This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?
I reference a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz, where it turns out he didn't know said population (and has since responded with an AI meme image of Tucker asking Luke the population of the Death Star).
Turns out that the population of Iran is 92 million, I thought it was around 80. 80 would be a fairly reasonable answer. Even Yemen is surprisingly populous, around 41 million. Fun game to try - estimate the population of various countries in these areas.
I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be super-smart, wouldn't it be natural to read up on Iran? He is on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. It's also relevant to US strategic choices and his particular love of Israel. Knowing about the subpopulations and relative size of the Azeris, Kurds and similar would be relevant to regime change, which is his professed goal:
To his credit he does know that Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. And maybe being on a bunch of other subcommittees means he has to divide up his time and energy in all these different areas. But it's not like Tucker is asking really sophisticated questions about the position and integration of Azeri elites in the Tehran power structure. That really should be dealt with by an expert diplomat. But senators are supposed to be making strategic decisions, one has to have some base of knowledge to decide upon different courses of action.
Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.
Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?
Trump also posted this somewhat ominous diatribe from Mike Huckabee (pastor and ambassador to Israel) praising Trump's divine prominence, his position similar to 'Truman in 1945' and how he has to listen to god and the angels only... https://x.com/Mondoweiss/status/1934999328583713096/photo/1
This episode reminds me of how George W Bush apparently didn't know of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam until after deciding to invade, he brought up Gog and Magog when trying to persuade Chirac to join the war. Maybe that's false, some have disputed it. Or how Trump apparently won't read any long extracts of text and demands pictures. Maybe that's also false, lots of stories have been made about Trump policy. It's known that Biden didn't know whether people were alive or dead or what was happening much of the time. Large swathes of the Democrats can't tell the difference between men and women.
Here's another one I just found from another US congressman: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1839686465820766542
That's just weird!
There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power. At the risk of sounding like an edgy atheist fighting a war everyone's tired of and moved on from years ago, surely theology should have no place in grand strategy. It's normal to have colourful characters in politics, some corruption, some old people who don't know what's going on, a certain level of lobbying. But this seems to be on a qualitatively different level, with serious results.
Others have taken the meat of your post to respond to already, so I'm going to reply with a tangent: who cares?
What utility does knowing Iran's population matter? What relevance is the specific number of Iranians to any American interests? They're a far group whose only relevance is how much they might endanger our investments in the Middle East with their constant terrorism funding and sabber-rattling. There could be ten million, twenty, one hundred, it'd change no calculus.
The population of a minor nation across the sea is trivia. It's not important knowledge, and not knowing it shouldn't be taken as significant. It's like not knowing what Burkina Faso is the capital of.
Iran's population is Iran. Iran, like the US, will act on its own interests. 10 million person Iran has a much different capacity to act than 100 million person Iran does. The extent that Iran can fund terror or saber rattle or endanger US investments is proportional to their population.
Things like industrial capacity, military budget, GDP, are all largely contingent on population.
There may be a correlation, but it's not absolute. Mexico doesn't have a single tank or air defense system in its entire armed forces. Even if Mexico wanted to build a domestic military industry, they may not have the state capacity to do it.
Meanwhile Ukraine is far smaller in population but capable of fighting a modern total war on land sea and air.
Mexico may or may not have the state capacity to build domestic milindust, but it’s a world leader in heavy industry in general- thé challenge would be mostly getting it converted over to military spec as opposed to civilian stuff. They clearly can make things, drones probably aren’t any harder than trucks.
More options
Context Copy link
That would be a relevant point if we knew nothing about Iran. But we do know things about Iran so I don't see the need for games of analogy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This all may be true, to an extent (it's obviously not as simple as adding people means more state capacity).
But again: so? I'm confident America is superior regardless.
Given how much damage the middle eastern refugee waves did to the US and Europe it would be nice if our Senator's knew that Iran's population is larger than Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria's populations (at the point of their regime change attempts) combined.
I'm more confident in this administration's ability to enforce our territorial sovereignty than previous ones. We don't actually need to let them in, no matter how many there are.
The administration that caved and eventually brought back an ms-13 member all because there was a minor clerical error and, despite him being cleared for deportation, he wasn't cleared for deportation to El Salvador specifically so the media spent an entire month throwing a fit about it? I lack your faith. All the institutions are still aligned against Populists.
Unfortunately, once they're already in the nation, they get significantly more protections due to the madness of the American left. That's why it's very important to keep them out in the first place, which is something this administration can do -- and, I have faith, will.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No. It is true. There is no "may". These things I mention being complicated and multifaceted doesn't mean there is a chance or a scenario in which population is not critical in their determination.
America was superior to Iraq (2003), and Syria, and Afghanistan, and Libya. Did our intervention in these countries go well for America? No, they did not.
It does not matter if America is superior to Iran. It matters if America can achieve what Ted Cruz wants to do, in the way Ted wants to do it, at an acceptable cost. If Ted Cruz does not know basic facts about the capacity of Iran to impose costs, how will Ted be able to know what costs Iran can impose?
It remains "may", because as said, scaling a population up doesn't necessarily improve its military or state capacities.
The wrong goals were pursued in all of these cases.
I asked this to another, I ask it to you: at what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz to handle logistics? This is not a Senator's role. The country's population numbers are not an important concern for him. They are trivia.
Yeah its why I said that American superiority doesn't matter. Seems that you should be not confident in American superiority. And yet you are. Ok.
No, it is not a senator's role to do logistics. Yes, it is a senators role to make informed choices on the people he wants to declare war on. Ted Cruz not knowing basic information about the country he wants to attack is an excellent indication that he is not making informed choices.
Knowing a country's population and demographics is not trivia when you want to overthrow its government. Tucker asked those questions for a reason. Iran's government is not popular. Iran has ethnic separatist movements, there are close to 15 million Azeris. How many want to join Azerbaijan, does Ted know? 10 million Kurds, how many want a Kurdistan, does Ted know? If Syria, with a quarter of the population of Iran, caused a refugee crisis, why does Ted think that won't happen in Iran? Ted Cruz thinks everyone in Iran is Shia Persian, Ted doesn't even know there are tens of millions of ethnic minorities who have a history of separatism. The fact that Ted Cruz could not answer those questions, that he didn't know there were large minority populations, is a damning indication that he did not consider that regime change very likely means civil war and refugee crisis.
America loves doomed interventions and military misadventures, but it loves them because it has such an overwhelming military and wealth advantage over everyone else it can afford to be reckless and half-ass imperialism.
I reject that population size is an important factor when deciding to halt nuclear proliferation. It is the military and the President who will handle the logistics of destruction and/or conquest.
What? No, of course it means those things. Why do you think Ted Cruz or people who support bombing Iran care about another civil war in the Middle East? So long as they're not nuclear, they're welcome to go full Mad Max.
Not true, not convincing
If stopping proliferation were all Ted wanted to do in Iran maybe youd have a point. But its not. So you dont.
Becauase if there is a civil war, then all of the progressives in America are going to do whatever they can to import a billion refugees.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As far as anyone can tell, the US government is currently considering military action against Iran. Surely a factor in whether that occurs is the population of Iran. There are many direct and indirect differences between bombing a country with a population of 90 million and 5 million. The population has ramifications for the number of deaths, the economic impact on the country and region, potential refugees, potential enemy combatants, and many other variables.
As a basic conceptual matter, I can't take someone's commentary on a country seriously unless they at the very least have a rough sense of the country's population, GDP, GDP per capita, major religious groups, major ethnic groups, and basic government structure.
If you're just trying to keep your boot in their face, then it doesn't matter. Blow up their economic and military centers and keep them from building up. Sadaam was begging for a deal in 2003 but Bush was too stupid to make one.
It certainly becomes difficult if you seriously want a regime change or occupation.
More options
Context Copy link
I continue not to see why their population matters to our bombing campaigns. At no point does Iran have too many people such that we shrug and accept them going nuclear.
I'm finding this response - which is echoed by a few others on this thread - really strange and hard to wrap my head around.
Even if the population of Iran has little-to-no bearing on whether military intervention is wise, it still has major implications on a million other relevant variables that accompany military intervention, like the death toll, the economic impact, the refugees, the counter attack, etc. Ceteris Paribus, using strategic bombing to stop a country with the population of Slovakia (5 million) from getting a nuke has very different ramifications than using strategic bombing from stopping a country the size of Indonesia (population 280 million) from getting a nuke. If Jakarta is wiped off the map and the government of Indonesia collapses overnight, it could tank the economy of southeast Asia and lead to millions of refugees flooding borders and tens of thousands of deaths in chaos and mass civil war, etc.
Even if you shrug and respond, "I don't care, I just don't want Indonesia to get nukes at all costs," it's still worth understanding the ramifications of that policy. You should have a sense of what carrying out this policy entails, what its costs will be, and what sort of secondary effects it will have, and all of these factors will in-part depend on the country's population. And it's not like national population figures are esoteric statistical knowledge or something; it's really basic info about a country.
I feel like I'm talking to someone who confidently declares that he doesn't care about prices when selecting a restaurant, and then I point out that prices will impact the cost of going to the restaurant and prices are strong indicators of food quality and decorum and may indicate how you should dress when going to the restaurant, etc., but the guy just keep saying, "I don't care, I have a lot of money, so no matter how expensive a restaurant is, I can afford it."
These are logistics, and it is not the place of US Senators to do the logistics work of the US military. The actual strategic planners and number-crunchers can figure out how many faceless Iranians need to die -- but no number will justify letting Iran go nuclear.
Yes, this is accurate. None of the things you think matter I think matter. I can go to the restaurant dressed however I please, and I don't care if the meal is especially tasty or not. I just want to get some food.
Or, rather, not get the food. In this case, I don't want to extract anything from Iran.
If none of those things matter to you, I don't want to go out to eat with you.
If you pick the restaurant, you're liable to pick a $200 a plate sushi restaurant when I said I wanted a quick snack; or take me somewhere that's absolute shit and say "I don't care if the meal is especially tasty." If I try to take you out to nice dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday, you're liable to show up in gym shorts and a wifebeater and say "I can dress how I please."
Similarly, if Ted Cruz doesn't care about the size of a country he wants me to go to war with, I will ignore Ted Cruz' opinion on who we should go to war with. If Ted Cruz wants to personally go to war with Iran, that's his call, but I'd prefer he not drag me and my country with him.
Fortunately, I'm not inviting you out to eat, and Ted Cruz isn't reading The Motte. Everyone wins!
Ted Cruz didn't go on Tucker for a chat, he went on Tucker to convince the American people (ME) of the correctness of his views. Ted Cruz is advocating for a position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Doing another Ceteris Paribus, I would much rather my elected officials understood the scope/scale of the military conflict they are pre-commiting the military people to executing on.
For a more tangible point, every missile fired at Iran, and every defensive interceptor used to protect American assets against Iran, cannot be used for a war against China. The bigger Iran is, the more of those you will need. T
here is a serious opportunity cost to committing to a war, especially when you are in a cold war with a country that is expanding its military faster than you.
Maybe you think it's more important to smash Iran than be maximally prepared against China, in which case fair enough.
But to confidently say "I don't care if the people in charge of deciding to start a war don't understand basic facts about the scope and scale of the war they're committing us to" I think you should have much higher standards for your elected officials.
All fair concerns for you to have, just not ones I share. I genuinely don't think it matters at all if Ted Cruz knows the population of Iran, because its population isn't one of the relevant metrics for our decisions.
I guess what I'm trying to understand about your view is why knowing the scale doesn't matter.
Bigger country = need more bombs = less bombs to deter China. Why isn't that important to understand?
I guess you can respond by saying "well we should simply make more bombs", which is correct, but the political party who is more willing to make bombs is currently in power and they're not exactly going hard on increasing defense production (happy to be proven wrong here, I would like USA to be stronger vs China than it is).
If Ted Cruz overplays America's hand due to ignorance, we all suffer
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just funny to say when your main rival is Communist China.
I don't think there being a billion Chinamen is the reason we don't nuke China. Them already having nukes is the big obstacle there.
That's a pretty good argument for why Iran should get nukes don't you think?
Yes, Iran and not-Iran have different wants and incentives This is quite typical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you're considering replacing its government by force, the size population you'll end up administering (at best) or fighting seems quite relevant.
Why? We're not looking to nation build there, last I checked, we're looking to nation destroy so they don't develop nuclear weapons.
Splendid. Nation-destroying Syria worked out so great for Europe, there's nothing that would bring me more joy than doing it again to country ~4x it's size.
Europe can, at any time, start enforcing its own sovereignty and defending its borders. I believe in you guys. I'm also not European, though, so if you fail, no skin off my back.
Realistically they are bound by international laws about refugees that they are unlikely to tear up. Also considering both the UK and France have a nuclear triad you don't want to destroy one country just to end up with 2 new nuclear armed foes in a few decades.
Realistically, there is no international law that America disagrees with, and that especially includes a rule of "you must let yourself be overrun by undesirables". I would personally sign up for Trump's Golden Gestapo to mow down orcs by the boatload.
I'm not sure where you are from but 'Bomb everything and then watch mass starvation, suffering and death whilst shrugging your shoulders saying 'Iran can't have nukes' sounds, at best, bizarre.
Like, at what point does nuking Israel just become a more humanitarian option to your proposals.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thanks, but we're being ruled be literal lizardmen, and we don't have nearly as many guns in the hands of the common people as you do.
If that's true, then you're fucked no matter what happens in Iran. You'll eventually be washed away in a tide of foreign brown.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Israel has already moved their goals from “destroy nuclear sites” to “destroy ballistic missile capabilities”. But it isn’t easy to destroy all of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, perpetually. This is something that Cruz would know if he had even a passing curiosity in the country which his funders want destroyed. A 1 minute YouTube short would inform someone that it has a topography uniquely suited for hiding missile development and launch sites, with 370,000 square miles of mountainous terrain.
The “Iran is almost out of missile launchers” is eerily similar to “Russia is almost out of missiles” of 2022. Except the difficult part of launching hypersonic missiles is not the launchers, it’s the missiles, and they already have those in abundance.
So keep bombing them. Kill all their scientists, all their engineers. Transform the mountains into infernos. Let them all die to defend their ambitions.
The missiles aren't sitting on the mountains, they are under the mountains. For some sites like fordow it's unlikely even the largest conventional bunker buster in the US's entire arsenal would be able to penetrate. We don't have the power to simply destroy entire mountain ranges. Not even counting nukes.
One MOP may not do it, but the MOPs are made to be used in multiples.
More options
Context Copy link
A shame if the bunkers themselves are truly impenetrable. In that case, we'd have to destroy everything except the bunkers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I really think you're delusional/mistaken about how powerful the US air force is at that kind of thing. It's built for precision strikes, not mass destruction (unless nukes). "kill every single scientist and engineer" and "transform mountains into infernos" is just not what they do. Israel wants them to use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP on Iran's mountain nuke research facility, but there's only 20 of them in existance and that's basically the only weapon capable of penetrating (maybe?) deep into a mountain. And Iran has a lot more than 20 mountains.
Yes, the USAF is built for precision strikes, but the US builds guided bombs the way the Russians build artillery shells. We've made over half a million JDAM kits (although of course we've used a lot of them). Assuming a stockpile of around 200,000, we have roughly one precision guided-bomb for every squad in the Iranian military. That's without getting tapping our inventories of cruise missiles, guided missiles, guided and unguided rockets, or cannon ammo at all.
The MOP is a bespoke weapon designed to fill a small niche, and the fact that it has been procured in small numbers doesn't reflect on the broader state of the USAF's procurement of guided weapons.
One way of looking at that is that Iran is 600,000 square miles, much of it mountainous, so there's roughly 1 bomb per 3 square miles. So not nearly enough to destroy the country with bombs alone.
Another way of looking at is is that Russia has been firing something like 10,000 shells a day for years on a country less than half the size of Iran, and it's still been a slow grinding war of attrition.
I'm pretty sure no one in the air force would claim they have the capability to destroy Iran with air power alone like what's being discussed here. Not to mention that Iran has spent decades building up its defenses against such an attack.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
We can always make more. I'm not persuaded by material limits -- we're the richest people in the history of the species.
You're not? Cool. As a lefty, can I have your support on having a robust social safety net? Because I guess the budget doesn't matter now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's been a suspiciously long pattern of US leaders thinking "we can solve this problem with strategic bombing, no ground invasion necessary." But then it turns out the strategic bombing is actually not that powerful, especially in a country as large and mountainous as Iran. This is a country roughly the size of the entire US west. It seems like they will always, inevitably be able to hide an enrichment facility somewhere. North Korea and Pakistan certainly did.
The problem is US leaders consistently failing to identify the real problem or lay out appropriate goals. Bombing can't nation-build. The US needs to utterly abandon its desire to nation build, to spread democracy, etc., etc. It doesn't work. What it can do is keep a non-nuclear power in the stone age with overwhelming violence.
Nobody went into Vietnam, Iraq, or Agahanistan thinking they wanted to nation-build. The plan was always "we'll just do a few air strikes against specific targets, then get out. should be easy."
It kind of sounds like you want to nuke them, with the way you're talking about "keep them in the stone age."
No, the fallout would probably hurt their neighbors. I'd prefer we stick to conventional bombs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Nation destroy" isn't sufficient in Iran. Israel probably could have killed off the regime's civilian/religious leaders by now. But if they did, Iran would just get a new set and they'd get right back to work building nukes. Because the lesson of Libya, North Korea, and Ukraine is if you want to survive and be independent of the world powers, you need nukes. An Iranian regime that is under US hegemony isn't going to come about except by force, and neither Russia nor China is in a position to take Iran within its orbit (not that they'd be likely to accept that either). So you'd need to either totally occupy or install a puppet regime backed by your military, (probably both in that order), and the population matters there.
Why does regular bombing campaigns leaving the country unable to create the necessary infrastructure not a viable path forward? I see no particular reason we can't just annihilate them.
You don't need the US to be directly involved for that. Israel can handle it all on their own.
"Annihilating" Iran, Carthage (or Circassia) style, isn't on the table.
That depends entirely on who's making the decisions, I think. I'm going to vote for people who are okay with destroying our enemies.
It would help to identify our enemies first. Iranians are friendlier to Western Civilization than Israelis.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think you'll have any luck finding serious American candidates who advocate for genocide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Many have explicitly said regime change is the goal.
Change tends to be inevitable when you blow up the current regime! But that's substantially different from us, personally, trying to groom a new generation of good boys in the Middle East.
Sure, but I think it's fair to say that someone who is interested in regime change would be better off knowing some basic facts. It's of course not necessary - you can hold whatever opinion you want with or without facts - but an individual who has done some research is likely to be more adept at the decision making involved. It has utility.
At what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz for population estimates in order to plan the next bomber run?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link