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Notes -
We have established two important things that we agree on:
Civilian casualties bad, but will happen in war.
We need a good reason to go to war, partly because civilian casualties bad.
The two points of contention were:
Why do the Iranians and Syrians deserve civilian casualties.
What will be the result of Europe turning the refugees away.
Neither of these were answered.
What I'm looking for is a distinction between the good and the bad. Why, for instance, was Oct. 7 bad? Or 9/11? If genocide is a militarily winning strategy, was the holocaust bad?
You might want to stop me here and mention that these questions don't need to have moral answers. Things happen. The causal chain of events that drives us towards our next disaster is too vast and complex for such simple terms. And I'm perfectly willing to recognize the salience of that position. But until that is done consistently, is there any reason for me to do so? Because the mainstream line has been that all of the above were bad, Iran also bad and that America is morally good. It is especially when America is doing morally bad that geopolitical realism is trudged out, claiming that, in reality, America needs to do bad to ultimately do good!
But even then. If we set morals aside, this Iran incursion can hardly be considered a positive move on the geopolitical side of things. If worst come to wear and there is a big refugee crisis, everyone knows Europe wont say no. They will let them in. Nations that are in a very precarious position demographically. Economies facing all manner of crises. This is practically every single modern ally the US has. How can this be justified?
I touched on it a bit for Iran, but in short:
Points 1, 3, and 5 also applied to Syria, and back to geopolitics I like for there to be less nations that are economically and militarily aligned and supported by Russia and China. I am explicitly for American dominance on the world stage because that means I am more likely to keep enjoying the benefits of a giant and very defensible united land mass that is far from war in all its forms.
Presupposes a tide of refugees which I am not inclined to think will happen (I touched on this in my first comment). I'd also mention that even if it did happen, overall Iranians are a good bit more westernized, less Wahhabist (that's a Sunni thing!), less tribal, and less teen-rapey than the current stock in Europe (to oversimplify, Syrian in the mainland, Pakistani in the UK), so a few refugees from there are more likely to integrate unless they do the whole "we'll just import young and pissed off men" thing again. Even then, I doubt they're nearly as bad as what we see now.
Persians are not Arabs, and will proudly tell you so, and that's for the better.
To be clear you only oppose this on the grounds that this is harmful to US interest in the region, which you support based on personal prosperity, not that these attacks were unjustified or unrelated to US provocation that might have caused them.
To that extent I'm having a hard time aligning myself with your position from a geopolitical point of view. Iran, and tell me if our history does not match up here, wanted the same thing you want for yourself. Peace and prosperity. To that end they wanted control over their natural resources. Resources that the US and UK were making use of. This leads to a very clear incursion into Iran by these nations. Which ties into reason 3, 4 and 5. What else is a nation to do when foreign entities so clearly disrupt their process of self determination?
I get it, 'aw shucks, sucks to suck, now give us the oil' but given the cost, past failures and losses, and how far the US has moved forward, and how quickly and drastically technology has bettered our standard of living, can any of this be rationally justified anymore? It feels like a giant sunk cost fallacy. Where a list of old grievances gets trudged out to justify an evergoing tit for tat that is of no tangible benefit to American or Iran.
I don't think it will happen either. Which is why I said it would be a worst case scenario. But even then, we are comparing potential cost and benefit. The cost being overloading Europe with refugees. And there is no contingency or plan. Americas allies in Europe will be weighted down even more. Further carrying the indirect cost of American incursions in the middle east. I ask, how can this be rationally justified? I get that personal prosperity is important, but at some point the calculus stops adding up. I have a genuinely hard time believing that you believe that America is having its interest served by risking their already weak allies and their precarious position for whatever it is you think is being gained by this campaign into Iran.
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Are you comparing the holocaust to "deaths caused by military bombing/heavy weapons"?
I'm comparing things generally considered to be bad by Americans with the morally neutral geopolitical framework supplied by LazyLongposter. Which I think he is using to selectively justify Americans doing things we all known are morally bad.
As he stated, the US could have won the war in Vietnam had they just intentionally bombed the civilians harder. But because doing such things is too awful in the eyes of the public, the US stopped. Using that morally neutral standard, what is the problem with the holocaust? Killing your enemy is a winning strategy. Is it better to starve to death in camp than it is to be burned alive in a firestorm that was intentionally created by dropping incendiary bombs on wooden residential areas?
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