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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17742 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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The Trump admin is consistently giving the American people the runaround as for why the war started, what they hope to achieve, and what the end conditions are.

I see people making this argument everywhere and I’m baffled. The have made it very clear why the war started and what our war goals are. They’ve been holding press conferences every day where they explain it! Proper press conferences, where they actually take questions! It’s like seeing someone argue that we shouldn’t land on the moon because it’s too purple. It’s…it’s obviously not! The Trump admin has not been shy about this! I mean just two days ago Pete had this to say:

”On day ten of Operation Epic Fury, we are winning with an overwhelming and unrelenting focus on our objectives, which are the same as the day I gave my first briefing here on Operation Epic Fury. They're straightforward and we are executing them with ruthless precision.

One: destroy their missile stockpiles, their missile launchers and their defense industrial base; missiles and their ability to make them. Two: destroy their Navy. And three: permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever. It's a laser focused, maximum authority mission delivered with overwhelming and unrelenting precision, no hesitation, no half measures.”

I feel like I’m going crazy. People really do love in different worlds.

It's a list written to sound specific but it's incredibly open ended. "Permanently denying Iran nuclear weapons" sounds like it must entail either regime change or a permabombing campaign that goes on forever. If they do a lot of damage to Iran's military structures but entrench its regime and cement its determination to get nuclear weapons, what's permanent about that?

The Trump admin is consistently giving the American people the runaround as for why the war started, what they hope to achieve, and what the end conditions are.

Are they? my impression has been that the admin has been clear from the beginning about what their intent is and that it has been been CNN MSNBC the BBC et al who have been trying to muddy the waters by claiming that this is all "coming out of nowhere" rather than Trump and Rubio following through on an ultimatum

Yes, but also Trump has been saying a lot of random stuff, which is just Trump being Trump, and "CNN MSNBC the BBS et al" have been pretending there's no way to sort that out.

People say it for the simple reason that the stated rationale keeps changing, not just from day to day but even within the same day.

Here's some of the examples:

Iran nuclear and navy capabilities

Regime change and helping protestors

Not a regime change

Oh wait no it is a regime change.

Following up Israel who was gonna do the strikes so we had to help them

Actually not the above despite multiple top Republicans saying it, imminent attack from Iran instead.

Some assassination plot against Trump

Uh actually we've always been at war with Iran

"UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"

Yeah if you isolate anything you can get a reason, but in the greater context they just keep throwing out claims even if they contradict.

It's not like it's just random people confused here, even right wing aligned media like Joe Rogan can't figure out what the actual reasoning is supposed to be. Heck the admin can't even decide if they should call it a war or not.

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