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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   28060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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When does "criticism" of the current military action in Iran (and by criticism I mean a variety of behaviors from our political leadership to randoms on the internet) become "treason" (both in the firm prosecutable sort and the "historically your neighbors would have stopped talking to you or maybe chased you out of town" sort)?

I get it, people are mad at Trump, Republicans, America, the Jews, Israel, whatever.

I get it.

Many people would rather have had us not get here. But we are here. The ship has sailed.

If everyone returns to their corners now at the very least we have billions of dollars in economic dysfunction, realistically we have tremendous destabilization in the region which is going cause the biggest problems we've seen in decades. In truth, we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel. Even the most anti-semitic person who ever lived should be able to understand how bad doing that could go. It would likely be the worst thing that's ever happened just from the resulting chaos.

So we are stuck.

But you see a lot of people with an agenda trying to defang the war effort or get it cancelled or whatever. Many probably don't expect it to happen, they are just trying to set up Trump looking bad. An example of this is probably the war powers resolutions.

But at that point you have overt politicking putting American, Israeli, Middle Eastern lives (and maybe everyone else?) at risk because you want to slightly increase the chance you can spend two years repeatedly impeaching Trump.

I think that's kind of treasonous? Maybe not the executing kind, but definitely the "holy shit what are you doing kind."

Like the war. Hate the war. It's happened. Criticizing how we got here is understandable, but I think we need to be careful.

Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.

  • -23

From the perspective of someone who lives in a country that also started a war widely considered to be unjust recently and then also got mired in it:

I don't give a fuck. Treason shmeason, it's their job to fill the hole back up after digging themselves into it. I don't buy the noises on how the country is going to collapse as soon as we give an inch of whatever, it's all lies. The truth is that failure will hurt the politician class (the current ones at least, which I hate and want ruined) more than it could ever hurt regular people. Fuck them. And if it does hurt regular people, fuck the government stooges anyway. They're afraid of ruin more than we are.

Not that I can do anything actively with a reasonable chance to get away with it, but they don't get a mote of loyalty from me.

Even if you don't want to burn them all down, you should still proceed with an understanding that the elites will lie about the consequences of not going along with their shit.

The problem is that America is a democratic republic. A section of Trump's vote was won on no more war/America first, or at least a leader that represented their interests in no war.

Now it appears as if the vast unaccountable artifice that wants war is actually more capable of setting foreign policy than the leader. This signals that the leader is useless at representing the people's interests.

If they want popular support for the war, the war needs to be successfully sold to the public, with reasons given for why the war is in America's best interest. If this is not done, the public will come up with their own explanations.

They didn't supply a good, or even bad reason. They didn't give a reason at all. I'm sure someone could come up with great explanations for why this was necessary, and a nuclear armed Iran doesn't seem great. But the incoherent noises from the government when asked to explain their situation do not inspire confidence.

There is a conspiracy theory that this is all a test, like a ratchet, to see how much people are willing to accept from their leaders. The hypernormalization of involvement in conflict, without a perceivable reason. There is another conspiracy theory that this is being done to distract from the frustration around the Epstein files, or the slightly related one that Mossad has significant kompromat on key American politicians related to Epstein and is using it as a lever to get them to assist with their war effort. There is another conspiracy theory that the evangelical wing of American politics has struck a deal with the Zionists to usher in the fucking apocalypse.

After Covid, I can no longer discount even the wildest of conspiracy theories as entirely without merit.

Why do you describe it like Trump was simply absent when all this was decided? Trump didn't simply fail to stop them, he is on board with it.

The people who wanted no war voted for a guy who constantly flip-flops, and this was a completely foreseeable outcome of that.

There is a conspiracy theory that this is all a test, like a ratchet, to see how much people are willing to accept from their leaders

It might not be an intentional test, but there is definitely a test going on for just how much the so called "conservatives" have sold their soul into a cult of personality. I always assumed in 1984 when they said "we've always been at war with Eurasia", the government would have at least taken down all the "we are not at war with Eurasia" propaganda first.

But the point about loyalty tests is the absurdity. The more you're willing to show blatant disregard for basic reason in favor of bootlicking, the more trustworthy you seem.

There is another conspiracy theory that the evangelical wing of American politics has struck a deal with the Zionists to usher in the fucking apocalypse.

The evangelical right has been very open about this for decades. It's not a conspiracy theory when they literally say it is their motivation.

In truth, we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel

So the line of argument is this:

Israel and America start bombing Iran in a predictably ineffective campaign to incite regime change - Israelis hardest hit since the Iranians might nuke Israel in retaliation. So the bombing must continue and intensify, perhaps followed up by a ground invasion since bombing alone isn't going to work!

Saddam Hussein launched a full ground invasion of Iran. He gassed Iranian civilians as part of a terror bombing campaign (with the support of much of the international community, including the US). The war lasted 8 years. The Iranians did not later acquire nukes and did not nuke Baghdad, they did not even gas the Iraqis back. Iraq was not even a nuclear power so there were no especially strong reasons not to nuke Iraq.

Why would Iran nuke Israel now when it didn't nuke Iraq? Israel has hundreds of nukes and would doubtless fire back.

And what is the proposed plan to finish the job? Destabilize the region more by bombing Iran harder, having Iran bomb the Gulf harder? Bombing alone has proven ineffective at achieving regime change. A ground invasion of an extremely mountainous country of 90 million? The US military would be fighting alone and would almost certainly get bogged down as China floods Iran with arms and aid. Meanwhile Iran would've suffered enormous casualties and be, if anything, more inclined to pursue nuclear weapons. Clearly their conventional forces are not sufficient to deter foreign attack! An enormous, bloody, ruinously expensive, strategically disastrous clusterfuck.

What the US really needs is smart leaders who appreciate what can and cannot be done with military power, who can judge the risks and benefits clearly, who have the wisdom to ignore the latest dossier of Israeli 'intelligence' about WMDs.

Leaving the job 'half done' is the best case scenario here. The US is not militarily or politically strong enough to launch a successful ground invasion. Nothing short of a ground invasion is going to achieve the kind of regime America is looking for. Probably not even that. You can't bomb people into becoming pro-Israeli.

I think that's kind of treasonous?

It is not treasonous for Americans to pursue American interests by enforcing constitutional constraints on waging war. I am not American for what its worth.

Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure if this kind of thing went to court, the typical Executive latitude over foreign affairs probably isn't enough for actual treason convictions. You need a Congressional statute to work off of. Maybe not a full declaration of war, though a really pedantic judge might say so for the most direct "treason" charges, but something that they've put out. Now, given, a few of these Congressional bills do devolve some judgement to the Executive, but I could easily see even the current conservative court make a ruling against it being enough for treason based on the Major Questions doctrine. After all, it's quite literally not (inherently) the President's job (normally) to decide who is an enemy and who is not. I think for this reason, the administration is probably a little wary of actually bringing treason or similar charges against certain people supporting certain groups, because legally some of them are not slam dunks and can even backfire. Funnily enough, there's a parallel for why the president of the Confederacy didn't end up getting prosecuted at the end of the day even though he was jailed - lawyers were at least a little worried that awkward questions would be asked in court about the legality of secession.

Now, politically that's a different story. And I can't remember the exact incidents off the top of my head, but Trump has thrown around the "treason" word already in at least several cases where the word obviously does not apply, so I don't consider him representative at all.

With that said, getting shunned by people for helping enemies/evil people is already part of modern politics to some extent. See not only Hamas supporters, but also BDS types shunning pro-Israel people, to give the obvious example. But rhetoric is free and part of free speech. Personally though I'd put a strong line between "persona non grata in society" and "we run them out of town".

In terms of enforcement, usually the line is "material support". That is, sending money or physical stuff to questionable groups or people. Again, congressional statute regulates these penalties and where the lines are, for the most part. In some cases, you're even forbidden to send money to a Hamas member for humanitarian purposes (because they might then use the freed budget to support military action, I think this was in the news recently).

I just wanna zoom in on this paragraph:

But you see a lot of people with an agenda trying to defang the war effort or get it cancelled or whatever. Many probably don't expect it to happen, they are just trying to set up Trump looking bad. An example of this is probably the war powers resolutions.

Is it your position that Congress passing a resolution compelling the President to cease hostilities is "probably" treasonous?

I’m not going to say treason. I don’t think it fits. But I will say that in my opinion, most of the bad outcomes from wars in the twentieth century and twenty first for that matter come not so much because of the war itself, but because the nation wasn’t fully committed to winning. Asking the president to “just stop” isn’t going to bring peace, because it simply shows the world that the USA refuses to win wars. Why would Iran or other nations like Iran be worried about a weekend bombing that leaves the country mostly intact and most of the leadership still in power? You punched the bully once in the face, but stopped short and without forcing him to stop hitting. What he learned is if he can survive the first punch, he can do as he pleases. I don’t think America will stop, but I can’t imagine this sort of thing isn’t giving Iran a reason to not bother to negotiate.

I don't disagree but I think a key prerequisite missing here is the President builds support, both in Congress and in the public, before launching hostilities. The President deciding to bomb some people and then everyone has to go along with it so we don't look weak isn't, and ought not be, how it works either.

It appears to be OP's position that the majority of the American public is engaged in some level of treason against itself.

Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.

That would be a very good reason not to start wars that lack democratic approval.

The purpose of requiring a congressional declaration of war is to make sure that you avoid this problem by having democratic backing for your war effort.

What stands out to me is that virtually no one seems willing to defend the war on the merits. Even the people who support it focus on how the IRI is bad or how we need to trust the president or how - per OP - not supporting the war is disloyal.

The merits seem to change on a daily basis, and have not been explained publicly in any way. I watched Hegseth's interview on 60 minutes last night, his explanation of the demand for "unconditional surrender" was vague to the point of incoherence. He smirked and played coy about whether there were troops on the ground ("well I sure wouldn't tell you that would I?" "we're not ruling anything out"), until the interviewer pointed out that he had said there were no troops on the ground earlier in the week at which point he claimed that was accurate.

As Daryl Cooper pointed out during the Gaza war, when Unconditional Surrender Grant or Eisenhower or Mcarthur demanded Unconditional Surrender from their foes, there was a basic understanding that once the foe surrendered, the conqueror would take on the government of the surrendered territory. We do not seem to intend to do that.

"Unconditional surrender" means exactly that; you surrender, and what the enemy does to you is up to them. If you've been watching Trump at all, you know that a demand for "unconditional surrender" by him just means "make me an offer".

I'll defend it on the merits as the Republican position has been remarkably consistent on the matter. If we (the US) are going to occupy the role of global hegemon we need to act like a global hegemon.

Khomeini's government had been warned repeatedly that there would be consequences if they started shooting protestors or continued to threaten international trade. Khomeini ignored those warnings and now Khomeini is dead. This is known as "Fuck around and find out".

Khomeini's government had been warned repeatedly that there would be consequences if they started shooting protestors or continued to threaten international trade. Khomeini ignored those warnings and now Khomeini is dead. This is known as "Fuck around and find out".

I would find this more convincing if the government was actually saying it. Instead, they offer up a medley of different explanations and goals, depending on who is being asked, who’s doing the asking, the day of the week, and whether Mercury is in retrograde. “Fuck it, we ball” is no way to run a military.

Khomeini's government had been warned repeatedly that there would be consequences if they started shooting protestors or continued to threaten international trade.

It would be a bit easier to believe any of this was done out of care for Iranian lives if you weren't bombing their desalination plants and turning their country into a hellscape.

I don't recall anyone saying anything about care for Iranian lives.

You literally said these are the consequences of shooting protestors.

Sorry, "don't kill Iranians, that's our job", then.

Have fun playing hegemon, but this war is insane, and nothing good will come of it.

Well Khomeini died peacefully in bed after achieving his wildest dreams. If your going to advocate for attacking a country maybe at least know the name of it's leader?

Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khameini, Potato, Potatah.

On the one hand, I tend to agree with this.

On the other hand, it seems plausible that Congress would have signed off on the war, since the Senate declined to do anything about it under the War Powers Act.

On the gripping hand, the first undeclared* war waged by the United States was in 1798(!) by John Adams(!!) against the French(!!!) and the second was in 1801 by noted hawk** Thomas Jefferson against Algiers. A series of Supreme Court rulings essentially signed off on the use of military force without an explicit declaration of war, although it's important to note that Congress favored and at least to some degree authorized both actions, as I understand it.

I wonder if part of the reason Congress is so lackadaisical about using or tightening up the War Powers Act is because they are afraid the Supreme Court would rule against any really meaningful preemptive restrictions on Presidential use of military force, potentially even weakening their power to conduct oversight of executive action relative to the current status quo.

*at least by the United States

** this is sarcasm

The purpose of requiring a congressional declaration of war is to make sure that you avoid this problem by having democratic backing for your war effort.

I agree, but given that the last time the US declared war on anyone prior to starting hostilities was WW2, at this point that ship has not only sailed, but wrecked and sank to the ocean floor.

But even when the US didn't formally declare war, Congress has generally implicitly consented to military actions by the president by agreeing to fund them.

Congress didn't do that here.

This stuff reminds me painfully of Russian justifications for continuing our own, original Special Military Operation (funny how nobody bothers to declare wars anymore, by the way). «Yeah maybe it was a bad call but now that we're there, gotta finish what we started, else Ukrainians will just rearm, get NATO nukes, and then… anyway, shut up traitor». This is all born out of a belief in impunity, which at least in the Russian case was clearly delusional. Anyway if it's treason to "defang the war effort", then certainly it's a legitimate big boy war for the nation's vital interests, why not declare it as such?

But at that point you have overt politicking putting American, Israeli, Middle Eastern lives (and maybe everyone else?) at risk because you want to slightly increase the chance you can spend two years repeatedly impeaching Trump.

I think that's kind of treasonous? Maybe not the executing kind, but definitely the "holy shit what are you doing kind."

Well, what are you doing? What are you, even?

YOU are bombing a civilian population, unleashing toxic rain on them, destroying their desalination facilities, generally committing war crimes and crimes against humanity while your "president" gloats with all the wit of a stunted 8 year old sadist. It seems that even the attack on that girls' school was deliberate, and it's likely you double-tapped, and your "president" is lying about it. By the way, IRGC children went to that school, so maybe it's just routine Amalek beheading. Israel is brutalizing civilians, in Iran and in Lebanon and in the West Bank, because it's a brutish expansionist Middle Eastern theocracy populated by savage people with a Mongol tier unreconstructed bronze age religion built around breeding, conquest and ethnic narcissism, and is not some wholesome chungus bulwark of the Western Civilization; for all the eloquent vile snark our resident UMC Jews can use to shut down this obvious conclusion based on their own words (thank G-d we have AI translate now) and actions. Your own state religion, expressed by Trump, Hegseth, Graham and other profound thinkers, amounts to sadism and serving Israel in terrorizing its enemies and furthering the subjugation of the entire Middle East. From the external point of view, you're moral equals to the regime of Ayatollah at best. Given that even I agree culling IRGC upper ranks was morally justified, it's a very legitimate question if a nation like yours deserves to exist. Accordingly, many American nationals who are not spiritual Middle Easterners and have some sort of affinity for Western civilization would prefer it to be some other kind of nation. It's a debate about the fate of your nation and your people, not "treason", to oppose this bullshit and try to obstruct it.

It seems that even the attack on that girls' school was deliberate,

This is an EXTREMELY inflammatory claim not supported by your article. Do you have any evidence for this?

YOU are bombing a civilian population, unleashing toxic rain on them, destroying their desalination facilities, generally committing war crimes and crimes against humanity while your "president" gloats with all the wit of a stunted 8 year old sadist.

The hypocrisy of it also annoys the absolute piss out of me, considering the sheer amount of criticism the US levels at virtually every other country for exercising any degree of regional power (unless they're US vassals, then it's all okay). Russia is bad for starting shit with Ukraine after NATO threatened to expand into the literal historic core of Kievan Rus without so much as a pretence of a buffer zone. China is bad because of Hong Kong and why can't they stop being mean to Taiwan and something something territorial claims in the South China Sea.

It is, apparently, A-OK for America and its allies to ceaselessly fuck with Afghanistan, fuck with Libya, fuck with Venezuela, fuck with Iran and destabilise or outright destroy countless other societies while justifying it all with flimsy excuses or worse, invoking their Civilising Mission of proselytising Democracy, Whiskey and Sexy to rescue these poor unwashed natives from their state of barbarism (this is even applied to countries whose material conditions could not be further from their own, and where instituting an America-esque "liberal democracy" is barely feasible and cannot work). It is a national pastime for Americans, producing propaganda to justify their endless imperialism around the world while at the same time condemning when regional powers attempt to exercise influence over their immediate geopolitical sphere without the US's permission.

I'm not a leftist (I have spilled enough ink in the process of explaining how much I dislike them), but the only thing I do agree with the hippie crowd on is that US foreign intervention is absolute poison. And that's not to mention their laughable domestic politics, the likes of which they regularly export anywhere they have even the slightest amount of influence. Just unconscionable, the fact that such a country is a hegemon is disgraceful.

destroying their desalination facilities

Is there evidence beyond the words of the Iranian regime that you support removing that the US has targeted Iranian desalination facilities?

It seems that even the attack on that girls' school was deliberate

Just to be clear, is your position that the US used a Tomahawk mission on a girls' school intentionally, knowing that is was a girls' school?

  1. The evidence is mainly lack of any reason to think to the contrary and Trump's bizarre whataboutist reaction to the question.

  2. I find that likely, though a little surprising (I doubted the intentionality just yesterday, but it being a double tap and the new actions on Tehran…). Tomahawks are very good and precise missiles (CEP like 10 meters) and the US has demonstrated immense competence in target selection.

Regarding the school, all signs point to it being a (massive and easily avoidable) fuckup by US intelligence. The school building was, until sometime about 10 years ago, part of the IRGC base which was targeted. It is now fenced off from the base (because it is a school) but from the air appears to be part of the same complex (because a decade ago, it was). A clinic which also was once part of the base was destroyed as well. By all appearances the government rushed into this war without adequate planning or preparation. It is highly likely that a commander pulled up this base from a target list which had been drawn up before that building was converted to a school, and which had never been updated. Certainly that’s more likely than the same commander sitting down and deciding “in addition to this military base, I also want to bomb the school next door.”

You can refer to the photos in this article: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5735801/satellite-imagery-shows-strike-that-destroyed-iranian-school-was-more-extensive-than-first-reported. NPR is an American source, of course, but not one with any interest in making Trump’s moronic war of choice look good.

I must note that this “stupidity defense” is indeed not a very strong defense, morally speaking. We are still directly responsible for the deaths of over 100 innocent civilians, mostly children. But there’s no reason to think the US intentionally bombed a school. Occam’s razor. What would there be to gain by doing so? The effect of the bombing is only to strengthen Iranians’ will to fight, weaken American support for the war, and reduce the chances of neutral countries choosing our side.

In that case, wouldn't a large portion of the blame lie with the IRGC for placing a school and hospital so close to a military base so as to be virtually indistinguishable from the air? That sounds an awful lot like fortifying your military position with innocent bodies to me.

There are plenty of overseas US bases that have medical facilities and schools for families of soldiers. And plenty of US military facilities that are directly in the middle of urban areas: San Diego, San Antonio, Norfolk, Alameda, Annapolis, and so on.

Unfortunately screwups are common enough in large war as to be unavoidable. The lesson I take from these sorts of things is "if it's not worth killing a bunch of schoolkids, don't go to war."

Re: #1, the link you had includes something like a denial by Trump. I would not be surprised if the desalination plants were hit, but the neighboring states seem like more likely culprits than the United States to me. Iran claiming such a strike falsely, or using it on themselves, and then using it as a justification to strike said states desalination plants also seems quite conceivable. The targets I would expect the US to hit first if they were settling in for a longer phase of the war would be related to power generation.

Re: #2, it is possible the building was struck intentionally due to being misclassified as a target, or that the coordinates for the target strike were entered incorrectly (the school was near an IRGC facility, IIRC). Even a tenth of a percent of error makes a mistake likely over the course of thousands of target sets. That seems much more likely to me than a coordinated decision to strike a children's school.

Iran claiming such a strike falsely, or using it on themselves

Enough of this nonsense, please. Ukrainians don't bomb their own schools, Russians don't bomb their own pipelines, neither do Iranians or Israelis strike themselves, false flag is the standard excuse. I'll give you that local Arabs may have been involved but I don't see why they'd escalate in this specific manner (inviting symmetrical retaliation that's way way worse for them because they demand more on desalinated water, it can get literally existential). And on the other hand, the US-Israeli axis is clearly enjoying the carnage, have you listened to Hegseth recently? Why should I give him any benefit of the doubt? This guy is a fanatic, a drunkard and a low IQ butcher, he belongs in an asylum. Presumably the chain of command is similar.

That seems much more likely to me than a coordinated decision to strike a children's school.

Children's school or training grounds for IRGC Khameneijugend? But yes, maybe they thought it's something else. Probably they decided to err on the side of caution (ie not allowing IRGC adjacent facilities to survive).

Ukrainians don't bomb their own schools

They probably do garrison troops there. (IIRC, Amnesty International caught them dispersing vehicles in civilian areas).

false flag is the standard excuse

I don't really think you can rule false flags out, they are a pretty obvious part of a covert services toolkit with a long known history (and presumably every so often they work so well they are never detected).

I do think it's stupid to blame every single thing on a false flag - there has to be a rationale for it. As you point out below, Iran stands to asymmetrically gain from attacking desalination plants. Has there been any satellite confirmation such an attack even occurred? Because the Iranians might also just be lying or mistaken.

(inviting symmetrical retaliation that's way way worse for them because they demand more on desalinated water, it can get literally existential)

Right, so...why would the US do this? Presumably this would alienate its regional allies!

Probably they decided to err on the side of caution (ie not allowing IRGC adjacent facilities to survive).

My understanding is that the building was initially part of (within the walls of) the IRGC compound. It seems likely to me that the US used an old target set list. Probably what happened is something like this:

  • There is a list of assessed-to-be-active IRGC facilities
  • There is a list of GPS coordinates associated with those facilities
  • These lists are being reviewed and updated periodically. They were first compiled before the school perimeter change (in the 2000s or 2010s)
  • The team tasked with reviewing the first list (correctly) determined the IRGC facilities was still active
  • The team (or I might even guess at this point image-matching software) looking at the imagery to see if anything changed confirmed the relevant IRGC facility still had the same buildings at the same coordinates
  • The detail that the perimeter had changed was not noticed or taken into account
  • The US triple-tapped a girl's school

Even if I thought your specific arguments for this were better it still wouldn't be worth suppressing anti-war arguments (at least among intelligent people), because said arguments are how we understand the world, how we figure out if we should continue the war or not, how we figure out in which way we should do either (because there are a million different ways to prosecute a war and a million different ways to exit a war, and they will have very different consequences).

Being opposed to the war is not treason. Treason would be something like assisting Iran. It's conceivably possible that a congressman might do this, but it probably looks more like Bob Menendez-type behavior than a political stunt.

As far as democrats' political behavior, this is pretty normal for late-stage republics. Iran can't really hurt us that much; obviously attacking them was dumb, but we're kind of committed now. The real question is 'is the local allies part of the plan going to work'. I don't have the highest hopes, but Iran is kind of falling apart right now.

Being opposed to the war is not treason.

I feel like my point was missed by the majority of posters (which could easily be my fault).

The problem is not opposing the war, it's serving as opposition to the war effort, which some people are clearly doing.

You have a difference between not wanting to spend American lives in Vietnam and giving aid to the VC, or even just hoping that the VC win.

I mean I get the argument on pragmatic grounds, but in theory the political process (i.e. the democratic part of government) is specifically entrusted with deciding who to go to war against and how. So on that level it's nonsensical to say opposing (non-democratic!) decisions about going to war isn't or shouldn't be allowed.

In other words, there's an okay argument you can make that it would be nice if people supported the war effort even if they oppose the war, but upgrading that to people ought to support the war effort even if they oppose the war is an argument that's at least out of sync with the Constitution and our history. Morally sure, you can still say that, everyone can have their opinion.

Haven't all American wars had significant numbers serving as opposition to the war efforts? Even WWII? And riots in New York city against conscription during the Civil War? Is there something different with what's going on now that I'm not seeing?

Yeah, the near-unanimity. Or apparent near-unanimity, anyway. Everywhere I look the story is that the US cannot win this war, in fact is losing as we speak, and has hit nothing but civilian infrastructure, schools, and world heritage sites. That Iran's launch capability cannot be stopped, that their nuclear materials are being recovered as we speak, and that the US can do nothing about their nuclear program. That Iran can keep the Strait of Hormuz closed indefinitely and there's nothing the US can do about it, that the IRGC will remain in control and remain defiant, and that the question is not whether the Iranian regime can survive this war but whether the American one can.

Or maybe it's just CNN, X, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, Reuters, AP, and The Wall Street Journal.

An American joining a chant of "Death to America" probably isn't treason (but if the American knew the chant was organized by the hostile state, I could see it), but it's pretty bad nevertheless. This is getting pretty close to the line, assuming any of those people are actually American citizens. "Solidarity with Iran" is pretty bad in terms of "adhering to their enemies".

(Why can I find no mention of this in US media... including Fox? Maybe nobody at any of those agencies speaks Farsi)

It's probably not mentioned because at least going by the one picture, this is like 30 people. Size of protests matter. You can pretty easily get 30 people to show up at a protest over a pretty stupid issue, especially in NYC

This is getting pretty close to the line

That is protected 1st amendment speech. And who actually cares what those privileged mamma's boys say? Blow them off, tell them to their face's they're assholes, or punch them in the nose and take the consequences. But spoiled brats acting out suggests not at all that the FBI and Justice Department need to be involved because Western Civilization is about to collapse.

A DIA analysts secretly passing intel reports to Iran or their proxies would be treason. This isn't just not in that neighborhood, it's not even in the same zip code.

I donated to Trump, I voted for him in the primary, and all three elections. From 2015 to 2025, my main complaint about Trump was that taco was happening too often.

I think attacking Iran was probably the worst strategic blunder in history. 20% of the world's crude oil flows through Hormuz. Worse 30% of the world's LNG and 30% of the world's nitrogen fertilizer. Thanks to a bunch of brilliant people we feed 8 billion people and counting thanks mostly to nitrogen fertilizer. It needs to be in place with planting which leaves a narrow window to get the supply that hasn't moved for almost a week moving. Finally a significant percentage of the world's sulfer also flows through there (it's a byproduct of refining crude). Sulfer is needed for copper refining so when that stockpile is used up so does semiconductor production (if LNG electricity in Taiwan doesn't stop it first). There are a massive web of gigantic world economic industries that all depend on inputs from inside the Persian Gulf.

Insurance is gone for a straight of Hormuz crossing. Every P&I Club pulled their policies effective Thursday. In a best case scenario and hostilities cease now, there's no guarantee it comes back because the risk of it happening again remains and is costly to calculate and they don't have enough capital to backstop the new business reality.

It takes time for governments to set up backstops and in that time we are very likely to miss important milestones like Taiwan runs out of natural gas or fertilizer never gets applied to spring 2026 planting.

Worse, there almost nothing that can be offered to Iran to get them to stop. if we try to make them stop. They have 90 million people in a mountain fortress full of missiles and drones and a week of bombing has only gotten potentially half the launchers. They make the drones that have completely stalemated Ukraine and Russia, so a ground invasion into endless drones is a slow costly bloody mess. Nukes don't solve this problem, and leave the US and Israel as pariah states or potentially kick off MAD.

There is nothing 90% of voters want or care about to be gained by hostilities and every other exit is massively costly. This was a giant, obvious trap (everything I mentioned above was or should have been well known to planners in advance of bombings) and Trump walked right into it thanks to at best flattery and at worst being a blackmailed child rapist.

We didn't even refill the SPR from the drawdowns, before attacking the nation that any idiot on the street would tell you they'd threaten Hormuz. Inexcusable blunder in my opinion.

Ok bad or not it's I doubt it's even in the top 1000 strategic blunders in history, however this ends it's unlikely to end with the entire population of the United States, or even a mere twentieth of its population, dead or destitute or enslaved or similar, and that is not true of a lot of strategic blunders.

We can rephrase "worst strategic blunder in history" with "worst American unforced error since cutting funding to mRNA vaccines"

I'm still so fucking mad about the mRNA vaccines

I'm still so fucking mad about the mRNA vaccines

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06800-3

Overall, these data increase our understanding of how modified ribonucleotides affect the fidelity of mRNA translation, and although there are no adverse outcomes reported from mistranslation of mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in humans, these data highlight potential off-target effects for future mRNA-based therapeutics and demonstrate the requirement for sequence optimization.

Sounds like we could use more data then, but oh wait...

any idiot on the street would tell you they'd threaten Hormuz

It's probably worth noting that not attacking Iran doesn't guarantee they won't threaten Hormuz. In fact the last time an Iran was involved in shutting down an international waterway was...2025.

Furthermore, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon (and allegedly their opening stance in negotiations with the US was "we're sitting on 11 bombs worth of uranium right now" then its ability to close the strait will arguably be enhanced, since they will be a nuclear-armed state.

I think it's all right to be skeptical of this action – I've argued against past proposals for intervention in Iran – and, well, we'll see how this one turns out. I think the points you raise here are fair. I just want to flag the counterpoint is that "Iran doing this but with nukes" is worse. And while Americans often flatter ourselves that just leaving everyone the heck alone would remove the incentive for people to do things that hurt us, the truth is that Iran might very well close the strait in a regional tiff with its neighbors that has nothing to do with us.

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the US-as-global-hegemon. I think it corrupts our incentives and our institutions. But the benefits of someone saying "I will explode you if you touch the global trade routes" are greater than zero.

Yeah, the whole ground invasion thing seems like it's going to be a meatgrinder for whatever forces get sent in, you'd need excellent air defense cover against drones to protect your own soldiers on enemy land, otherwise we're getting drone videos posted to /r/CombatFootage with Americans getting blown up instead of Russians, which at the very least will garner some interesting reactions...

Lol. Obviously the mods, failing that the admins, failing that the government of the United States would never let footage of American troops getting brutally merc'd onto /r/combatfootage.

I was right by the way.

It'll just be on the infinite plethora of Russian/Chinese sites that'll pop up to host and mirror. The CCP would happily and enthusiastically dump any number of millions of dollars into "dead American warporn YouTube"

Is there reason to think the Iranians have procured tactical antipersonnel drones in large numbers? It would make sense for them to do that, it's just that most of the media I've seen covering Iranian done procurement has been about Shaheds.

Obviously they are trivially easy to make, but I'm not sure if Iran is in a position to procure them quickly in large numbers if they don't have them stockpiled.

Every P&I Club pulled their policies effective Thursday.

Yeah, they're the only friend Iran has.

both in the firm prosecutable sort

Treason is defined by the Constitution and does not include criticism of the President or his policies. I know this is trivially dismissing the premise, but thems the facts.

In a less formal sense: I recall the mood during the invasion of Iraq. A lot of support and also plenty of bitter criticism. This is normal in the post-Vietnam era.

The United States exists in the first place because a bunch of people committed treason. Treason is not automatically bad. It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason. What even is treason? It's a very "in the eye of the beholder" thing, isn't it? Is the US government currently encouraging Iranian civilians to commit treason against their government?

If we follow your logic, the US government will be able to start any war it wants to at any time and, if stopping it half-way might cause chaos, we'll have to support it. We will have to suspend attempts to attack the ruling administration, since that might interfere with the war. Basically, we would turn the US into a country that is regularly ruled by military dictators. Maybe we'd even bring back the Espionage Act and make it illegal to criticize the war effort. I don't like that idea.

The United States exists in the first place because a bunch of people committed treason. Treason is not automatically bad. It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason. What even is treason? It's a very "in the eye of the beholder" thing, isn't it?

If it's in the eye of the beholder then where's the problem in finding some actions unjustified and others not?

"Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse to hang the losers."

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?/Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

--Sir John Harington, who might have also invented the flushing toilet.

It's kind of incoherent for an American to criticize treason.

Not really. A traitor breaks the social compact/sacred bond that binds countrymen.

And a big grievance of the American revolutionaries was that (from their perspective) the British government broke that social compact/sacred bond first.

Makes part of me want to dust off my half-finished effortpost about the larger theoretical justifications for secession/revolution. It's actually a pretty diverse set of belief systems.

However you're right, generally speaking that's the US approach in terms of its political heritage, so a reasonable default. The Confederacy tried to pull that card, but the Northerners (rightly, IMO) said that OK, fine, even if you think that the North is breaking the slavery-compact part of the Constitution (not even a 'fundamental right'), you were mostly whiny losers about it (leaving when Lincoln gets elected and before he even does anything) instead of trying to exhaust all reasonable options first (what the Declaration of Independence was claiming the colonies had done).

Now whether you think the OG Founders were exaggerating when they claimed that their revolution was the only, reluctantly embraced option or not is a separate issue :)

instead of trying to exhaust all reasonable options first

It's probably worth noting that South Carolina pretty much yoloed themselves into it face first. Some of the other states (I don't recall the breakdown off the top of my head) did not secede until after it was very clear that Lincoln was actually going to march an army to take them back.

whether you think the OG Founders were exaggerating when they claimed that their revolution was the only, reluctantly embraced option or not is a separate issue :)

I think there's decent evidence they overfit a pattern of British conduct and attributed it to malice. Something like a sincere but perhaps not fully rational belief.

Thank you. I could go off on a long rant about this, but best not to distract the conversation so much.

It's the type of 'historical revisionism bordering on a lie' that even Americans have started to believe it.

Having had a British education, I always find myself chuckling when extremely-online libs start fulminating about how Confederates were "traitors". Maybe you should have paid for your tea!

More seriously, I think the motte definition of treason in an American context is "aiding enemies of the country in a context where the right of revolution does not apply". The concept of the right of revolution is critical to the Founders' political thought, for obvious reasons (vide), but it was a complex concept that is inextricable from the right of self-defense in e.g. Hobbes/Locke and can't easily be applied in a modern context.

Having had a British education, I always find myself chuckling when extremely-online libs start fulminating about how Confederates were "traitors". Maybe you should have paid for your tea!

When I'm in a snarky mood, I refer to the American War of Independence and the American Civil War as the "First Slavers' Treason" and "Second Slavers' Treason" respectively.

Hobbes/Locke and can't easily be applied in a modern context.

Former commentors here like David Friedman and HlynkaCG would disagree but that's also a big part of why they're former commentors.

To be clear, I am a big fan of both thinkers, particularly Hobbes - just because an idea is difficult to apply doesn't mean that it's not productive or even necessary to do so. But they're difficult, even if they're both excellent writers, and it's very easy to get them wrong if you're approaching with a modern conceptual vocabulary (e.g. the kudzu tangle that is the modern conception of "rights"). Argued plenty with good old Hlynka over Hobbes.

I'm assuming those two people were banned (I've seen references to Hlynka before) but what does that have to do with Hobbes/Locke? I'm assuming the mods aren't massive haters of those two philosophers lol

Hlynka talked about Hobbes a lot (that wasn't why he was banned though).

First - Trump will get Congress on board. He may have to pay yuuge price, but even the biggest doves and biggest morons in Congress know that US trying to overthrow regime and failing means the empire is over and there will be many more challengers in the years to come. There is reason why Russia is hellbent on finishing the SMO on their own terms. If you want to know how international relationships work - go watch the Godfather. So far USA haven't failed in overthrowing a regime after committing the needed forces.

Second - speaking against the special military operation is not treason.

Third - the best time to have dialogue about the war was before and during the protests. The second best was after them. The third best is now.

Fourth - the year is still young. There is chance that the US may actually win with low bodycount.

The Logan Act and saying things on the internet can get to a very stretchy version of a violation. The law is probably too vague even before this stretch but nowadays some dude in Iowa can literally talk to Putin directly on the internet.

Unless he got paid for speaking pro Russian propaganda - I am not sure how the dude in Iowa will be held responsible. You are totally allowed to spew enemy propaganda. Just not commercially.

Ever since Flynn I am paranoid on lawfare and how stretchy something like treason or sedition could be.

Even something small like talking to a Russian bot on a message board telling them “everyone in my house would fight against Trump” would be giving an adversary a small amount of intelligence

[Michael] Flynn

News article for whippersnappers who don't remember this like me

Text of acts admitted to in guilty plea

It was nowhere near that simple, but to be fair, you really had to be there. Once the long-awaited OIG report dropped detailing serious Shenanigans[1], Flynn motioned to withdraw his guilty plea. Here is a supplement that details the misconduct of Covington & Burling LLP, his original lawyers in his case, and here[2] is the supplement that spells out the relevant parts of the FBI and DOJ misconduct in his case. As new evidence, such as the official closing of the Flynn investigation on 1/4/17, and an email documenting an unofficial promise not to prosecute Mike Jr.[3], continued to accumulate, Brandon Van Grack was removed from the case. By May, the DOJ was motioning to dismiss, but even as exculpatory evidence continued to be produced, the circus just kept going.

Revisiting all of this the better part of a decade later, I've had significant difficulty locating the some of the supplements and exhibits that I remember reading that provide even more context, which is frustrating to say the least. It's admittedly possible that they have all blurred together in my memory, as I followed all of that business rather closely. This is a preface to say that what I have linked here is merely what I hope is a decent sampling of the evidence underlying the smorgasbord of bullshit that was the Flynn prosecution. Alas, I have spent the bulk of my evening typing this lone reply rather than attending to my own needs and despite (allegedly) knowing better. More fool me.

[1]. As with all good political documents, the devil is in the details while the executive summary is considerably more... neutered tidy. More importantly, Flynn's new counsel had repeatedly filed motions to compel Brady material, aka exculpatory evidence, which the FBI and DOJ both denied existed.

[2]. This supplement rebutted the DOJ's downplaying of the OIG report, saying that it wasn't that bad and that it didn't pertain to Flynn, which considering that Flynn was in fact Crossfire Razor, was a lie "lacked candor" in OIG-speak.

[3]. This bit was relevant both because Van Grack denied threatening to prosecute Flynn Jr. and also because he would have been required to report an official agreement, hence the unofficial nature of the offer detailed in the email.

I feel like the US has lost plenty of times and been fine. Korea had an unsatisfactory stalemate (that still haunts us). Vietnam was a clear loss and retreat. Iraq and Afghanistan were immediate victories followed by long drawn out slogs that no one feels we "won" at.

The 1990 Gulf war was a victory of sorts, but that seems to have happened because we didn't get involved in regime change in Iraq at that time. Otherwise you have to go back to WWII for a clear victory.

Your specific phrase "overthrowing the regime" is kind of a strange victory condition. We have arguably already done that in Iran. Bunch of their leaders dead on day one. There might be a technical continuance of governance, but there is already going to be a different set of people in charge in Iran. And historically our attempts at regime change in the middle east have gone poorly. It's why no one wants us committed to a ground war.

The USA did not lose Vietnam, although the public thinks we did. America concluded(wrongly) that south Vietnam was capable of fending of a north Vietnamese invasion, and declined to bail them out when this turned out not to be the case- the republic of Vietnam was independent for several years without US troops or support, and the commies had promised not to invade in exchange for American withdrawal. Nixon and Kissinger surely knew that they would go back on this promise, but the ARVN fended off a full scale invasion without US support before reshuffling their general staff due to political turmoil and then losing the next round.

Vietnam is weird. People who are like "hurr hurr USA hasn't won a war since WW2" are obviously retarded.

But the USA fought a war for many years with the explicit goal of preventing South Vietnam from being communist. They then made assumptions the ARVN could stand on its own, which was a convenient assumption given the political unrest at home. Regardless of the assumption, they were wrong. You don't get points for saying "okay but at the time we really did believe it". They were wrong, and south Vietnam was taken over by the communists. The war that was fought, the lives that were spent, did NOT achieve the outcome. Full stop. I would call that a strategic loss, despite the numerous and overwhelming tactical victories. I think Clausewitz would agree.

although the public thinks we did

Amusingly, I think this is actually the most important part in this context. Power is exercised much more about belief than kinetic force. That's much more efficient too. The belief of your kinetic power means it doesn't get tested. Once that belief starts to slip, it gets much harder to maintain your power. You still can, especially with lots of kinetic force, but that comes with many costs of its own. It's way way cheaper when everyone respects the big stick, using it a lot sucks, and if absolutely everyone says "fuck you, bring it" you can only hit so many of them...

Vietnam was a strategic loss, that’s true. But also the ARVN did stand on its own until political turmoil in the Republic of Vietnam caused coup-proofing shakeup in the army’s leadership post-US withdrawal, leading to a collapse of the front in the face of the north Vietnamese 1975 offensive- the ARVN had been highly successful with 0 direct US assistance for three years at that point. It would be like if Ukraine suddenly fired all its generals and put a rando in charge who proceeded to lose the war in a matter of weeks.

I know this isn't the point , but this made me chuckle

It would be like if Ukraine suddenly fired all its generals

This would probably be accretive to Ukraine, and would 100% be accretive to Russia. These old-guard Soviet generals are so fucking bad.

Korea and Vietnam happened during the height of the Cold War, when the world was perceived as bipolar. In a way - some losses here and there were baked in. After the 90s (or 80s - I don't think anyone took seriously the USSR in 1985) - we live in Pax Americana. And one of the things that underpins Pax Americana is that US has mightier military than the next 20 combined.

And while Afghanistan and Iraq could be considered as political losses - the US forces never lost a battle there. I am not even sure that they lost many during the korean and vietnam wars.

Whereas leaving Iran in the hands of the islamic revolution after such fireworks display will be a first of a kind post Cold war.

I agree with everything you've said, except

There might be a technical continuance of governance, but there is already going to be a different set of people in charge in Iran.

I wouldn't call that regime change. I think you'd need substantial change in the policies/views/beliefs/actions in the governance of Iran for it to count as "Regime change". Ending the war right now means the IGRC #100, #101, #101... people step up and get right back to "death to America, death to the Jews" after 24-48 months of rebuilding.

I would not call Venezuela regime change either by that metric. Although it did seem to very much alter the relationship between Venezuela and America's respective "regimes".

Although it did seem to very much alter the relationship between Venezuela and America's respective "regimes".

Mostly unilaterally, on the part of the United States.

Otherwise you have to go back to WWII for a clear victory.

It's not quite that dire. Grenada and Panama were fairly unambiguous successes and the NATO mission in the Balkans can reasonably be characterized as a success as well.

Failing in Vietnam and Afghanistan did not end the so-called empire, why would failing to overthrow Iran's government end the empire?

I don't know if I'd go so far to say "it'll end the empire" but the American Empire was in a much stronger place relative to the rest of the world in Afghanistan, and debatably in Vietnam too.

While the USA is still the dominant world superpower, there is definitely a "lull" right now in the perception of that power. The USA is chaotic, it is divided, it is looking increasingly, for lack of a better word, stupider. Europe is starting to wake up again (we'll see if they actually do). China is unequivocally rising, and fast. Russia is fighting a really pathetic war, but the fact it's even being allowed to do that is slightly questionable given how hard we cucked them for nearly 30 years.

If the USA can't even shit on the middle east like it used to, that's a hit to credibility no matter how you slice it. Not a good look when you're already looking a bit extra-chromosome-y already.

If the USA can't even shit on the middle east like it used to

Uh, the US is totally shitting on the Middle East right now.

That's true, let me rephrase

"Shit on the middle east to completion"

America striking a "deal" where nothing changes with Iran is the blowing your load too early/whiskey dick/erectile dysfunction of this incredibly tortured metaphor.

"Treason" is covered under title 18 of the US federal code and is defined as levying war against the United States or aiding others in doing so.

So in this context actively helping the Iranian regime defend themselves against US military aggression, or engaging in sabotage activities to limit the US military's ability to fight would arguably be "Treason", but that's not really the sort of thing we are talking about here is it?

The sort of culture war fodder we're talking about here would fall under "Sedition" which is much less clearly defined but basically boils down to plotting or advocating for the overthrow of the US government. I feel like a lot of people are using the term "treasonous" when they really mean "seditious" or "morally bankrupt" to get that extra little bit of rhetorical punch in describing something that is "treason adjacent" even if it isn't treason itself.

I'll eat my hat if 10% of Americans could define sedition. The reason people call it treason is because modern Americans have lost the vocabulary to communicate subtlety.

When does "criticism" of the current military action in Iran (and by criticism I mean a variety of behaviors from our political leadership to randoms on the internet) become "treason" (both in the firm prosecutable sort and the "historically your neighbors would have stopped talking to you or maybe chased you out of town" sort)?

Never? Unless you're trying some bait and switch with "criticism" in scare quotes.

I get it, people are mad at Trump, Republicans, America, the Jews, Israel, whatever.

If you're asking that question, I'm not sure that you do.

We've got an unpopular president starting a war in the middle east while conservatives close rank and accuse anyone against it to be unpatriotic traitors. Is it 2001 or 2026? I'm eagerly awaiting the return of freedom fries and politicians being pressured into wearing US flags on their lapels.

A significant part of the case for Trump in 2016 was people swearing up and down that Trump was a non-interventionist, that Killary Clinton was a mad warmongerer in the lineage of Bush who would kick off WW3 and MAGA was the only political faction that wouldn't send us to war. Trump's second term has been nothing but foreign intervention and saber-rattling! Where are those people who told me this would never happen? Weren't you one of them?

If everyone returns to their corners now at the very least we have billions of dollars in economic dysfunction, realistically we have tremendous destabilization in the region which is going cause the biggest problems we've seen in decades. In truth, we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel. Even the most anti-semitic person who ever lived should be able to understand how bad doing that could go. It would likely be the worst thing that's ever happened just from the resulting chaos.

'Hey, I just made the case for why the guy I voted into office made a terrible decision that I swore he never would that could easily cost us trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. But ignore all that! Now that it's happened, you have to put aside your silly bickering and support the president and flag.'

Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.

You mean like we left the job half done in Afghanistan? Do you think some better domestic PR magically would have defeated the Taliban?

I have to admit, this is one of the funniest timelines. A year or so ago conservatives here were smugly telling me that Biden and Harris had ushered in a golden age for conservatives, that the left was imploding and Christianity was ascendant. Today Trump is massively unpopular, immigration agenda in shambles, and he literally decided that taking a page out of the Bush's playbook was a good idea. If he manages to preside over another financial crisis or recession, well, that would just be the cherry on top.

I'd say that I'm looking forward to hearing what those people think about the war in Iran, but if I'm being honest, it's probably just going to be more blackpills and fedposting about the fourth box of liberty.

Make the PR bad enough and we stop with the job half done and everyone loses.

You mean like we left the job half done in Afghanistan? Do you think some better domestic PR magically would have defeated the Taliban?

More like we left the job half done in Vietnam. Afghanistan was a counter-insurgency and nation-building fight, whereas this is a pretty straight-forward destroy-the-enemy fight. We don't even need our own troops on the ground to provide advisors and support to the Artesh, communications tech has come a long way since the 60s. And yet the media is once again trying to make the US lose a war that it can pretty easily win.

We left the job done in Vietnam, though- the war goals never included the destruction of the north Vietnamese commie regime.

Judging by the assessment of John McNaughton (assistant secdef for international security affairs) in March 1965, we achieved 20% of our aims.

  1. US aims:

70%—To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).

20%—To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.

10%—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.

Also—To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.

Not—To “help a friend,” although it would be hard to stay if asked out.

And with the US withdrawal from the conflict, we left with 90-100% of our war goals accomplished- South Vietnam remained an independent state for several years following American withdrawal, and North Vietnam promising to respect its territorial integrity was a key promise to obtain that withdrawal. That North Vietnam reneged on that promise was perhaps predictable, but when the US agreed to withdraw all of American war aims were met at the time of withdrawal.

If in 1947 Nazi Germany somehow reconquered continental Europe then the US 'winning' WW2 is rather irrelevant and minimal even if American troops marched through Berlin and went home with a peace treaty. The political goal was a failure.

And yet the media is once again trying to make the US lose a war that it can pretty easily win.

Yeah, I don't think the media is problem here. The media loves a good war.

The problem is that war is fundamentally about willpower, not firepower, and Trump has made no effort to build public support for this war. This has, in fact, been a more general aspect US foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era. The American public isn't willing to tolerate casualties or pain because they don't believe enough in the causes their support is being demanded for, not because they're soft or because the troops are being stabbed in the back by the media.

I don't think the media was the main factor that made the US lose in Vietnam. The main factors were:

  1. Fear of Soviet and Chinese intervention prevented the US from invading North Vietnam.
  2. Conscription made the war more than just an abstract political event for the American population. There had been conscription during the Korean War, too, but that war ended quickly enough for conscription to not become a major political problem.

I would argue that the war ended because of media coverage of the Tet offensive. Most media treated it as a massive blow to the US, a surprise attack that showed the strength of the enemy. But militarily the offensive was a failure. It didn't meet its objectives and was very costly for the Vietcong. The media portrayed this incorrectly because they were already ideologically against the war. I agree there are many factors, but ultimately I think the US lost that war because of demoralization and successful psyops from the Vietnamese.

But the US continued waging the war for 5 years after the Tet Offensive. It still had plenty of time to win the war, and/or to make the South Vietnamese military capable of defending South Vietnam, and it failed. The US did draw down its troop strength after the Tet Offensive, which likely played a role in its failure to win the war. But even 2 years after the offensive, the US troop strength was higher than it had been in 1965.

I do think the Tet Offensive and media coverage played a large role, just not a decisive one.

If the US had used an entirely volunteer military instead of using conscription, the war would still have been very unpopular in leftist circles, but the appeal of the anti-war side would have stayed relatively limited compared to the historical timeline. After all, this was the same country that went on to elect Nixon with 60% of the electoral vote in 1972 over the anti-war McGovern, despite the conscription and the failures to win the war. The hardcore anti-Vietnam-War leftists were a small subset of the US population who loom larger than their actual size because they made a large fraction of their generation's enduring movies, music, and writing — and also because the US defeat adds to the tendency to see them as having been right. It was the draft that gave the antiwawr cause resonant widespread appeal among the youth.

If the US had invaded North Vietnam, and China and the Soviet Union did not send land troops to stop the invasion in response, the US would have suffered heavy casualties but would have almost certainly won the war decisively as a result. The fear of China and the Soviet Union sending land troops into Vietnam, and/or the Soviet Union attacking Western Europe, and/or either using nukes, was the main thing that stopped the US from invading North Vietnam.

The ARVN was capable of defending Vietnam, they defeated the first invasion following US withdrawal. But the Republic of Vietnam was an corrupt dictatorship which removed their competent generals for political reasons, leading to the army collapsing in a subsequent invasion.

Would you, personally, be in favor of a ground invasion involving 400,000–500,000 US troops? How many US killed in action do you think we should be willing to commit to? 5,000? 30,000? 50,000?

Personally I wouldn't support a ground invasion at all. If I were the boss, I would be willing to commit troops to special operations and direct action missions that would provide outsized impacts that we couldn't achieve from long range strikes - but it's not clear to me that there are many targets that require that. What exactly would be the purpose of an invasion?

Also, there aren't 500,000 currently deployable ground troops in the entire US military. There may be that many troops in total, but to get most of those units ready to deploy would take months, and then months and months more to ship them overseas a few at a time. For more context, at the peak of the Iraq war we had 170,000 troops on the ground, and less than 5,000 were killed over the course of 8 years. I'm not sure you're really calibrated on this.

I chose the invasion force numbers based on Gen. Eric Shineski's testimony before congress in 2003, when he estimated that it would take between 200,000 and 300,000 troops to control Iraq. Rumsfeld and Wolfoqitz eviscerated him for this, as they knew that such numbers likely wouldn't fly with the public, whom they were trying to convince that a more nimble operation would be successful. They ended up sending about 150,000 troops for the initial invasion, but those numbers were augmented by 50,000 troops from other countries. I don't know how many troops Israel would be willing to send, but I think it's safe to say that we can't expect much help from elsewhere.

In the end, I don't know why you're bringing up actual troop numbers in Iraq at all, since that's obviously not a war we want to emulate. If we assume that Shineski's estimates were correct, and account for the fact that Iran has double the population and several times the land area, 500,000 seems like a reasonable estimate for what it would take to control the country. I brought up the casualty numbers not because I think any of those numbers are likely, but because we don't know what kind of numbers would be likely. We lost 5,000 in Iraq, but 50,000 in Vietnam and 30,000 in Korea.

I brought all this up because on the one hand you talk about how we weren't willing to fully commit in Vietnam but on the other talk about how this is a fight we can "easily win", and your reply makes it clear that you don't want to commit any ground troops. Well, which is it? Do you want to win, or are you willing to walk away if the air campaign doesn't achieve the objectives (which, it should be said, aren't clear right now). To my knowledge, and correct me if I'm wrong, there has never been an instance where a government has been toppled due to air power alone. Libya fell due to a counterinsurgency, and again, I'm not sure that's an example we want to follow here. What do we do after we've bombed every legitimate target and the regime is still in power? Walk away? If so, that's fine, but it's also evidence that "we really didn't want to win". We may not have 500,000 troops at the ready, but we're certainly able to commit that many if necessary. We've committed more when the population was a lot lower.

it would take between 200,000 and 300,000 troops to control Iraq

I think this is the key point. He was talking about invading and occupying the country. I don't think anyone, even the most rabid war hawks, is suggesting we should occupy the whole of Iran. From what I've seen, most of the usual hawks don't want troops on the ground at all.

As I've said before, the aim seems to be to destroy the ability of the IRGC to wage war in the hope that the Artesh or some insurgent group can move in and take control. And in the case that no such group succeeds, we can still be happy with destroying as much of the IRGC military infrastructure as we can. The risk to us seems to be primarily from the economic effects of shutting down shipping lanes, which I think is most likely worth the cost.

Iran is a problem because of:

  1. Their sponsorship of terrorist groups in other countries
  2. Their nuclear program

Neither of these have to do with their conventional capabilities, which nobody was talking about until recently. They were already conventionally weak and destroying these capabilities further doesn't accomplish anything, except to possibly exacerbate the existing problems. If you want those problems to go away, you have to either negotiate or control the country. Trump didn't want to negotiate, and due to his recent actions the Iranians aren't going to be willing to negotiate either, so that option is off the table. We already hit their nuclear sites last summer, and Trump said that anyone claiming that it didn't solve the nuclear issue was reporting fake news. 8 months later and they're back to being two weeks away from a bomb. They aren't going to install a new government without some kind of occupation, and they aren't going to be able to get to the nuclear sites without boots on the ground occupying and destroying them. There's no precedent for a country capitulating due to bombing alone, except maybe Japan in 1945 if you only count the mainland. And even then we had total air and naval superiority and still had to both use nukes and send an occupying force of more than 400,000 for a country that's smaller than Iran. I have no idea what Trump thinks is magically going to happen.

The risk to us seems to be primarily from the economic effects of shutting down shipping lanes, which I think is most likely worth the cost.

How can you say that when you don't know what the cost is yet? Should Americans pay $7/gallon for gas for a year for this? Will Iranian insurgent groups periodically drone oil tankers in the Gulf for the foreseeable future? How long will it take global shipping to recover? How much money are you personally willing to lose because of this war?

So far we've seen no attempt at any action against the regime. I think the IRGC has successfully neutered all the opposition; there's no armed rival to take control. And the hard-line regime may be deep enough that you simply can't kill enough of them to find anyone willing to make a deal; if you keep killing you may just reduce the nation to ungoverned chaos.

I think taking the country and the troops hostage to your insane decisions is spiritually treasonous, if not treason by the letter of the law. Even if we grant (which I do not) that we really are irrevocably committed, the first thing to do would be to remove Trump and his cabinet and replace them with less corrupt, inept, and irresponsible leadership.

Many people would rather have had us not get here. But we are here. The ship has sailed.

See, I think what is going to happen is that we're going to bomb them for a while more, kill a bunch of people, and then proclaim victory and go home having accomplished very little. Sure, we'll have blown up some Iranian military hardware, destroyed a bunch of civilian infrastructure, killed some replaceable autocrats, and killed a lot of civilians. After which the IRI will rebuild and redouble its quest for a nuclear weapon. Trump does not believe in the Pottery Barn principle and he has a notoriously short attention span. Hegseth has openly stated that we're not in it for regime change and thinks war crimes are badass. So from where I stand, the options are 1) stop the war now and stop killing people, despite the job being 'unfinished' 2) keep the war going, killing a lot more people, and still leave the job unfinished. Either way, at the end of this we're going to be back to negotiating with IRI leadership.

Really, Trump II has really cemented my opinion that we need to gut the executive. The ability of the presidency to embroil the US in a major conflict unilaterally is untenable, and the notional justification for this broad authority doesn't seem to have much real-world basis.

them with less corrupt, inept, and irresponsible leadership.

I have a news for you - there isn't any. It's neocons all the way down. At least Trump with adventures - he keeps like Clinton only in the air and with low US body count.

Really, Trump II has really cemented my opinion that we need to gut the executive

The Congress has spent the better part of a century removing power from itself and piling it onto the executive. Why do you think that it will be easily reversed when the Dems are hungry to do the imperial presidency too.

There are no people left in the congress willing to defend the commons.

Skibboleth did not actually say that he thought gutting the executive would be easy, or that it is on the Dems' agenda. He said that it needs to be done. It may very well be that no one will do the necessary thing, but it's still necessary.

The people who manipulated Trump into starting the war are the “traitors” in my book, though this isn’t the legal definition. Lindsey Graham shouldn’t be coached by Mossad on how to neurolinguistically program Trump’s 80yo mind into joining a war. That’s the most insane thing I have ever read. It is baffling that this happened. And I don’t trust “confirmed bachelor” Lindsey Graham in Tel Aviv in the Epstein era at all:

To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country's intelligence community. "They'll tell me things our own government won't tell me," he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said.

A law should be passed to deport people who do this to Mogadishu along with their nearest kin, extending even to second cousins, along with banning any of their interns of assistants from working in government. Imagine the best salesmen in the world working for years to figure out how to sell you something, and they are able to use a friend of yours to do so. They have an infinite budget and have collated tens of thousands of hours of your speeches and conversations to determine priming words and anchoring words according to your facial expressions and vocal tenor. Oh, and you’re 80 years old and easily impressionable. This is the capability of Mossad, plus infinitely more.

we call it all off now, Iran will probably finish arming themselves and nuke a civilian population, likely Israel

I would sooner support America formally declaring war on Israel than believe this, or support someone who believes this. This is not the assessment of the American intelligence community. This is an Israeli talking point.

The whole "US politicians go to Israel to touch the magic wall" was always weird to me. The fact AIPAC has so much sway annoys me, but it's America and any one with PAC-tier money at least has an "equal" shot at influence (this is such cope oh my god Citizens United was such a mistake).

The whole ridiculousness with the Mamdami x Cuomo debate of "as mayor of New York, how many microseconds after you win the election will it take you to board a plane for Israel" was absolutely sickening, although could be coped as "they obviously hate Mamdami and are trying to bait him"

But holy FUCK

That’s the most insane thing I have ever read

This is an understatement. WHY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT THIS OPENLY. WHY DO I KNOW THEY DID THIS?!?!? I can't remember which poster here is walking the razor line of almost getting banned for Jew-posting, but I'm sure he's laughing so hard he's crying right now. What the fuck.

I'm not 100% convinced that Israel wanted this particular approach, although my only evidence is that neocons have been sending mixed signals.

It could just be that they're still in "Get Trump" mode, but maybe they wanted Trump to do something else than what he actually did?

Does anyone have any interesting articles which point the finger somewhere else? The Gulf states, maybe?

“confirmed bachelor” Lindsey Graham in Tel Aviv in the Epstein era

We know he likes bottoming for fit male escorts. One of them blabbed to the media about how in D.C. all the male escorts know him and call him "Lady G". That actually makes him immune to blackmail since there are already first hand published accounts of what his asshole looks like when getting prepped for anal. He likes hot guys and the Israelis can't hold that over him.

Now that homosexuality itself isn't blackmail material I guess the sheer promiscuousness of the average partaker and lack of spontaneous extramarital offspring makes it quite hard to blackmail

along with their nearest kin, extending even to second cousins

United States Constitution, Article III, section 3, paragraph 2:

no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood

They had experience with governments punishing the relatives of traitors and wanted no part of it.

If you told the founders that we were entering a needless war of foreign intervention 6000 miles away in Persia, they would consider their constitution a failure, and may be partial to my helpful revision.

"From the Halls of Montezu-uma,

to the shores of Tripoli,

but not twenty-five percent fa-arther,

cause that'd just be crazy!"

Seems like it ruins the original's meter and spirit.

Maybe focus on "needless"; don't throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

Tripoli and Mexico were not interventions into foreign affairs as they secured the wellbeing of Americans exclusively. The lyrics are “we fight our country's battles […] to keep our honor clean”. Not, “we fight Israel’s battles and lose all our honor by killing 100 children in the first salvo, while also killing a Muslim leader in their holy month backhandedly while lying about negotiations, all while harming our own interests among Arab allies in the region”. Our plan going into Tripoli was to secure a deal to benefit Americans, not trying to kill everyone in the government and military and hoping for the best. Leave such dishonor to Israel. In any case this is a 1930s authorization, not really traditional enough for me.

to keep our honor clean

That ship sailed, and was turned away, in 1939. Unitedstatesian acts in defence of Israel can be justified many ways, but one of them is to restore that honour.

(Also, Iran supported the Houthis, and the Houthis touched our boats.)

Also if the place was still called "Persia", we likely wouldn't be having this issue.

Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said.

This is not NLP mind control, this is how military decisions should be made. You may object that Trump is just too stupid to assess military intelligence - okay great, thanks for you input. Or you can object that the intel was bad - obviously a baseless objection, but if you think Israel is secretly evil then I see where you're coming from. But to object to the President making a military decision based on military intelligence is completely asinine.

You failed to read. This part is NLP:

Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country's intelligence community. "They'll tell me things our own government won't tell me," he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action

The part you selected is only Trump being lied to, as our own intelligence does not agree with what Netanyahu said, and Israel has previously lied to get us into war. A fool would trust their intel without vetting.

assess military intelligence

Its not American military intel, its whatever Netanyahu said.

IMO the fault really lies in the American populace for weighting the specific political agenda of candidates higher than an assessment of their character, personal judgement, and trustworthiness. And here, Trump specifically for being an easily convinced idiot. But "congressmen can't visit foreign countries and bring back advice for the president" has literally never been forbidden, and it would be silly to do so, and impossible to draw a rational line about what kind of advice/exactly which countries/etc.

Edit: of course, if you just want to badmouth and shame Graham for doing this, have at it and I encourage it, that's fine.

Trump has been talking about fucking up Iran since the days of the Embassy Hostage Crisis, and there are multiple people in his cabinet (Vance and Hegseth foremost among them) who have a personal beef with the IRGC.

I know a bunch of veterans who were stationed on the Iraq/Iran border during the Second US/Iraq War and they have told me stories about both the IRGC and the absolutely asinine policies of the Obama administration in regards to them. Stories about receiving instructions not to interfere with IRGC death-squads operating in their AO because acknowledging their presence or worse yet, US troops "accidentally" shooting an Iranian citizen (even if that Iranian had shot at US troops or Iraqi citizens first) might negatively impact JCPOA negotiations.

I also find your characterization of Trump as some sort of senescent meat-puppet especially rich given who he replaced.

Trump has been talking about fucking up Iran since the days of the Embassy Hostage Crisis

Both Trump and Vance explicitly ran as anti-war-with-Iran.

If Trump had ran on war with Iran he would have lost. He ran on the opposite as the "peace" candidate.

He ran on "Make America Great Again" and part of being "great" is people heed your warnings. As I said in one of the earlier threads on the topic Trump is not Obama, when he sets a "red-line" he means it.

when he sets a "red-line" he means it.

And when he didn't mean it after all, then it wasn't a real red line to begin with, right?

Oh, and you’re 80 years old and easily impressionable. This is the capability of Mossad, plus infinitely more.

Why does responsibility not lie with Trump / Hegseth etc here, or even Americans who voted for someone allegedly so easily manipulated? It’s very much “the Tsar’s advisors are the real problem”.

Imagine the best salesmen in the world working for years to figure out how to sell you something.

The best salesmen in the world are working right now to sell you Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Fanduel, Kalshi, day trading, laundry detergent, whatever. That doesn’t mean one can’t criticize the lifestyle decisions of gluttons, gamblers and spendthrifts.

The best salesmen in the world are at the intelligence agencies because they have access to psychological research that has never been published, and because such a job is more rewarding than working at Coca Cola. McDonald’s does not have a team focused specifically on targetting you, as an individual, using all your data, with access to your friend while you’re in a golf-induced trance state. If they did then you would prostrate before the Big Arch and salivate upon hearing “I’m lovin’ it”.

I've met people who work in intelligence work and I've met apex businessmen - guess who is usually more persuasive?

Career progression in government work is sometimes based around success but is often just based around politics and staying. Meanwhile business rewards skill, and many fields like production in real estate finance, represent one of the few ways to end up with million dollar pay checks without equity.

The best salesmen work in sales, because if you are truly good at sales you can become absolutely filthy rich and retire at 50 and spend the rest of your days at golf clubs nobody has heard of.

Well yeah, we do blame Trump, or at least I do. But that's an even worse problem, because it proves that these loyalties to Israel have to be rooted out of our government on both the D and R side, it's not a matter of just "find someone with higher agency who can balance these concerns more responsibly". I'm never supporting a candidate who vocally supports Israel, ever again. Compromise is impossible- "Trump is based but he supports Israel, we'll support him in hopes he gives use the change we want without compromising the very existence of our Empire on behalf of the Jews." Didn't work. The Right-Wing Zionist/Brown Alliance the BAP sphere insists upon in opposition to "peasant antisemitism" is impossible. It's not just about the advisors, it's about the politicians themselves. Supporting Israel should make you unelectable in both parties, it's the only solution. Newsom is pivoting hard in that direction, reading the writing on the wall. Woke shit sucks, but it's not nearly as dangerous as this fifth column, and demonstrated loyalty to that fifth column even if it's bundled with based rhetoric should be a disqualifier whether you are left-wing or right-wing.

So I agree with you, I can criticize the lifestyle of people who indulge while at the same time resolve that nobody in bed with those salesmen should have power anywhere in America.

If the war is called off now, the IRGC will press to finish developing nuclear weapons, engage in an extraordinary program of domestic repression and ultimately emerge as the much firmer, more cemented, and even more indisputable ruling elite of Iran. Will they nuke Israel after a cessation of hostilities? I doubt it. If there is a nuclear attack it will happen during a long war of at least several months, probably a rough or dirty bomb using the current 60% enriched material, put together quickly over a month, smuggled into Israel, Dubai, or somewhere else by an IRGC remnant unit operating under limited central authority. Someone like Pezeshkian wouldn’t even know about it until it happened.

The problem is, all of that might happen anyway, underscoring what a poor decision this war has been so far. As I said, there was only one chance to do this and it would have been while 2m+ Iranians were protesting, take out the leadership, police stations, basij, IRGC hubs, then hope that the institutions get overwhelmed with the sheer mass of human movement before anyone regroups, and then bring in US forces to ‘defend’ the (counter)revolution either overtly or quietly. Doing it after all the most aggressive / low inhibition protestors have been killed is pointless, a bunch of scared middle class people in Tehran are now supposed to, what, message each other on Telegram and try to storm parliament, when there are 800,000 soldiers, some who care and some who don’t, and 150,000 deeply ideologically committed IRGC fighters out to avenge their spiritual leader?

As I said, there was only one chance to do this and it would have been while 2m+ Iranians were protesting

I agree. My only.assumptiom is that they really wanted ~2 carriers in region to be able to put together big enough strike packages that they could SEAD/DEAD to their hearts content. Which to be fair, seems to be working quite well. I'm not following this war closely but I think three F-15s have been shot down and it's all friendly fire? So American hardware taking down American hardware.

They definitely should have just flown whatever they had around and relied heavily on the IAF stealth jets so they could sieze the moment. But they probably assumed that Iran actually scoring kills on American hardware would be too embarassing. Or the IAF said "yeah, we could, but wouldn't it be nice if you just did it for us? You're so much better at it 😍" and as always, we decided to set billions and billions of dollars on fire for our greatest ally.

Trump could offer a Palestinian State and the expulsion of the Jews from the West Bank in exchange for significant compromise on Iran's nuclear capabilities and tech.

No nuclear enrichment, lift sanctions, Palestinian state, expel the Jews from the West Bank and make the West Bank part of Palestine. No Israeli presence in Syria.

The real problem is the only sane offramps would go against Israel, we aren't actually in an unresolvable situation, it only seems there's no offramp because we aren't allowed to compromise the interests of Israel for the interests of America and the rest of the world.

No nuclear enrichment, lift sanctions, Palestinian state, expel the Jews from the West Bank and make the West Bank part of Palestine. No Israeli presence in Syria.

Would Iran also have to publically dismantle its Doomsday Countdown Clock?

Given the last 40 years there is no reason to believe that either party would take those limitations seriously so you might as well premise your "peace" deal on alien space bats and magical unicorn farts.

The Palestinians and Arab States have had multiple opportunities to implement a two state solution and they've blown it up every time.

Broadly I agree with that kind of two state solution but it’s also very explicitly against the absolute antizionism embedded in the foundation of the Islamic revolution, in which any Israeli state ie ‘Zionist entity’ is illegitimate; this was the Iranian position even when in the late 1980s and early 1990s a two state solution that involved the removal of most Jewish settlements was on the table.

You don't think this measurably increases the chance of a proactive nuclear attack? (terrorist or otherwise).

I imagine the more religious end of Iranian politics would push hard for it.

It increases it hugely during a conflict. Afterwards the incentives change, especially after a very shameful US withdrawal / unilateral cessation of hostilities, in which case the smart move for them is to complete the bomb, display it publicly, make clear there are many spares distributed across hardened underground facilities, and so a state of nuclear MAD has been reached with Israel.

Twelver Shias really do have a millenarian eschatology but I don’t think that says much about how likely they would be to use that nuclear weapon. In addition, there would be a price to pay for breaking the 80 year nuclear taboo diplomatically, including with Russia and China (since a successful wartime use of a nuclear weapon would almost certainly lead to Poland, Japan and others getting the bomb, which is contrary to the political desires of those states).

Lastly, it’s unclear that a nuclear attack on Israel, depending on scale, would 100% be the end of Israel or (viable) Zionism. It might well be, and presumably this theory involves the subsequent storming (after the deaths of 800k+ Israelis) of the country from multiple sides by an army of angry Muslims, both ‘axis of resistance’ and otherwise Sunnis from Egypt, Syria etc just caught up in the nature of things. But it also might not, Israel would retaliate with nuclear attacks, the population is well armed, it’s possible the US could intervene, there could be a period of anarchy before a Jewish state of a kind is restored, there a number of scenarios.

So certainly it increases the chance, yes. But I don’t think that a regime that survives intact under, say, Khamenei’s son will necessarily do it. That an Iran that survives will get nuclear weapons though is inevitable, surely.

Lastly, it’s unclear that a nuclear attack on Israel, depending on scale, would 100% be the end of Israel or (viable) Zionism.

Does Iran even have a sufficiently reliable delivery mechanism for this to be viable? At least a decent chunk of their ballistic attacks have been intercepted. Landing a nuclear warhead might have some (debatable) tactical/strategic benefit, but a bunch of spicy isotopes getting detected after a ballistic missile interception only has all of the fallout (heh). Existing nuclear powers trying to limit the viability of proliferation, and so forth.

And given Israel's intelligence victories over Iran previously, it seems likely they'd have advance knowledge of such an attempt, and likely have interceptor missiles earmarked specifically for, uh, non-conventional warheads.

Does Iran even have a sufficiently reliable delivery mechanism for this to be viable?

The odds are so bad. They'd have better luck trying to snuggle a bomb in, and good luck with that lol

When the metric keeps changing it's a very useless term to use. Just a few months ago it was mainstream Republican view that interventionism and fucking with the middle east was a waste of time even at best and potentially dangerous. We spent the whole last year justifying the admin's dwindling support of Ukraine as a "pivot to Asia" and now we're back in the middle east again for ?????? They won't even give a cohesive explanation, the reasons keep shifting around at their whim (likely because if you give an actual goal, then you actually have to achieve it instead of just claiming victory whenever you feel like it). Even before the election the conservative argument was that Harris would be the one shooting missiles into Iran and potentially putting soldiers on the ground, the this you account on Twitter has documented a few of them.

It's absolutely insane that some people are trying to argue having actual principles and beliefs instead of being hypocrite liars who turn on a dime because Israel and Trump under them told them to is treasonous behavior. If anyone is a traitor, it's the people who lie to the American public (with the aid of foreign spy agencies mind you) and get elected on false promises. That's not loyalty to Americans, that's treating us citizen goyims as cattle and sheep who you think are too stupid to recognize it and won't notice. Well too bad, this war is really unpopular and there hasn't been a "rally around the flag" effect. Turns out the American people aren't brainless and don't just become your fans over a war you started because Israel told you to.

Edit: Also quite interesting this happens just a few days before they had to release the part of the Epstein files where we find out the guards were talking about a coverup of Epstein's death, saying he was killed, and also mysteriously depositing tons of money in cash over a period of a few months right around that time. What a strange coincidence that Israel and the US would want a headline consuming war started right at this exact time.

and now we're back in the middle east again for ??????

The answer is "Israel", you even have the right number of "?" lol

release the part of the Epstein files where we find out the guards were talking about a coverup of Epstein's death, saying he was killed, and also mysteriously depositing tons of money in cash over a period of a few months right around that time.

Holy shit I missed this

I agree with a lot of your concerns, but a clear case for Iran now can be made as part of a pivot to Asia. That basically gives US full control over the global oil market. It would just be Russia outside of the American block. US would have a credible card of cutting Chinese oil supplies 80% during a Taiwan War.

"simply blockage the Malacca strait" needs to stop. I honestly might make a copy pasta for this.

Here's a lazy version:

  1. it is likely, but not guaranteed, that the USA could station enough forces to maintain a blockade , but we'll assume it does for the rest of this analysis

  2. blockades are effective, but not a kill switch. Germany got blockaded quite hard in both world wars. It definitely contributed to its downfall. That downfall still took many years and massive amounts of boots on the ground effort and death.

  3. China shares a massive land border with a massive oil producer who hates the USA, Russia. They don't have enough pipelines, and it's actually odd that China is slow rolling the power of Siberia 2, but they could speed it up if they wanted.

  4. a clear part of belt and road was to start hedging against a Malacca blockade (and to soak up absurd domestic construction capacity), it's not going great , but they're thinking about it

  5. speaking of thinking about it, China is a world leader in solar and EVs , you ever wonder why they're going balls deep into tech that reduces oil dependency??? They can run their warships and planes for years on domestic production, storage, and Russian imports.

  6. China is calorie self sufficient. They import a ton of food, but they could live off their own rice if they had to. They also share a giant land border with a country that grows a ton of food and hates America (it's Russia again!).

  7. the Chinese people can soak a lot of pain. They won't like having no gas and eating rice, but their grandparents remember way worse.

  8. if you think China has an energy/calorie import problem, you should look at Taiwan and Japan. Both of them need to import WAY WAY more of their energy/calories as a % of demand. Japan could get away with only offloading with Pacific ports, although that would suck. Taiwan just immediately starves to death and collapses. There are no (0) ports that Taiwan can use that can't be missile/mine spammed from the Chinese mainland.

  9. on another note, a ridiculous amount of global trade goes through Malacca. The USA will deeply upset the rest of the world by doing this. You can say "yes but fuck the rest of the world, we have super carriers" which is true. But when you're in a peer fight against a peer who's got home field advantage, you are not helping yourself by doing this.

I'm so fucking sick of "erm, we'll simply blockade the straits of Malacca and they'll fold, gg" when the entire population of Taiwan will have starved 5 times over before China even starts going "damn are we sure we want to spend the fuel on this sortie right now?"

The US already had those cards given its ability to sanction or blockade pretty much any oil exporter at will and/or blockade China. The only reason that Chinese purchases dominated Venezuelan and Iranian exports in the first place is that they were pretty much the only ones who would buy from them thanks to US sanctions, and as much as the sanction discount was easy money for the Chinese it isn't that important. China also buys lots of oil (much more than from Iran and Venezuela combined) from Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries, along with Iraq. Are we going to sanction all of them as well?

Treason would be literally aiding and abetting the enemy, which despite many people's attempts to claim it is so during every conflict, does not include "Speaking out against the war."

Also, you need a declared war for there to be treason.

Taking your point more figuratively, you're just arguing that we should all get on board because Trump made it a fait accompli. But Trump has a short attention span and no conviction. Opponents of the war have every reason to believe he'll TACO if popularity drops. If you believe the war is a bad idea to begin with, 'leaving it half done ' isn't a compelling argument to keep going.

Also, you need a declared war for there to be treason.

This is simply not true, over the last century numerous people have been successfully prosecuted on charges of Treason and even executed for aiding enemies of the United States (most notably the Soviet Union) outside of a declared war.

The Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, not treason. The last person executed for treason was during the Civil War.

Treason would be literally aiding and abetting the enemy, which despite many people's attempts to claim it is so during every conflict, does not include "Speaking out against the war."

Eh, there's a point where colloquial usage is fair. I would say that if an opposition Senator gave information to the Iranian regime, that ought to count enough for "slander" purposes, even without a formal declaration.

But Trump has a short attention span and no conviction.

Trump has been talking about fucking up Iran since the 80s.

United States Constitution, Article III, section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

A U. S. citizen joining an Iranian foreign volunteer brigade and shooting at U. S. troops would be guilty of treason. A U. S. citizen giving Iranian intelligence the encryption keys to U. S. military communications would be guilty of treason. Advocating that the United States stop waging war against Iran, however ill-advised that course of action may be, is not treason.

The reason that I would speculate there may be some actual treason or sedition cases during this war, in particular, is because of the huge network of Arab/Islamic "Advocacy" organizations in the US, many of which already stand credibly accused of funneling money and materials to Hezbollah and Hamas, which are Iranian proxies. I would not be surprised to learn many of them are sending cash or intel to the IRGC.

huge network of Arab/Islamic "Advocacy" organizations in the US, many of which already stand credibly accused of funneling money and materials to Hezbollah and Hamas, which are Iranian proxies. I would not be surprised to learn many of them are sending cash or intel to the IRGC.

You'd at least have half a case for those being treason. What isn't treason, what is ipso fatso unconstitutional to treat as treason, is expressing disagreement with government policy.

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." --Edward R. Murrow

Why would I bring up money if I was talking about speech?

What about lying about the state of the war to help Iranian propaganda efforts? Say, creating AI videos that purport to show Iran winning military victories against the US and presenting them as real news?

What is your (interpretation of the) definition of treason such that it being a lie rather than the truth makes a difference?

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

If the claims are literally true, then there would be reasonable value in propagating them beyond being a partisan for the other side. If the claims are not true, and you reasonable ought to have known that (as in, you had to have an AI generate the footage you're purporting to supply as "news" because it just doesn't exist), then your actions are a much cleaner, likely entirely indefensible, fit for "giving them Aid and Comfort".

What did we consider Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw? But is it different if they're just being fooled by Iranian propaganda and reporting what they believe is the truth (and making AI videos or other art to display said "truth"), vice actively taking official marching orders from the regime?

That's the blurry edge. What's the difference between a gullible idiot and someone just explicitly rooting for the other side?

Personally, for my own safety's sake, I'd rather we err heavily on the side of "assuming people are/protecting gullible idiots".

That's fine and fair. I more think this is a ripe scenario for thought experiments and teasing the outlines of things, than I am, say, calling for twitter posters to be jailed.

Imagine you were a juror in a case involving this sort of thing. What kind of evidence would you want to see to conclude that a person was an actively bad actor trying to sabotage their own nation? Or do you think idiocy is a fully general defense?

This is why I drove a distinction between (T)reason and (t)reason in my post.

But you see a lot of people with an agenda trying to defang the war effort or get it cancelled or whatever.

It would be helpful if you could give much more specific examples for those of us who haven't been following domestic political developments as closely as you have.

But, that said, I think the tendency to rally political opinion around the flag in wartime is generally far too strong. If it's been counterbalanced by modem partisanship then that's worrying, but worrying for what it says about partisanship rather than for any other reason.

The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so intense that we have got to finish with them. If we don't, they will plan their revenge.

That's a quote from Talaat Pasha, who has been called the architect of the Armenian genocide. In some sense he was not wrong. After the war Armenians systematically assassinated a bunch of Ottomon war criminals involved in the genocide, including Pasha himself. Pasha was murdered in Berlin where he lived after the war. His Armenian killer said during the trial "I do not consider myself guilty because my conscience is clear…I have killed a man. But I am not a murderer." The German court proceeded the acquit him from murder.

"Okay maybe we started an unjust war, but now we have to finish our killing otherwise they might take revenge" might well be a factually correct statement, but it isn't going to get you a lot of sympathy.

It sounds like you disagree with what is happening. The point is that people are turning that disagreement into making things worse for everyone or attempting to do so.

So don't do that.

Here's an easy deal: you can call it treason after Congress declares war (or otherwise formally approves military operations against Iran).

Up until that point this is purely the whims of the President, not the elected representatives of the country. Opposing Trump is no more treason than opposing Biden or Obama.

Okay we hold back and don't use the big scary T word, which is fair, the legislature needs to be able to express itself even if it's a terrible idea.

But again, what happens if we just stop now? Everyone is worse off - Americans and everyone else will likely die.

Doesn't that make the actions un-American? Irresponsible?

Being mad that we are here doesn't seem unreasonable. Trying to make everything worse in the frustration doesn't seem wise.

Doesn't that make the actions un-American? Irresponsible?

No. A reasonable person can look at the situation in Iran and conclude that the best thing for American interests is to get out now. You obviously disagree with that, and that's fine (I'm not actually trying to take a stand on that point), but the contrary position is not somehow beyond the pale such that one can't imagine someone would take it up only in a bad-faith attempt to make our country worse off.

Is Trump's invasion un-American and irresponsible? I'm not sure what it's supposed to accomplish. If he wants to remove the Islamic Republic and ensure that they never get nukes, he isn't going to do that by lobbing missiles at them. He needs to put an invasion force together of about a half-million troops to occupy the cities and find and permanently destroy all of the nuclear sites, and make a firm commitment that they will not leave until the mission is accomplished, even if it takes decades. Of course, he won't do that, because it would be incredibly unpopular, but his current stance amounts to some sort of permanent dicking around, and his own intelligence tells him that. If he stops the war and resigns then Vance or whoever might be able to do a sufficient amount of groveling to avoid the worst of the repercussions.

We spent 20 years in Afghanistan with literally nothing to show for it but lost blood and treasure. That makes "We can't stop now, we'll have accomplished nothing" a much weaker argument.

I don't object, per se, to acting against Iran. Contra our Jew-haters, it's in our interests as much as Israel's to put an end to the regime.

But I have no confidence in Trump's vision or plan. I expect we'll bomb them for a while, Trump will declare victory and stop, and Iran will still be Iran, just shaken, somewhat weakened, and still hankering for revenge.

But I have no confidence in Trump's vision or plan. I expect we'll bomb them for a while, Trump will declare victory and stop, and Iran will still be Iran, just shaken, somewhat weakened, and still hankering for revenge.

This is exactly my concern. An Afghanistan style solution does not seem likely to be helpful, Israel and the US Military (but perhaps, not Trump) may have a plan that could work - but if the propaganda apparatus is efficacious enough Trump will bail and we'll be stuck with a hankering for revenge outcome.

That's worse for everybody.

Israel and the US Military (but perhaps, not Trump) may have a plan that could work - but if the propaganda apparatus is efficacious enough Trump will bail and we'll be stuck with a hankering for revenge outcome.

Does anyone actually have any idea what this plan is? Has it been expressed to anyone publicly?

If it's a plan that won't work, isn't it treasonous to support it by your standard?

Luckily I'm not american, so I don't have to bother with considering whether I'm committing treason by disliking this stupid war.

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