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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26530 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.

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.

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