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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25925 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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Iran - US - Israel War Flareup

“Israel says it has launched attack on Iran, as explosions reported in Tehran”

“The US has begun Major Combat Operations in Iran” - Donald Trump (headline flashed up just now on my phone, no link yet)

—-

More to follow but thought I’d post quickly for any commenting.

New coalition of the willing is forming.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a joint statement Sunday they are ready to work with the US and partners to help stop Iran’s retaliatory attacks.

As if the hopes and fears about demise of US/NATO bloc were premature.

Carney as well from Canada has been saying the US's actions are justified.

Trump knows that it's much easier to survive as a bully if you pick on unpopular targets. Both Venezuela and Iran qualify.

It probably helps that Iran has been shooting at French and British targets as well, plus Middle Eastern countries that aren't Turkey or Israel are in the bottom rung of the West's "Are you a real country with real sovereignty?" tier-list.

Yes, Iran is playing it extremely dumb (might be because the initial attack blew their brains out). They apparently haven't shot at Turkey; perhaps they figure the Turks would try to carve off a piece of the country if they did.

What are they going to do? We got Muslim nations on board against Iran at home.

Random- I happened to be reading the Wikipedia entry for Khamenei, when on a whim I thought to compare it to the Wikipedia page for Trump.

Even if you just read the summary introduction, the tone and facts emphasized for Khamenei are vastly kinder to him than they are for Trump.

But this is fundamentally insane. Khamenei has had thousands of people killed (including recently!). And he was crucial in Iran's long-term support of terrorist groups that have killed huge numbers of people in the Middle East.

Is there really no recourse for this? Are Americans absolutely forced to have one of our major sources of information (heavily used in schools) basically running propaganda operations on behalf of religious extremist dictators of governments that encourage "Death to the USA"?

Is there really no recourse for this?

1/ Build your own. Conservapedia, Infogalactic, Grokipedia etc. tried and failed, try harder.

2/ Take over. Bring few thousand friends willing to dedicate all waking hours to editing and edit warring, and persevere for years of uphill struggle.

Is there really no recourse for this?

That depends. How much spare time do you have right now? One of the many structural problems Wikipedia has is their reliable sources policy. The way they've written it places all scholars and academics as the highest authorities for claims. Paper beats rock, decolonial cultural studies or not. The good news for you is that doesn't seem to be a serious issue on this article, as the 400 citations are mostly news sources which can be defeated with other news sources or, possibly, the same ones with a more neutral interpretation.

Your main problem is going to be that this is a protected article. Each change you want to propose is required to be a sentence for sentence replacement. After you submit it to the talk page, a person -- one who has decided this is what they want to do on Wikipedia -- will swoop in, read it for a few seconds, and say yes or no. That's another structural problem in Wikipedia: the people who choose to participate. Most likely you will need to claw, yell about policy, request other editors give a second opinion, re-submit a different version, and generally escalate it until you get your sentence replaced. You can then repeat this process to do the next sentence or small paragraph. So I ask again, how much spare time do you have?

Khamenei's article doesn't seem too bad by Wikipedia standards of bias, but it's there. Tracing Woodgrains wrote a good critique Mao's article last year to highlight its atrociously soft framing. I agree that when compared to Trump it's absurd, although that goes for a lot of articles on Wikipedia. I haven't checked,* but I'm going to go out on a limb to say that there's more Trump-related articles than any other president or living world leader. I suspect the great 20th century dictators have him beat, though I'm not very confident.

  • "Stalin" is in 200 article titles, "Hitler" in 400 titles, and "Trump" is in 900. Not a great metric as many of those are family members or other famous Trump monikers, however there's tons of pseudonyms of Donald Trump, social media use by Donald Trump, and everything else people wanted to put in one article or another but were told no.

It's the Bin Laden vs Margaret Thatcher situation again. I'm one of those weirdos who is still on Tumblr, and I've got friends on Bluesky, and there were a lot of crab rave memes and "not celebrating, but totally celebrating" posts when Charlie Kirk died. There will be more when Trump dies. There has, however, been zero celebration for the death of a man who is worse in pretty much every metric they care about than those two (except Islamophobia, I suppose).

Tragedy is when I stub my toe, comedy is when you fall through an open manhole and die, situation?

He's their problem, Trump is ours kinda thing probably, combined with Iraq/Afghanistan forever war flashbacks, maybe.

(except Islamophobia, I suppose).

The Ayatollah certainly hates sunnis more than Trump or Kirk.

From your description I was expecting far worse. Both entries are freely critical in terms of the facts selected for high level inclusion and neither are complimentary.

E.g. Khomeini's entry ends: "Khamenei's critics viewed him as a repressive despot responsible for repression, mass murders and other acts of injustice."

Trump's entry ends: "Trump's actions have been described by researchers as authoritarian and contributing to democratic backsliding. After his first term, scholars and historians ranked him as one of the worst presidents in American history."

This is a difficult thing to quantify, so forgive me, I turned to ChatGPT5.2-Thinking to attempt it in a vaguely neutral way. I asked the question "How many negative statements or claims or inferences or anything resembling criticisms from critics are made about ____, in total, in the pasted text below?" For both individuals and their introductory sections.

ChatGPT concluded that there were 41 negative statements about Trump, and only 20 about Khamenei. There's a real density of negative inferences about Trump, which Khamenei doesn't get.

I would personally consider some of the "negatives" about either of the men to be neutral or even positive. But especially regarding Trump, to me the phrasing and emphasis seems meant to create a negative impression in the reader (especially the typical reader on Wikipedia).

Part of what was galling to me was how many of the negative claims about Trump could have been made about Khamenei, or some variation on them, and yet Khamenei's much worse "offenses" were ignored.

Here were the statements selected by ChatGPT for each of the men. I've pointed out some areas where Khamenei could have potentially been described in a similar manner to Trump, but wasn't:

Khamenei:

he was “only a middle ranking cleric” at appointment (such a trivial negative to count)

he was “not even an Ayatollah” before appointment (again, trivial, at least to most audiences)

he achieved the position through “state media, patronage networks, and the security apparatus”

he transformed the IRGC into a tool for “domestic control”

his rhetoric included “calls for Israel’s destruction”

his rhetoric included “antisemitic tropes”

Iran (under him) was involved in “proxy wars” with Israel and Saudi Arabia

he is labeled a “hardliner”

he “sidelined … political dissidents” and other factions (oh, he merely sidelined them)

he “eas[ed] restrictions” only when regime stability/legitimacy was threatened implying tactical repression

his leadership was associated with “expansion of state militarization”

his leadership was associated with “consolidation of power” in the Supreme Leader’s office (associated with... some vague thing)

people were put on trial for “insulting” him, often with blasphemy charges

those sentences included “lashing”

those sentences included “jail time”

“some of them died in custody”

critics viewed him as a “repressive despot”

critics said he was responsible for “repression”

critics said he was responsible for “mass murders” (they merely said it? or did it actually happen?)

critics said he was responsible for “other acts of injustice”

Trump:

imposed a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries (Khamenei never supported any travel restrictions?)

expanded the Mexico–United States border wall (does Iran never enhance its border security?)

enforced a family separation policy on the border

rolled back environmental regulations (never happens in Iran?)

rolled back business regulations (never happens in Iran?)

withdrew the U.S. from climate agreements

withdrew the U.S. from trade agreements (never happens in Iran?)

withdrew the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear program agreement (Khamenei having any role in nuclear program issues which precipitated his death is not mentioned in Khamenei's intro)

started a trade war with China (Iran never has tariffs or adjusts its trade policy?)

downplayed COVID-19’s severity

contradicted health officials

attempted to overturn the 2020 election result

actions culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack (to me, most of these descriptions are either overstated, or missing crucial context)

impeached in 2019 for abuse of power

impeached in 2019 for obstruction of Congress

impeached in 2021 for incitement of insurrection

found liable (civil) for sexual abuse

found liable (civil) for defamation

found liable (civil) for business fraud (I guess Khamenei can't be said to have ever done anything illegal or morally wrong, since his cohort controlled the judiciary and the religion)

found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records

first U.S. president convicted of a felony

federal felony indictment alleged retention of classified documents, later dismissed without prejudice

federal felony indictment alleged obstruction of the 2020 election, later dismissed without prejudice (you can sort of see how every single plausible negative thing is being crammed into the introduction)

initiated mass layoffs of federal workers (did the Iranian government never fire anyone? And you see there is no mention of the positive intentions of this kind of action. In fact, the positive intentions are perhaps never mentioned for any of Trump's actions, as though he just went around trying to do bad things, for absolutely no plausible reason whatsoever.)

imposed tariffs on nearly all countries at the highest level since the Great Depression (no mention of the international context that these nations typically had higher tariffs than we had...)

administration actions included targeting political opponents and civil society (ah, but it's not possible that Trump was himself ever targeted...)

administration actions included persecution of transgender people (Khamenei never persecuted any sexual minorities, eh?)

administration actions included deportation of immigrants (Iran never ever deported anyone?)

administration actions included extensive use of executive orders (I guess this is acknowledged for Khamenei, lol)

these actions drew over 550 lawsuits challenging their legality (I guess Khamenei couldn't be challenged in this way...)

pursued a legally controversial campaign to attack alleged drug traffickers (I'm sure drug traffickers are treated kindly in Iran!)

ordered a military intervention in Venezuela that captured Nicolás Maduro (I don't believe there's anything in Khamenei's introduction which acknowledges Iran's roles in supporting other nations and organizations which engaged in violence)

authorized American involvement (alongside Israel) in a major attack on Iran

that attack resulted in the assassination of Ali Khamenei

comments/actions characterized as racist (Khamenei was surely a beacon of tolerance)

comments/actions characterized as misogynistic (we all know how much the Iranian government encourages women to live freely and at a bare minimum with head uncovered, right?)

made many false or misleading statements to an unprecedented degree (Khamenei was a real George Washington?)

promotes conspiracy theories

actions described by researchers as authoritarian

actions described as contributing to democratic backsliding

ranked by scholars/historians as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history

As you say tonnes of these things for both men seem pretty neutral, so not sure if this exercise establishes bias very clearly. (Who's to say that 'deportation of migrants' is a criticism – surely Trump wouldn't regard it as one. To take just one example.)

I also think a lot of the differences are a function of Wikipedia being by westerners for westerners, in the main. No, the summary doesn't mention Khomeini's trade policies whereas it does mention Trump's, but it would be bizarre not to make the latter prominent and I don't think that Khomeini's trade policies were among the most remarkable things about his life (?).

I guess you could have a more standardised biographical format where every leader gets a section on trade policy, etc, so as not to allow biased differences of emphasis, which might be a good ideal but a tad unworkable. The standardised side bars and overall headline structure of political biography pages are a good gesture towards this – perhaps they could go a little further but ultimately it's an encyclopaedia meant to be read, not a database.

he was “only a middle ranking cleric” at appointment (such a trivial negative to count)

he was “not even an Ayatollah” before appointment (again, trivial, at least to most audiences)

Not sure these are even intended as negatives, however mild; they could as easily give the impression of a humble-man-of-the-people success story as anything else.

"Critics" are generally assumed to he biased, though, and counterweighted by "supporters". "Scholars and researchers and historians" are understood to be bastions of truth and fact. It's subtle, but it's there.

I don't disagree but 'vastly kinder' led me to expect a much starker contrast.

Somewhere in heaven, John McCain is smiling.

Just what kind of power does the Blob have, that it manages to convince every president that blowing up random middle eastern countries for Israel is a good idea?

blowing up random middle eastern countries for Israel

I would take issue with the 'random' part; the countries attacked by the United States tend to be the ones loudly calling for the Jews to be driven into the sea, and sponsoring groups attempting to carry out that mission. (cf. the Book of Esther)

I don't think Iraq was much into Jew-killing when they got attacked.

And nor was Israel that big of a factor in the Iraq war, it was mostly about stabilizing oil sales.

There was some Tyrion Lannister quip about how difficult it is to rule without the rest of the elites on your side but I can't quite recall it. Anyway, compare and contrast with Trump's first term, the difference between how effectively he's been able to implement his decisions, is precisely equal to the power the Blob has.

Bought some spy puts last week because I was certain trump would do it, but now I‘m thinking, that was stupid, spy doesn‘t need to care. I should have bet the event directly, or calls on oil.

Isn't this just an admission of failure? Last summer we were told that the strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities had solved the problem, or at least crippled the program to the point that there would be no way they could get a bomb in the foreseeable future. Now we apparently need to take out the regime, which isn't going to happen without a committed ground war. Trump says he wants a deal, but his deals tend to fall apart once he decides he doesn't like them, and he cancelled the last deal presumably because he didn't trust them to abide by the terms. This war is going nowhere.

It also proved that they no longer have any deterrent capabilities. The Israelis operated freely over the entire country, there is no Hezbollah or Hamas left to retaliate. Their entire ballistic missile attack on Israel killed, what, one person? Two people?

Last I checked they've been firing missiles and drones more or less nonstop almost immediately after they were hit. At the current rate they're going to exceed the total from the 12 Day War within a few days and that was sufficient to drain global interceptor stockpiles by a quarter.

Another way to look at the current situation is that Dubai, Doha, Kuwait and Bahrain invested billions in American hardware under the premise that it would protect them and instead Trump evacuated and parked all of his assets as far as possible, leaving his hapless clients to get smoked.

It actually seems impressive how many Iranian missiles the Gulf states have seemingly shot down. A few casualties here and there, but nothing crazy yet.

Maybe the plan is to bleed them a little (and get them afraid of being hung from lamp posts by their populace) so they'll be more amenable at the bargaining table? Art of the deal and all that.

What bargaining table? They had a deal yen years ago but Trump broke it. Trump can't stick to deals he makes; why would anyone trust him to hold up his end?

They had a deal yen years ago but Trump broke it.

Well, the obvious answer would be that Trump wants a better deal.

Ten years ago (2016) Trump was still in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (a deal he did not make). Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 after Israel published evidence that Iran had not come clean about a past nuclear weapons program, as required by JCPOA. Therefore, unless either my (very surface-level) understanding of what JCPOA requires is incorrect or Israel's documents are fraudulent, it seems trivially true that Iran violated the deal and likely went into it under false pretenses.

This does not necessarily mean that withdrawing from the JCPOA was a good idea, but it also seems like perhaps, under the circumstances, skepticism about the ability to honor agreements might be better directed at Iran, which plausibly entered the deal with no intent to honor it.

That was my point. If the violations were immaterial, there was no reason to cancel the old deal. If the violations were material, then there's no reason to believe they would honor a new deal.

There were ongoing diplomatic negotiations in Geneva up until yesterday. The BBC reported yesterday that an observer claimed "significant progress" in the talks. Whether the US was negotiating in good faith is up for debate.

Negotiations require that both sides understand what the BATNA is.

...and peace requires both parties to be agreeable.

Iran was already on the back foot, if one is of the opinion that Iran was not trying to negotiate a peace but rather negotiate themselves sufficient breathing space to regroup and resume combat at a later date, it would be foolish not to press the attack while the regime is weak.

I think it's not just about being weak, but about accurately assessing your relative position.

Donald the Dove strikes again.

This seems... incredibly late to capitalize on anti-government sentiment. If you were going to try and provide military support to protests/deter their violent suppression, it probably would have been more effective to do it before they all got killed.

In the meantime, I don't see how a bombing campaign is going to succeed. I don't have anything sympathy for the Iranian regime, but if you're going to go to war you can't just lean on "my adversaries are evil" to justify it. If you don't have a credible plan to succeed you're just squandering money and killing people without purpose.

It remains to be seen. Iran is a big country with a huge population, many of whom are young and angry. Did the crackdown with 30k dead kill all the individuals or groups able and willing to engage in risky, intensive protesting? Did they break the will of most of those wanting the regime's downfall? Perhaps not.

You could argue that, even though the US didn't have nearly as much hardware in place back then compared to what they've spent weeks putting in place now, they could have carried out limited strikes that might have been enough to tip the balance. I'm not sure what the right answer is here.

But I do think it's too early to conclude that Israel and the US won't be successful in killing off the regime.

Did the crackdown with 30k dead kill all the individuals or groups able and willing to engage in risky, intensive protesting? Did they break the will of most of those wanting the regime's downfall? Perhaps not.

Well, they stopped protesting, so they are likely quite demoralized. And an airstrike campaign is unlikely to resolve the fundamental issue, which is that the regime's enforcers have weapons and anti-government protestors do not. As long as the Iranian government can find people willing to shoot protestors, the government will be able to manage internal dissent. And, as you say, Iran is a big country. A lot of that population is pro-government. It doesn't even need to be a majority, just enough to staff the instruments of repression, a hurdle they clear easily.

The track record of airstrike campaigns alone achieving decisive results is basically nil, and any plan which entails "and then the people will rise up" is begging for embarrassing failure at best and bloody disaster at worst. It's possible this will all succeed, but the historical record is against it.

So what do you think is the most likely way it will play out in the longer term? No regime change. Trump falsely claiming "obliteration" and success after lots of bombing? He's very clear on the "no nukes" thing though, so just letting the regime rebuild in peace next year seems like it can't happen.

I'm not going to pretend to have a high confidence prediction of what will happen; merely what probably won't happen. Which is to say, it is unlikely that the outcome will be that the IRI regime will be toppled and replaced with a US-friendly one or that Iranian nuclear ambitions will be put decisively to rest. I think it is likely that whatever does occur, Trump will claim massive success, even if it is a massive shitshow.

I don't really see what the failure case is here. Trump's unlikely to send in ground troops, so the most probably worst case outcome from the US' POV is that a heavily degraded IRGC maintains control of the country. That's not any worse for the US than the status quo.

The failure case is that the US spend a bunch of money and depletes materiel stockpiles (not to mention reputation) to bump off a decrepit and ultimately replaceable theocrat while losing any chance of a negotiated solution to Iran developing nukes. If the US isn't going to mount a ground invasion, we're left hoping that either a revolution finally succeeds or that they can keep the IRI nuclear program in check forever with nothing but air raids.

The time to bomb Iran was a month and a half ago, but we were too busy with Operation Caribbean Shakedown.

How much in the way of resources does the US realistically stand to lose here? I'm definitely not a military expert, but it looks like the Iranians seem to have little ability to attack anything of significant military value. They've set a hotel in Dubai on fire and killed one Israeli AFAIK. And I don't particularly buy the Iranian line that they're holding back, but next time they'll really retaliate.

I also disagree on the reputational front. Striking when the protests were at their peak would of course have been ideal, but carrying out a strike now after having moved so many military assets into the region and having made so many threats seem strictly better for the US' reputation at this point than not doing anything at all and demonstrating that none of the threats or posturing had any credibility from the start. I also do think that demonstrating that the US isn't afraid to eliminate the leaders of actively hostile states does affect the behaviour of these leaders even if it by itself doesn't revolutionise the state in question.

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There's always the off chance that, e.g., an Iranian drifting mine sinks an aircraft carrier, but I think the big-time failure case here is that the US expends 500 interceptors swatting Iranian SRBMs and then China rolls Taiwan because we can't keep them from plastering Guam with reentry vehicles twice daily.

That's fair enough. Do we have a sense of Iran's likely missile capabilities? My sense was that Israel destroyed/absorbed a huge chunk of this during the Summer, and given that the Iranians don't seem to have managed to fire off much that's hit anything of strategic importance over the last 24 hours, I assume they haven't managed to replenish their stocks. Or has the US been spending its interceptors already?

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Israeli media announce death of Khamenei.

Not hard to believe. Put yourself in Ayatollah's shoes.

Stay in your palace with your turban on, die.

Hide in bunker like a rat, die too because the secret location was sold off long ago.

Looks it is real, mainstream news are confirming it now, including the most authoritative source. Not only US&ISR killed big K, but have sources on the ground that could verify it.

Only Wikipedia still cannot process this mega habbening, massive edit war is ongoing on recent deaths page.

In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls. What can go wrong?

On a related note, what position did or will the Iraqi government assume in all of this?

In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls.

This is a bit. Even KR isn't that retarded.

^ something every Motte regular has thought at one point or another

Are you really trying to pull the "joke's on you I was only pretending to be retarded" meme in real life?

In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls. What can go wrong?

Watching third worldists' minds melt is always a surreal experience. Thanks for the lols.

Apparently he's still alive. News reports I have seen say he was targeted but the Iranians deny that he was killed. I'm not sure what difference he was supposed to make since he's 86 and if he dropped dead tomorrow of natural causes I doubt it would bring an end to the government. His predecessor was more important than he ever was and his death didn't change much politically.

I'm not sure what difference he was supposed to make since he's 86 and if he dropped dead tomorrow of natural causes I doubt it would bring an end to the government

It increases the odds that the nuclear fatwa gets revoked if nothing else

Out of interest for someone largely ignorant, is "ayatollah" a hereditary monarchic title? If he dies, is there an immediate line of succession so that somebody else becomes the ayatollah?

It's a religious title (basically, the chief Shia cleric) and the Ayatollah is chosen by a complicated process involving the Iranian Assembly and a Guardian Council. Basically the Shia version of the Vatican choosing a new Pope.

No need for worries. The Iranian regime made sure there will be no shortage of Ayatollahs.

Work hard, grind for exams and you can be an Ayatollah too.

Originally used as a title bestowed by popular/clerical acclaim for a small number of the most distinguished marja' at-taqlid mujtahid, it suffered from "inflation" following the 1979 Iranian Revolution when it came to be used for "any established mujtahid".[3] By 2015, it was further expanded to include any student who had passed their Mujtahid final exam,[4] leading to "thousands" of Ayatollahs.[5]

"Operation Epic Fury"

Really? Who let the Redditors run the government?

I think you mean "Epic Furry".

If I were in charge I'd name these operations the same way reddit autogenerates usernames.

Operation Strange_Custard_5437

The autogen prevents a situation where people guess your plan based on having a code name that's too on point, at least.

I’ve heard it called “Operation Epstein Fury” or “Operation Epic Jewry” on X, because dying for Israel is like dying for Epstein island.

Call it the soy right.

This has been very much the tone of Trump 2.0. It was either this or "Operation Bacon420"

Knowing Hegseth "Operation Teabag" was either overruled, or has been reserved for some future effort to liberate the British isles

Well, I was wrong about this.

Good rule of thumb for US military interventions: once all the toys are out of the toybox, they're going to get played with.

A message to people trying to negotiate with the US is that the longer you let the build-up continue, the more you're going to have to give up to call it off. The effort involved in assembling these many military assets in-theater makes its momentum hard to stop. The inertia is just too much.

This is a near historical universal- Rome didn't negotiate after their final siege assault was ready.

  • Rome didn't negotiate after their final siege assault was ready

Can you give some citations. My google fu failed me on that topic

In his war memoirs Julius Ceasar gives one of the Gallic cities a deadline of "you have until the ram has touched the wall", IE we are preparing to attack, and you have until the attack begins to negotiate terms. The idea being that trying to stall for time will only result in a worse terms (or no terms at all) compared to what was already on the table.

Edit: Credit to @TowardsPanna who beat me to it.

The traditional rule is you had until the siege engines were complete (which was enormously expensive and time consuming) to surrender with terms and avoid a sack (The army is allowed to do whatever they want, up to and including killing literally every person in the city they didn't enslave then burning it down on the way out.)

This was to encourage people to not force you to spend the money on the siege, you were incentivized to not break terms on a surrender because then nobody would trust you enough to surrender and many sieges ended with the besieging army half starved/half dead from various illneses.

Caesar described the principle of “murum aries attigit” in his commentary on the Gallic wars, which literally means the “The Ram Has Touched the Wall.” It referred to a Roman policy: surrender would be accepted before, but not after the battering ram touched an enemy’s city walls.

I've heard that the defenders could negotiate up until the ram reached the wall/gates. At that point, it was too late, since defeat was assured and all the hard work on the Roman end had been completed.

Romans usually used a mole- which would prevent negotiation after it was completed, just the same. A ram reaching the wall is, like a mole reaching the wall, the end product of a lengthy process.

I may have been conflating Rome with general medieval siege etiquette. Different techniques, same philosophy and end result.

That was more classical siege etiquette, not medieval. In medieval times sieges tended to be very prolonged, assaults rare, and in general hunger was the main tactic used to force surrender.

Thinking about it, this isn't exactly new policy: The second half of 1990 included "Operation Desert Shield", the operation just to relocate the assets for the actual Gulf War took almost 6 months, and wasn't quiet. The bombardment took a few weeks, and the actual ground invasion just a few days.

Clearly.

I assumed Trump was too invested in a deal of some sort, even a bad one. I also thought he would be too cautious to commit lots of US forces against a country like Iran. All misjudgements on my part.

He hasn't committed anything yet, just a bunch of airstrikes. I could be wrong, but I doubt he'll commit to ground troops. He'll kill a bunch of top military and government leaders and declare victory, meanwhile nothing has changed. Same story as Venezuela.

Trump abruptly cancels press conference scheduled for shortly (ie this US morning). First possibility that comes to mind, given the reported strikes on the ayatollah’s compound, is that they aimed for the supreme leader and either didn’t get him or aren’t sure yet, such that a triumphant morning announcement has been delayed or cancelled.

Mods, can we get a mega thread on this? Else I fear it will be like the Charlie Kirk thing, or just devolve into dozens of bare links which you will have to keep moderating.

The Charlie Kirk assassination was rather obvious culture war fuel. A Middle Eastern shooting war, while obviously a rather serious development, does not necessarily prove to be culture war fuel. What exactly would the culture-warring be about anyway?

The one thing I can surely say is that in my native Hungary the local Blue Tribe, which supports the main opposition party almost without exception and is otherwise heavily influenced by the US Blue Tribe in every other thing, is, due to the historic legacy of WW2 and the Cold War, largely supporting not only Zionism as such but also the project of Greater Israel (i.e. Israeli control over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon, if not more), and in this they are not a bit different from the government that they otherwise hate with a burning passion. And for this reason I rather doubt this will be fodder for any local culture-warring.

due to the historic legacy of WW2 and the Cold War, largely supporting not only Zionism as such but also the project of Greater Israel

Can you explain further? Do you mean to say that the Hungarian Blue Tribe (Tribe of Kék?) supports Israel due to civilization guilt about the Holocaust? If so, where does the legacy of the Cold War come into it

During the Cold War the Soviet Bloc countries took the official stance of anti-Zionism after the Six Day War of 1967 and openly lent support to the PLO, Syria, Iraq and (until 1973) Egypt (the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict, essentially), all in the name of anti-imperialism and national liberation. This had a couple of cultural consequences. One was a general anti-Arab sentiment under the surface among oppositional/dissident social groups. Another phenomenon connected to the latter was that groups of the democratic opposition took on an attitude that was at least not anti-Zionist or even sympathetic to Zionism, considering Israel to be a member of the Western liberal democratic global alliance that they were hoping to transition their countries to. This is a sort of Randian narrative about Israel being part of Western enlightened civilization and her Arab enemies being against it.

This is maybe something many normies didn't notice either inside or outside Central Europe, but sometimes it appears on the surface. (In 2003 for example, when the governments of these former Soviet Bloc countries seemed to be rather keen on supporting the Iraqi adventure in service of the US neocons and the Israel Lobby.) The democratic opposition included both liberals and nationalists but this difference didn't become obvious until years after the transitions of 1989. The liberals generally held onto their Zionist sympathies with increasing resolve as they observed the nationalists parting ways with them in this regard. This is not to say that Western pro-Palestinian leftist activism has no cultural influence in Central Europe at all, especially not after Oct 7, but their relevance appears to be rather marginal even within leftist social spheres. They can only gain small traction against decades-long trends.

This is in short the Cold War legacy I mentioned.

With respect to the Holocaust, it's rather the opposite of guilt, if that makes any sense. The short story is that Hungary was allied to Germany in WW2 as a member of the Tripartite Pact (while having a relatively large Jewish minority). We can draw a parallel with the Italians here, who also allied with the Germans because both wanted to undo the perceived shame and injustice their nations suffered at the end of WW1. The Italians defected from the pact and agreed to a ceasefire when the Allied forces reached their shores in 1943 and eventual German defeat seemed inevitable.

The Germans understandably assumed that the Hungarians are likely to follow suit when the Red Army reaches their borders, and at one point it became clear that this is just a matter of time, so they occupied Hungary in a swift preventive operation in March 1944 and forced the government to step down. (Unlike Finland, Romania and Bulgaria, Hungary was thus unable to switch sides in WW2.) The deportation of Hungarian Jews, who did face legal discrimination but not genocide up until that point, was started a few weeks later and it was only the swift degradation of the Axis situation on the Eastern Front (as well) in summer 1944 that prevented it from being completed. The official figures say roughly half of Hungarian Jewry (400 thousand) fell victim.

All this later generated the right-wing nationalist interpretation that this particular aspect of the Holocaust was the sole responsibility of the Nazis and the Hungarian nation is blameless, because without the German occupation it was never going to happen. This is more or less the official line of the current right-wing government as well. The dissenting liberal leftist narrative is that the authoritarian rightist regime that made an alliance with Hitler was itself virulently anti-Semitic, passing anti-Semitic laws that were becoming ever more extreme after 1938 but also date back all the way to 1920, tolerated anti-Semitic propaganda, generally normalized the hatred of Jews, made Jewish conscripts do forced labor in the army and operated state agencies that were so full of Jew haters that they swiftly and efficiently carried out the deportations the German occupiers ordered them to without saying a word. And when the nation had her first and last free elections under Soviet occupation in November 1945, the results made it clear that the majority of voters support parties that have also been in parliament during the deposed regime. In other words, they displayed no willingness to clearly part with the shameful past.

I won't go into even more detail about this, suffice it is to say that this is a local culture war dispute that has been done to death, people have been repeating the same narratives for decades, nobody is giving one inch, the whole tiresome subject gets creatively brought up over and over in different contexts, and culture warriors are feeding off one another's outrage. The legacy of the Holocaust is that every Jew who's politically active is a liberal leftist, and everyone who's of the Blue Tribe in general (in US terms) promotes the narrative that anti-Semitism has been a huge cultural problem with a terrible legacy, the country is full of Jew-hating shithead goyim unwilling to face their sordid national past, not taking any responsibility, not coming to terms with the Holocaust etc. I guess it's akin to US Blue Tribe beliefs about anti-Black racism and the legacy of slavery. And since these people generally disbelieve that anti-Israel tendencies can stem from anything but ignorant anti-Jewish prejudice, they are generally more likely to be pro-Israel.

Huh, thanks for the explanation!

I guess I’m a tad surprised that the Hungarian Blue Tribe, presumably unlike the Red Tribe, considers itself heir to the liberal dissident opposition to Soviet rule.

I would have thought that opposition to Soviet hegemony and repression would have cut across tribal lines; if anything I would have guessed blood-and-soil type Red Tribers would be even more likely to tout their anti-Soviet bona fides, given that the Soviets forcibly suppressed all forms of ethnic and nationalist sentiment!

Alternatively, I would have guessed that, like their US counterparts, the Blues (or at least their extremists) would be sympathetic to communism and eager to be mouthpieces/useful idiots for (in this case deceased) communist regimes and their policies, with plenty of anti-US/anti-Western whataboutism thrown in for good measure (cf. Hassan Piker)

I think the situation was roughly the following throughout the Soviet Bloc, not counting the USSR as a whole but do counting the Baltics. This will not be a post that much coherent but please bear with me.

Opposition to the regime took two main forms. 1a. Nationalist/patriotic 1b. Religious 2a. Reformist socialist 2b. Reformist social liberal and economic libertarian. There was no large difference between the subgroups. Anti-Russian sentiment was almost completely concentrated in group 1, and religious groups were almost always nationalistic. Group 2 generally agreed on the necessity of liberalization to one degree or another but the dissident reformists within the ruling parties preferred maintaining one-party rule.

Subgroup 2b got the most attention in the West because they appeared to be the most sympathetic and their activists were generally educated, Westernized and presentable. That does not mean they were the most significant in number. They generally prospered after the transitions of 1989, gaining positions throughout the media and founding parties that were initially successful whereas the reformist socialists lost a lot of their relevance after one-party rule collapsed.

One defining factor in the ‘90s was that group 2b largely decided that they have a lot more in common with group 2b than with group 1 and engaged in politics accordingly. Many functionaries formerly in high positions in the media who were disproportionately Jews, were never supporters of the opposition and then successfully took part in the privatization schemes after the transition decided to ally with group 2b and started promoting themselves as left-wing liberals. To the extent that a local version of the Blue Tribe exists in Central European countries, this is their origin. And the more US cultural influence there was present (various NGOs etc.), the more similar they became to the US Blue Tribe.

Regarding group 1, whatever level of sympathy they did initially enjoy in the West largely evaporated later, as they revealed themselves to be standard ethnic nationalist authoritarians not that interested in either economic or social liberty. Apparently there was some level of disillusionment happening because many Westerners erroneously viewed the European revolutions of 1989 (to the extent that those were true revolutions) as liberal revolutions whereas in reality those were mostly nationalist revolutions.

There are other peculiarities about group 1. In Poland, Galicia / Western Ukraine and (to a lesser extent) the Baltics, where animosity towards the Russians is more or less a cultural tradition, group 1 interprets the Soviet Bloc as a manifestation of the imperialist tendencies of barbaric Muscovite orcs. In other words, not something bad that the commies inflicted on them, but something bad the Russian people inflicted on them. This is pointedly not the case in Hungary where the same ethnic nationalist tendencies are present but usually target (communist) Jews and not Russians.

It's important to point out that there is basically no political force left that has sympathy for the Soviet era. The Boomers who were still nostalgic for the old times are mostly dead by now. The opposite is happening. That is, political groups are basically competing in the creation of propaganda associating their outgroup with the evil commies of the old days.

It's pretty common in less-religious parts of Eastern Europe for soviet nostalgia to be conservative coded. Eastern bloc regimes were socially moderate, paid their pensions on time, kept the streets clear, and made sure employment rates were high- eastern Euro boomercons mostly have not been the beneficiaries of their EU integration driven economic growth.

Culture war aspects:

  • 10 minutes before Trump announced we started military operations in Iran, there were already organizations putting out calls to protest. Americans protesting against the attacks while the Iranian people are celebrating the death of Khamenei. Several online people saying they are hoping that the US military gets annihilated to teach us a lesson.

  • US Congresswoman Tlaib said, "This is who they are", where "they" refers to Americans, while the normal pronoun to use would be "we." She doesn't think of herself as American despite serving as a US Congresswoman.

  • Early polling showed that the war was massively unpopular with independents and Democrats, but the vibe online seems to be changing as it looks like we took out 40 of their top leaders while taking 0 casualties. How much can we trust initial polling data? What does this mean for Trump's approval going forward?

  • Iran lashed out at neutral countries, attacking hotels, shopping malls, and apartment complexes in UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc.

  • School in Iran was hit, many deaths. Arguing over whether it was Israel/Americans or Iranians misfiring.

US Congresswoman Tlaib said, "This is who they are", where "they" refers to Americans

Or, more charitably, "they" refers to the Trump admin & DoD. Er, DoW, now.

She word for word said, "Both the U.S. and genocidal Israel doesn't care about the laws. This is who they are."

https://x.com/RashidaTlaib/status/2027755832742416584

Grammatically it has flaws, for sure. But the referent to "They" is "the US and genocidal Israel." She does not consider herself one or the other, otherwise she would use "We."

She does not consider herself one or the other,

Couldn't it be a "Not my president" kind of vibe? Versus an "I'm not an American and I hate the Americans" kind of thing? I don't like Congresswoman Tlaib. She has many characteristics, and been behind many public stunts, that are easy to criticize, but worst of all she's just plain trashy. But I find it hard to believe she seriously wouldn't consider herself an American considering she was born and raised in Michigan.

Isn't "Not my president" bad too? This reminds me of when the Red Tribe was cheering like mad for the Figure Skater and all the leftists were saying, "She's progressive, she'd hate you, why are you cheering for her?" And the Red Tribe was just, "USA! USA! USA!"

As crazy as it sounds, I like to think we have an actual country that has more in common than divides. I believe we should support our troops always. Our troops. Even if we are worried about their current orders. If they aren't your troops, if he's not your president, then you aren't in the same country as I am. I don't see how we could be.

Why be charitable? I've been told my entire life to take responsibility for things other white people did a thousand miles away from my ancestors a hundred and fifty years ago. If she wants to claim to be an American (and represent us in Congress!) then she can publicly flagellate herself for the purported sins of America. If not, then her whining means nothing and she can emigrate back to Palestine.

I feel like stuff like this should just go in the trasnational Thursday thread.

I don’t think that this has turned into a happening that big yet. Maybe if the regime falls or looks like it, or they actually fully close the strait, but not yet.

I admire your commitment to "nothing ever happens" even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Even if something happens, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll require a culture war megathread.

So it is finally habbening. The "axis of resistance" doing nothing as predicted by most astute observers. After Syria and Venezuela, Iran is on the chopping block now.

Turbo America is here as promised, the real American century is just beginning. Next step Cuba, and then Russia.

China will be the final boss.

The US is not going to fight Russia and China anymore than the US fought the Soviet Union. Nukes prevent that and even so Russia and China can actually defend themselves.

Syria was not a US op. Local Islamists (backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but probably also the US, I think) defeated Assad (backed by Russia, which was otherwise occupied).

The jury is still out on Venezuela. Trump kidnapped Maduro, great. But he did not exactly bring freedom and democracy there. More like "it keeps shipping its oil to us, or else it gets bombed again".

Cuba is suffering badly from a lack of oil. But I am not sure that they will greet the Marines as liberators just because of that, sometimes foreigners have their own ideas on whom to blame for their hardships.

Your last two grand regime change operations were Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq gave rise to daesh, which was eventually defeated. Today they seem democratic but mostly vote along ethnic lines, not exactly a bedrock of democracy. Afghanistan was of course a disaster, with the Taliban taking power as the last plane was lifting off.

For Iran, I am not holding my breath until Trump sends infantry to occupy it. Even then, it will likely be a costly asymmetric war for a few decades.

A regime change in Russia seems hard. They inherited the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and the relevant population is somewhat in favor of Putin thanks to his propaganda. Good luck trying to invade them, too.

And a regime change imposed from outside in China is just as unlikely. They certainly have enough nukes to ruin your day, but probably threatening to tank the global market for rare earth elements would be enough to persuade any US president to not risk a head-on confrontation. Nor am I convinced that anyone else would back you if Trump decided to start WW3 by trying to invade China.

The US Oil embargo in 2011 was a major factor in Syria not being able to pay its military and secure armaments.

/images/17723060893272033.webp

Thanks, Obama?

In all seriousness, equating economic sanctions with hard power is more

That's what the DSA does, calling sanctions a "weapon of war" and demanding they be lifted from Iran and applied to Israel.

Not that I know what the rest of your point was going to be.

Whoops.

I was going to say something along the lines of: “soft power” arguments traditionally don’t score many points with neocons or knee-jerk nationalists. Trying to rehabilitate Syria as a success of the RBIO feels like it’s missing the point.

Trump has done a real bang up job of rallying American allies over the last couple of months, so China is very likely to "face a de facto united West". It's not as if he's threatened to annex a bunch of NATO allies' territory and in general tried his very best to piss away every last piece of soft power the US wields.

The "real American century" is being ushered in by a fat retard in end stage dementia dismantling all US alliances and the final boss will be the one country it probably can't beat in a conventional war, gg.

Funny enough, Western Europe called for de-escalation but Carney signaled support for the U.S.

There's now a non-zero chance China is going to face a de facto united West that's militantly supportive of Taiwan independence & coordinates globally to restrict advanced tech imports, with just Pakistan, North Korea and Myanmar as allies (and I'm not sure about Pakistan).

Iran was never going to be an important player in a Taiwan contingency, and China has never had an ally who'd be important in it except for Russia (and, to a small extent, Pakistan). And although Anatoly just says it's a possibility, the idea of us getting a more united West from the current situation is not at all obvious.

Iran was always going to be important for Chinese contingency plans for dealing with a blockade of the strait of malacca, though.

The US failed miserably in Yemen. The US managed a kidnapping in Venezuela, not regime change. The US is bombing Iran because they can't actually invade countries anymore.

What winning?

Venezuela is now basically a client state.

Not the only post today that things we lost Venezuela because it’s not in the news everyday. To the best of my knowledge Rubio is essentially the head of state of Venezuela at this moment.

The US is bombing Iran because they can't actually invade countries anymore.

I assume you mean that from a national will standpoint, and not a capability standpoint?

In multiple ways. The US population is tired of these wars.

The US military is dumber, smaller, and worse equipped than before.

The US is stuck feeding a black hole of a war in Ukraine while trying to keep pace with China even though China is far more cost efficient and has a larger industrial base. A repeat of the Iraq war wouldn't be possible today.

Sounds great to me - keep showing the world who controls it and no protracted engagement.

For the Iranian government to fall, there would have to be mass protests today (or maybe tomorrow) coinciding with more strikes. I don’t know, that feels unlikely.

There had just been massive protests, which the Iranian regime has drowned in blood. I am suspicious of exact numbers, but it sounds more that people were beaten into temporary submission with overwhelming violence than that they simply gave up. Uprising is plausible I think.

Uprising is plausible I think.

It is if CIA has significant assets in-country that have already built up networks. The belief that these things just happen organically when the situation is ripe is suspect.

Isn't there another round of uprisings and protests going on right now?

I believe so and I'll concede that it's possible that the people of Iran take control. Personally, I'd be happy if that happened. But I'm skeptical of a disorganized mob being able to effectively stand up to even a very wounded regime. If there's actually an organized group of dissidents on the ground poised to stage a coup d'etat, I think that would have a much better chance at success. There's always the outside chance of a full-on revolution too (counter-revolution, actually). Don't know whether the circumstances in the country make that likely. But again, without a plan, leaders and organization, a revolution could make things far worse.

I honestly think that if Trump had been fast on the trigger and started targeted bombing IRGC field offices, police stations, local army bases during the height of the last protests it might have been enough. As you say, hard to know for sure but there were at least hundreds of thousands protesting in Tehran which is close to the level where a motivated force can overwhelm non-hardened government sites. But today? There were some renewed student protests this week, but nothing on the level that could topple even a weakened government.

"And then the people will rise up..." is generally a good way to tell whether an operation is going to work out or not.

Indeed.

The ultra feminists on hacker news are busy downvoting me after I pointed out that the way Iranian regime treat its women makes the regime the worse side compared to US and Israel. That is all one needs to know about the current situation honestly.

Wow, I did not have you pegged as someone who would judge stances on feminism as the ultimate proxy for ethics.

In the real world, anyone who wants to sell you on a world view of Good vs Evil in a war is either writing high fantasy or a partisan hack. If Norway (pretty swell country to live in, by all accounts) decides to bomb North Korea (rather terrible) tomorrow, I can not just compare their maternal death rates and conclude that Norway is the good guy. Rather, I would have to ask myself if Norway is trying to mold NK in its own image, and what their changes for succeeding at it are, and if the humanitarian gains outweigh the humanitarian costs. I would probably conclude that it is a terrible idea.

I would not want to be a woman in in Iran, but I also would not want to be a woman in Saudi Arabia. I most certainly would not want to be a woman in daesh, which popped up the last time the US liberated a ME country. Being a woman at the mercy of Israel depends a lot on your precise location, with women in Tel Aviv consistently reporting a higher satisfaction with Israel than women in Gaza City. (Sure, the women in Gaza do not get bombed for being women, but that would be little consolation for me personally.)

I don't judge stances on feminism as the ultimate proxy for ethics. I am just amused by the inability of the TDS to observe that there are worse people than Trump on this planet. And at this point some of them rule Iran. It may be good idea to leave iran alone - there are a lot of non interventionist arguments available. But in this case the Americans are not bad guys.

What exactly do you think life is like for Iranian women? They don't have Western levels of feminism for sure, but you can watch man on the street videos from almost* any city in Iran and see an approximately even sex ratio, women walking around without male guardians, and very loose interpretations of the hijab law.

*Qom is still very conservative. It's basically the Iranian Vatican. Even so, women there wear chadors, not burqas.

I mean Iranian women are still under coverture.

As with any country, it varies widely based on region, neighborhood, class etc. In the middle-class districts of the major cities with squishy lefty politics like all middle-class districts of all major cities? Yeah, women about, very loose interpretations of hijab etc. In the Iranian analog to Oklahoma or Alabama, not so much.

The pro-western, pro-israeli, pro-shah groups of Iranian society have always been around, their more vociferous members live in the west now. They are influential, because they are the economic middle classes, and secular elites. But they are not a majority of the country by any stretch. As with most countries, the vast majority of the population is lower and working class, more religious, more nationalistic, more bigoted against outsiders than the college professors and the accountants. And generally harder on their womenfolk.

There is a very direct comparison next door in Turkey, where the same western-oriented secular modernizers have the same political outlook, despite differences in culture and religion to Iran. It's just that Ataturk was better at it than Reza Shah, and so when the religious nationalistic backlash came, it stayed within the bounds set by his government, rather than producing a revolution.

What exactly do you think life is like for Iranian women?

Probably not so bad compared to life for your average Iranian man. That's just the way of our gynocentric world.

Still, the fact that women are privileged in most parts of the world has never stopped western feminists from complaining about even the smallest (perceived) disadvantages suffered by women in comparison to men. Probably in convenience stores in Iran, they have women's disposable razors with pink handles and which cost an extra rial or so.

No, what stops western feminists from complaining is (1) they don't want to go against their allies in the progressive movement and any criticism of Iran is perceived as helping Israel, one of the big Bogeymen of the progressive movement; and (2) ultimately they care only about maximizing their goodies and gibs so it's more productive to complain about the lack of female tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Probably because it's transparently a bad faith argument. I'm guessing neither you nor trump care that much how $arbitrary_regime treats women and even if you did, would never advocate for starting military action on any nation that basis. if you did care about the women, starting a war is obviously not the most productive way to fix that, nor is there any guarantee that the women will be better off afterwards.

So this war is not about the women and your attempt to collapse the whole issue into "better or worse for women" is a cheap rhetorical trick to paint your adversaries as hypocrites for opposing it.

Maybe the feminist angle is not what most right wingers really hate about Islam, but for me at least it is the main thing. I’m somewhat of a western chauvinist and one of the important ways the west is culturally superior is in how we treat our women. Islam’s treatment of women is barbaric and disgusting in and of itself because women are human beings, but it’s also disgusting to me because of how alien it is to my culture. I’m a basic women-are-people equality feminist (a right wing position these days I’m afraid). Maybe I’m not the modal right winger (I’m not that right wing), but while there could be some people from whom the feminist anti Islam line is bad faith, I assure you that it is a real motivating concern for some of us.

Then I congratulate you sincerely on being principled on this matter. However I still believe that this war is not being prosecuted on women's behalf, and whether or not the women of Iran will be better or worse off is a highly uncertain question. It would not be the first time America's regime-change efforts in the middle east resulted in an even more backwards/regressive Islamic rule.

I would mostly agree. This war is over nukes, terrorism, old grudges and regional power. I do think some Iran hawks are hawks for cultural reasons though. At the object level we are jockeying to make Iran less powerful and more compliant, but how we got there is importantly related to their barbaric culture. Part of why a powerful Iran seems like such a bad thing to me is that I don’t want to live in a world where a culture like theirs can project power.

Yeah, that's a big element for me as well, plus the weird double standard; western rurals/conservatives having slightly-old-fashioned views about women and gays that they can't really enforce = disgusting bigots, but downright medieval attitudes enshrined in law and actual gay-bashing from slightly browner people is a-okay.

I actually find some Christian conservatives pretty off putting because of their views on women as well, however, I’m way more comfortable with them than with Muslims because Christianity is a much bigger tent and as far as I can tell the most distasteful Christian attitudes come from weird low church Christians who as far as I can tell are wrong about their religion. Meanwhile, I’ve read the Quran cover to cover and as far as I can tell ISIS is just mostly right about how to interpret their religion. Of course western Muslims lie to themselves and others about how bad it is (they translate “jihad” to “struggle” when translating the Quran which is obvious dishonesty because “jihad” is a word in English too), but the theological grounding for extremism is so strong in Islam that you can’t trust that a population of moderate Muslims won’t swing to extremism at some later date. The Middle East was way more chill about their religion 200 years ago, but the Quran says what it says, and it’s the revealed word of god.

While we're inching closer every day, I don't think there's a major constituency for bombing Alabama yet.

Did you ask in Auburn?

Calling it a "cheap rhetorical trick" is itself a cheap rhetorical trick to try to dodge a hypocrisy killshot. The alliance between Western feminist progressives and Islamic fundamentalists was always completely psychotic under any ideological framework other than "they just hate the West and don't believe any of their own bullshit". Rubbing their noses in it and taking the opportunity to diminish the extent that anyone takes progressive feminists seriously is points fairly scored.

It isn't, it's calling a spade a spade.

I'm confident it's a cheap rhetorical trick, because if the form of the argument were used against you, you would call it out as a low grade gotcha. "If you care about X, and Y is bad for X, then you should in all cases oppose Y and support any action whatsoever that harms Y" is obvious nonsense of the highest order. Just substitute "children" for X and imagine all of the policy positions that would result.

The alliance between Western feminist progressives and Islamic fundamentalists was always completely psychotic under any ideological framework other than "they just hate the West and don't believe any of their own bullshit

Uncharitable at best. Failure to model your opponents at worst. I think there's definitely an aspect of hypocrisy here but characterizing the situation as psychotic is not true. There are mechanisistic reasons we see this play out. It does have its own internal logic.

Rubbing their noses in it and taking the opportunity to diminish the extent that anyone takes progressive feminists seriously is points fairly scored.

Ahh. So it is just arguments as soldiers then.

Gonna have to bow out here, I don't see any further exchange between us on this topic being productive.

There are mechanisistic reasons we see this play out. It does have its own internal logic.

Which are?

I mean, I can think of a few off the top of my head - Muslims are fargroup, ingroup enemies matter more and I can hurt them more so I pick the battles I think I can win?

I don't live anywhere near brown people so I consider them a nonfactor to my immediate safety compared to white people, who are competition within the same class?

I think demographics are destiny and Muslims vote as a political bloc, I don't want to do anything that would weaken my political side?

The iconic weapon of Islamic fundamentalists are AK-47s that fire bigger bullets, and getting shot by one or blown up by an IED carries more risk than catching one from the bog standard American right-wing nutjob AR-15 derivative chambered in 5.56?

I don't think you're talking about any of those, but those seem like pretty logical reasons to me. The one thing that pretty much can't be argued is that Islamic fundamentalism is better for women than western conservatism - and if you do, please bring receipts, I'm interested to see the outcomes on a chart somewhere. It'd be really funny to find out if there's some negative correlation to be found on a chart between heart disease and hijabs.

I'm confident it's a cheap rhetorical trick, because if the form of the argument were used against you, you would call it out as a low grade gotcha. "If you care about X, and Y is bad for X, then you should in all cases oppose Y and support any action whatsoever that harms Y" is obvious nonsense of the highest order. Just substitute "children" for X and imagine all of the policy positions that would result.

It's nonsense because you're going with absolutes. The widespread inability to explicitly think in terms of trade-offs and hierarchies of values is a common leftwinger/Sith mistake. What we instead see is progressive feminists almost entirely ignoring the plight of women under Islam (or British girls being mass raped in the UK) because they have no real ability to engage with the nuances of something having both good and bad qualities under a leftist intellectual framework, which pushes hard in a Manichean black/white, good/evil, oppressor/oppressed dynamic. Muslims are [oppressed category], and so dwelling on their failings is haram.

Compare that to libertarian or conservatives, who are much more comfortable talking about tradeoffs. You can't trick them into banning swimming pools because ~50 kids drown per year and THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Uncharitable at best. Failure to model your opponents at worst. I think there's definitely an aspect of hypocrisy here but characterizing the situation as psychotic is not true. There are mechanisistic reasons we see this play out. It does have its own internal logic.

The underlying internal logic is "we just hate daddy, I mean the West/America/capitalism/white people". The higher level pretend logic is "Muslims are an oppressed group and we have no ability to consider, much less address, crippling and dangerous flaws in oppressed groups". The highest level is just stop thinking about it, omg

Ahh. So it is just arguments as soldiers then.

Nope. Older waves of feminism won so hard that even most conservatives genuinely think Islam's treatment of women is fucked up. Then they see progressive feminists going apeshit over white men being mildly less than perfect doormats, while refusing to even talk about Islam. Progfems get more upset about white Christians because of the Handmaid's Tale (a made-up story literally inspired by Iran) than the 10k girls raped in the UK.

This is pretty fucked up. And beyond that it is a massive, ruinous hypocrisy, and until it's addressed, it's entirely fair to dismiss surface claims and motivations from people doing it. Anyone can escape that trap just by saying that Islam is wrong about women.

Which won't happen, for the same reason those people can't bring themselves to say itt's OK to be white.

What we instead see is progressive feminists almost entirely ignoring the plight of women under Islam

Set aside what could and should Western "progressive feminists" do about plight of women under Islam.

Would you also ask, for example, first world labor union organizers:

"Why you care about such trifle as lunch breaks and pay raises for already spoiled first world workers? Do you know that millions of workers in Africa are actual slaves? Why you do not fight against slavery in Africa?"

The same for every first world problem - the problem is much worse in third world, do you want everyone to be effective altruist concentrating all their efforts on the most dowtrodden people of the world?

This is still black and white thinking. You don't have to devote a ton of effort to a problem to acknowledge it exists. You also don't have to openly ally with people who are like a comic book villain exagerration of your hated domestic foes.

Like, if labor organizers were openly throwing protests to support the slavers, then it would be quite fair to question their commitment to the principles of workers rights. Whereas it would be much more reasonable for them to say "Yes, slavery is terrible, but it very far away and not my problem. I wish the slaves the best of luck though."

Feminism is an instrumental criticism of fundamentalist Islam for American political conservatives. It is rightly seen as an instrumental criticism by people who disagree with American conservatism, but wrongly seen as 'not worth worrying about' by them. Women actually do have few rights under Islam.

No, it's more like an attempt by you to satisfy yourself emotionally. To score points fairly you would have to distinguish between feminists who support fundamentalist Islam and feminists who do not, and you show no signs of wanting to do that even though I am sure you understand the distinction.

No, it's more like an attempt by you to satisfy yourself emotionally.

Yes, it's very emotionally satisfying to be proven correct.

To score points fairly you would have to distinguish between feminists who support fundamentalist Islam and feminists who do not, and you show no signs of wanting to do that even though I am sure you understand the distinction.

Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed that. Can you please point to the prominent progressive feminists who have been more critical of fundamentalist Islam than, say, the made-up, Iran-inspired Christian fundamentalists in the Handmaid's Tale?

Can you point to any who are showing any degree of hope for the current hostilities improving conditions for women in Iran? Or even a single progressive feminist who would rather see [women in Iran become more free plus Trump gets to count a win] than [thousands of women in Iran are massacred by their government, but Trump takes an L]?

Or if you don't like either of those framings, how would you care to distinguish those two groups? I am willing to be convinced that the latter exists. Make your case.

So as long as I see feminists being fellow travellers for Hamas and for Iran, for Pakistani grooming gangs and Moroccan pickpockets, for shooters at the Bataclan and truck drivers at Christmas markets - it is a distinction without a difference. I have never heard a mea culpa from a feminist, about the Southport stabbings at a Taylor Swift concert. Even when girls are being killed and raped, they don't care because their overgrown mothering instinct sees brown people as babies who don't know what they're doing.

It's frankly insulting that you think that wordcel games like even matter in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary.

It's always 'but think on how it will affect the poor, innocent Muslims'. Norm Macdonald parodied this attitude thirty years ago, and your posture is exactly the thing he skewered. I don't know if you know this, but 'moderate' Islam is a spook. 'fundamentalist' Islam is just Islam, a liberal cope. We know it from the Muslims themselves that there is only one correct interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah. The fact that feminists uncritically swallow lies about this is proof that no one should take them seriously.

Generally feminism is a class-interest movement for urban, educated, professional women in the west. That's why they don't tend to care very much about things like sexual assault in the military, third world oppression, grooming gangs, etc., but care a lot about college campuses or US men's only spaces.

There is no world leadership of feminism, no feminist constitution. You are talking about feminism as if it is a monolith. This is simply not an accurate view of reality.

That's true, but it's not like it's impossible to broadly survey the alignment and publicly held ideological stances of feminists in general and to notice that the average feminist holds views that would put them into the center-left at least, if not further to the left. Notably, in modern times this part of the political spectrum is strongly correlated with stances on migration that directly imply that the West, particularly Europe, will become much more Muslim towards the end of the century. How e.g. 35% Muslim France is going to be compatible with the ostensibly central ideological tenets typically held by feminists is, to put it mildly, an open question.

Blaming specific negative consequences of (Muslim) migration like the rape gangs on feminists directly is unfair, in that I agree, but it's quite clear that the average feminist is pretty much all-aboard with the political program that brought those rape gangs here, is in fact quite likely to advocate for accelerating that program, and has no plausible, pragmatic & politically viable plan to ensure that it's not going to get worse as the prominence of Islam increases as the direct consequence of that program. For that, I think it is fair to blame feminists.

You are talking about feminism as if it is a monolith. This is simply not an accurate view of reality.

Men and women are different.

Different people have different interests [and different motivating factors], and vice versa.

Thus, the null hypothesis is that people who share the same biological conditions are going to act the same way. (Feminists already make this assumption when it comes to men having different interests, and they are correct.)

The extent to which this is true, whose interests happen to dominate, and if those interests should be dominant vary due to local conditions. There are some cultures where men and women have learned to get along, there are some that define themselves by actively refusing to, and there are some where the overriding concerns are more pedestrian, like "where's my next meal coming from?". Women in the 1st tend not to be feminist because they've figured out gynosupremacy is legitimately destructive, and women in the 3rd tend not to be feminist because failing to deal means you starve.

And yet, feminists all remain on the same page; you would be hard-pressed to find any self-described "feminist" who is as critical of fundamentalist Islam as of the West. For that matter, I stuggle to think of any willing to publicly criticize Islam at all, and would expect them to be summarily excommunicated from the broader movement, even if it has no "Moma" with the formal authority to do so. Yes, crushedoranges actually does have an accurate view of reality.

It will be interesting to see how many sockpuppets are still around this time... as I recall, during the previous bombing, a lot of pro-palestine accounts claiming to definitely not be from Iran mysteriously went dark at the same time, although I can't find a source at the moment.

The ultra feminists on hacker news are busy downvoting me

I would definitely agree that progressives tend to be very selective in their outrage. And it's not necessarily a matter of choosing one side or the other. A lot of the time, Left-wing activists won't even open their mouths and condemn regimes such as that of Iran.

How hard would it be to say something like this:

We think the US should address it's own social justice issues before intervening in Iran, but with that said we condemn the government of Iran for executing homosexuals, forcing women to wear hijabs, etc.

But instead, progressives are deathly afraid that either the hated Red Tribe or Israel should get a win. Indeed, in a good demonstration of the horseshoe hypothesis, progressives tend to agree with neo-Nazis that Israel is the very worst country in the world.

On the contrary, deciding which side is 'the worse side' is basically a side issue when forming an opinion about a military situation.

The women of Syria / Iraq / Libya were not better off after our interventions, but substantially worse off.

You are likely correct. On the other hand, the Iranian people are a different stock compared to Syria / Iraq / Libya.

Thankfully Trump's instincts how to do regime change seem to be better than those of the neocons.

Trump is 80 years old and easily impressionable. Jared has an outsize influence on his thoughts. I don’t see why Jared Kushner wouldn’t sacrifice millions of Americans for Israel, which is the homeland he pledges allegiance to in his prayers, and which he believes is God’s favorite place and people. Kushner runs American foreign policy according to Rex Tillerson via one FBI informant (Chuck Johnson), and there are some reasons to believe he’s telling the truth here, although he’s otherwise totally unreliable:

Renda is the wife of Rex Tillerson (Rex), former Secretary of State for Trump. Renda told CHS [Confidential Human Source] about smears in the New York Post and how Jared was running a rival State Department operation. Rex affirmed Renda's claim. Renda was introduced to CHS by Daren Blanton (Blanton). Renda and Rex both told CHS they had been under intense surveillance. Renda told CHS she can't wait for the FBI to call her, so that she can tell them everything she knows

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00090314.pdf

Trump is 80 years old and stubborn as hell. I expect he thinks "nation-building" is fucking retarded. Instead, he wants and expects clean, easy, impressive-looking wins that are over and done. There is no plausible scenario where we "sacrifice millions of Americans", and no reason to think Trump would volunteer for that sort of disaster beyond TDS or some variation of Israeli/Jewish/Epstein Derangement Syndrome.

There is no plausible scenario where we "sacrifice millions of Americans"

Seems to me that what you're responding to was an attack on Kushner's character, and his loyalty and disloyalty to Israel and the US respectively, versus a claim of what Trump and the US gov't will do. In other words, he'd be willing to sacrifice millions of Americans because he's a terrible person and only cares about Israel anyway.

My rebuttal was more to the "Trump is easily impressionable" thing. Even if Kushner was willing to trade millions of American lives, he'd have to convince his father-in-law, and I think assuming that is a given is just an utter failure at any kind of theory of mind in favor of Jews/Orange Man Bad.

Fair enough and I agree with your assessment of Trump. Trump is Trump. He does things his way and that rubs lots of people the wrong way. But he's not a monster. In fact, from time to time you'll see evidence that he actually cares about the legacy he leaves. Kushner, on the other hand, just gives me the heebie-jeebies. Brilliant and sociopathic.

Queers for Palestine levels of bizareness

It really isn't.

Wanting to genocide a population that largely consists of children because of LGBTQXYZ issues is beyond extreme.

Israel's policy of trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza and move millions of refugees to Europe isn't popular with a decent portion of the gay community in Europe.

Israel's policy of trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza and move millions of refugees

You people love to say Israel has a policy of genocide, when it's at least ambiguous at best. But if I go through your post history, am I going to see dozens of posts about Hamas specifically, and Palestinians generally, who DEFINITELY and EXPLICITLY have a policy of genocide, and see any criticism of them?

Israel has the capability to kill every Gazan tomorrow. But they dont have the intent to do so. If the Palestinians could kill every Jew on the Earth, they would do it by yesterday.

I'm so sick of this unidirectional accountability. It's disgustingly racist, baked in a dressing of progressive ideology.

What policy would that be ?

The policy of expanding Israel, attacking their neighbours and helping migrants get to Greece. Israel is a major refugee smuggler into Europe. Meanwhile they push millions of arabs out of their homes.

So zero ethnic cleansing ?

We can’t quibble about the word attacking here - their neighbors are the aggressors and Israel has been on the defense since its inception.

Also it’s a war - they aren’t pushing millions of Arabs out of their homes.

Their neighbors have been pushed back as Israel has stolen land and driven millions of people off it. Many of them are now in Europe.

Who were they defending against when they bombed the King David Hotel?

British imperialism

Link for US involvement: https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/israel-us-attack-iran-trump-says-major-combat-operations/

Well, here we go. Scope of the attacks still unclear.

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