What was the Falkland Islands War all about anyway?

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"But note here that it was May 21st that the British finally landed on East Falkland and June 13th that they managed to take control of Stanley. Yeah, three weeks. It was three weeks and the Argentinians managed to hold them off for that long. But this is almost like, you know, those movies, like the huge sweeping epic comedies, like it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. — Josh compares the complexity of the Falkland War campaign with multiple simultaneous operations to the chaotic plot of 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'." — Josh

"May the 2nd, 1982, 1,095 men went into the water, 772 come out, the sea took the rest. — Josh references the famous Jaws monologue from the USS Indianapolis speech when describing casualties from the sinking of the General Belgrano." — Josh

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"It wasn't just that the British were being patrimonious and really wanted to help the Falklanders out by opening up trade between them and the Argentinians. They also wanted to potentially offload responsibility for the Falklands to Argentina. Kind of like how you would consider selling a car that you knew maybe had 50 miles left in it. Oh man. But you could sink some money into repairing it or whatever, or you can sell it to some Schmo. Argentina said, can I take it for a spin? And Britain went, I can't find the keys right now, but if we go ahead and make the deal, I'll see if I can find them. It runs great though. Yeah, exactly. So just trust me. But imagine what you just said in a British accent. Yeah, I thought about doing it, but no. So the thing is, is this didn't go over very well with Great Britain. They were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't just, these are British subjects in some form or another. You can't just abandon them to the Argentinians. You can't sell them out. And the people on the island of the Falklands were not very happy with this either. Supposedly they used to call themselves Kelpers. And I think I get the impression that's one of those things that they can still call themselves Kelpers, but if you're from Argentina and you call them Kelpers, then that's fighting words. Okay. But they did not like the idea of being sold off to the Argentinians as a pawn in a larger trade negotiation to sell missiles. That just didn't sit well with them. No, and you get why? I totally get why. And the other problem is, this is just so neo-lib too. The Thatcher administration went in and was like, this is really what we want to do, sell missiles, but we're not going to give one way or another. There's no compromise on the Falklands. It's either all or nothing. And they, I guess, wanted to open trade to the Argentinians but didn't want to give them to the Argentinians, but the Argentinians wanted them. And rather than find a compromise, like I said, it was just all or nothing. And they just left it as is. They basically scared the pants off of the Falkland Islanders saying we're willing to basically leave you guys hanging. But at the same time, they weren't willing to pull the trigger and go all the way and let Argentina have the Falklands and maybe administer them correctly. Who knows? So instead, the Falkland Islands were left in this weird geopolitical limbo in starting about 1979, I believe, 1980, to where no one quite knew exactly how interested Great Britain was in holding these islands. Argentina was very interested in getting these islands. And the Falkland Islanders were caught in the middle of this. Yeah, and on the Argentinian side, they were sort of in the midst of a right-wing military dictatorship that after a 76 coup, they were not nice people. They terrorized people. They murdered their opponents. They imprisoned people. It was called the Dirty War. Within that, or a few years after that in 1981, there was an internal coup within that same party where a general Leopoldo Galtieri, good? Sure. All right. He went into power, but still that same right-wing faction. And they wanted not only the Falklands, they wanted the South, they wanted South Georgia Island and South Sandwich Islands and basically wanted that whole sort of South Atlantic area because of Antarctica. Yeah, yeah. So they, the other thing is a lot of people point to this. Did you mention the name of that, the dictatorship? Oh, the NPR? No, it's the opposite of the NPR. It's the NRP. The NRP, yeah. It's not the opposite. National reorganization process. Well, I mean, instead of the ethos of NPR. Oh, it is, I guess. I guess, although they're both into reeducation for sure. Oh boy. So Argentina basically was saying like, okay, we're a military junta. We don't know what to do with the economy. We're super oppressive, especially against our opposition. We'll like make you disappear and murder your family and all this stuff. This is a bad jam at home. We need something to make everybody feel good about being Argentinian again. Yep. Maybe, maybe. If we go get these Falkland Islands, this little adventurism that we go on, will restore patriotism in Argentina and will make everybody look the other way on what's called the dirty war that we've been fighting for the last few years since we've come to power. And that was kind of like the big impetus toward Argentina. They had like these military aspirations because it was after all the military coup that took over as a military dictatorship. So what else are you gonna do? Military stuff. But at the same time, Britain was widely viewed around the world as not really caring much about what happened to the Falklands. And I think that that gave Argentina an overblown sense of how easy it would be to just go ahead and take these islands once and for all as their own. Yeah, they needed this for nationalism. They couldn't count on Diego Maradona to come in and save the day for another four or five years. Okay. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? He was a soccer player. Yeah. He must have been a contemporary of Paley's then, huh? The hand of God. That was a very famous soccer goal that he scored. I think it was. The hand of, you can't use your hands in soccer. Exactly. Huh. Look it up. Okay. So I think that's kind of sets the table for what's about to happen here. It's not like England or, I'm sorry, geez, I always do that. Let's just say Britain to be safe. That's what I've been doing. Britain wasn't really planning for this, even though there'd been a lot of back and forth about the Falklands. I don't think they expected, ultimately, a surprise attack. They weren't really prepared. Like you mentioned, the Argentines thought it would kind of go pretty easily because they didn't seem like they cared about it, the Britain, the Brits. Yeah. And they're like, we're gonna go get all these islands. But then this weird sort of start to the war, to the start of a very weird war happened, which was an incident at South Georgia Island with a scrap metal dealer of all things. Yeah. So I mean, at that time, remember the Argentinean dictatorship was like just looking for any opportunity to take these islands. And that scrap metal dealer got a contract to dismantle the whaling station in South Georgia Island. And so we chartered an Argentinean Navy vessel to carry him and his salvage crew over there. And Argentina actually thought, this would be a good opportunity for us to secretly invade South Georgia Island. I mean, invade by way of just sort of parking their car there and saying, hey, this is ours. Exactly. Exactly. And they didn't even, as they were backing in, somebody else was coming in front ways. Oh, Seinfeld. — Chuck makes a reference to the Seinfeld-like scenario of Argentina and Britain arguing about parking/backing into South Georgia Island." — Chuck