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.
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So apparently the gloves are coming off. Trump has Truthed out, in clear language, that Iran has 48 hours to allow all traffic through Hormuz with no threats of action, or the US will start hitting power plants. Apparently what Trump meant when he said the USA could easily open the strait without any help.
Notably to this point Iranian government sources have only put civilian casualties at 200-400, essentially one big accident and change for a bombing operation this large. From here the intention is to strike civilian targets until Iran cries uncle.
Iran in turn is threatening to strike back at gulf power generation targets. With weapons they may or may not have at this point.
How it started:
How it’s going:
Hehe.
I suspect blowing up power plants is a war crime.
How is this going to win the hearts and minds of the Iranian people? The US is going to seem like a bigger enemy than the clerics now.
The USA has shown a marked unconcern for legal niceties throughout, that is not going to change any opinions or make the top 5 list at the end of the war.
Power plants are 50/50 anyway, it should be proportional and Iran will provide proportionality afterwards if it hasn't by now.
How would you characterize the concern for legal niceties exhibited by everyone else in modern history then? Iran, for instance is attacking other nations seemingly at random and targeting infrastructure and hotels and other civilian targets.
The U.S. has shown the most concern for legal niceties out of any major combatant since those legal niceties existed.
That's not to say that the U.S. is particularly great on this front, just to say that nobody else really seems to even bother.
I don't see where this is relevant to the comment I made or the comment I'm replying to.
I think it's notable, as I've stated upwards in this comment chain, that Iran has only reported a total of 200-400 civilian casualties, showing that the USA has shown a great deal of concern for civilian casualties during this war, and an extraordinary ability to prevent them. For all the talk about the girls' school, it's basically been that and some spare change.
But the DoW leadership has hammered repeatedly on the message that the focus of the military is on "lethality, not legality." They have no concern for legal technicalities.
I'm pointing out that "marked unconcern for legal niceties" isn't really accurate, something like "as usual legal niceties become a bit fuzzier during war time" or "the U.S. usually does a better job than most at maintaining legal niceties, however..." would be more accurate.
Your word choice implies that the U.S.'s approach is worthy of criticism and perhaps is worse than others.
If you feel that way, I think it should be explicit.
This is superficially a small matter of language but given the amount of criticism for certain actions taken by Israel and the U.S. and lack of criticism and even forgiveness for actions taken by the other side that are ten times worse....I think the loaded language needs to be pointed out.
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:
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.
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