hanikrummihundursvin
No bio...
User ID: 673
1 I responded to that comment below.
2 If your free speech comes with the caveat that any sufficiently powerful person or group can effectively own the public square in part or whole and dictate what can and can't be said then I can only consider my original point, that Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedoms and rights, proven and demonstrated.
3 I'm not terribly interested in getting in the weeds on this nor do I see the relevance, but:
I don't see how Trump 2.0 can be considered to have given his voters what they wanted when there is an active middle east war and more foreign workers in the country now than before his second term began. But the MAGA base will cheer on literally anything as long as Trump does it so there's that.
If your free speech rights hinge on you becoming a billionaire to functionally buy the public square then, again, I feel I can't overstate my original point.
4 Isn't that a great refutation of your own point? He didn't compare himself to Europe and make that the barometer. He had ideological and philosophical values! He looked beyond just what's in the world and dared to dream of what was possible. Or something...
But how American are those values? The vast majority of the American elite is in favor of speech restrictions and controls. Illustrated by every other American platform having very clear speech and content restrictions that go beyond any law of the land. That's why Musk had to buy Twitter. Before that people had been getting banned for misgendering people or making political jokes that offended the ownership elite or the special interest groups that constantly drive for more censorship like the ADL. Musk's X is in a very clear minority among the elite and his platform still engages in censorship and backroom algorithmic manipulation.
How about we have our own ideologies and values and judge what's happening in the world of free speech by those? Rather than basing our barometer on what some billionaire came up with or what they are doing in Germany or wherever else.
hanikrummihundursvin
23d ago
There being a lot of pigs in the sty doesn't change the point.
hanikrummihundursvin
24d ago
That's a comparison revolving around being the cleanest pig in the sty. If the culmination of the freedom loving spirit of Americans can't reach beyond comparing themselves to the Germans then the point, that Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedom and rights, is very much made.
hanikrummihundursvin
24d ago
I feel Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedoms and rights. Not only has the US government worked to censor in recent years using big tech as a proxy, it has also done so historically, such as with the case of Schenck v. United States, Charles Coughlin, McCarthyism or COINTELPRO and similar.
If the government was the owner of all major communications platforms, then yeah, the first amendment would technically be super relevant. But when American law is willing to leverage the right of a single company owner to censor speech as being equal to the right of millions of people to express themselves on that companies platform, you have a state of affairs that is effectively no different from not having any free speech rights at all. Which is exactly the case for anyone wanting to color outside the lines of American powers that be. Maybe not by putting you in jail, as is the case in Europe. But via indirect means, such as with the examples given earlier or suddenly not having a bank account or not being able to freely choose an airline or host a website by any normal means.
I think a secondary part is that what a lot of Americans believe doesn't seem to matter a whole lot. And even if that wasn't the case, American media has had such a stranglehold on the public that it's not as if there was ever going to be a risk of anyone believing anything truly heterodox to begin with. And if that were ever a likely case, the American government can and has stepped in to get ahead of those movements. The sheer mass of the American media and political system has been too great for any popular grass roots movement to budge it until, arguably, 2016 Trump arrived.
But even after Trump, TPTB have learned their lesson, are course correcting and we are now only celebrating 'free speech' in America because a South African bought twitter.
I haven't felt this negative about America since Bush Jr. Along with exposure to Paula White I feel myself being dragged back to my New Atheist days.
This stuff sure cycles fast.
hanikrummihundursvin
28d ago
I don't think much of the modern gender wars rhetoric is aimed at such a goal. The modern manosphere types going on the Whatever podcast to talk at young women and call them stupid It's not about fixing women but telling men to recognize women as being the equivalent of a 'rapist'.
And if we're being honest, there's not much to argue against that from any self aware feminist perspective. 'Teach men not to rape' was never intended to teach men not to rape. It was just a hostile gender based expression directed at men by the most sheltered and privileged women on earth.
hanikrummihundursvin
29d ago
Americans have a slightly mythological view of Europeans as a separate and independent culture, when in reality the European consensus is just what's on American TV told back to you in an exotic accent.
I'm not sure if that's a high enough resolution look at the situation. There are a lot of media bubbles. Many arrive at similar conclusions for a wide variety of reasons.
As an example, it seems a lot of people have a hard time understanding how cutting China off from Iranian or Venezuelan oil is a big geopolitical victory for the US when China is already buying most of its oil from Russia and is increasing those imports in response to current events. Russia being a country that is in a rather obvious geopolitical dispute with the EU and the US over Ukraine.
Russia selling more of its oil and gas to China effectively circumvents the sanction efforts of the EU and US. If the goal prior was to pressure Russia through sanctions then disrupting the oil market was probably the worst move possible if those disruptions alleviate pressure off of Russia.
It's even worse when we account for the bind Europe has put itself in with their own global warming minded energy reforms and how heavily the sanctions against Russia are affecting them in tandem.
So we arrive at a point of convergence. PWC Liberal World Order folks of all stripes in the US and EU want to uphold that order and punish Russia for disrupting it. Nativist Right wingers in the US and EU wanted less foreign wars for various reasons. Well, here we have a foreign war that aggravates all parties. I don't think that earmarking all of them as being trapped in a liberal oriented bubble is a very illuminating effort.
Along with the confirmation bias inducing admissions of what was really going on with regards to US policy and involvement in the middle east and how ideologically Zionist it has always been, the piece is very interesting. One can imagine that the Foreign Affairs Policy Board meetings have been getting heated for Kagan to want to publish this.
But taking the article at face value, Kagan seems to be wanting to have things both ways when he says:
That is especially true given this administration’s cavalier attitude toward international responsibilities. The Iran war is global intervention “America First”–style: no public debate, no vote in Congress, no cooperation or, in many cases, even consultation with allies other than Israel, and, apparently, no concern for potential consequences to the region and the world.
Well, how is it America First then? I understand the label insofar as it can represent the 'populist strongman' stereotype of an authoritarian coming in like a wrecking ball to 'make things right' by cutting through all the nonsense and getting things done, or whatever. But why would such an 'America First' person feel the need to consult only with Israel at the cost of everything else? Throughout decades of foreign occupations, countless lives lost and trillions down the drain, the common denominator has not been 'America First' but Zionism.
The stalwarts of neo-conservatism might imagine that their interventions were prim and proper, but it's precisely those interventions and the negative fallout that has burnt through all the necessary political power around themselves and their allies so that they can continue on enacting and supporting this type of 'US' foreign policy.
To put a lighthearted spin on it, imagine a trolley problem. The trolley has already driven through millions of innocents. Cutting them to bits and causing excruciating torturous deaths, and it's about to drive over another undetermined amount of innocents. Kagan is here to tell us that the real problem is not the mass murder of innocents in service of US's ideological commitment to Zionism, but the authoritarianism and vulgarity by which the current operator is handling the lever. At no point do we consider directing the trolley somewhere else.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
If the Israeli government is 'deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Gazans', then why haven't they brought about their destruction in whole or in part?
I mentioned why in my comment:
Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.
The argument being the only reason to do something like this is to kill the people there, force them out of the land, permanently disperse them and then take the land and eventually have no one left to make a claim to it as the dispersed population loses its identity and disappears.
You can already see the reasoning in comments here, to a lesser extent:
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
The first three conditions are already fulfilled. so the only relevant question left is whether Israel intends to destroy the Palestinians / views this current act as a stepping stone to get there or not.
Looking at Israeli actions in a modern context, the question is not whether they 'physically' could, since we know they could, but how a modern nation would go about genociding a population. Given a modern nation would understand that overtly killing a lot of people at once would garner a drastic response they could potentially not afford.
So if you had credible evidence that there was a great plan for something similar to 'lebensraum' in the area, and a population or political class with firm belief in a distinct and exclusive ethno supremacist identity, along with a healthy doze of otherizing rhetoric from public officials, then you certainly have a recipe.
That being said, I would not care if we use the word genocide or 'ethnic cleansing' or 'politically motivated mass murder on an industrial scale' to describe this. But I would want some reconciliation over the fact that one side is trying to amplify what is going on whilst another is trying to do the opposite.
This reads like a fever dream.
As a foreword, I don't like reading quoted lines being rebutted one by one as it can drag on and become incoherent, but in this case there is sometimes so little argumentative weight within the paragraphs I think we can get away without it. But not everywhere.
- 1
It is obviously absurd to think peace and prosperity for all will come if Israel were to vanish. Is this absurd belief popular? Not really, right? So who are we arguing against?
Heck if Israel wasn't there to focus hatred on, the Arabs would probably fight among themselves even more.
There's no evidence presented for this claim or rational given for why this would be the case. The opposite can just as easily be presented as equally plausible.
- 2
Secondly, it's extremely impractical, if not impossible to remove 6 million Jews from land they've now lived on for (at least) three generations
Again, who is this directed towards? Is geociding every Palestinian a more practical solution? Probably not, so why not hash out what an actual practical solution might be?
- 3
Rabin was assassinated by another Israeli. In what Wikipedia found remarkable enough to note to probably be the most successful political assassination in history. So what is the point here? What's the argument? Israel wanted peace, demonstrated by Rabin signing the Oslo accords. OK. But other factions in Israel were so against that signing that they killed Rabin. This assassination and the fact that the political landscape of the country moved away from the Oslo accords demonstrates what? That they still want peace?
I'm not stating this as a 'gotcha' proof of anything. A relevant portion might still have wanted peace. Just that your line of reasoning here is clearly going nowhere.
Unfortunately, every government the Palestinians have elected have made it their central platform to destroy Israel
This is not true. Who else signed the Oslo accords? Is that signing not an equal demonstration of wanting peace? The Palestinians didn't even assassinate their guy(written half jokingly). I hope this justifies my likening your post to a fever dream.
- 4
What is the relevance of the US also having outsized influence in Israeli politics? Much of the criticism laid against Israel is by Americans who feel Israel has too much influence in their politics. Why would they have a problem with America having influence over Israel? There's no contradiction there. Again, where this is going? It just reads like a complete non-sequitur. Beyond that, surely we could reason why the US would have more influence in Israeli politics, given the power disparity, right? But that's a tangential argument.
Up until the mid 1970s, Israel was heavily socialist country that had far more ties to the Soviet Union than the US wanted.
So the US made a covert effort to subvert the naturally leftist state of Israel towards capitalism? The way I remember my history Israel came naturally towards the US as it became clear the Soviet Union wasn't completely ready to play ball with Zionist demands. Demonstrated in USSR support for Egypt and Syria. With increased tensions during the Suez Crisis, and with the USSR dropping all formal diplomatic contact after the Six Day War.
Am I completely off base here?
Netenyahu is the logical result of this.
Seems more like Israel had goals that could not align with the greater USSR vision of a somewhat united front against the west in the ME. Netanyahu is just as much a further expression of that impulse, rather than a consequence of some US ploy to win over Israel.
I feel point 5 has been adequately discussed in different comments.
In closing:
If this were a formal debate, I'd call what you are doing a Spread. Not so much with regards to the speed, but in that you are directing the debate towards a certain direction. My problem with your spread is that it's not going anywhere relevant. It's just a bunch of off ramps towards easy joo apologia that circumvent the meat and potatoes of a lot of criticism regarding Israel.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
Has Iran funded a lot of terrorism in the west? I was under the impression they were one of the smaller players in that arena.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
Maybe the "antisemites" should.
I can feel a very clear border when talking to many of my foreign co-workers. There are topics beyond discussion because all parties know there isn't one to to be had. It would in fact be an insult to even broach them. Yet here I sit, my entire culture now revolving around how to accommodate their viewpoints within the nation my ancestors made.
Looking at the big picture it's all futile. They get a say in your land, you get no say in theirs. Their customs are sacred, yours are at best arbitrary and certainly up for critique and debate. They have a just cause, you have guilt and sin. And if you want to keep the peace then that's the truth. This dynamic has been playing out wherever immigrants stake their claim in the west. At some point it's just stupid not to point out how this all goes.
They ultimately recognize their common cause as outsiders who are trying to keep their foot in the door. Keeping my ear full of how great their country is and how bad mine is yet somehow never stumble on the idea that they are here for a reason that might impugn that assessment. That maybe because their countries have one too many a person with exactly their type of temperament and opinion is the reason why they find themselves traveling thousands of miles to a country with, apparently, worse weather, worse food, dumber laws, worse religion and more racists.
Humility would go a long way, but no. The most common explanation I get when I point this out is that somewhere along the way those nasty Europeans did evil to them and theirs, so they now have to come here. Well... What great neighbors I have!
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
These are human beings with moral agency and rational minds. In principle there should be nothing stopping them from just ceasing to be an oppressive warmongering theocracy, and then, miraculously, the rest of the world would stop trying to blow them up.
I'm pretty sure there are Iranians pondering the exact same thing about the US and Israel.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
It sounds like a negotiating tactic to put someone under pressure via a deadline.
I'm sure he wrote something similar in 'Art of the Deal'. Not sure if you can transfer the intended effect over a social media post in the context of a deadly civilizational conflict.
I had firm belief that Ukraine would sue for peace after they weathered the shock of the initial attack by Russia. But it turns out you can just ignore the obvious disaster on the horizon and condemn hundreds of thousands of men to their useless deaths.
Honestly feels like reality lost its training wheels after that and anything is now possible regardless of how obviously stupid it is.
That being said, I'd wager against further escalation in this specific direction if only because Israel is allegedly very vulnerable to retaliation. Now, how true is that? I don't know. Maybe the Israeli government has tunnel vision on the idea that this is their final chance to knock Iran down a peg, so the risk is worth it.
My prediction is Trump will bomb something else and successfully pivot to that being a victory.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
There is a lot of hyperbole on this topic and it's easy to get lost in the sauce.
There are, however, some key elements that are a bit too big to just be swept under the rug.
And if Europe is left without oil - it is their own fault for antagonizing Russia.
This seems like a pretty big swipe. Especially considering Europe has already been the garbage dump for all the trash Israel and American wars have caused in the middle east.
Is there no concern Europe will eventually just either have enough or take on so much trash it can no longer function as an ally? Seems like we are already seeing signs of that with UK's reluctance or Spain's flat out refusal to aid in the war so far.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
If Iran had showed more restraint whilst the US was either in the process of financing an invasion of them or directly invading their neighboring country of Iraq? That Sunni neighbor that had just failed in their invasion of them? Or whilst America and Israel were destroying Syria and Libya?
Not having WMD's didn't help Iraq or Syria. Giving away their nuclear weapons didn't help Gadaffi, it did quite the opposite. The double standard here nullifies this position completely. Not to mention Israel's nuclear stockpile. What instances of Iranian 'aggression' are you referring to? Because we have already gone over the broad stroke instances and you have not put up much defense of them. Recognizing them as reasonable or at least rational.
Outside of the hostage crisis, I can't take your position seriously. No sober look at the Iran situation, especially considering past events, can justify it being a rational decision to depend on the mercy of America and Israel.
I feel like we are again approaching my original point of circular argumentation, where the aggression and unreasonableness of Iran is referred to without any consideration for why they took the actions they took.
Or, they could have pursued a nuclear weapon quietly instead of creating a nasty regional proxy network while pursuing conciliatory policies towards their neighbors. This would lower the perceived threat of the nuclear weapons program.
This I agree with. An either or would have been preferable. But considering the conditions, I'm not sure if it would have been plausibly feasible.
Giving the Houthis the ability to dictate US policy by threatening to cut off international trade is not really a great idea.
But letting Israel dictate US policy is? Pressuring your ally that is engaging in relentless revenge bombing that has been condemned the world over to stop, especially when the blowback starts threatening your interests in the region, is not giving the reigns of your foreign policy away. It's doing quite the opposite.
But, as I understand it, it was also a violation of the JCPOA, at least in the sense that Iran was supposed to disclose past nuclear dealings.
The JCPOA had no binding resolutions for Iran to immediately disclose all instances of previously undeclared nuclear activity. The treaty was designed to give outside organizations leverage to investigate. Those were the only binding factors aside from specific caps on material and enrichment. This is why, even in 2015 before the JCPOA was in effect, the findings of the IAEA that confirmed Iran had been seeking to create nuclear weapons prior to 2003 were not disqualifying. As those kinds of findings were exactly the kind of thing the JCPOA would help with resolving, since the treaty would give investigators leverage to get access to those sites and demand answers from Iran.
So the idea that Iran has had no choice but to do all of this doesn't really seem correct.
Considering the history of recent death and destruction with its neighbors, I can't agree, as highlighted before. Assad, Hussein, Gaddafi. At least one of them saw the writing on the wall.
I mean - shooting ballistic missiles after the US killed Soleimani was fair enough. Forming proxy networks, maybe. Mining international waters? Seems like (in hindsight) it likely hurt more than it helped. Most of the other stuff seems gratuitous.
I feel like we are getting somewhere here. So what are the concrete reasons for why the US needs to bomb Iran? Maybe instead of saying 'because they fund Hezbollah' a more honest response would be 'we pushed them into a corner and are now dealing with the consequences of doing that whilst unconditionally supporting Israel'
Sure, and it depends a lot on who you ask. The idea that the US should uphold international trade, by military force if necessary, is pretty popular in America even with people who are skeptical of, e.g., Iraq.
That doesn't seem factually correct to me. Most polling I see says that most Americans don't like either the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or the GWOT in general despite initial popularity.
It seems you are conflating wars in the middle east with upholding international trade. Invading Iraq did not help trade, nor did the invasion into Afghanistan or toppling Assad or Gaddafi. And US protecting Israel's action to bomb civilians in Gaza has only hurt international trade via retaliation from Houthis. And international trade is in a pretty terrible state because of bombing Iran and the fallout.
This position seems completely wrong. Like... Where does this come from?
So it seems like we're both agreed that US retaliation against Iranian assets when those Iranian assets kill Americans is, in fact, reasonable?
but moving from a contract dispute to seizure is pretty escalatory.
There was no dispute. The British flat out refused to even allow the Iranians to audit the company that they believed was stiffing them. I agree that it was an escalation, but what was the alternative? Let the communist party ride the issue until they won an election? Would the UK and US take kindly to that development? Something had to be done by Mossadegh, no?
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
"Iran made mistakes that did not best serve its national interest" is another way of looking at it.
No it's not. I've already asked you to clarify what the reasonable action for Iran would be, but you never answer. It's always a negative insinuation without context or explanation that 'Iran bad' and therefor causal.
Really. So when the United States bombed the Houthis until they agreed to stop attacking US shipping, that wasn't in our interests? When the Iranians deployed mines that nearly sunk a US frigate that was deployed to escort tankers because the Iranians were attacking oil tankers and the US bombed the Iranian navy in retaliation, contributing to the end of the war with Iraq, that wasn't in our interest?
You are again cutting off events from context. Maybe it would be helpful if we just run down the entire chain of events so my point can eventually get across when we get to the part where you disagree with US action. So I would ask if supporting action that compels the Houthis to bomb shipping is in the interest of America. Or if it would have been better to pressure Israel to stop bombing so many civilians in Gaza before it ever came to Houthis taking action. To me the answer is very clear. America loses nothing by stopping Israel and its excessive bombing of Gaza, it loses a lot by having to engage with Houthis after they disrupt shipping.
The long and short of it is that the Iranians failed to declare the full extent of their nuclear program as required by the JCPOA.
That would be a violation of the NPT. The JCPOA was valuable as a tool to coerce Iran to allow inspectors to sites where potential breaches like the one you mention occur. Iran would only be in violation of the JCPOA if they denied access to investigators and/or if the findings would reveal that Iran was using material to enrich above the set cap or that this material would in total exceed the 300kg maximum stockpile and they refused to hand it over. Findings like the one you mentioned are precisely why the JCPOA was useful.
This makes rifting the JCPOA extremely stupid as it now leaves inspectors in the dark and Iran is floating the idea of leaving the NPT entirely. From a standpoint of wanting less nuclear weapons, especially when it comes to Iran, the Trump admin made bad decisions.
Are you saying that Israel and the US cooperate, so the US has no standing to criticize Iran's actions?
What do you think "leverage that as a reason" refers to in my comment? The entire premise of the NPT is to facilitate conditions where a nuclear arms race does not occur. The US is explicitly allied with a nation neighboring Iran that did not sign the treaty and has nuclear weapons. To say Iran was allied with Israel in a similar way, or Iraq, is not getting it.
I agree that this is the case with some US actions in the region, but I am not persuaded that is the case for every action the United States has taken in the region.
Of course, I'm sure there are cases like that. But in other cases there is a clean line of causation where Iran had to take action and it is precisely because of that why I say that the existence of Iran proxies would not be a good reason to increase hostilities but rather to try to bring them down. I mean, is there a genuine belief that the forever war in the middle east has been beneficial to US interest? What are the soldiers getting blown up by Iranian proxies dying for?
As for cases like the captured US colonel, if negotiations fail, you would have to track down the perpetrators and kill them. Torture is uniquely ugly.
But as I understand it, the reason for the coup was at least in part that Iran had nationalized oil assets (basically: confiscating British property).
Iran voted to nationalize oil assets after Britain refused to allow investigation into AIOC. Iran suspected they were not being paid their fair share, which was 16% of profits at the time. On top of that, Iran wanted a new deal similar to neighboring states, which would split profits 50/50. Britain refused.
I am personally of the opinion that people outside the west do even recognize the enormous amount of technology they are given freely. Most natural resources would be no resource at all if it weren't for Europeans, their descendants and their towering technological achievements. That being said, after having allegedly been paying less that the agreed upon 16%, and after the AIOC had made profits on their original technological investment many times over, 50/50 sounds fair to me. To say that Iran was unilaterally confiscating British property is, I would argue, unfair.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
I don't know that "Iran bad" really matters, does it? Iran is, like, a little bad, sure. You seem to want to boil this down to "Iran good/bad, US bad/good" – both countries have actually in real life done rotten things and the US or Iran being a better or worse country than the other doesn't mean that the way they have conducted themselves in these particular circumstances is wise. I don't really think it was wise of the US to meddle in Iran's government, that doesn't mean it was wise of Iran to poke the States.
It's incredible that you wrote all this just to say 'Iran bad' again.
You've expressed skepticism about US "interest" as regards Iran's conduct and I am trying to explain the US interest to you
That's not correct. The point I'm making is that the hostile actions taken by Israel and the US have not served the interests of the US in the region.
What would meet your threshold for unreasonable behavior? Lying to the IAEA about their past nuclear aspirations, thus undermining the JCPOA?
That would be unreasonable behavior depending on the extent of the lies, when they were made, their geopolitical situation at the time when the research was being done. But considering their neighbor state, Israel, hasn't even signed the NPT and the hostilities between them and Iran, not to mention Iraq's use of chemical weapons and their own nuclear weapons research during a time they were being supported by the US in invading Iran, I'm hesitant to say that the US is in a position to leverage that as a reason.
When did these lies get uncovered and how did they undermine the JCPOA? As far as I've understood things, Iran was in compliance and that this was repeatedly verified up until the Trump admin invalidated the agreement.
but are you insisting that Japanese-flagged ships in some moral sense deserve to be attacked by Iran? Or that, just because Iran has decided it will help it in its war if it attacks neutral shipping, that the neutral shipping just has to agree to that?
No. I'm saying US interest and the interest of nations that depend on the US are hurt by the actions of the US in the region and that the response they get from Iran is entirely predictable.
The United States did not in any sense make them attempt to
Yes they did. At every turn the US forced Iran's hand. At every point of escalation Iran had to match it or get destroyed. You can not have a clearer line drawn in the sand than when chemical weapons are used against your people. There is no coming back from that. To act as if Iran was unreasonable when it started funding and arming proxies in the region after such a terrible war is a joke.
The one time the US offered a deal to the Iranians they signed it and stood by it until the US invalidated it. As you correctly point out, Obama did indeed facilitate that. And despite claims that it was too good of a deal for Iran, there was a host of nations that disagreed.
I do agree that we should not have facilitated the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran or done anything in 1953.
This I find curious. Why? Would continued access to very cheap oil not be of benefit to the US?
I appreciate the sentiment, but that sort of 'tracing back the blame' game, whilst fitting in a sense, isn't what's going on here. It's not about finding ultimate moral culpability via locating the human that cast the first stone. It's about judging the actions of Iran as being reasonable or not. Sure, some historical context is required, but if a nations motivations to attack are tracing themselves back a thousand year or two, I wouldn't call them reasonable.
From a geopolitical standpoint, when people ask why we need to bomb Iran and the reason given is that, effectively, Iranians are lunatics that fund terrorists as a hobby and block trade for sport... Some context is warranted. Context that the 'bomb Iran' crowd somehow never mentions despite being obviously relevant.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
There is no real 'worst' in the sense of any moral transgression. For every single alleged Iranian misdeed there is a clear analog and reason as to why.
As an example: Iran funds proxies in the region as a continuation of the Iraq-Iran war. Where the US and other states provided direct support to Iraq so it could invade Iran. This is why there are no major 'terror' attacks by alleged Iran funded proxies prior to that invasion.
To put things into context, in total, the US has, according to AI, lost less than 1000 men to alleged Iran proxy attacks in the middle east. In contrast, the Iraq-Iran war killed at least 180 thousand Iranians. That's only counting the war and not the many thousands that die because of other US backed wars, strikes and their continued support for Israel, which does the same.
But none of this is ever mentioned by any anti-Iran advocates.
It's comical, really. The worst Iranian transgressions interventionists can point towards are all the direct consequence of their prior failed interventions.
hanikrummihundursvin
1mo ago
It's only looks reasonable if you create a small circular argument that begins with 'Iran bad' and ends with 'Therefor Iran bad and needs to be stopped'. Which is all you are doing. Comment after comment. At every turn when I ask you to evaluate and demonstrate that Iran acted unreasonably or had better options you either ignore it or short circuit and say 'Iran bad'.
I mean:
Because Iran is engaged in proxy warfare with the Saudis and Israel, we have no particular reason to believe that the US departure from the area would cause the regional crisis to cease, nor do we have a guarantee that Iran wouldn't do things such as blockade the Red Sea or Straits of Hormuz. In fact we know that Iran did this sort of thing in the past during their war with Iraq!
Now, why would Iran do such a thing as block shipping routes during their defensive war against Iraq? What could the US and other countries possibly have done to not have to deal with that? Maybe not directly back Iraq in invading Iran? No no, that's not what you respond to. You create short circular loops of 'Iran bad therefor military action against Iran good' instead.
Does Iran close the strait in peacetime? Does Iran not look to make deals with other countries to allow their ships to pass and not others? What a curious thing for an unreasonable country to do.
And here again, the exact same circular argument:
Your logic seems to be that this is all the poisoned fruit of the United States and UK meddling in Iran ~50 years ago. I think it's completely fair to criticize that decision, and to point out that it had bad consequences. But the United States did not make the only decision: Iran had its own set of decisions to make, some of them were poor ones, and that is why we are where we are.
It's just crazy that you do this again and again. What were these decisions? Where did America offer or facilitate better alternatives? If America caused the conflict to begin with by attempting to strongarm the Iranians for their oil, and then follows that up with a coup, then transitions into directly backing a full scale invasion into Iran, and in the fallout of that 8 year war never once takes a step back to deescalate or acknowledge what has transpired then how on earth can the Iranian response to this America made mess be a relevant cause towards any further escalating action against Iran? If you make a geopolitical blunder, the correct course of action is to accept the loss. Not constantly double down on it and then point to the negative fallout your failures caused as a further reason to engage in more failures.
We can think of an analogous decision, wherein we hold Germany responsible for the Holodomor because they assisted placing Lenin in power. Certainly that decision can be criticized! But so too can the mistakes and outright evil deeds perpetrated by the Soviets. It's absurd to give them no agency, and it's absurd to give the Iranians no say in their own actions.
Communism bad therefor Operation Barbarossa good? I agree that this is analogous to what the US is doing. I am asking you to consider why Germany returned Lenin with millions in cash, what the fallout of that decision was and to consider that further escalation of warfare was a bad decision for everyone.
Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people. Hard to imagine a greater authority on the matter.
Besides that, rhetoric coming from a protest or some mass gathering is slightly different than rhetoric coming from world leaders. 'Glassing the place' became a common term for what many Americans said should be done to the middle east, I don't suppose you think that's the same as an official statement from a national leader? Though Trump has now narrowed that gap.
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