site banner

Transnational Thursday for March 19, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm pointing out that "marked unconcern for legal niceties" isn't really accurate,

How is it inaccurate to say that the US is unconcerned with legal niceties when the Secretary of War has made a career out of criticizing prior war efforts for their adherence to legal niceties? When the SoW has repeatedly made public statements that they are focused on "maximum lethality, not tepid legality?" When the stated intention has been from the beginning to open up rules of engagement based on legal niceties?

Look bro, you seem to want to be the woke police about people not being rah rah enough for the war, in future consider all my comments about the American war effort to contain the Politically Correct Disclaimer:

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN IS AN EVIL REGIME THAT DOES EVIL THINGS, AND WE SHOULD NOT FORGET HOW EVIL THEY ARE

Then maybe you won't feel the need to play whataboutism in a discussion of the United States' openly avowed policies. Iran is evil, sure, that doesn't prevent one from examining policy questions in light of the statements made by the United States' Government.

We should be precise in our statements, Iran is winning the propaganda war, you can find a large number of Americans and Europeans saying and believing things like "Iran is about as or more honest in reporting during this conflict" "Iran is about as or more following the rules of war/attacking civilians" "Israel is not checked will attack Europe and the rest of the world" (front page on reddit yesterday!).

This was has created situation where you have a truly unprecedented publishing of military and diplomatic information with near zero credible publishing of military and diplomatic interpretation.

Add in the usual TDS and you have a boiling pot of misinformation that we should be careful to avoid contributing to.

Some people do need to be reminded that Iran's government is evil.

I don't have any problem with criticism of the conflict.