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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Yes, by ignoring my central point of "all of it's a disaster, you better have an objective you are accomplishing by doing so, and that better be worth the deaths", you can twist the tragedy of any intentional death into equivalence with genocide.

I also reject the "morally neutral" framework. The circumstances of what a country's objective is matters more than anything. It's the exact reason I support US and allied interests and do not support the objectives of hostile nations. It's not merely that they're opposed to me (though that is my personal stake in foreign policy, as I admitted earlier); it's that they're nations that do bad things and make people suffer. I can't think of a modern adversary that we've had where the opposing nation is hunky dory, and we're just going to war because we failed to resolve things in any other way (in fact, that is the great advantage of the post-World War II order we live in). It's not like we're bombing Canada over border disputes.

Again, object to the feasibility, justification, or alignment (if you dislike the US) of the use of force all you want. I'm just saying that if you're going to object to even a single civilian casualty in cases where the regimes are both actively operating against the US and are pretty nasty in and of themselves, you're not going to sway me.

Because if it's all a disaster and the only barometer to judge actions is our own self interest then we aren't twisting anything when we chalk up our collateral damage at the end of the day. It was all in the service of the objective we believed was worth the deaths. I'm sure the 1940's Germans wrt jews were as heartbroken as you are when you suggested Europe just turn away millions of refugees.

If the entire thing you wrote earlier boils down to your personal alignment with US foreign policy and you believe America to be morally superior then I'm not sure what lesson you were trying to parlay.

For instance, if you can't achieve your objectives without murdering millions of civilians or destabilizing entire nations, by what token are you morally better?

You can ignore my central point and restate your argument all you want, but it's not very convincing.