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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26628 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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The Iran War is beginning to alarm even the neocons

Robert Kagan has a new article in the Atlantic blasting Trump for the Iran War. This is somewhat significant. Kagan is an arch-neocon who supported every previous war in the Middle East. He was a major proponent of the Iraq War, acting as the media arm of the Israel Lobby. The neocons of the 00s were the mostly-Jewish “decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq”, a pointless war that cost 3 trillion dollars, 35,000 American casualties including 4,500 dead, 200,000 direct civilian deaths by violence, and 1,000,000 excess civilian deaths in total, while indirectly leading ISIS to form among the disenfranchised and dispossessed former Ba’athist commanders (what did you think regime change consisted of?), a lapse in judgment which would cause the refugee crisis in Europe (with all the consequent rape and mayhem), the decimation of Iraqi and Syrian Christian communities, and myriad other human tragedies. It is important, I think, to continually remember how retarded that was; it is so recent, yet never sufficiently referenced in its full scope. (“Another Iraq”, yeah, but do you remember precisely how dumb that was?). Kagan’s criticism of the Iran War is interesting also because it retroactively informs us about the thinking behind the necon’s push for Iraq, given his prominence in that elite circle.

No state in the Middle East (including Iraq in 2003 and Iran today) ever posed a direct threat to the security of the American homeland. Iran has no missiles that can reach the United States and, according to American intelligence, would not until 2035. Access to Middle Eastern oil and gas has never been essential to the security of the American homeland. Today the United States is less dependent on Middle Eastern energy than in the past, which Trump has pointed out numerous times since the Strait of Hormuz was closed.

The United States has long sought to prevent Iraq or Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but not because these countries would pose a direct threat to the United States. The American nuclear arsenal would have been more than adequate to deter a first strike by either of them, as it has been for decades against far more powerful adversaries. What American administrations have feared is that an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would be more difficult to contain in its region, because neither the United States nor Israel would be able to launch the kind of attack now under way. The Middle East’s security, not America’s, would be imperiled. As for Israel, the United States committed to its defense out of a sense of moral responsibility after the Holocaust. This never had anything to do with American national-security interests. In fact, American officials from the beginning regarded support for Israel as contrary to U.S. interests. George C. Marshall opposed recognition in 1948, and Dean Acheson said that by recognizing Israel, the United States had succeeded Britain as “the most disliked power in the Middle East.” During the Cold War, even supporters of Israel acknowledged that as a simple matter of “power politics,” the United States had “every reason for wishing that Israel had never come into existence.” But as Harry Truman put it, the decision to support the state of Israel was made “not in the light of oil, but in the light of justice.”

Even the threat of terrorism from the region was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it. Had the United States not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s, Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking an indifferent nation 5,000 miles and two oceans away. Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of “who we are” but because of where we are. In Iran’s case, the United States was deeply involved in its politics from the 1950s until the 1979 revolution, including as the main supporter of the brutal regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The surest way of avoiding Islamist terrorist attacks would have been to get out.

America’s interests in the Middle East have always been indirect and secondary to larger global aims and strategies. During World War II, the United States led a coalition of nations that depended on the greater Middle East for oil and strategic position. During the Cold War, the United States assumed responsibility not only for the defense of the Jewish state but for the defense and economic well-being of European and Asian allies who depended on Middle Eastern oil. After the Cold War, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the George H. W. Bush administration believed that failing to reverse that aggression would set an ominous precedent in the aborning “new world order.”

That sense of global responsibility is precisely what the Trump administration came to office to repudiate and undo. The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy, which has dramatically shifted the focus of American policy from world order to homeland security and hemispheric hegemony, appropriately downgraded the Middle East in the hierarchy of American concerns. A United States concerned only with defense of its homeland and the Western Hemisphere would see nothing in the region worth fighting for. In the heyday of “America First” foreign policy during the 1920s and ’30s, when Americans did not regard even Europe and Asia as vital interests, the idea that they had any security interests in the greater Middle East would have struck them as hallucinatory.

One would be hard-pressed to find any nation in the world that has been reassured by the Israeli and American war against Iran, other than Israel itself. According to The Wall Street Journal, Gulf state leaders are “privately furious” with the U.S. for “triggering a war that put them in the crosshairs.” Despite its impressive power, the United States was unable to protect these countries from Iran’s attacks; now they have to hope that Trump will not leave them to face a weakened yet intact and angry Iranian regime but will instead double down on America’s long-term military commitment to the region, including by putting ground troops in Iran. Israelis should also be asking how far they can count on the Americans’ dedication to this fight. A United States capable of abandoning long-standing allies in Europe and East Asia will be capable of abandoning Israel too. Can Israel sustain its new dominance in the region without a long and deep American commitment?

The unintended effect of the war, in fact, may be driving regional players to seek other great-power protectors in addition to the United States. Trump himself has invited the Chinese to help open the strait, and the Chinese are actively courting the Arab and Gulf states. The Gulf states are not averse to dealing with Beijing and Moscow. Neither is Israel. It sold management of a container terminal in the port of Haifa to a Chinese company, despite objections from the U.S. Navy, which uses the port. Israel, practically alone among American allies, refused to take part in sanctions against Russia when it invaded Ukraine in 2022. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ran for reelection in 2019, some of his campaign posters showed him shaking hands with Putin under the tagline a different league. No one should blame Israelis for this. They are an independent nation and can be expected to do what they feel they need to do to survive. Americans may have a sentimental or religious attachment to Israel, but Israelis cannot afford to be sentimental in return.

That is especially true given this administration’s cavalier attitude toward international responsibilities. The Iran war is global intervention “America First”–style: no public debate, no vote in Congress, no cooperation or, in many cases, even consultation with allies other than Israel, and, apparently, no concern for potential consequences to the region and the world. “They say if you break it, you own it. I don’t buy that,” Senator Lindsey Graham, arguably Trump’s most influential adviser on the war, said.

For Europeans, the problem is worse than American disregard and irresponsibility. They now face an unremittingly hostile United States—one that no longer treats its allies as allies or differentiates between allies and potential adversaries. The aggressive tariffs Washington imposed last year hit America’s erstwhile friends at least as hard as they hit Russia and China, and in some cases harder. Europeans must now wonder whether Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran makes it more or less likely that he will take similarly bold action on Greenland. The risks and costs of taking that undefended Danish territory, after all, would be far less than the risks and costs of waging the present war. Not some EU liberal but Trump’s conservative friend, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently warned that American actions have produced a “crisis in international law and multilateral organizations” and “the collapse of a shared world order.”

[…] Friends and allies will be ever less willing to cooperate with the United States. This time, Spain refused American use of air and naval bases in its territory. Next time, that could be Germany, Italy, or even Japan. Nations around the world will come to rely not on American commitments and permanent alliances but on ad hoc coalitions to address crises. No one will cooperate with the United States by choice, only by coercion. Without allies, the United States will have to depend on clients that it controls, such as Venezuela, or weaker powers that it can bully.

Funnily enough, one of Kagan’s last predictions just came true: Italy joined Spain in closing down its airspace this morning.

The neocons that I've been reading or occasionally checking have had mixed opinions from the start. See The Bulwark, The Dispatch, and most importantly, The National Interest. Jewish right publications like Tablet have been supportive, but see for example this podcast about the nuanced ways the Israelites might think about this.

Overall I get the impression that the pro-Israel crowd would have preferred for Trump to intervene earlier, and, yes, would probably like him to stay in longer now that it has started. But it isn't an across-the-board thing. It never was.

I even wonder if it wasn't Israel who tried to get the jump on the US to ensure that Israel had some control over the course of the fighting, and not the other way around per Rubio. I have doubts that Israel was truly the trigger, or the only trigger for the US intervention. News has been trickling out about possible Gulf state support.

Agreed, prior to this war I thought that Trump was at least better than Bush Junior but he's dived a whole league beneath Bush with this. At least Iraq wasn't strong enough to be a big pain like Iran.

This is what happens when you can't think soundly in strategic terms. The value of Greenland is microscopic compared to the value of Europe. 2 nuclear powers, ASML chip equipment, machine tools, 600 million people, precision optics, a fairly advanced defence industrial base and about 2 million troops. Europe could be a decisive factor in a world war with China, they provide the numerical weight to somewhat counterbalance China. There was coalition-building where Britain and France were going to help send fleets to Asia, that was part of the strategy.

Greenland is a frozen wasteland. The only vaguely valuable thing there is basing and radar that the US already has! Trump wanted to map-paint there, antagonized much more valuable countries over it. Same with tariffs. Tariff your enemies and not your allies.

The Iran war was predictably a terrible idea. The US seems to be getting kicked out of Iraq, while Iran has secured the straits of Hormuz de facto, possibly soon formally. Trump is reduced to telling other countries to go in and secure the oil themselves, since Iran has been 'decimated'. If Iran is so beaten then why not just go in with the US Navy and secure the oil, secure a big W for America? It's obnoxious to falsely declare victory and then usher allies into the death zone to do some futile bleeding, demand their assistance in a war that worsens their interests, a war they lack the power to win.

It's worse than Suez. Britain and France and Israel were crushing Egypt militarily, they landed troops and took Port Said in a week. There was no doubt they had the power to prevail on a purely military level. British troops weren't 'working from home' sitting in hotels because their bases were getting bombed out. The US is not just losing strategically but hasn't made any traction at all with regard to the strait. There has been no traction with regard to regime change either. Maybe that will change in future but it's looking really bad.

W is literally one of the rare presidents from the last 100 years who really doesn't have any defenders on either side of the aisle. He clearly doesn't have a home in the current GOP, and nobody on the left is ever going to bat to defend his presidency. And honestly, after that infamous freudian slip in 2022, it's safe to say that W himself shares that sentiment. And while Presidents like Grant, Truman, Carter, and even HW have seen historical reassessments boost the ranking of their presidencies to various degrees, that's never happened for W. Those guys were hurt by making unpopular decisions at the time that were somewhat justifiable in the long run, but the Iraq war looks like a bigger and bigger mistake with each year that passes. And Trump seems to be headed down a worse trajectory, there's at least that W was probably just a passenger in his own presidency while Cheney and Rumsfeld were behind the wheel.

I don't know if this qualifies as "a defense" but I have a lot of sympathy for W. My impression of him is that he was a fundamentally decent human being that was ultimately chewed up and spit out by world events and elements within his own party.

That said, I also have a fair bit of sympathy and respect for Cheney despite thinking he was wrong about everything.

I don't know, my view from Europe is that our elites are so firmly in the US pocket that European non-participation on the US side in the case of a serious showdown of systems is still inconceivable. Europeans are mildly unhappy with Trump, but are only so in a way in which a battered wife is unhappy with her husband's temporary alcoholised and violent state but will still tell the cops to piss off if they come to investigate reports that he sexually abuses their child.

If they were willing to break with the US for real, maybe they would follow the Cory Doctorow suggestion and return US threats with threats to cancel DMCA analogues that were imposed on them, or perhaps even remember that their stance on the Ukraine war and EU eastward expansion in general are largely cuckoldry for US interests supported only by the barest minimum of rationalising wordslop to let the "politically well-informed" crowd maintain their self-image as such. In such a setting, the Greenland thing just serves as a reminder of who is boss, and/or anchoring device to make future humiliations seem relatively more generous in comparison.

(I expect that in a couple of years it will come out that Spain did everything it could to proactively help with the Iran campaign behind closed doors, while maintaining the public posture with restricting the usage of their airspace, as it turned out Germany did with Iraq.)

a battered wife is unhappy with her husband's temporary alcoholised and violent state but will still tell the cops to piss off if they come to investigate reports that he sexually abuses their child.

Yeeep. Harsh but all that NATO infrastructure, dollar clearing, intel pipelines, and post-WW2 habit make outright defection feel so much costlier than staying. They signal public unhappiness to war wary domestic audiences while operational alignment cracks on as usual. The real question is future power dynamics in the middle east. Let's say Trump withdraws today and pretends shit never happened. The past month has dramatically altered the timeline. We're told the UAE is joining to open up the strait. Israel's "moderate" Yair Lapid backed the attacks on Tehran's oil fields. Iran is absolutely pursuing a nuke now. Does anybody remember Gaza? Where do we go from here?

He seems like a motivated thinker.

  1. The US backs Israel because Jews were 30-40% of US high-end intellectual power which also translated to having $$$, controlling probably more than half of Hollywood, and around 30-40% of US Nobel Prizes. Plus Evangelicals like Israel because of the Left Behind Series and some of their End Times beliefs. The Holocaust is a nice stated belief but we don’t go around protecting Gypsies or sending massive Aid to Vietnamn who the US sort of directly bombed. It’s simply the Jews are very powerful in the US.

  2. Everything I’ve seen has most of the big Gulf States backing the war. Not sure where he’s getting his data.

  3. The ME during the Gulf Wars was geopolitically vital to the US. Our economy ran on oil. We did not produce enough domestically. They were our gas station.

  4. If he’s a neocon and complaining about “international law” then I can’t take him serious. Supposedly the CIA always thought the WMD proof was coming from an untrustworthy clown who would say anything if you wrote him a check. Is Trump not going to the UN any worse than Cheney lying to the UN and everyone who didn’t have security clearances to know the war aims were bogus?

Bear in mind that Robert Kagan is a never-Trumper who publically endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, he's had no real government positions, so he's just an unimportant newspaper pundit now. Hes been wildly against everything Trump has ever done. Most of the other Neocons strongly support the Iran war- indeed, many have noted that they seem to have convinced Trump to get into it when he was strongly isolationist in his first term.

Thank you. I'll not hold it against someone to not know about a particular media personality's long-established personality, but it was confusing seeing the equivalent someone pointing at the The Guardian and positing it as evidence that even Britain was lost. Kagan has ever been part of the Trump coalition. A person who for a decade has campaigned for the Democrats against the current Republican, writing for a generally Democratic media outlet, continuing to do so is about as surprising as water being wet.

Heck, it's not even good TDS-Kagan stuff, and it's filled with the sort of shallow geopolitical, historical, or strategic analysis that's either unserious or seriously phoning it in. There are a lot of reasons why various people in the US support the Israeli, but we have the Cold War records and deliberations of why the US started supporting Israel when it did, and 'a sense of moral responsibility after the Holocaust' is not a particularly competent summation of them... or why the US support started after a period, rather than consistent. Again, we have records from the leader deliberations at the time. Or the bit about 'Israelis should question the US's dedication to this fight' in the short but also longer term. This not only treats as an error the rather obvious limiting factor in the air campaign that the Israelis clearly helped and advocated for the US to do- the factor being that raids are by their nature shorter in duration and have more limited goals- but also ignores the elephant donkey in the room of the changing Democratic Party establishment's, shall we say, anti-commitment to Israeli support. Which would be providing the perspective for the Israelis in any now-or-later consideration. And going by his last paragraph, you'd think Kagan thinks the US never faced shifting basing basing or overflight permission shifts or adhoc coalition making in the past... as opposed to it being the standard practice (and difficulty) depending on the state and their interests at the time.

As far as rigor goes, it's slop. Comfortable slop, depending on one's taste, but it is very much served to satiate (or instigate) an emotional state rather than going for analytic or even historical accuracy. Which has been par for course for Kagan in the Trump era, so eh.

Not saying that I'm going to go sit in my little corner and chuckle smugly at the usual suspects, but this quote comes to mind after seeing recent developments (and it's by an American too!):

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Life imitates Art, as they say; now if only the inflation rate here in the UK wasn't about to spike up because of "careless people"...

This is how I feel about Democrats who live in beautiful houses and vote for crime in the subways

An "I support my neighbors in tents sign" on the lawn of a $3 million home who's owner has the cops on speed dial (and you know their response time to that neighborhood is <5 minutes)

Along with the confirmation bias inducing admissions of what was really going on with regards to US policy and involvement in the middle east and how ideologically Zionist it has always been, the piece is very interesting. One can imagine that the Foreign Affairs Policy Board meetings have been getting heated for Kagan to want to publish this.

But taking the article at face value, Kagan seems to be wanting to have things both ways when he says:

That is especially true given this administration’s cavalier attitude toward international responsibilities. The Iran war is global intervention “America First”–style: no public debate, no vote in Congress, no cooperation or, in many cases, even consultation with allies other than Israel, and, apparently, no concern for potential consequences to the region and the world.

Well, how is it America First then? I understand the label insofar as it can represent the 'populist strongman' stereotype of an authoritarian coming in like a wrecking ball to 'make things right' by cutting through all the nonsense and getting things done, or whatever. But why would such an 'America First' person feel the need to consult only with Israel at the cost of everything else? Throughout decades of foreign occupations, countless lives lost and trillions down the drain, the common denominator has not been 'America First' but Zionism.

The stalwarts of neo-conservatism might imagine that their interventions were prim and proper, but it's precisely those interventions and the negative fallout that has burnt through all the necessary political power around themselves and their allies so that they can continue on enacting and supporting this type of 'US' foreign policy.

To put a lighthearted spin on it, imagine a trolley problem. The trolley has already driven through millions of innocents. Cutting them to bits and causing excruciating torturous deaths, and it's about to drive over another undetermined amount of innocents. Kagan is here to tell us that the real problem is not the mass murder of innocents in service of US's ideological commitment to Zionism, but the authoritarianism and vulgarity by which the current operator is handling the lever. At no point do we consider directing the trolley somewhere else.

As someone who has made a conscious effort to maintain some a presence on both sides of a wide cultural gulf I don't think I've seen any event since Covid that made the different algorithmic/media bubbles that people exist in more apparent than current conflict with Iran.

If you exist in a liberal oriented media bubble that includes publications like The Atlantic everyone in your feed is talking about how this came out of nowhere, how there is no plan, how Trump has betrayed MAGA principles for Zionist interests and as a result the GOP is surely going to get creamed in the mid-terms.

If you exist in a more conservative or internationalist oriented media bubble everyone in your feed is talking about how striking Venezuela and Iran props up the petro-dollar and deprives rivals like China of cheap fuel.

I'm not sure if that's a high enough resolution look at the situation. There are a lot of media bubbles. Many arrive at similar conclusions for a wide variety of reasons.

As an example, it seems a lot of people have a hard time understanding how cutting China off from Iranian or Venezuelan oil is a big geopolitical victory for the US when China is already buying most of its oil from Russia and is increasing those imports in response to current events. Russia being a country that is in a rather obvious geopolitical dispute with the EU and the US over Ukraine.

Russia selling more of its oil and gas to China effectively circumvents the sanction efforts of the EU and US. If the goal prior was to pressure Russia through sanctions then disrupting the oil market was probably the worst move possible if those disruptions alleviate pressure off of Russia.

It's even worse when we account for the bind Europe has put itself in with their own global warming minded energy reforms and how heavily the sanctions against Russia are affecting them in tandem.

So we arrive at a point of convergence. PWC Liberal World Order folks of all stripes in the US and EU want to uphold that order and punish Russia for disrupting it. Nativist Right wingers in the US and EU wanted less foreign wars for various reasons. Well, here we have a foreign war that aggravates all parties. I don't think that earmarking all of them as being trapped in a liberal oriented bubble is a very illuminating effort.

While the "US" as an entity seems like it is obviously in dispute with Russia over Ukraine, I don't really perceive Trump as having a huge problem with it. Seemingly, Trump and Putin get along, or at least Trump respects Putin's aura/energy (sorry, can't come up with non-colloquial here) and even has an understanding perspective on Russia's nationalist/expansionist ambitions. I do not at all see propping up Russian oil revenues as something that makes Trump really mad, though it is kind funny that this greatly mitigates the war's impact on Trump's Asian trade enemies.

From a Bayesian perspective, there is strong evidence that Trump really likes Jews and is not a great long term thinker. Hegseth's record does not inspire confidence either.

Meanwhile, in an example of horseshoe theory, in my far-right-oriented "media bubble," almost everyone in my feed is talking about "how there is no plan, how Trump has betrayed MAGA principles for Zionist interests and as a result the GOP is surely going to get creamed in the mid-terms."

Not so much the "this came out of nowhere" part, though, because a lot of them are gloating about they've been saying since his first term that Trump is just containment, there to prevent a real pro-White candidate from emerging; that he pretends to be for the American people, but he's actually just another ZOG puppet; that the only surprise here is that it took something this blatant for people to start waking up to the obvious truth (that they've seen all along) that Trump is the top shabbos goy for International Jewry; and that they've once again been vindicated in believing that nothing will change until we get a Leader who truly understands the Jewish Question and how to finally solve it…

God damn, these Jew guys sound incredible. How do I get on their team?

Gonna cost you a foreskin as down payment

Conservatives are also now all on the same page about the existence of a 47-year-long war with Iran. That that piece of propaganda worked is what surprised me the most.

Is this not rather a sign of TDS? Kagan spends decades advocating war with Iran, hates Trump; Trump delivers war with Iran, now Kagan is against the war. It’s not that Kagan was ever wrong or ever changed his mind see, it’s just that Donald Trump is wrong about whatever it is we’re talking about today.

You spend long time advocating for a dinner.

Your spouse finally relents, starts cooking and makes huge grease fire in the kitchen.

Now you are against dinner? Hypocrite!

To be fair, the dinner the neocons were advocating for was impossible to make and they have a horrible track record in general.

They may have wanted dinner, but their recipe was always going to result in a grease fire of some size.

The war is going well. We decapitated Iran's entire leadership in a week and have been systematically destroying the manufacturing base of their army. In retaliation, Iran has lashed out desperately at allies and third parties. How could it have gone any other way? What magical war would the neocons have wrought? Is there some President Obama Iran war where the IRGC doesn't threaten Hormuz? Maybe a President Biden war where social media isn't saturated with rumor and hyperventilating defeat?

How could it have gone any other way?

Not having a war, perhaps a policy of "no new wars"

What magical war would the neocons have wrought?

None, neocons are retards, especially about wars, especially about wars in the middle east. Their opinions on such matters should be ignored.

And the Europeans aren't willing to lift a finger to defend themselves against damage caused by Iran's war crimes (yes, attacking neutral shipping is a war crime), and instead blame America for provoking Iran into doing it.

What is your opinion on striking desalination plants?

Neutral or belligerent? Supplying military installations or not?

Belligerent and water is pretty fungible and I doubt military bases have dedicated desalination plants so it's just a normal one near a city but we can assume some goes to service members.

Although to pre-empt something I'll probably say later, one problem with "we'll cut off their service members water by hitting the desalination plants" is that in most countries that use desalination, they have other sources of water too, just not enough for everyone. So the military, having guns, will always get 100% of their water needs. It's the civilians who end up short.

Idk why I'm beating around the bush. I'm asking if you think hitting Iranian desalination plants is a war crime (or adjacent , I have no interest in splitting legal hairs). Especially given it will likely not reduce military effectiveness and will inflict a lot of suffering on the civilian population that Trump/the USA is claiming to be fighting to free from their (absolutely awful) government.

Edit: To continue not beating around the bush, I will state my opinion.

I do not think striking a desalination or power plant or other dual use but largely civilian infrastructure is a "War Crime" by the legal definition (however, I have not googled it so could be wrong). However I do think it is the kind of move that should be reserved for a total war against an existential threat. I think blowing shit up that hurts 99 civilians for every 1 service member who is inconvenienced is wildly disproportionate is a dick move, and is quite shitty from an ethical front when the war is not an existential threat for societal survival.

I don't really blame Ukraine for trying to hit Russian power infrastructure, as they're fighting for the survival of the nation of "Ukraine". I think the Russian government/military are monsters for doing that to Ukraine, as they're fighting for.... who fucking knows. Sunk cost basically at this point lol.b

Belligerent and water is pretty fungible

No, not at all. Kuwait, for instance, is not a belligerent.

I doubt military bases have dedicated desalination plants so it's just a normal one near a city but we can assume some goes to service members.

Which makes them dual-use infrastructure, which means they are not absolutely protected from attack but rather are subject to the usual rules of proportionality (military advantage vs. collateral civilian damage)

Especially given it will likely not reduce military effectiveness and will inflict a lot of suffering on the civilian population that Trump/the USA is claiming to be fighting to free from their (absolutely awful) government.

As far as I know, the only desalination plant to be hit (allegedly) is on Qeshm Island. Which Iran is currently (and predictably) using as part of their strategem to control the Strait. This makes it an arguably reasonable target on its face, though I do not know enough details to know if it's really a reasonable target. (I also don't know if it was actually hit or if it was, if it was itself collateral damage)

Is this not rather a sign of TDS? Kagan spends decades advocating war with Iran, hates Trump; Trump delivers war with Iran, now Kagan is against the war.

Have you read the excerpt? Kagan is obviously a fan of the US being the leader of the free world (a model which worked well enough for the Western world during the Cold War). I would imagine that his policy (which is more or less that of GWB) is the antithesis of Trump's foreign policy, superfluous similarities (bombing brown people) aside.

In guess in his model, a regime change operation in Iran would work differently.

First, Iran would have to violate the JCPOA so badly that most signatories would agree that it was not salvageable, because unilaterally withdrawing from a treaty would damage the image of the US as a reliable partner. (For Trump, Obama's signature was reason enough -- he clearly does not give a fuck about how other countries see the US.)

Then, the US would try to form a broad coalition, come up with a strategic plan to actually achieve the objectives, think about the obvious Iran countermeasures and how to block them, wait until the troops are in the area and then attack.

Trump did none of these things. He looked at the polling, saw that he would lose the mid-terms between Epstein and ICE, and decided to bomb Iran in a bid to cause regime change from the air. Unlike with Venezuela, he lost his gamble and did not achieve any strategic objectives, because no, blowing up missiles is not a strategic objective.

Your comment makes me update towards the real syndrome being TDSS, where people accuse others of having TDS -- treating the same actions differently when done by Trump -- when in fact the actions of Trump are at best vaguely similar.

Your comment makes me update towards the real syndrome being TDSS, where people accuse others of having TDS

I've noticed the same thing in recent months. People here have started to shout "TDS!" at almost any criticism of Trump whatsoever.

That doesn't seem right to me, because even though I agree with this specific criticism of Trump, and have called the decision to start the war a disaster, it still looks like blatant TDS to me. Neocons don't get to play doves.

I enjoy dunking on neocons, to borrow one of their terms, now that we've seen the fruits of their ideas, is a "target rich environment"

"Neocons don't get to play doves." Is a great statement

Dunno that "everyone" hates neocons, and even if there aren't any here, this is definitely an attempt to build consensus.

To be honest, I don't really know what "attempt to build consensus" means in this context.

But I clearly chose my words poorly (so I have edited them to be more clear), I have no intention of rallying the motte into an anti-neocon forum.

I did a time limited search to see what Kagan thought about the JCPOA before Trump got into office, and he was seemingly silent on the issue. Prior to the JCPOA he called the Iran nuclear program the biggest question to American security Obama would face. Given that silence we can't know what he thought about the JCPOA in a Trump-free world. However, his lack of commentary while fellow Neocons were very loud about how it was a shit sandwich with no enforcement mechanisms that gave Iran everything up front (oddly correct by the Neocons here), indicates he was already departing from the neocon camp into a more full-Dem partisan camp at that time.

Regardless of Kagan's views at the time, I do always find appeals to the JCPOA facile and stupid. Its not a treaty, and other countries who were party to it didn't care about any part of the agreement besides getting more Iranian petrol and LNG. They were never going to think it was sufficiently violated to think it wasn't salvageable, because they didn't care about any of the alleged burdens on Iran. They only were interested in the US's obligations.

Given all that, there is no path to a "broad coalition" Iran could have been doing all the terrorist funding it has been since 2015, just with extra money because of lifted sanctions, and then put up a big clock in Tehran in Jan 2024 that said, "Countdown to Nuclear ICBM completion" with a 365 day countdown and none of the other countries would have cared. America would be left with this same coalition of Israel + a couple of ME countries pissed about Iran's terrorism.

That doesn't mean Trump didn't fuck this up. He's unarguably failed rhetorically selling the war to the public. He's seemingly underestimated the IRGC's leadership depth. And he's also seemingly committed to no ground troops, which means he can't secure the straight long term. But, about the last point, it is also kind of a stupid criticism of Trump. There's nothing that says Iran needs to attack French and Chinese vessels because they are at war with America. In fact, that is just piracy. The fact that the French and Chinese blame America is a kind of derangement in its own right. In more normal times France would be the one threatening to nuke Tehran right now if they stopped or hit a single additional French flagged vessel.

The fact that the French and Chinese blame America is a kind of derangement in its own right.

Doesn't seem that deranged? France is unmistakably tied to America. Regardless of France's opinion on attacking Iran, from the perspective of Iran, France is not a friend as they are allied to their enemy.

Thus France is now having problems it did not cause. Let alone the broader global fuel market issues which it would be exposed to even if Iran let every French ship anywhere it wanted.

Everyone blames the USA and not Iran because the USA started this round*

*I'm not trying to litigate 100 years of tit for tat, but the most recent round of shit exploding began with Isreali and US fighter jets making things explode. They took the initiative and fired the first shots of 2026, and now get to own it as a result.

Similarly, China is effected by the global fuel issues, AND has every incentive to blame the USA for literally anything given they are geopolitical rivals both fighting for influence.

The USA is not engaged in piracy no.

So the difference between Bush bombing Iran and Trump is ? Lipstick on a pig? GWB took the time to flatter and lie to some Europeans before he bombed a bunch of brown people ? Trump just bombed them and skipped the lying?

GWB took the time to flatter and lie to some Europeans

This does matter if you want allies to support you, which is usually nice to have, although not required in this case

Yeap, that’s what matters. The process matters as much as the results.

While I agree that there's definitely criticisms to be made of the war even from a neocon perspective, this does read like TDS. The war on Iran is easily justifiable from a Neocon perspective(we invaded Iraq over less), and there is an international coalition- it happens to be middle eastern countries rather than European ones, but it's there.

(bombing brown people)

Every ethnicity in Iran is light skinned, and the dominant one has an extremely long history of civilization. Are Chinamen 'brown people'? Russians?

First off, I am not a neocon (I was opposed to GWB's Iraq war for example), and don't know how good I a am at the ideological Turing test.

Still, I would say that execution matters. In Iraq and even Afghanistan, the US at least managed to achieve some strategic objectives, like toppling the regimes. A neocon might argue that the bombings were means to an end. (Of course, in my point of view, neither operation achieved a desirable long term strategic outcome.)

Afghanistan was a blunder but at least not an obvious blunder, I am sure that some people predicted that the nation-building would fail, but I was personally not certain of that.

With Trump's Iran war, the blunder is obvious immediately. He gambled on regime change through bombing, and his gamble failed, and he does not have a plan B which is why he is bullshitting about Iran surrendering any day now.

(bombing brown people)

Every ethnicity in Iran is light skinned, and the dominant one has an extremely long history of civilization. Are Chinamen 'brown people'? Russians?

This phrasing annoyed some people, including @Shakes. I apologize, also for being factually incorrect as you point out.

What I meant to suggest was that for the US, killing people in far-away lands which are of different (particular Muslim) cultures is just Tuesday. I think the USG began using drone strikes to blow up weddings beginning in 2010 under Nobel laureate Obama and continuing under Trump. The median voter did not give a damn. My phrasing meant to suggest that few voters cared because the victims were not Caucasians. I certainly did not mean to suggest that I bought into any framework where 'brown' people mattered less personally. I do realize that I am posting on a forum where such views exist, so that was a failure to clearly communicate on my part.

On reflection, I do not think the racism answer for drone death apathy is quite true. The CW waves created by police shooting innocent blacks by mistake are second to none. I think that it is more a case of Newtonian Ethics. People in Afghanistan or Iran are far removed from Americans both in space and social graphs. My personal guess is that the US military killing Australians would upset the voters a lot more. Sure, Australia is also far away, but they speak English and their most recent common cultural ancestor is much more recent.

Of course, Trump has shown the median voter also do not care about him blowing up "drug smuggling" ships presumably crewed by Hispanics, which are both culturally and spatially closer to the US. I am a bit puzzled why that is. It might just be opportunity to oppose, though: in foreign matters, the president has a lot of leeway, so activists can not do much to stop him from ordering military strikes. On US soil, his power is much more limited, so activists can oppose him for sending in ICE or the like.

Of course, Trump has shown the median voter also do not care about him blowing up "drug smuggling" ships presumably crewed by Hispanics, which are both culturally and spatially closer to the US. I am a bit puzzled why that is.

I'm also surprised by this. I assume largely to do with the cartels having a justifiably awful reputation. Everyone sees how they shit up Mexico.

But then why do people go so hard against ICE when ICE was trying to target criminal immigrants, etc? I think partially bc those opposed didn't believe the "criminal focus" bit. But also bc boats sink with their evidence, vs the infinite clips of ICE doing stuff (many posted by ice itself lol)

But then why do people go so hard against ICE when ICE was trying to target criminal immigrants, etc? I think partially bc those opposed didn't believe the "criminal focus" bit. But also bc boats sink with their evidence, vs the infinite clips of ICE doing stuff (many posted by ice itself lol)

Based on personal conversations with boomer libs, they just believe straight up crazy things about the situation. That ICE is rounding up random brown people, including citizens, and torturing and killing them just for fun, and sending them to FOREIGN TORTURE PRISONS, all with absolutely no legal authority to do anything because they're not cops.

They appear to literally believe that Donald Trump created ICE as a kind of para-military KKK to enact his evil as the wicked emperor of America. That's why they're so gung-ho to seek vengeance on ICE agents. They think of it like "Molly Weasley killing Bellatrix Black", and not "jailing law enforcement for enforcing the law on child rapists".

We've had a lot of discourse about right-wing radicalization, but the shit women on TikTok are getting up to is a genuine Abyss where reality goes to die.

Yeah exactly they believe all kinds of insane stuff.

So then why didn't they believe the drugs boats were fishing boats? Or the drug boats were Hispanic cruises? Or any number of untrue things.

Like people went insane over ICE, and the boat strikes got like 15 minutes of attention.

I assume proximity, but it's just funny.

There's plenty who DO believe the drug boats are fishing boats. They're still going on about Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila.

With Trump's Iran war, the blunder is obvious immediately. He gambled on regime change through bombing, and his gamble failed, and he does not have a plan B which is why he is bullshitting about Iran surrendering any day now.

I think this is the problem. I don't suppose to read Trump's mind at all. Moreover, I don't understand why we assume that Trump's only goal is regime change through bombing -- the speech he himself made at the start of the war lists several other objectives, such as destroying Iran's ability to produce missiles and project force in the Middle East.

I'm rambling about this here because I see this as a case of a kind of "degenerate case" we can't ever really argue out of.

Everything is a matter of taste. Basically, you think something is plausible. I don't. We can argue and butt heads about the underlying facts or methods or fallacies and such. But you think your interpretation of the world is plausible, and I don't. You think that not even because of one news story about Donald Trump and Iran or a month's worth of coverage. It's your entire life and experience that inform your point of view. Likewise mine. For you it's reasonable to imagine Trump acting rashly on a gamble and to interpret everything subsequent as bullshitting. I imagine that comes through not just a decade of interpreting Trump but, e.g. --: honing your personal sense of "bullshit" arguing with partners and family and coworkers; matching the news with your own expertise and intuiting when you can believe your eyes and when you can't; values about what's important in the world and a related sense of who you can trust as allies to inform you about the world; etc. etc. etc. Well, we probably have very different life experiences.

I can say, for instance, that I have some familiarity with military intelligence, and that informs what I believe. And I don't think it's possible e.g. that Trump just hit launch by the seat of his pants because there must exist detailed plans that have been drafted for decades for every contingency. But if I'm being honest, it's not as though I have direct experience of the (putative) Situation Room. I don't actually know Donald Trump. It's possible I'm wrong about everything, I'm only filling in the blanks of things I can never possibly know with my imagination. And hoping that my imagination is quite powerful.

Opinions are primarily formed through life experience. And the vast majority of life experience is media consumption.

When I used to have these arguments with Yassine, I think he perceived my skepticism of Truth to be quite radical. I would say that, well, ultimately, we don't really know that. That story is something that happened in the Oval Office and was witnessed by maybe six people, and one (or two of them) with an axe to grind talked to a reporter, who was edited by his boss, until a story was written up with a headline eye for drama, posted for twitter without any context, except whatever context it is we're all of us each carrying with us all the time. And you're not even considering the stories twitter surfaced to me but not to you. Yassine would say, well, sure, but isn't it convenient that you don't believe whatever isn't convenient for you? I think he thought I was arguing some post-truth magical realism, concomitant with Donald Trump crying "Fake News" and dumb conservacon talking head punditry. And maybe there was some sense in what I was saying as a kind of trivial philosophy, but, well, it's awfully convenient, isn't it?

I'm rambling about this because it does strike me as a particular problem and not a general one. We could be having an argument about facts and figures. We could be debating radically different visions of The Good and how society should operate. I think most Culture War debates tend into these categories, and are much more acrimonious in that way.

Well, I believe that Donald Trump is the most successful man alive and has total control over Iran and everything is going to work out fine. But I can't really be mad at anybody for seeing things differently or even thinking this is the craziest thing they've ever heard in their life. So it goes, right?

This phrasing annoyed some people, including @Shakes. I apologize, also for being factually incorrect as you point out.

So, in that spirit, I'm not sure we can ever really understand each other; Because everything was formed through experience. I can't put you under the fluorescent light where my dentist swore that it was true that my father used to get his teeth drilled without anesthetic, where he would say that pain was a choice and he could choose not to feel it. I can't put you on the chair where my aunt's girlfriend waved her arms over my head like a jedi mindtrick and an image of a clogged sink flashed through my head and my chronic neuropathy dissolved forever, although a friend calls that a placebo and I suppose his imagination is as good as mine. And I'm not sure where I learned to love America or believe in God except that I observe these feelings bubbling up from within me as plainly as I obviously feel the rain when I forget my umbrella during a storm, etc. etc. Maybe you have had good Chinese food and will sympathize when I declare it one of the great cuisines, and when my friends who have only tasted Kung Pao and the general can only titter and laugh about bats all I can do is shine. But I'm sure the reverse is true as well and I want to maintain a little humility when all I've done so far is talk about myself without ever really trying to understand you.

So I appreciate that we are, after all, just arguing to kill time and there's nothing personal about it.

And it's better actually to have these "arguments of the imagination" because we can at least acknowledge the gap and -- shrug? smile? As opposed to the other kinds of arguments where we have to do battle in some sense.

This is my problem with the phrase "bombing brown people". It's the kind of thing that transforms an imaginative gap into a personal one. Or at least it feels that way to me, I can't really propose that it's the same for everyone. But I feel as though people didn't talk this way when I was a kid. There were white people and black people, but nobody used the phrase "brown people" until the last Obama years and it felt vulgar to me then like some new viral load. I think the Progressives were using it in some sense to say, well, society is racist and it reduces people to colors, and it's important for us to talk in these terms so we can examine what is happening invisibly and unsaid. Maybe so but it always felt to me as though some words were being put in my mouth, because I never thought in these kinds of terms as far as I could tell. Or maybe this term preceded me and I was too young to notice and my perception that it's a new and vulgar insertion is totally without basis. I can't really know, you could show me Google N-Gram proof that it's been there all along, but I've also read somewhere that the moon landing was fake, and I don't really believe that either. Because all I'm doing is believing whatever feels convenient to me, exactly as Yassine said all along.

Anyways there's nothing for it but taste, everything is a matter of taste. And maybe time makes more converts than reason and time will tell and we can wait and see and one of us will be right and one of us will be wrong. But my experience tells me that even then we'll be debating what it all means anyways forever and ever, like Vonnegut on Hamlet, a drama that never resolves. So there's nothing personal.

This is one of the best comments I've ever read on this site.

Because, whatever their views on the Iran war or drug interdiction, it seems inarguable that cartel crews or Islamofascistic regime enforcers are bad people, and that is what people care about- not what they have in common with them.

I am aware that you are German, but in America the death penalty is broadly extremely popular. 'The government killing bad guys' is a very popular position, and arguing about the niceties of exactly how they do this is splitting hairs. BLM gets support because of the view that many black victims of police shooting are not bad guys, or at least not bad enough to deserve the death penalty(AFAICT most of them die from their own stupidity after committing various crimes which carry prison sentences of less than a decade, which of course is pretty far off from offenses most Americans regard as justifiably capital).

While I agree that there's definitely criticisms to be made of the war even from a neocon perspective, this does read like TDS. The war on Iran is easily justifiable from a Neocon perspective(we invaded Iraq over less), and there is an international coalition- it happens to be middle eastern countries rather than European ones, but it's there.

I suspect part of the issue is a paradigm difference between the sort of people who view wars as discrete, self-contained periods of violence, and those who view the current conflict as just the latest campaign of a longer war that neither started or expected to end (hence why the war is basically an extended air raid). I don't think 'neocon' implies one way or the other, but I firmly suspect Kagan is among the former and the current war leaders are among the later.

It's a paradigm difference that matters because a Kagan-style neocon might have a binary view of war based on the expected ability to decisively win, but otherwise see themselves at peace otherwise. It struggles when put into a context where decisive victory is not possible (and thus would prefer peace), but also is also denied peace (because the enemy gets to vote and can engage in sustained asymmetric warfare).

This is why military science discussions over the last few decades have shifted away from war as a binary to the conceptualization of conflict continuums of degrees of intensity/lethality that can be moved between more easily. But that evolution in the literature was after Kagan established his professional persona, and there's no indication he's tried or wanted to update his own models, especially when TDS-posting gives him steady employment and prestigious placings.

Every ethnicity in Iran is light skinned, and the dominant one has an extremely long history of civilization.

The name "Iran" is derived from the same root as "Aryan".

And 'Ireland' and 'Aristocrat' and so on and so forth.

Neither "Ireland" nor "aristocrat" has the same root as "Aryan" or "Iran".

All of them come from the Indo-European root 'arstos'- either through the Greek 'aristos' or the Gaelic 'eire'.

Well, except "Ireland" and "Aryan".

superfluous similarities (bombing brown people)

When I read remarks like this I just lose interest in everything else the speaker to say. "Bombing brown people"? It's just a callous phrase

The callousness is the point, isn't it? No one self-labels as "I want to bomb brown people". It's an accusation against other people that they are callous because "They want to bomb brown people." Suggesting that someone else is callous doesn't strike me as callous.

That’s the turn-off. Dismissing opposing views without being able to describe them accurately. Even worse, it’s a cliche.

I think when the neocons wanted war with Iran, it certainly wasn't this kind of war.

I struggle to see what other kind of war could have been envisioned. Admittedly I'm not military myself, but I certainly hang out with a goodly number of current and former military personnel in various online and IRL spaces from several different branches -- they uniformly say that this is more or less a textbook example of the "American way of war." With focus on as-precise-as-technologically-possible aerial and missile strikes on political and military targets, down to the targeting of specific individuals, supported where possible by Special Forces/CIA paramilitary "dirty tricks" I don't see how this is functionally different from, e.g., the way we went into Afghanistan. The bombardment of Tehran, Isfahan, and IRGC infrastructure looks a lot like 2003 "Shock and Awe" in Iraq.

What, do you think Paul Wolfowitz was jonesing for the 82nd Airborne and 1st Infantry Division to be rolling from Turkey towards Tabriz?

The kind of war that I imagine guys like Kagan want is an extended low to medium intensity conflict like Afghanistan or Iraq circa 2010 that gives them a chance to posture and justify their salaries while funneling money to their friends and sponsors in the contracting world.

This war, at least so far, is not that.

What, do you think Paul Wolfowitz was jonesing for the 82nd Airborne and 1st Infantry Division to be rolling from Turkey towards Tabriz?

Yes, actually.

The big difference is the lack of buildup. There was no effort to sell the war to the public or to the international community. Trump relied on the element of surprise, the Sucker Punch Doctrine.

The result is low support. Even the Republican numbers are hovering in the 80s, where they were in Lizardman Constant territory at this point in the Iraq war. The USA had the Coalition of the Willing, with Britain Australia Poland etc deploying troops in Iraq. In Iran we have...Israel? I mean kinda but Israeli forces don't appear to be under direct command of a US general, where in Iraq all coalition forces were under a US commander (Spartan style).

Now obviously the bright side was the element of surprise, and for whatever reason we can't expect the Israelis to operate under a US command structure...but there are big differences in how the story will be seen.

The big difference is the lack of buildup. There was no effort to sell the war to the public or to the international community.

There was no way Donald Trump could do so. The "public" (meaning the mainstream media) and the "international community" (meaning Euro liberals) could not be convinced by Donald Trump. So he quite rationally did not waste any effort on this unachievable goal. He does seem to have brought the Gulf states into the fold (with the help of a feckless IRGC, granted).

Well, Trump didn't even bother trying to convince a domestic audience. Compact has a good overview of the collapse in basic propaganda efforts: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-GEcO360z1g&t=1484s

As I was saying to @hanikrummihundursvin up thread, to me this issue illustrates just how "siloed" the liberal media bubble has become from more conservative and internationalist ones.

Liberals feel like this came out of nowhere and as a result their first impulse blame the perfidious Jew. Meanwhile everyone else has been speculating about if/when the US would do something about Iran's repeated threats to global shipping, and the answer to those questions turned out to be "Yes" and "March 2026".

The threat to global shipping...just came from the US starting a war.

More comments

The neocon dream was a quick, decisive war to topple the IRI and replace it with a pro-American democracy. The specifics of how that was going to happen were probably pretty hazy and involved both underestimating Iran and overestimating the US, but I really doubt they envisioned an intense-yet-noncommittal air war with no meaningful ground element. As I will never shut up about: this war looks like a failed attempt at gunboat diplomacy with seemingly no plan if Iran didn't immediately cave.

The bombardment of Tehran, Isfahan, and IRGC infrastructure looks a lot like 2003 "Shock and Awe" in Iraq.

Not really. The point of "Shock and Awe"-style tactics is to disrupt enemy command and control so your ground forces can overwhelm theirs with limited organized resistance. There was no ground component to Operation Epic Fury.

This is honestly the problem I have with a lot of Trump 2.0. In broad strokes, a lot of the things the administration are doing could be sensible policies if done well, but instead Trump 2.0 seems intent on doing things in the most foolish and ill-considered way possible.

One of the examples that just gets me is the Harvard situation. Telling Harvard to not be racist was totally reasonable (especially since there was already Supreme Court precedence that what Harvard was doing was not legal), but following that up with, "Oh, and you've got to hire who we tell you to, and give us control of your admissions process so you admit more conservative students" was cuckoo bananas. The Trump administration somehow managed to make Harvard look sympathetic in all of that, and that was no easy feat.

but following that up with, "Oh, and you've got to hire who we tell you to, and give us control of your admissions process so you admit more conservative students" was cuckoo bananas.

How? Academics throughout the country openly admit they discriminate on political/idealogical grounds. What exactly is wrong with telling them to knock it off, if they want to keep getting federal goodies?

I would be okay with us passing a law that prevented discrimination on the basis of political ideology (some jurisdictions in the US already have such laws.) I might even be convinced that individual states passing laws to ensure more viewpoint diversity in state colleges could be a good thing.

But a single individual unilaterally twisting an existing law in order to interfere with hiring and firing decisions of a university in a way that interferes with the basic educational mission of that university is a bridge too far for me. I think universities need to change, but it should be done through gradual reforms or a new march through the institutions, not imposed all at once in a top down way for a variety of reasons.

Wasn't the dear colleagues letter exactly that?

I too would prefer congress establish those limits, but I believe the only way to get there is to have someone make so many intolerable policies following that, that the side that started this with that letter is sickened enough to not want to touch that rail again.

What's wrong with that? Having more conservative intellectuals at the highest level is, if anything, good for national stability- democracies with weak conservative wings deteriorate very fast, much faster than overwhelmingly conservative democracies(Japan etc).

But a single individual unilaterally twisting an existing law in order to interfere with hiring and firing decisions of a university in a way that interferes with the basic educational mission of that university is a bridge too far for me

Is it? Isn't there some conservative college, who's name escapes me, that makes a point of not accepting any federal help so they aren't on the hook for Title IX, and all the other federal fuckery, and the Dems are still always looking for ways to force them to run it their way? Why is it so beyond the pale to put conditions on a university that does get federal money, then?

You're thinking of Hillsdale College.

That's the one! Was at the tip of my tongue, thanks!

Isn't there some conservative college, who's name escapes me, that makes a point of not accepting any federal help so they aren't on the hook for Title IX, and all the other federal fuckery, and the Dems are still always looking for ways to force them to run it their way?

There was, Bob Jones University. They lost not just Federal funds but their tax-exempt status, and then knelt at the altar of equality.

Meanwhile, the University of California and others have explicit political tests for their faculty (in some cases also being fig-leaves for RACIAL tests), and that's fine. It's all who/whom and all very tiresome, and if Trump refuses to let them continue doing that he's not breaking any precedent except in aiming that power at the left for a change.

Why is it so beyond the pale to put conditions on a university that does get federal money, then?

I'm happy for federal money to come with strings attached. But within our system, I would prefer if the strings came from Congress and not from a unilateral action from the president.

It was wrong when Obama tried to do it with the Dear Colleague letter, and it is wrong when Trump tries to do it with the Harvard letter.

In many ways, I would prefer the federal government to stop funding universities altogether, so they couldn't use the withdrawal of funds as a threat against them. But in the context where the funding exists, I do think it should be handled in a way consistent with the principles of our constitutional republic as far as possible.

It was wrong when Obama tried to do it with the Dear Colleague letter, and it is wrong when Trump tried to do it with the Harvard letter.

The problem is that Obama didn't just try, he actually did it, so it's just a normal part of business now, even if you or I are against it in principle.

No offense, but this seems completely unworkable to me. The universities are already simply ignoring existing laws when it suits them, they'll just ignore those, too. They might at most need to find a paper-thin excuse that will allow already sympathetic judges/lawyers to sign it off, but I'm not sure even that is necessary.

A new march is impossible, since the old one was only possible thanks to the conservative old guard allowing it. Which is also the reason they lost to the trumpist new right.

I was going to say the same. That’s a more common thing than most people think.

What kind of war did they want instead

The kind of war where they bomb everyone else, but nobody gets to bomb them.

A quagmire where we set up a long-term occupation force only to reluctantly surrender 20 years later?

The ones where they reap all the benefit.

That remains yet to be seen; this thing is still barely a month old.

Poland also refused to transfer two patriot batteries over, and France refused a request from Israel to use its airspace for weapons transfer. This is the logical conclusion of the boiling, seething contempt that the administration has for Europe (which is of course mutual).

The Poland thing seems to be fake news. The US made a general request to all the allies for Patriot batteries, and Poland said no -- but Poland only HAS the two, so this was probably expected.

As for the Euros, they probably think the US will give up with Iran in control of the strait and are trying to position themselves to be able to suck up to Iran for oil.

Poland doesn't have burning seathing contempt for the US, or vice versa, get real. What they do have is Russia next door to them.

Come on. Poland gave 4.5 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine, a country which is fighting a very bloody war with Russia. Obviously Poland believes that NATO will protect them from Russian aggression (which is a reasonable assumption when Trump is not president).

That’s partially it though, Europe gave a lot of scarce military equipment to Ukraine and now their belts have to be a lot tighter.

Poland's donation of military aid there has (presumably) also degraded Russian military effectiveness without casualties on their part. Which is better for Poland, ATGMs in warehouses, or destroyed Russian tanks (in Ukraine)? Certainly the latter is better than Russian and Ukrainian tanks attacking them like Czechoslovakian troops in 1939.

They also sent tons of hardware (something to the tune of 400 tanks, IIRC), but the logic wasn't just "NATO will protect us" (which, again IIRC, is a gamble - isn't the official battle plan to start giving proper resistance at the Oder river?), it was also (if not more) "if they steamroll Ukraine, we'll be in a much worse position to defend ourselves".

Either way, none of it says anything about "seathing contempt".

This. The only potential enemy European tanks are useful for defending ourselves against is Russia, and if we are going to defend ourselves against Russia we should be doing it in Ukraine and not in Poland.

Poland doesn't have burning seething contempt for the US

Sadly not yet and far to go, but attitudes are shifting. I said previously, the neediness, the entitlement, the lies, even heavily insulated normies notice and shift. I sound people on this often (interesting, plus to agitate), I think it goes well beyond "orange man bad". In the mainstream (TV etc) "discourse", that US is a reliable ally and a positive force in the world used to be near axiomatic, not anymore.

As for contempt in the US for Poland, among the elite, I'm positive it is there. They see us as an unserious country with weak elite core, and fair enough.

MAGA respects Poland and their accomplishments and views them as a real country with ho girls.

I've been planning a trip to poland and sounding out my contacts (Techvisa pre-expats); the pole prols like maga for race reasons but dislike maga on account of rolling over for russia, the poles with juice (the conservative ones) consider maga to be degenerate cowardly morons; with their complaints coming in that order.

I guess polish cons are a lot more trad than I thought, they take their Catholicism seriously; or at least pretend to.

In the mainstream (TV etc) "discourse", that US is a reliable ally and a positive force in the world used to be near axiomatic, not anymore.

I suppose if we ignore not just Trump I, but also Bush II, Reagan, Nixon, and of course Eisenhower over the whole Suez Crisis.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but praise for the US was never axiomatic even from Europe, let alone other places.

I suppose if we ignore not just Trump I, but also Bush II, Reagan, Nixon, and of course Eisenhower over the whole Suez Crisis.

Hmm, I sense a commonality between those Presidents.

As for contempt in the US for Poland, among the elite, I'm positive it is there. They see us as an unserious country with weak elite core, and fair enough.

Doesn't Poland often get honorable mention as the non-freeloading part of NATO from the American elites? And what's with this "unserious country" nonsense? No one on the western side talks about it like that anymore, you gotta ditch that inferiority complex of yours.

honorable mention as the non-freeloading part of NATO from the American elites?

Head pats in public for a retarded puppy and rightoids projecting their fantasies onto "based Poland". We carry water for the US, we buy US weaponry, we can and are used to sabotage Europe, ask for very little in return. And since "US is a reliable ally and a positive force in the world used to be near axiomatic" and our elite quality is laughable, praise was and still is effective and sought after.

US elite consider us suckers, taking ideology/propaganda seriously, satisfied with an army unfit for operation outside US framework, weak internally, transparent.

you gotta ditch that inferiority complex of yours

I resent this, you don't know what you're talking about. There is not a shred of inferiority complex in a typical Pole; he is cynical, a pessimist. Appearance of strength is enough for outsiders, not for people invested in the outcome.

A country in our position should have domestic arms industry fit for modern war, own satellite recon, civil defence and reserve at Finnish level, elite loyal and capable of running a nuclear program without someone instantly running to snitch to the US. We don't have any of this due to a combination of skill issues, bad historical luck, and meddling.

non-freeloading part of NATO

I reject this framing, by the way. In fact, with the inability to keep trade routes open under even slight pressure, and the benefits of European integration into the NATO, the US is the freeloading party.

US elite consider us suckers, taking ideology/propaganda seriously, satisfied with an army unfit for operation outside US framework, weak internally, transparent.

If you spent a lot of time mingling with the American elites, and that's your honest assessment of them, fair enough. I can't say I've talked to them all that much.

I resent this, you don't know what you're talking about. There is not a shred of inferiority complex in a typical Pole; he is cynical, a pessimist. Appearance of strength is enough for outsiders, not for people invested in the outcome.

Oh, I know quite a fair bit, actually. #NotAll, but if you've ran into someone who not only complains about his country, but goes out of their way to convince you that his country is shit, and does so over your explicit expression of genuine admiration, you're almost certainly talking to a Pole. Cynicism and pessimism? There's a difference between lack of trust and expecting the worst, and self-abasing yourself in front of others with expressions like "retarded puppy" and "unserious country". Yes, appearance of strength is for outsiders. In private there's nothing wrong with a sergeant screaming profanities at his men to whip them into shape, but there are also things that are not for outsiders' eyes, and performative self-flagellation is one of them. Even with all this, I could write it down to peculiarities of culture, and go with your explanation, if it wasn't for the tendency to put some foreign country on a pedestal, and chase them down every retarded suicidal trend they come up with. Which one it's going to be depends on one's political views, but if it's not the US, it's usually Germany or the nordics.

Maybe there's a better term for this than "inferiority complex" but it sure as hell is more than just cynicism and pessimism.

A country in our position should have domestic arms industry fit for modern war, own satellite recon, civil defence and reserve at Finnish level, elite loyal and capable of running a nuclear program without someone instantly running to snitch to the US. We don't have any of this due to a combination of skill issues, bad historical luck, and meddling.

You've pulled yourself out of a literal gutter within a single generation. It's good you don't want to rest on your laurels, but none of the countries around you are particularly serious by this standard.

I reject this framing, by the way. In fact, with the inability to keep trade routes open under even slight pressure, and the benefits of European integration into the NATO, the US is the freeloading party.

I've seen 3 views put forward about the US' relationship with Europe:

  1. Americans are the good guys, ensuring the world's stability purely out of the kindness of their hearts, and doing so despite the ingratitude of the parties they're helping

  2. America and Europe voluntarily entered into an agreement, where Europe gets security in return for strategic deference.

  3. The post-WW2 order is an American scheme to keep Europe down and ensure it will never be able to rival. or even be independent of, the US.

My personal view falls somewhere between #2 and #3. I've never heard of your view #4 "America is getting so much out of """European integration into NATO""" that they're the freeloaders, actually", and it feels about as naive as view #1 to me.

If you spent a lot of time mingling with the American elites, and that's your honest assessment of them, fair enough. I can't say I've talked to them all that much.

Of course this is a pleb assessment from the outside.

self-abasing yourself in front of others with expressions like "retarded puppy" and "unserious country"

Did not cross my mind that this is self-abasement or performative self-flagellation. "Retarded puppy" just describes what I think those people think of us. "Unserious country" is just a blunt assessment of our state relative to what our aspirations must be. Not like discussing such things in the open is abnormal, I don't have any insight that would warrant being secretive.

With appearances and outsiders, I did not mean putting up a front, but what one is satisfied with. For a neutral/sympathetic outsider, the appearance is enough, no consequences if it is hollow. Praise and admiration on questionable ground is worth little, not surprising people would push back on it; consider that it almost is an insult, "this bare minimum is impressive for the likes of you". You can cram this into "inferiority complex", but on group level, you'd be wrong, it's pride, revulsion to condescension.

You've pulled yourself out of a literal gutter within a single generation.

We were not in the gutter, and the rebound was easy for a European country in our position, switching away from a clown economic system, with the tailwinds of the period.

if it wasn't for the tendency to put some foreign country on a pedestal, and chase them down every retarded suicidal trend they come up with

Pedestal for the US, due to circumstances. Beyond that just standard dynamics of a peripheral country on the backfoot. Don't see us chasing down suicidal trends.

My personal view falls somewhere between #2 and #3. I've never heard of your view #4 "America is getting so much out of """European integration into NATO""" that they're the freeloaders, actually", and it feels about as naive as view #1 to me.

To the extent you presented this as a spectrum, shouldn't #4 sit between #2 and #3? #3 is aggression, freeloading implies just opportunism. Anyway, it's less naive than the view that there are freeloading NATO members because of military spending not being at whatever % of GDP.

I guess it depends wildly on who you mean by "elite", but I don't find this accurate at all. The way I see it, the broad left considers us a less bad version of Hungary for failing to bend the knee on various progressive causes. the right, honestly, hard to say, maybe the do see us as rubes, but I don't think it's as calculated as you present it, we're merely a weak, still unestablished player for them.

There is not a shred of inferiority complex in a typical Pole; he is cynical, a pessimist.

Guess I am imagining it then, when every single goddamn time, multiple times a week, when something bad happens, somebody from my friends or family is compelled to chime in saying that what occurred is so "typically Polish". When I hear people wishing that our country wouldn't exist, that the Germans should just annex us and bring civilization here. Etc. etc. The complex of Z A G R A N I C O may be less pronounced than it was 20 years ago, but it's alive and kicking.

I guess it depends wildly on who you mean by "elite"

Something more exclusive, definitely. For broad left/right, I don't really disagree with your view.

somebody from my friends or family is compelled to chime in saying that what occurred is so "typically Polish". When I hear people wishing that our country wouldn't exist, that the Germans should just annex us and bring civilization here

I'm surprised you find it so prevalent, I don't really encounter people that seriously hold (meaning, would make and stand by such a statement on pushback) this mindset irl, rarely someone that would say it without it being a joke.

Sorting, I suppose? My groups skew male, too.

You may well be right, but FWIW there is a lot of genuine respect for Poles from other countries that maybe wasn’t there before. Not just militarily, they’re often seen as very serious, very capable people who’ve known real hardship and don’t get fooled by trivial griping. One of the best engineers I knew was Polish.

I don't doubt this, I'm thinking here of Poland, the nation/country.

When I hear "unserious country" nowadays it's usually someone on the right talking about the U.K. or Germany.

I really wonder how many Poles still have anxiety over Russia. The very few of them that I’ve met seem to like Russia. Historically Russia and Iran never liked each other either. In 2026, they’re fairly close allies.

Flatly stating you like Russia would produce a mildly negative reaction in almost any company, but using a slur for Russians, describing them in strong negative terms, would not. Russian are 4 years into a horribly destructive, clearly pointless war, so reactions are biased, and anxiety about Russia as an aggressor is the default for near everyone.

Historically Russia and Iran never liked each other either

Not exactly comparable, Iran is on the periphery of Russia, Poland is in the way. But the divide is fixable, mistrust is permanent but hatred not, a change in Russian leadership, a decade, push to focus on similarities. And in certain configurations, inflexibly standing in the way of Eurasian integration will be just dangerous in practical terms, and will force us.

This Pew research report suggests almost everybody in Poland has a negative view of Russia.

The chart at the top shows 70% very unfavorable and 20% somewhat unfavorable (90% total). The 79% is the average across the countries surveyed.

21% is less than a quarter...?

I think if you were to look at opinion polls, or their justifications for increasing cooperation with NATO, you would see a lot more anxiety towards Russia.

It might not be recognisable as the American/Western European form of anti-Russia sentiment as they also have some friction with Ukraine and they're still friendly with Hungary, but Kaliningrad and Belarus are right beside them.

Obviously I can't speak for the "Polish street," but their government has been unrelentingly hawkish towards Russia for over a decade.

What’s the influence of political Catholicism like there? At least that’s where I’ve heard of support for Russia. The Russian ‘Civilizational State’ paradigm of foreign policy seems to attract a lot of former enemies they had in Europe that persisted since the Soviet times.

Political Catholicism is occasionally instrumentally cooperative with Russia, just like other movements outside the western mainstream(Russia's funding/assistance in western countries is an enormous grab bag including everything from greenies to texas nationalists and everything in between), but it's not ideologically pro-Russia.

Russian nationalism is tied to politicised Orthodoxy, and therefore anti-Catholic.

Turning American politicised evangelicalism from a force which was primarily anti-Catholic to a force which is primarily anti-Left was a multi-decade project.

American politicised evangelicalism has never been primarily anti-Catholic. It's too new; American politicised protestantism was at one time primarily anti-Catholic, but that was in the nineteenth century and they were not evangelical.

Evangelical is a specific thing, it doesn't just mean 'politically active protestant'.

Things are especially going bad in Israel according to some of the voices sitting behind the MSM. Maybe that’s what’s driving part of reversal of opinion. Not to mention the continued strong dissent from Jews in opposition to Zionism, but the latter is hard to estimate the impact of. The war was a dumb idea from the very get go. Any settlement that does get reached if things push in that direction, Iran has already made clear its intent is to play its hand to the strongest extent possible which would include concessions from Israel and the west to regional allies like Lebanon.

Can you provide more information about "Things are going especially bad in Israel according to some of the voices sitting behind the MSM"?

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