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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1054 thread views

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.

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I'm sorry - based off of your response I think you may have misread my comment, or at least you are not responding to what I actually said.

Given the specifics of the way you jumped in here it could be as part of some didactic exercise, please clarify if so.

Thank you!

Could you please clarify what your list actually meant then? When you said "I am unaware of any U.S. military bases or U.S. troops in several of the attacked countries" you then followed up with "To list, at least: Israel,". What, exactly, were you listing? I interpreted your post as listing countries that were attacked which lacked US military bases or US Troops, because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion. I'm not aware of any nations that Iran has attacked which didn't contribute to the attacks on them, with the exception of Lebanon (which is a difficult situation anyway, because to the best of my knowledge Iran has been attacking Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory).

because simply listing all countries that had been attacked and implying that some of them lacked US Military bases or Troops would be ambiguous and useless in a good faith discussion.

I think this implies you understood what I meant and decided not to interpret it correctly?

From my perspective, the two interpretations were you that you were wrong and/or didn't know the details of the situation, or that you were creating unnecessary ambiguity to obscure the actual argument you were making - what's the point of listing countries which were attacked and asking me to guess which of them your criteria actually apply to? I believed that the first interpretation was the more charitable.

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