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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10480 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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A tiny note on the war

In the previous thread, I got some pushback for suggesting that not only did the US strike the Iranian school in Minab, killing 170 children or something like that, but perhaps it did so intentionally (or at least without remorse for the possible consequences of erroneous targeting). I admit that wasn't fully sincere. I realize that, even morals aside, there is no perceived military value in bombing children, at least not for the US (I do think Israelis may target children of IRGC officers out of their usual Bronze Age blood feud sentiment, Oct 7, Gaza and all, seen enough of their remarks to this effect; but then again they don't operate Tomahawks).

Well now the question on it having been an American strike appears settled. As for the intent – it's not so straightforward:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gutted the Pentagon oversight offices that would have investigated the recent strike on an Iranian girls’ school — a move that has degraded America’s ability to protect civilians amid its largest air campaign in decades.
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.
Hegseth can’t close the offices because they are approved by Congress. But he has managed to make them nearly inoperable, according to the people, as the Pentagon investigates its responsibility in what could be the worst U.S.-led killing of civilians since 2003. Iranian state media said the strike killed about 170 children and 14 teachers.
“The fact that our secretary of Defense, that our Central Command commander, cannot actually tell us whether or not they dropped a bomb in this location, that is so unbelievably unacceptable,” said Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments until last year. “It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”

Does it matter if there was no intent if the United States, as of now, also has a revealed preference to not bother with minimizing such risks, in favor of «lethality» and some zany Judeo-Christian nationalism courtesy the power-tripping macho TV host Pete Hegseth? I believe it does, but marginally; about as much as those girls matter to Lethal Pete. I rest my case.

More to the point. It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here. I won't criticize anyone, be the change you want etc.; but what we are seeing is pretty astonishing from the culture war standpoint. Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016? It looks as if the politically dominant culture of the United States changed overnight. Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?

Mistakes happen. A strong, competent leader, secure in his masculinity, owns his mistakes and does so publicly. Learns from them. Expresses regret, if appropriate, and lets people know how and why learning of the mistake will improve his ability to avoid such mistakes going forward. These are the men that other men follow to the gates of hell.

I think its possible that the US did the hit, but we're not certain. By their stalling I think its likely or they would have denied it already. Lets be honest, they have the intelligence and they've had a week.

That said, I've talked to a persian expat friend and he's highlighted Iran's history of false flags going back to the 80's. He isn't upset at the way the narrative is playing out. He thinks if this isn't the toppling of the theocracy, that Iran will suffer as is for another 30 years+

Frankly this seems like such a non-story.

The only way this is in fact a story is if the U.S. intentionally targeted the school WHILE knowing it was solely a school.

Assuming no one is alleging that, then everything else is window dressing. Mistakes happen all of the time including in war. Having a stupid panel to tut tut post hoc likely has a de minimis impact on an accident (after all why didn’t it prevent the mistake in the Afghan withdrawal). But it is a nice little way for an opponent of the administration to chest thump in a performative way despite the panel almost certainly being useless (bureaucrats love complaining about elimination of useless bureaucracy).

In short, it seems the military is doing just fine under Hegseth. Complaining about one mistake out of hundreds of strikes seems to misunderstand war.

Who cares if it was an errant US, Israeli or Iranian strike? War happens. All this struggle session about it is lame.

Let me just get this out there. When you go to war with anyone in the whole wide world, more civilians will die than soldiers. If you're very (un)lucky, you'll be facing a world superpower with good enough targeting to keep that ratio low. In a standard conventional military without smart munitions, the civvy/oppo ratio exceeds 5:1 for conventional operations and 10:1 for irregular warfare. Which is why irregular combatants are not protected under the Geneva Conventions.

This is what war is. There are, ultimately, no rules to the war game. Anyone cherry picking the one-off mistakes of any country in an armed conflict is doing so for their own reasons, not some established corpus of imaginary "international law" of which they seem to be the only lawyers.

When you go to war with anyone in the whole wide world, more civilians will die than soldiers.

Does not look so clear to me today, wars like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Gaza are not the normal. In Ukraine, well below 25% of the military deaths. In Nagorno-Karabakh, completely marginal. Iraq-Iran, below 1:1. Soviets in Afganistan, Russians in Chechenia, US in Iraq, something between 1:1 and 5:1 looks plausible. In conflicts that are more a civil war, varied and unclear.

Calling it lame is rather shameless. You start a war of aggression, on your own terms and schedule, from a position of strength and near total security, and you immediately fuck up a school then lie until the video surfaces, like some desperate, barely functional shithole. Don't know, maybe you are consistent, but for americans in general, there is a gap between reputation expected and actual conduct (targeting, behaviour afterwards, cynical excuses); very grating considering the advantages the US has.

Exactly, if the war is worth fighting then it's worth killing some civilians over. If the war isn't worth fighting, than it isn't. Lying about the strike is lame and stupid, but what more do we expect?

I feel the same way about the attitude around the American dead. Trump and Hegseth appear to be accidentally telling the truth here. If this war was just and a good idea, you have to be willing to trade a dozen dead Americans for an Ayatollah, or you're just not serious about it.

Thus the interesting argument, being had below, is: is this war a good idea? Is it just? Is it likely to succeed? Because the answers to those questions answer the question about the civilian and military deaths and costs of the war.

Those now shrugging their shoulders at civilian casualties likely did not do the same when Hamas killed some civilians on October 7th. I do wonder how much selective empathy is going on.

Nobody thinks the US military was trying to kill Iranian girls on purpose.

I do wonder how much selective empathy is going on.

For the folks parroting "why should I give a shit about some girl's school", I wonder how many of them have expressed strong public condemnation of abortion because "think of the children". I can't see how both attitudes could coexist within someone who's being honest about each view. Perhaps there's no such person.

Hamas raped and killed civilians on purpose. You really see no difference?

Shrugging at this is insane, though. I can understand the reality of war, but hundreds of kids being vaporized on accident is horrific.

There were soldiers throughout the music festival, off-duty Israelis carrying rifles. Why should I care if they miss some soldiers and shoot some civilians? Is that worse than missing a base and hitting a school? Why should an American trust what Israel says about the allegation of rape when (1) they are maximally motivated to exaggerate the event and (2) they have never admitted to killing hundreds of their own civilians in cars with the Hannibal Directive? This is not a trustworthy country.

Are you aware that we don’t have a single name of someone coming forward to allege rape? And that similarly, female hostages have not alleged rape despite being kept among Hamas for years? Or that Israelis rape their Palestinian prisoners?

I do wonder how much selective empathy is going on.

Bucketloads, on all sides. In general the wars of the last decade have really opened my eyes to the fact that most people can't have empathy (even nominally) for the opposing side of a conflict that they actually care about.

(I don't claim immunity to the phenomenon myself, and noticing that has been pretty creepy too. Especially since noticing it doesn't actually change it.)

As other people have pointed out, these things happen. Making a fuss about this bombing mainly incentivizes Iran's leadership to start using human shields.

War is hell. Mistakes happen.

a move that has degraded America’s ability to protect civilians amid its largest air campaign in decades.

It is not America's job to protect civilians.

“It just points even more to recklessness in this, in the entire planning and execution of this campaign, the fact that they don’t have any idea.”

Only 8 US dead so far. The campaign is not reckless.

At this point I think that the US doctrine should change to using many dumb bombs. And just say - we don't have the capacity to ensure civilian safety in one kilometer away from a military target and let the other government sort it out.

Why not do some victim blaming though - first putting a school next to military base is stupid, operating the school when knowing war is imminent is stupider. Treating it as just another day in paradise is stupider still. Putting a school in former barracks is once again not a smart move. And it is not as if Iran makes sure to give US information where the real juicy targets are.

here are quotes that are from Al Jazeera article (hardly us friendly outlet)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/3/questions-over-minab-girls-school-strike-as-israel-us-deny-involvement

On Saturday morning, the first day of the school week in Iran, US-Israeli strikes began on the country. Air raids started hitting various sites in the city of Minab and Hormozgan province.

But life in general was proceeding in a near-normal manner; children went to their schools, and photos and videos showed almost normal traffic on the roads surrounding the school.

Returning to the school in Minab, testimony by Shiva Amilairad, a representative of the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Unions, to Time magazine indicates that the decision to evacuate the school was made as soon as the US-Israeli attacks began. But, she said, the time between the warning issued by Iranian authorities (after detecting attacks on the city) and the moment the missile struck was far too short, and most parents were unable to reach the school to pick up their daughters.

At some point the best way to keep civilians from harm is not to entangle civilian and military infrastructure together. And what kind of evacuation is sitting in place waiting for parents to pick kids up. Evacuation is get the fuck out of the building and run away.

There should be investigation, and people should be demoted - but it should be for wasting valuable asset and putting the pilot's life and plane at risk for no good reason.

Why not do some victim blaming though - first putting a school next to military base is stupid

This is standard practice, the US has 160 such schools.

Accordingly it is predictable that there are schools on foreign military bases too .

Also Iranians were negotiating in good faith, this happened in the first hours of the war, because you're incapable of good faith, and demands for evacuation are quite disingenuous. How were they to know you're committed to not just attack while negotiating, but to destroying the country and not another Midnight Hammer type surgical strike on nuclear facilities?

All these excuses are slop, as is the tryhard cynicism. I guess the only possible rebuttal you'd be able to recognize is military defeat.

I'm confused. How many people in the US would be actually surprised/outraged if we got into a hot war and someone bombed a military base, which also had a school on it? We'd be upset about getting bombed at all, but I don't think the fact that a school on the base also got hit would add to the upsetness. It seems like a legit strike would also harm people at the school.

Schools on military bases are probably really convenient and the risk is low right now because we are unlikely to have people attacking us on the continental US. But it is a risk that they probably had to assess and accept. If an attack on US soil seemed more likely, the schools would probably be moved.

I'm confused. How many people in the US would be actually surprised/outraged if we got into a hot war and someone bombed a military base, which also had a school on it? We'd be upset about getting bombed at all, but I don't think the fact that a school on the base also got hit would add to the upsetness. It seems like a legit strike would also harm people at the school.

Looking at what's been happening in Ukraine, Iran and so on, I think that you'd (plural) be incandescent. It would immediately form the basis of huge volumes of war propaganda against the baby-killers for domestic consumption. Diplomats from the UK would be dragged in front of a mike and ask why they aren't doing more to stop innocent American children being slaughtered. Meanwhile any unfortunate civilian casualties abroad would be targeting accidents resulting from the enemy's perfidy in leaving children next to their bases, unlike the US which is (..now) doing everything possible to get them out of harm's way.

That just seems to be how war is.

This is standard practice, the US has 160 such schools.

With the benefit of hindsight, this seems like a bad idea to me. Even if it's a base that's not in serious danger of being attacked, it strikes me as a bad precedent.

That being said, if the US were at war, and the enemy attacked a military base and destroyed such a school, I do not think the enemy would deserve any special condemnation for having done so.

There needs to be a principle that -- as far as the rules of war go -- there is nothing necessarily or inherently wrong with an attack that destroys a school if the attack was otherwise legitimate. Anything else encourages the use of human shields.

Also Iranians were negotiating in good faith

I tend to doubt this. Probably there is no way to know for sure either way, but what's your evidence?

The US military maintains a network of schools for service member’s Children. This is the best public(Catholic schools are better) school system in the country going off test scores and is a regular line item in the budget overseen by the DoD- it’s not ad hoc.

The US military maintains a network of schools for service member’s Children. This is the best public(Catholic schools are better) school system in the country going off test scores and is a regular line item in the budget overseen by the DoD- it’s not ad hoc.

I don't dispute that at all. I'm just saying it would be nice if the school facilities were located off-base. Even if an attack against a US base is unlikely, I think it sets a good example. That being said, I have no idea if this is logistically feasible.

The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.

Seriously??

Man, how many Japanese kids and teachers were incinerated when we firebombed Tokyo? War is terrible, that's why we shouldn't be overly fond of it.

What's remarkable is less about what happened from 2019 to 2026 and more about what happened in the time prior to that. I'm all for targeted munitions and accurate intelligence and whatnot, but all kinetic action is, frankly, a broadsword. We're lying to ourselves if we imagine otherwise.

I don't even like Hegseth, he's not a particular good SecDefWar. But he's right that the military's job is to be lethal. If you want to avoid all that, that's on State.

Man, how many Japanese kids and teachers were incinerated when we firebombed Tokyo? War is terrible, that's why we shouldn't be overly fond of it.

Agreed, and I would add that people who make a fuss about this school bombing are, in effect, endangering MORE children. What do you expect Iran's leadership to do if they perceive they can gain an advantage from this situation? The obvious thing is to start mixing military facilities with schools, hospitals, etc.

Don't incentivize Iran to start using human shields.

something to realize is that modern people have dramatically much less willingness to accept civilian casualties than our great grandparents did. This constraint causes dramatic shifts in how war is fought in strange ways.

I admit that this is mostly secondhand from reading ROEs but like if we fought wars like we did back in the 40s and 50s the outcry's would be insane

The falklands war had the UK basically do everything in a respectable way, and the most controversial incident from my grandfather's perspecictive (RIP) was like "wow this even caused any controversy at all?" When he saw and read about it. To the old people wars are dramatically crazier than modern day wars. Vietnam Veterans I talk to describing the vietnam war show things that I personally consider abhorrent as just "lol that's war".

We (the average american young person) are soft and that's a good thing! (it makes us less willing to accept wars)

We (the average american young person) are soft and that's a good thing! (it makes us less willing to accept wars)

I don't think that's necessarily true. If a bad actor knows (or at least perceives) that you are unwilling (or less willing) to go to war, he is more likely to engage in bad behavior against you or your allies.

To be sure, the United States has the luxury of being a large, wealthy country in a very defensible location. But we do (arguably) have interests overseas and there are definitely people who are tempted to interfere with those interests.

I don't think it's about being old or young. The wars of our great-grandparents' day were existential, at least if you were in Europe. And notably the one party in the Iran conflict for whom this stuff is - rightly or wrongly - somewhat existential is Israel and they are ultimately pretty accepting of casualties. Likewise Ukraine.

If you are American of course it's a bit more complicated, but I still think that WW2 was visibly more urgent from an American POV in ways that created greater tolerance for large-scale casualties. Japan attacked the US; and the Nazi regime were very powerful, very dangerous genuine racial supremacists who had taken over France and Poland, presided over mass bombing and mass executions, and had the explicit goal of ethnic cleansing Eastern Europe for German expansion. Putin just isn't in the same league, and neither is Iran.

And notably the one party in the Iran conflict for whom this stuff is - rightly or wrongly - somewhat existential is Israel and they are ultimately pretty accepting of casualties.

The war is obviously more existential for Iran than it is for any of the aggressors. The destruction of the Iranian state is a plausible outcome, indeed it may be Netanyahu's goal. And a million excess deaths (mostly due to starvation and disease) is a reasonable estimate of the likely human cost of a failed state in Iran.

The war is obviously more existential for Iran than it is for any of the aggressors.

To be clear, Iran IS the aggressor -- certainly with respect to Israel. People seem to forget the facts that (1) for many years, Iran has been relentlessly attacking Israel by means of its proxies; (2) Iran's leadership has openly threatened to wipe Israel off the map; and (3) Iran's leadership has prioritized building a nuclear bomb.

I agree that at the moment, Iran has a lot more to lose than Israel or the United States. Probably Iran's leadership should have thought about that before engaging in its aggressive behavior.

Talking smack about an unfriendly country doesn't constitute waging war against them. Building nukes may justify a pre-emptive war as a matter of sound policy, but it doesn't as a matter of international law, and it certainly doesn't make you the aggressor if someone does wage a pre-emptive war against you - as a matter of ordinary English meanings of words, building nukes does not constitute aggression unless they are used.

You have a better case on point (1) - Iran is indeed supporting proxies which are attacking Israel (and indeed committing war crimes against Israeli civilians). But they are not an aggressor here - they skate on two technicalities.

  • The attacks on Israel aren't by Iranians and don't come from Iranian territory. There is a lot of state practice (very much including the US and Israel) of funding plausibly deniable proxies to engage in military action against countries you are at peace with. I don't think the involvement of US government officials in NORAID makes the US the aggressor in the IRA's war against my country. Iran funding Hamas and Hezbullah is a hostile act against Israel, and a despicable one given the circumstances in the current year, but it isn't military aggression in the way the term is usually used in practice.
  • Hamas and Hezbullah's attacks on Israel are not aggressive. Both are resistance movements that started their wars when Israel was in belligerent occupation of the Palestinian Territories and southern Lebanon respectively. If NATO funds resistance to Russia in occupied Ukraine, that is a hostile act against Russia but not an aggressive one. Hezbullah has continued their defensive war against Israel long after Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory and have been told to stop by the UNSC, which makes their continued war against Israel wrong, but it doesn't make it aggression.

Talking smack about an unfriendly country doesn't constitute waging war against them. Building nukes may justify a pre-emptive war as a matter of sound policy, but it doesn't as a matter of international law, and it certainly doesn't make you the aggressor if someone does wage a pre-emptive war against you - as a matter of ordinary English meanings of words, building nukes does not constitute aggression unless they are used.

You have a better case on point (1) - Iran is indeed supporting proxies which are attacking Israel (and indeed committing war crimes against Israeli civilians). But they are not an aggressor here - they skate on two technicalities.

The attacks on Israel aren't by Iranians and don't come from Iranian territory. There is a lot of state practice (very much including the US and Israel) of funding plausibly deniable proxies to engage in military action against countries you are at peace with. I don't think the involvement of US government officials in NORAID makes the US the aggressor in the IRA's war against my country. Iran funding Hamas and Hezbullah is a hostile act against Israel, and a despicable one given the circumstances in the current year, but it isn't military aggression in the way the term is usually used in practice.

Hamas and Hezbullah's attacks on Israel are not aggressive. Both are resistance movements that started their wars when Israel was in belligerent occupation of the Palestinian Territories and southern Lebanon respectively. If NATO funds resistance to Russia in occupied Ukraine, that is a hostile act against Russia but not an aggressive one. Hezbullah has continued their defensive war against Israel long after Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory and have been told to stop by the UNSC, which makes their continued war against Israel wrong, but it doesn't make it aggression.

I wasn't aware that you were using the word "aggressor" as a legal term of art. And assuming that the word is in fact such a term, I am extremely skeptical of your claim that proxy attacks do not count.

Please provide cites and links to support your claim. TIA.

Separately, since you have used the phrase "Palestinian Territories," can you please tell me (1) which land areas constitute "Palestinian Territories" (e.g. do they include Ramallah, Gaza City, Hebron, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, etc.); and (2) how those areas came to be "Palestinian Territories"? TIA

Ultimately wars don't start when the leader of a formerly peaceful nation wakes up and decides to kill some people, they are an escalation of a violent and hostile relationship. If invading Iranian territory and killing its head of state doesn't make A+I the aggressors, probably aggressor/defender is the wrong way to look at this conflict.

For example, if Iran had nuked America six months ago, I think people would call them the aggressor even though America was imposing heavy sanctions i.e. blockades on them, had multiple times threatened/attempted to/historically actually achieved regime change, was attacking them via regional proxies (Israel) and had already bombed them.

Ultimately wars don't start when the leader of a formerly peaceful nation wakes up and decides to kill some people, they are an escalation of a violent and hostile relationship. If invading Iranian territory and killing its head of state doesn't make A+I the aggressors, probably aggressor/defender is the wrong way to look at this conflict.

Perhaps, but it's pretty clear that if anyone is the "aggressor," it's Iran.

“The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to one.“

So Hegseth gutted the unit that would have wound up with the wokest people in the military. This is why I voted for.

I don’t want civilians killed. But firing that group I 100% support.

It's "woke" to not want to kill children?

It's woke to complain whenever the U.S. fails to be absolutely perfect and not complain at all when Russia/Islamic Regimes deliberately murder civilians with specific intention.

I do not see Dase equally criticizing Russian, Iranian, and Palestinian attacks on civilian populations.

In short, isolated demands for rigor on political grounds is a classic woke manifestation.

Unfortunately I think there are units with even more woke people in them.

So Hegseth gutted the unit that would have wound up with the wokest people in the military. This is why I voted for.

I guess that's the fitting conclusion to the Culture War MAGA arc. Just like "nazi" became "everyone to the right of my AIDS-positive trans activist HR manager", "woke" now means "anyone with higher moral standards than Genghis Khan – like a small unit in a bloated imperial military that tries to reduce collateral damage by fucking checking whether a building marked 10 years ago as barracks is clearly something else now". I mean, a Tomahawk already costs like $2.5M, how much would this red tape add, given the third worldist level of American corruption? Certainly more than the cumulative utility or net worth of 170 brown children, and it's not like the parents could sue (seeing as they're IRGC, you've killed them earlier). Persians aren't quite brown, but that doesn't matter, American category of race has always been a social construct, after all.

Shoe, foot, who/whom, torturer and tortured, master and nigger, Jew and Amalek – that's all there is to American political discourse, when the disparity of power is sufficiently high. You lot were right about the leftists, and the leftists were… uh, all along correct about the right. I should've been more charitable.

This group probably does not double check targets to make sure they aren’t schools- if I had to guess, their job is to write forms that the people checking targets to make sure they aren’t schools fill out.

Just like "nazi" became "everyone to the right of my AIDS-positive trans activist HR manager", "woke" now means "anyone with higher moral standards than Genghis Khan

My feelings to both sides here are along the lines of "What did you think war meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays?". War is war, and there will be innocent casualties. Either the war is morally justifiable and those are regrettable consequences, or it's not --- frankly, leaning toward "not" personally here on the basis of what information has been shared with the public. Expecting an innocent-bloodless war, even just a precision bombing campaign, seems naive on both sides. Heck, Clinton managed to bomb a Chinese embassy.

I can see the reasons for establishing such a unit, and I think it sounds on paper like something easily justifiable. But if I had a nickel for every veteran account I've read along the lines of "We were under strict rules to not fire unless fired upon. We watched [enemy] truck in a heavy machine gun and ammo all morning, constantly calling our commanders for permission to dissuade them or to leave the area, and were ordered to stay put and hold fire. After they were all in place, they opened fire on us, and two servicemen were injured. We returned small arms fire and vectored in close air support, neutralizing the enemy." I'd have at least a few nickels. I wouldn't exclusively side with either the boots on the ground (plenty of examples of misbehavior in the past), or with the ivory-tower academics arguing ethics of war thousands of miles away with no skin in the game, but I see a reason to listen to both.

I assume normal military people do these checks. The group labeled “check” this are going to be the pure lefties that get in the way of doing anything.

Don’t waste a tomahawk blowing up a school (or any non-useful thing) is what competent people do. You don’t need a specific group outside the command chain.

like a small unit in a bloated imperial military that tries to reduce collateral damage by fucking checking whether a building marked 10 years ago as barracks is clearly something else now".

This seems to be a standard job for military recon units, doesn't it? Before you fire on a target, confirm where it is and what it is. Shouldn't that be evident? What's the point in creating a separate unit responsible for reducing collateral damage? And then naming it 'Civilian Protection Center of Excellence' to boot?

The rot starts from the head. The more orwelian a govt program or sub-unit is named the more I'm inclined to axe it whole. Same reason why the dept of defense should be officially renamed back to the dept of war.

More to the point. It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here.

Easy to understand - the current world historical habbenings are not only hopelessly grim but also hopelessly stupid.

Overall, too much downer for debate. Even most rational (and rational adjacent) folks do not like being reminded that their fate ultimately hangs on fat orange finger messing with buttons.

Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016? It looks as if the politically dominant culture of the United States changed overnight. Does everyone just like it too much to find the change worth commenting on?

This culture was always there, now it is fully in the open.

Remember GWOT, remember the sudden jump of official line from "We do not torture, we are good guys" to "Yes we torture, and we are rather good at it. America number one! YEE-HAW!"

Ideally, this is the sort of mistake someone gargles their SIG over, but the combination of diffusion of responsibility, fog of war, and the possibility of genuinely insurmountable mistake means it's probably going to just end up rhyming with other past errors.

It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here.

I'm in the pinch point of several business decisions and the FIRST FRC comp season, so for now even my normal targets-of-discussion (subscribestar TOS clench, federal courts behaving badly, gun law) just go into the bullet point file to be filled out later, and I'll admit that foreign policy has long been one of my weak spots. But there's also a lot of FUD going around, here, and while there's some cowardice in not committing too heavily to positions that could be proven wrong, there's something to be said for people not making vastly confident positions first and then just ignoring their mistakes after.

Could someone like Pete be imaginable as the Secretary of War – no, Defense – in 2023? 2019, even? 2016?

It's... uh, not a position that has had a long and unbroken history of Absolute Winners. The 2021-2024 option might have sounded more professional, at least when he showed up to work, but he didn't exactly cover himself with honor when it comes to not killing civilians and children with misaimed drone strikes. I guess he didn't get a high score?

The 2021-2024 option might have sounded more professional, at least when he showed up to work

Well yeah, this is about culture. I am not appalled by the civilian death toll, 170 is rather low for a major operation as far as these things go. Pete offends me aesthetically.

The 2021-2024 option might have sounded more professional, at least when he showed up to work

Well yeah, this is about culture. I am not appalled by the civilian death toll, 170 is rather low for a major operation as far as these things go. Pete offends me aesthetically.

The perfect two-line summary of the entirety of pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump discourse, isn't it?

Sure. But if he offends you aesthetically and not on the merits, then don't start in on a death toll.

I understand that there was demand for someone to put on a crisp suit and portray an image of careful and meticulous balance. My take that is that aesthetic gloss is, at best, neutral to the actual thing.

It is the merits, or rather the lack thereof. He is much more concerned with aesthetics than me, only his aesthetics is that of a manchild, an inept, swaggering butcher given big toys that go kaboom, who can't think through such contingencies because his balls are too big for sissy things like minimizing civilian deaths. He can't even react to the news adequately.

My issue is not the death toll but the low-IQ fetishization of lethality as such. The purpose of a military force is to achieve the strategic objectives, not kill more people (not even kill more hostiles). Carelessly killing civilian children is not advancing the primary objectives (to the extent that Trump's USA even has coherent objectives in this Special Military Operation after the Plan A failed); it hardens and legitimizes the regime. Sure, you can kill more and more, you've got bombs and air supremacy and shit, and perhaps in some very Israeli mindset this even makes sense because their fanatical resistance gives you an excuse to whittle down Iran's long-term demographic and economic perspectives rather than get their capitulation and maybe deal with revanchism some other way later. But in a normal human war it does not make sense; it's a straightforward, avoidable negative EV event which he made drastically more likely by gutting the relevant department, for AESTHETICS of LETHALITY and being BASED. I don't know how to make this more obvious. Hegseth is low human capital and so is much of the rest of Trump's cabinet.

And if a war with an actual power comes, he'll slaughter you just the same, with the same swagger. Russians have had these psycho tough boy commanders for centuries. It didn't make us better at war, it's third world shithole default. You've had some too, but almost all of your great generals and commanders were nothing like this.

Hegseth is low human capital and so is much of the rest of Trump's cabinet.

You just said your primary objection to him was aesthetics. Which is it?

I think you're just completely misreading what's happening. The US touch overseas is lightening, not tightening. Kidnapping heads of state is orders of magnitude more complex, difficult and lower casualty than a bombing campaign. The previous Iran bombing campaign, very targeted, very precise, little in the way of collateral. The current run is certainly higher volume and less precise, as any escalation must necessarily be. But that isn't the tale of a US government obsessed with "lethality", much the opposite. You've got one or two out of thousands upon thousands of missions and millions of bits of ordnance to complain about.

I think you're on to something here. Previous administrations either wouldn't execute operations or do them in a big, dumb way. Even the killing of Osama was delayed across multiple heads of state.

Trump and Hesgeth are taking the approach of actually using our more powerful tools instead of holding them in reserve for a peer conflict. It seems like overkill but you can't get too much more surgical than eviscerating individual speedboats full of drugs.

I'm of two minds about it. First, Russia and China probably already know about most of this so security through obscurity doesn't matter.

But it does feel like playing Poker with an open hand, giving the world a greater opportunity to catch up, prepare, and Monday morning quarterback.

The orwellian hypocrisy is tough to swallow too. Narco Terrorists and Special Excursions my ass.

Around 200 employees who worked on the issue, including at that office, have been reduced by about 90 percent, according to two current and former officials and a person familiar with the effort. The team that handles civilian casualties at Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, has dropped from 10 to 1.

This information improves my opinion of Hegseth.

It’s bad enough that I have to pay (taxes) for firing tomahawks at Iran; it’s insulting that I simultaneously have to pay for people to sit around and finger-wag that those tomahawks might do collateral damage. So I am very glad that I no longer have to pay for 90% of those people.

Previously, the US had a - not stellar, but decent - claim at being the country (one of very few) that would at least try to do the good thing, even if it sometimes went against their interests. Frankly, I think that's a good reputation to have! Both internationally, but also domestically when it comes to trust. And personally, I quite liked being able to tell some of my extremist leftist friends that they were far too over-critical about the US military. It's becoming much more difficult to say that every year, and I might stop saying it soon.

And beyond that, I don't think the people who go "isn't it good that the military is more responsible than before to who won the election" fully realize the extent that certain kinds of actions by the military, even if facially democratic, undermine the very real, quite impressive, and somewhat delicate set of agreements that undermine the uniquely stable US civil-military relationship. See here for the best treatment of this idea I've seen.

We also had a reputation of being a military that couldn’t in the end accomplish the mission.

The two may not be related but they very well may.

To be fair, a Tomahawk that is mistargeted is a few million we could have spent actually hitting the right target.

Have Americans lost the ability to envision a positive future for their own country? You lead the most powerful and one of the greatest nations ever to exist on this planet. You proudly proclaim your democratic traditions and the spirit of freedom - yet this? Reflexively choosing between the lesser of two evils, unable to craft a positive vision or imagine a way forward, opting to be maximally cynical and completely unconstructive. What the hell is wrong? Seriously what is wrong?

This is the consequence of the Great Awokening. Welcome to the current year.

Hmm. I think it started long before that. Bush winning instead of Gore, 9/11 and the overreaction to it, mass surveillance, Iraq, GFC and not punishing the banksters, then the awokening to keep the plebs divided.

Was this meant to be in reply to something else? I can't quite see how this fits the above post.

Not seeing the utility in having just enough bureaucratic red tape to ensure swift and lethal force delivery while actually saving a few lives (Iranian lives, a people with an actual civilization, which should have some extra utility), and then lowkey saying “I voted for this” when tragedy strikes. That in my book is being unable to have a positive vision.

I am not sure how you got from “I am glad that bureaucratic bloat has been reduced” to “Americans cannot envisage a positive future”.

You’re still paying for them, they’re just doing other, presumably even dumber, things.

I don't like it. People like Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump seem vile to me. And Trump never seemed vile to me until his second term, in fact I was one of those people who quite enjoyed how much he pissed off "the libs". And I'm still glad that the Trump movement stopped woke overreach. But I think that at this point the time has come to stop the Trump movement. It really seems to me to be a very seedy sort of movement full of twisted weirdoes, sadists, sociopaths, and almost comically corrupt people. And when I say this, I should probably mention that yes, I think the libs are corrupt too. But these Trump people are something else.

It's one thing to believe that Iran should be contained using violence or to want stronger border control. It's another to unabashedly revel in causing pain and to constantly indulge in vice signalling, as these people do.. They seem to be profoundly psychologically disturbed wannabe authoritarians. The "libs" are wrong about so many things, but they are right about these people's character. Unfortunately, as the libs tend to do, they cried wolf about so many things ("Putin has tapes of Trump getting peed on by a hooker!", blah blah blah...) that they fucked up their ability to message the things they actually were right about.

Anyway, after a lifetime of having never voted for either a Democrat or a Republican in a national election, I am seriously considering voting for the Democrats later this year and in 2028.

As for the war, it's kind of looking right now like it won't even liberate the anti-government Iranians. Every day that passes gives the Iranian government more time to track down and kill anyone whom they suspect of even having ever looked at a policeman funny. So what's the point? Nothing that I care about as a positive. Basically the result so far is to just, potentially, give the America-Israel partnership more breathing room to do whatever they want in the Middle East without pushback.

It's all performative though. Hating them is like hating a piñata. Much the same as cheering for them is. Their personas don't represent anything real.

For instance, Stephen Miller has been doing his aggressive anti-immigration schtick for over a decade. Through 2 administrations. Where is immigration in the US today? The same place it has been for the last decade.

Hegseth has been representing the tough guy nothing but business soldier in charge. Yet the US starts a war in the middle east at the behest of Israel that is of no discernable benefit to the US.

Trump, the guy who promised to cut down on immigration and not do any wars in the middle east has resided over all of this. And people still boo or cheer this on as if it where a WWE wrestling match.

It's just so overbearing. As if Trump bending the knee to the Heritage Foundation in his first term wasn't enough, he's been talking about how illegals can stay if they are working. ILLEGALS. Has this rhetoric changed the tune of the left at all regarding orange hitler? Not one bit.

And on the flipside, Obama killed plenty of innocent families. I don't think a department of million men could get anyone to care about dead middle easterners past a single news cycle regardless of who the president is. America really does not care.

What is anyone even cheering for or against? On the ground numbers show no relevant change in any relevant aspect. The American machine is chugging along as usual on its slow downward spiral. And getting anyone to care about that reality is like pulling teeth out of a donkey.

Literally my 3 favorite people. The guy who gets stuff down at deporting third world immigrants, the dude who suddenly got our military to win again, and the boss of it all.

I could not be happier with what those three are doing for my country.

What do you mean got our military to win again? We always had the power to do this. See Obama and Libya.

Miller is barely beating Obama's run rate at deporting immigrants. 500K a year instead of Obama's 400K. At this rate he'll be done in (checks notes) 20 years.

Whether it's his fault or he's just outmatched by the liberal barbed wire, he's certainly not "getting things done".

Saying no at the border doesn’t really count as deportation.

This has long been debunked. It counts turnaways at the border. Trump is deporting people who have been inside the country from the last administration. People don’t even show up to the border now

From what I heard, the school had previously been part of the military base until it was repurposed, and an AI apparently mistook the old target list for an up-to-date one.

If true, this certainly makes Anthropic seem a lot more justified in their unwillingness to extend carte blanche to the Pentagon....

the school had previously been part of the military base until it was repurposed, and an AI apparently mistook the old target list for an up-to-date one

I don't take the "AI mistook" argument very seriously (although given that they reportedly switched from Claude 4.5/4.6 to GPT 4.1… oh God). The DOW claims they scrutinize targets, there's human in the loop.

The major reason for my suspicion of intentionality was the clause «and the US has demonstrated immense competence in target selection». I actually think highly of the American military, always thought highly of them on priors, and they've been absolutely showboating all over Iranians these last 10 (11?) days. But now that I know Hegseth had gutted the office that's entrusted with avoiding such accidents, it doesn't matter if it originally was AI or human error. There's just not been enough attention to prevent this.

It's remarkable that there's so little discussion of contemporary historical events on here.

I think it's because there is so much uncertainty and fog of war, none of us want to go full Panican- "US hegemony over, global economic collapse imminent, US military humiliation" and then some ceasefire happens and be told "see it wasn't as bad as you thought." Or the inverse, people don't want to downplay it, say it's imminently over, but then it has a really bad fallout.

Like I alluded to in my previous response, there is essentially no reaction from the ground. Not from MAGA rank-and-file in day-to-day casual talk, and there is even some sympathy from diehard anti-Trump Democrats I know. Literally today I heard an extreme Trump-hater say something along the lines of "well Iran wants to destroy Israel for some reason, so they obviously can't have a nuke so I understand what Trump is doing to an extent."

The issue seems to have remarkably low cultural salience at the moment outside of X, but of course I think there's a reason for that. I remember Operation Iraqi Freedom, the feeling and interest among public in the opening weeks of the war was nothing like that at all in either direction today. There are Panicans on X and some informed anti-Panicans, but the average voter just doesn't seem to care very much at this point. With that said, what's your prediction? Does this blow over without the average voter taking much notice?

The average voter will care if gas prices are a dollar higher for longer than a couple weeks. Evangelicals are happy and river-to-the-sea lefties are sad, but Americans really don't care about foreign policy that much.

There are Panicans on X and some informed anti-Panicans, but the average voter just doesn't seem to care very much at this point. With that said, what's your prediction? Does this blow over without the average voter taking much notice?

TPTB found out that propagandizing ordinary plebes is unnecessary distraction, that the war machine can work regardless of plebe "support" or "approval".

We will see if they are right.

Does this blow over without the average voter taking much notice?

Unless the situation directly touches average voter's wallet. Then all bets are off.

Speaking of the school strike, I'll take this opportunity to post a contender for the Hall of Fame of cope tweets.

This guy thinks that a KH-55 (air-launched) cruise missile was fired by Iran, and then got jammed by the US in a way which just so happened to cause it to nosedive straight down into a school that was 100 feet away from an IRGC facility which completely unrelatedly was targeted by real US-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. His evidence? AI analysis of the grainy video of a high-subsonic missile puts the wing fins at 40-45% of the way down the fuselage, whereas a Tomahawk has wing fins 50% of the way down the fuselage.

7.4 million views and 34k likes by the way.

There is a paradoxical sentiment amongst a certain segment of Americans* which simultaneously holds that the US military is a force of warrior-saints who would never commit target civilians (whether by accident or deliberately), but also that a we're too worried about moral and legal niceties.

I supposed the charitable resolution of the paradox is that if the military is staffed by paragons then there's no need for oversight, but this is both observably ridiculous (we have a number of well-documented instances of US military covering up or soft-balling war crimes, as well as many instances of target selection that was either reckless or callous) and belied by the overt appetite for brutality.

*tbf this is not unique to Americans, but given that the US gets stuck in a lot more, it's more salient

7.4 million views and 34k likes by the way.

In a somewhat pitiful way, that makes me think better of Americans. They really really don't want to be the kind of people who murder children, and cling to any flimsy "proof" to the contrary.

Russians had similar denialism around Buk vs Boeing, around Bucha, and later in the war when we've destroyed a bunch of grotesquely innocent civilian facilities in Ukraine. Now there's more indifference.

The best moment in this cope story, imo:

As an Iranian who grew up in that country and knows this regime from the inside, I can tell you they are capable of this. The most important question here is the timing. Why did this happen at the very beginning of the war—just 45 minutes after Iran started launching missiles? Why wasn’t there a single similar incident in the following 10 days?

Diasporoids are funny, man.

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