cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38323356
Oct. 31, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET Michelle Goldberg
Andy O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and newspaper editor, told me that outsiders didn’t fully understand how radicalizing the second Trump presidency has been for ordinary Democrats. Even senior citizens, he said, were becoming “fire-breathing leftists. They’re just pissed off.”
These voters understood that Platner had made mistakes, but they saw him as a fighter. “Five years ago, he would have been dead in the water, I think,” said O’Brien, who now works with the labor movement. “But this is such an unprecedented time. I think a lot of people really believe that we need somebody who can effectively fight against fascism.”
Maine is an overwhelmingly white state, but it’s not just white guys who feel this way. “We’re sticking by him,” said Safiya Khalid, a Somali American activist and former member of the Lewiston City Council.
I don’t know how so many keep missing the point here.
Routinely, one weapon system is not authorized for use, when another of lesser explosive yield is authorized for use.
They did not, due to concerns for collateral damage, want to use the higher powered indirect fire option (mortars). So the marines created a way to calculate trajectory for use of a lower powered option (40mm grenades).
Every single conflict in the last 100 years occurred with noncombatants in the theater of conflict. None, I repeat none, hold themselves to the standard of never using a munition is it could harm a civilian at all. We try like hell to avoid it, and you do due diligence to target attackers embedded in civilian infrastructure as precisely as possible.
In the very same deployment, in the very same AO, the same command team did change authorization later for the larger indirect fire munition (mortars). There was no evacuation of civilians. Decisions on what weapon to employ are made based on ground conditions at the time.
Tell me this; what is the standard of when you can use a munition? 90% confidence no civilian casualties? 99%? 99.99999%? If it is 100% no military force could ever fire a shot, so why does this use of force in a calculated way to avoid civilian collateral damage not make the cut but other instances do?
I’m opposed to all wars except the class war, if you’re going across the world to kill civilians in an imperial war and you joined the Marines to kill, I’m not going to have a lot of charity about the use of improvised explosives in civilian areas
do you think there was anything wrong with what the US was doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? do you think that launching full scale invasions of other countries is okay as long as there’s a justification?