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I mean support is still reasonably broad. I saw stats suggesting somewhere in the range of 80-85 percent of Republicans are down.
Most of the internet continues to have an anti-Trump/Republican bias that doesn't change. So you'd expect to have trouble with pro-war discourse.
Witch havens like here are stuffed with people with deeply unconventionally views (die hard anti-intervention folks and anti-jew posters for one) and are not representative of the general Republican field.
I'm personally for the war and found the experience supporting it here to be not very rewarding, I imagine plenty of others have similar thoughts.
I for one would be quite interested in why you support the war. The information environment is bad right now, so I value getting perspectives which disagree from my own that I am quite confident aren't from a bot.
There are several justifications for this war that strike me as plausible, but I have no idea which ones (if any) are load-bearing among supporters e.g.
Are any of these close?
Yes some combination of those, to expand on a few reasons to go about this (not that I believe in all of them):
-The expression of the power of the United States has been inappropriately curtailed for too long, the most straightforward example of this is the Russian invasion of Ukraine which likely only happened because of the Biden administrations weakness. Showing off reaffirms the U.S.'s superpower status and likely prevents all kinds of bad outcomes. China's fans like to make claims but realistically every military in the world is shitting their pants looking at this and Venezuela. Later losing for political reasons will not change this. The whole world benefits from U.S. lead global stability and this affirms our capacity.
-Israel can probably be considered something of an albatross but it is a key ally, and was one when we needed it. We shouldn't abandon them. Additionally coordinating with Israel and the other countries in the area is more or less bringing everyone in the region into the U.S.'s sphere of influence. Unclear if this will be durable once Iran and proxies are gone, but it is a thing, and the world is probably better off if we transform the religious regimes into klepto-authoritarian ones. This also is a boon against China, as Venezuela was.
-Oil (long term stability, not short term obviously).
-Morals. The death of the protestors and general oppression is not good. Anyone who thinks they would stop the Nazis but isn't stopping Iran needs to be asking themselves hard questions. And - while it is deeply tied to his ego (b/c ignoring threats), people who know Trump will seriously and probably correctly point out that killing the protestors made him mad and is a big part of what made him pull the trigger. Lots of people treat Trump like a character and not an actual person, but he has been consistent in this, and he is of a generation that that was deeply impacted by the hostage crisis.
-We've been (essentially) at war with Iran for decades, to some extent increasingly. Asymmetric options like terrorism, cyberattacks, drones are only going to be increasing in danger. The country has threatened to kill our president. People with intelligence backgrounds I know have frequently emphasized Iran as one of the biggest threats, and people who played in the sandbox have a lot of problems with them. You don't let someone keep punching you indefinitely, especially if they are probing for the right spot for David to kill Goliath.
-Nukes. Absolutely fucking not. Regardless of how close they were in reality their response to being attacked makes it pretty clear that Iran actually getting nuclear weapons would represent an existential threat to global stability. People emphasize closeness but that isn't the right question, when can we actually stop them is the right question, how close is just political justification.
-Speaking of when is the right time, it's pretty likely now. The regime is going through a lot of political and economic turmoil and waiting might have panned out, but if they survive the clearly increasing missile and drone capacity pretty readily substitutes for Nukes in a MAD scenario (at least for the global economy). If our intervention ends out being bad, then that's evidence waiting while they get stronger would have been even worse.
Importantly how real the threat of the last two is is not going to be something people will actually be able to know unless a credible leak happens, and likely only in the affirmative.
Ultimately this is pretty likely to be a "bad idea" in the sense it is going to be a shit show, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary to do the hard thing.
... man, why can't the executive just say that. If this is a considered decision to embroil ourselves in a shitshow because the alternative is worse, that's understandable. What worries me is when the Trump admin doesn't show signs of awareness that it's going to be a shitshow.
Or maybe Trump posted something coherently explaining the reasoning on Truth Social and I just missed it.
The usual reasons.
"We are doing this now because someone has to do it eventually and I'm left holding the bag and not a coward." Not inspiring.
"Personally, I hate watching civilians die." Not his vibe - and a huge leverage point with the school bombing.
"Complicated rambling about missile and drone production rates vs. interceptor costs" ...not going to work.
A different president might be able to convey the meaning without the specifics but Trump is not that guy, and critically the media and social environment is so relentlessly criticizing that he isn't incentivized in any way to try.
The vast majority of the military and the executive are not stupid, you see plenty of people saying "wow why did they do this when they don't have a plan for Hormuz" of course they have a plan. It's not a good one because there aren't any good plans, and doing nothing was a plan with risks of its own. The public does not tolerate those kinds of discussions though.
I find this pretty inspiring, to be honest.
I think society would be better served with more people having a positive reaction to "we do this because it is hard and necessary, so that people in the future do not suffer."
We do not live in that society.
The problem with that is it's too exploitable -- it can be used for things which are hard but NOT necessary, done only because the entity doing it has other less-noble motives for it.
Sure, don't think that's a universal principle but it's true for some things.
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