I think this is the issue when it comes to the long-term planning as opposed to short-term actions. Long-term, you’re likely not going to see the results of it for a painfully long time, and it feels like nothing’s really changed. Meanwhile short-term actions might not end up panning out in the long run, but they sure do make it feel like you’re winning by constantly making headlines and being very in-your-face.

Kharkiv in September 2022 is a good example of this. Russia fucks up by assuming that all their soldiers are gonna stay and not wanna go home to their families, Ukraine storms into Kharkiv and takes pretty much the whole oblast, they then later have to withdraw from Kherson City, mass panic by the pro-Russia side. The sky is falling, NATO is winning, Russia is on the verge of total defeat, this is merely Stage 1 of the grand Ukrainian plan to roll up Russia back to the border, and then… nothing really happens. I mean, Putin announces they’re mobilizing more troops but there’s no grand, sudden response which totally paralyzes Ukraine in a the-gloves-are-off moment. Russia looks insanely cucked and cowardly for not declaring outright war and merely firing missiles in barrages at the electrical grid. Doesn’t Putin know that you HAVE to respond tit-for-tat?! Then, months later, Bakhmut eventually falls after a grueling siege. Then, the gradual construction of defenses in Zaporozhye pays off when Ukraine fails to make progress there. Then there’s almost nothing else for all of 2023 and a big part of 2024. Then Ukraine invades Kursk, stalls almost immediately, and Russia accelerates the clearing of the Donbass. The triumph of long term planning over a mere sequence of short-term semi-victories.

I feel like the bloomers and the doomers (and I count myself in the first camp, I’m no impartial observer) are more or less talking past one another because we simply disagree on fundamental tenets like whether the Resistance should perform flashy short-term operations, or whether every action by Israel necessitates an immediate reaction in the same style (if Israel strikes us with a missile, we must strike them with a missile instead of something potentially more effective but more subtle). I’ve witnessed enough conflict management over the last couple years to know that the most effective strategy for military commanders is almost always to just sit, calm down, think through what the consequences of an event are likely to be, think about whether you must respond, and if you must, in what timeframe, and so on.

Anybody who’s fairly good at chess knows that when your opponent slides in and takes your piece in a bombastic move, often the instinct for beginners is to immediately take back, even if repeatedly doing that will quickly lose you the game. Instead you have to look at the whole board and consider options for counterattacking or defending. Iran, Hezbollah, Yemen, etc should not feel pressured to make a response to an Israeli attack if performing that attack leaves them in the same or a worse position. They might be called cowards by people online, but I’d prefer them to be like “Well, our best analysts and informants have concluded that if we respond in three weeks/months rather than three hours, then it’s likely that it’ll have a bigger effect because of our other operations weakening this aspect of the Israeli military etc, so we shall do that.” They’re trying to win a war, they have zero interest in helping you look less foolish online because you promised some Zionist lib that Hezbollah will DEFINITELY rain down missiles on Tel Aviv soon, and oh boy, you BETTER be scared! and then that didn’t actually happen.

I get that it’s the 21st century and warfare isn’t just lining up in a field shooting muskets, but some of these moves by Israel are just so-damn-bizarre. And even the most fervent Zionist needs to be asking :are-ya-winning-son:

I am a bloomer, and I would like to think that I have very good, grounded reasons for my bloomerism. But I do worry that being a bloomer leaves me with blind spots in my analysis.

I’m a centrist, Israel will be destroyed but it’ll take time.

More likely it’ll destroy itself.