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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   4644 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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What if there are no guarantees and Iran is not like Libya for a multitude of reasons?

If you want America to commit to yet another military intervention in the middle east, I think you should provide something pretty close to a guarantee. The last several interventions were all disasters, and further, demonstrated that the elites in charge of managing the interventions could not actually be held accountable in any meaningful way for their disastrous management and decision-making. This has been a serious problem, and until I see some evidence that it has actually been corrected, my vote is no, hell no, are you insane?

If you want America to commit to yet another military intervention in the middle east, I think you should provide something pretty close to a guarantee.

Why? Surely it can be justified on the grounds that almost any replacement is going to be better for the US + allies than the current one.

This is famously what they thought about Syria, which is now controlled by Al Qaeda. I've yet to hear how any serious explanation for how Al Qaeda running Syria is better for America or Americans than Assad

Well, we can be very positive Al Qaeda won't be running things in Iran.

They presently have a Shia theocracy running things. That's a major reason they're a problem.

The opposition, in contrast, wants secular democracy.

The opposition in Iran wants the monarchy.

Why? Surely it can be justified on the grounds that almost any replacement is going to be better for the US + allies than the current one.

The problem with claiming that things can't get worse is all the previous claims that things couldn't get worse, combined with the numerous, extremely horrifying examples of how they did, in fact, get worse.

We've already done a recent intervention in the Middle East that went pretty well.

Namely, we bombed Iran's nuclear program (and supported Israel bombing other targets). There were decades of handwringing about Iran's weapons program and the downsides of intervention and it turned out most of that was needless concern.

Here's another one: Heard much about ISIS lately? Probably not, because we blew the fuck out of them.

That's the great thing here: Bombing is low risk, and things are already so bad for the Iranian people it would be hard for them to get worse.

Even a humanitarian disaster would be something chosen by the Iranians, and we take an enemy of Western Civilization out.

Knowing what we know now, we could have done the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan and then simply left. We don't have to do "you break it you buy it" if our concern is removing enemies, and not nation building. (Noting that taking out Saddam wasn't a great idea for the general geopolitical reason that he didn't have a nuclear weapons program, and Iran did, and he was their primary enemy.)

Iran is in a far better position to succeed as a country if the regime is removed than any recent example I can think of.

Here's another one: Heard much about ISIS lately? Probably not, because we blew the fuck out of them.

ISIS shot and killed numerous people in the city I live in while I was out having dinner with my partner - I actually got to see the police cars leaving to go deal with the active shooters, so I have in fact heard a lot about them recently.

Do you live in the Middle East?

Because that was the geographic context of the response. They don't control territory anymore, but they still do attacks worldwide.

No, I was referring to the Bondi shootings.

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