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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7871 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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Top Administration Officials Are Now Openly Admitting That America Is Israel's Bitch.

Rubio: "The president made the very wise decision—we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

This wasn't clipped and quoted from a fringe groyper. This was posted by an official White House account.

I can't believe this shit. The United States has abdicated strategic initiative to Israel. The American armed forces in the Middle East have been reduced to reacting to and mitigating damage from Israel's operations in the theater. The straightforward interpretation of the above quote is that Israel started a war that killed American troops.

I was watching Tucker Carlson lay out this exact theory and thought, “well that’s an interesting idea. Too bad we’ll never know for sure.” And then the first thing I see when I tab over to Twitter is Marco Rubio making the exact same thought.

Walk me through the logic?

Would Israel not have struck Iran if the U.S. weren't involved?

If Israel struck Iran would Iran NOT have launched attacks that put U.S. personnel at risk?

And if Iran did strike U.S. bases or personnel, would the U.S. not have taken that as an act of war and retaliated?

If the fact is that Israel was going to strike, Iran would retaliate, and THEN the U.S. would retaliate as a matter of course... then yes, the inevitable conclusion is that a pre-emptive strike in cooperation with Israel is preferable all around.

I don't think making the game-theoretically sound action is the same as being the other party's bitch.

Or in other words, if Israel went in alone and lit the candle, and Iran dropped ordinance on Americans, would you be blaming that on Israel or Iran right now?

Would you be against the U.S. taking further action?

Or is your contention that Israel would have withheld their actions if they didn't have U.S. backing guaranteed?

You are ignoring the military buildup. Yes, the military buildup would be likely to provoke retaliation, but why do it in the first place? Because America is Israel's bitch and Israel cannot take on Iran alone and it knows it. So Netanyahu goes to Washington, Trump sends an obvious preparation for an attack, and then the US attacks on the logic that an attack would prompt retaliation. It's not a matter of "game theory", it's a matter of the US dancing to the tune of Netanyahu. This buildup was always going to lead to an attack, you don't bluff with that degree of military hardware.

...and you're ignoring the fact that the build-up was itself a response to the Iranian regime gunning down protestors after being explicitly warned that doing so would have consequences.

Trump is not Obama, when he sets a "red-line" he means it.

Trump claimed credit for stopping the executions, and the mobilization happened after the protests died down. So he already claimed victory on that front, not to mention the fact that the protests themselves were pushed by the US and Israel.

And earlier you said:

Would Israel not have struck Iran if the U.S. weren't involved?

No they wouldn't have, their plan relied on US involvement and Netanyahu made sure of it.

Trump claimed credit for stopping the executions

And then Iran kept rounding up people who were involved with the protests.

The Iranian authorities have carried out sweeping arrests across the country in recent days, seizing people during night‑time home raids, at checkpoints, in workplaces, and from hospitals. In addition to protesters, among those arrested are university students, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities.

30 of whom still face the death penalty.

And earlier you said...

Where did I say that?

Would they have attempted a false flag operation to ensure U.S. involvement?

What's actually remarkable is that there was no false flag, not even a false pretext like Iraqi WMDs. Trump didn't even try to justify the war to the public to any significant degree. People here are struggling to develop alternative explanations (we are overthrowing Iran because of the protests, funny people actually believe that). There's not even really a solid "narrative" for the apologists for the war. The Administration briefly claimed they had intelligence claiming Iran was planning an attack on US assets, which was immediately debunked by our own intelligence agencies.

So why even need a false flag? They aren't even trying to get the support of the public, they are just doing it, that is a testament to their level of control they don't even go through the motions of trying to justify it. This Rubio statement is literally the best they can come up with! Their hands were tied by Israel, according to them.

With Iraq the dialectic was "we're doing it for Oil" versus "we're doing it to prevent WMDs and spread Democracy" (of course both sides of the dialectic were wrong, we were doing it for Israel). But there's not even anything like that dialectic for this war, Rubio's position is "our hands were tied by Israel". So people who support it and planned it and people who oppose it essentially agree we are being pulled into this by Israel.

Why'd we abduct Maduro?

Sure there were drug boats being sent over but Venezuela is even less a military threat than Iran.

The grand strategy seems to be isolating China from allies they can use to pester the U.S. or use as a staging point for their own operations.

I dunno, after managing to achieve voluntary accords with every single other regional power there, Iran is the singular inflamed festering boil that stands out as an obstacle to some semi-permanent peace. It likewise (as opposed to, say, North Korea) seems to have a significant portion of the population opposed to the current ruling party.

Generally I'm all for leaving them alone and caring primarily about domestic issues. But if a direct conflict with China is on the horizon, ensuring all the nations they could import energy from are either on our side or are sidelined entirely is just good game theory.

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