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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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Meanwhile you've killed scores of civilians, support displacement of millions, bomb population centers with impunity, and your president is threatening to escalate to committing large scale war crimes with childlike glee, as a Tough Negotiation tactic that he finds very clever. Let me cite it in full:

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be. By scores do you mean dozens? We have certainly killed fewer than the Iranians own government did a couple months back. Most Iranians are not displaced. Most homes are in tact. The Iranians I see who can still get the occasional internet access say that they aren't afraid of the bombs, they're afraid of the bombs stopping because that means the war is over and the IRCG is still in charge.

Targeting mixed-use infrastructure is not actually a war crime and there are ways to target infrastructure without permanently destroying it. Trump might actually be legitimately senile and I hope he gets replaced soon, but the military is still run by competent good people. Don't pay any attention to anything on Truth Social ever and you'll probably have a clearer view of world events.

I would also just add that I think the idea that the US just now started acting with "realpolitik" is...very ahistorical. Europe accepted us after WW2 because the Russians were ~infinitely worse, not because the US didn't indulge in realpolitik.

For all the griping about Iraq (which...I get it! I also gripe about Iraq!) and American Empire, the specific failures of Iraq were bad in (large) part because it wasn't tempered by realpolitik, not because it was an imperial/hegemonic action. I think a realpolitik view (and also most American presidents throughout all of history) would have just bombed the heck out of various unlucky places known or suspected to be involved in terrorism and bribed, beg, borrowed, stolen and murdered until we got UBL and then called it a day. That might have been bad in different ways but it probably would not have been a 20-year ground occupation.