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Does anyone have a place where people in favor of this war are discussing it? I’m struggling to find anybody who genuinely thinks it’s a good idea.
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.
In the nicest possible way, a lot of these justifications seem deeply hypocritical and self-serving.
I am glad to be told this by my benevolent overlord.
America, unlike Iran, famously never uses its dominance of key global markets to get its way /s
You have killed their president! And let us not forget that America created the Taliban, supports Kurdish rebels, and almost certainly aids and abets Mossad campaigns of sabotage and assassination in Iran. There is no possible way that America can present itself as a principled objector to asymmetric warfare.
It's weird how unstable American global stability feels. More to the point, this is precisely the kind of behaviour that spurs people to make nukes. It's now absolutely undeniable that any country who doesn't wish their cities razed and their leaders black-bagged when America feels like it, needs nukes that aren't controlled by America. Even the UK Labour party now supports getting a new nuclear deterrent that's not American-controlled. These people were unilateral abolitionists 5 years ago! America eying European and Canadian territory and licking their lips doesn't help even slightly.
'If this goes badly, that makes it even more important to do it!' That's a Kafka trap.
The moral argument I give you, but taking that seriously seems to demand that:
These are talking points not fully fleshed out arguments, but I find the quality of discussion on this latest conflict to be far below what I usually see here.
Example: "Rubio said Israel dragged us into this war." No. Just no.
And as to this specific point, I should not need to write a full length essay in order for you to be able to connect the dots here. It's not a Kafka trap, it's an army sitting outside a castle building siege weapons shouting "when these are done are we'll kill you all with these weapons." You attack before they are done, and "wow that was fucking close."
I understand that a lot of people are using this conflict to funnel anti-Trump, American, and Jew feelings, but a lot of people are actively cheering for America to lose and to support Iran, a country that is recently accused of killing tens of thousands of its own population and actively, joyfully supports global terrorism.
Likewise the U.S. isn't an amazing hegemon, but people cheering for China or Russia to take over? Jesus Christ.
Thing is, you are fundamentally a patriotic American at your core and you know in your heart that yours is the best country even if it's not perfect. As you should! Moderate patriotism is a virtue. But it means you cannot genuinely empathise with people like me who are looking at the behaviour of America and Americans right now and getting really creeped out.
My history of posts on this site is available for you to make up your own mind, but 10 years ago I would have classed myself as definitely pro-American. The Americans weren't always perfect, there was Iraq, they had the usual imperial tendency to have difficulty distinguishing their personal interests from the interests of the world, but they did their best and there were much worse people out there.
I got rather more dubious about America's social and economic dominance once wokeness and especially BLM came in: race relations in the UK were never perfect but I didn't like watching them become a carbon-copy of America's, right up to and including the 'hands up, don't shoot' slogan when police in the UK don't have guns. Trump and the American Right were fighting hard though, and things did indeed turn the corner, and I was very pleased to see it. Again, please read my posting history.
I went off Israel in a big way after Oct 7 when the biggest contingent of pro-Israelis on this site started just outright saying, 'look, it's time to exterminate the Palestinians now'. I don't want to huff and puff on the internet, and I don't like the Palestinians or Hamas either, but I was genuinely shocked at the number of people who seemed to be A-OK with campaigns of racial extermination as long as it was their guys doing the exterminating.
Likewise, a few months ago, when Trump suddenly decided that he wanted Greenland, the sovereign territory of an ally and perhaps the least woke country in Western Europe, I was horrified to see a big contingent of Americans on this site with massive grins on their faces saying, "Yeah! Fuck those smug Europeans! Sorry boys, if you didn't want us to stomp on your balls you should have grown some bigger ones!" Even from posters I respect, often the response was essentially, "Look, you've been weak and disrespectful, and if my party wants to stomp on your balls then you basically deserve it."
Ultimately your post seems to me to be saying that America deserves to subjugate the world forever, and if anyone decides they don't like it or they'd at least like to try being stamped on by a different boot, then that makes them an enemy and a threat to oh-so-benevolent American hegemony which needs to be dealt with. "The whole world benefits from U.S. lead global stability and this affirms our capacity," you say happily. Have you asked the world? In general, I think your position contains a serious Kafka trap where any serious attempt to defy American authority or defend against American hostility (like preparing nuclear weapons that could actually defend against an American attack, or seeking good relations with other powerful nations, or engaging in proxy economic or military activity, the last of which I do not endorse) is automatic proof of guilt indicating the need to subjugate or raze. Strong 'if you didn't resist, I wouldn't have to hurt you' vibes.
I feel confident saying that America could and would black-bag my democratically-elected
pratPrime Minister if they felt like it and the response from the aforementioned contingent would be the same as it was to Gaza, Denmark and Iran. They, and the US government, seem to feel that the problem with Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't that they killed vast numbers of innocent people and turned whole nations into warlord-infested torture deserts for nothing, but that America was mildly inconvenienced while doing so.TLDR: Apologies for being a little heated. I think our positions and priors are too different for us to viscerally appreciate each others' positions, but
please consider what it might say about America's recent behaviour if it causes sensible people feel even an ounce of warmth towards Iran (whose government is as awful as you say). Likewise, that the People's Republic of China is looking sensible and level-headed. I hope that this is America's 'wolf warrior' moment and the bloodlust will recede and America will realise that other people's opinions matter at least a little bit and retrench, but I'm not confident.
But see this attitude is part of the problem. Trump's interest in Greenland is not irrational or sudden. It's strictly transactional. It could be arranged easily. There is no special reason why Denmark has to have it, it doesn't form a core part of the Danish identity or state. It's some land they technically own. And instead of being willing to deal at all or even producing good reasons why the deal should not be done, everyone says, "it's our sovereign territory!" Well, yeah, can we do a deal about it? "It's ours! Not yours! You can't have it!"
There has been a total refusal to understand America's motivations as anything except some kind of ur-bully instinct. Now in the spirit of good will and good discussion, sure, I can admit that Trump's tone becomes hostile and threatening. But this is only because Denmark and Europe refuse to negotiate in the first place. Refuse to even consider it. What threat does it pose to Denmark to make a deal? It's their "sovereign territory"? That's not a good reason actually, that's declaring a priori some kind of status quo as an inviolable metaphysical truth. It doesn't actually violate the dignity of the Danish people to propose swapping some land. It's a kind of TDS, of a kind with when Trump warned the Germans of their dependence on Russian gas and they laughed at him.
Europe wants to act as though America is totally irrational but it doesn't seem as though Europe is rational either. This is why, when you say, "please consider what it might say about America's recent behavior," nobody is interested. People support a theocratic regime over Trump because they think Trump is mean? They want Iran to win and cripple the global energy market so Trump suffers a loss? That's not rational. It's not the product of a rational mind. Irrational people are not going to prod us to introspect, except maybe to consider if we need to change our behavior to avoid their erratic behavior.
What was Trump's offer? Was there ever an offer on the table?
Sounds to me like making irrational demands can just be "Art of the Deal"-ing you!
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