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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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?
This does matter if you want allies to support you, which is usually nice to have, although not required in this case
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Yeap, that’s what matters. The process matters as much as the results.
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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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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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?
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.
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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).
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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.
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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".
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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.
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