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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   11872 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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How Trump Took the US to War in Iran

Netanyahu claimed it would be possible to effect quick regime change via Mossad-aided protests and even arming the Kurds (who apparently just kept the guns, having learned from past American 'support').

Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.

Mossad is obviously too smart for this to have been their true assessment. The CIA quickly realized it was BS:

The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.S. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation — killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country.

The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable with American intelligence and military power. They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s pitch, which included the possibility of the Kurds mounting a ground invasion of Iran, were detached from reality. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.” At that point, Mr. Rubio cut in. “In other words, it’s bullshit,” he said.

The president then turned to General Caine. “General, what do you think?” General Caine replied: “Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”

So, Trump's team at least was not snookered by claims of easy victory. But as chairman of the JCS, Caine had to walk the fine line between giving military advice and administering politics.

He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risks of Iran blocking it. Mr. Trump had dismissed that possibility on the assumption that the regime would capitulate before it came to that. The president appeared to think it would be a very quick war — an impression that had been reinforced by the tepid response to the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. General Caine’s role in the lead-up to the war captured a classic tension between military counsel and presidential decision-making. So persistent was the chairman in not taking a stand — repeating that it was not his role to tell the president what to do, but rather to present options along with potential risks and possible second- and third-order consequences — that he could appear to some of those listening to be arguing all sides of an issue simultaneously. At no point during the deliberations did the chairman directly tell the president that war with Iran was a terrible idea — though some of General Caine’s colleagues believed that was exactly what he thought.

It's reminiscent of the bind that the JCS was in back in 1964-65, when LBJ played them against each other and silenced their belief in a full military commitment so that he could tiptoe into the Vietnam War without anyone noticing. Meanwhile Vance was the most dovish of his advisors.

In January, when Mr. Trump publicly warned Iran to stop killing protesters and promised that help was on its way, Mr. Vance had privately encouraged the president to enforce his red line. But what the vice president pushed for was a limited, punitive strike, something closer to the model of Mr. Trump’s missile attack against Syria in 2017 over the use of chemical weapons against civilians. The vice president thought a regime-change war with Iran would be a disaster. His preference was for no strikes at all. But knowing that Mr. Trump was likely to intervene in some fashion, he tried to steer toward more limited action. Later, when it seemed certain that the president was set on a large-scale campaign, Mr. Vance argued that he should do so with overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his objectives quickly.

The deciding factor against negotiations was, apparently, really stupid. Why on earth would the Iranians want to be taking handouts from the US like this?

That same week, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff called from Geneva after the latest talks with Iranian officials. Over three rounds of negotiations in Oman and Switzerland, the two had tested Iran’s willingness to make a deal. At one point, they offered the Iranians free nuclear fuel for the life of their program — a test of whether Tehran’s insistence on enrichment was truly about civilian energy or about preserving the ability to build a bomb. The Iranians rejected the offer, calling it an assault on their dignity.

It seems like his team would have decided against intervention if the choice was up to them. Ultimately the buck stops with Trump, and everyone else who's come this far is willing to live with his decisions.

Wow. This story basically hands a giant bazooka to the anti Semitic wing of the Republican party. MAGA will do anything to shift blame away from Trump. Before this, the MO was the old Good Tsar, Bad Boyars schtick. But now there's a clear scapegoat: It's the (Israeli) Jews' fault.

Nick Fuentes will be eating good it seems.

Consider whether the reality of the situation is best described in the language of bias and scapegoats, and whether the problem is Nick Fuentes or the people who just got us into a literal war.

  • A foreign nation successfully persuaded the President to wage a costly and unjust war on their behalf despite the protests of the entire USIC and most of his appointees. The only appointee who was supportive of the war is Hegseth, who secured his nomination through the approval of the Jewish community via Norm Coleman, a pro-Israel shill and the leader of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

  • Lindsey Graham, a closeted homosexual who visits Tel Aviv every two weeks (except during the war when he replaced his visits with Disney Land — odd), was integral to persuading Trump about Iran, using the soundbites he learned from Mossad, in Israel.

  • Trump’s favorite news program, the Mark Levin show, is run by a pro-Israel shill with a close relationship to this foreign country.

  • Our negotiating team was comprised of two Jews with a close relationship to this foreign country, and they apparently lied about the negotiation progress.

  • The extent of foreign interference was so significant that the head of our counter-terrorism resigned to tell the American public, a man who formerly served directly under the DNI, which oversees pretty much all intelligence between the USIC and the executive branch.

  • During our mission to rescue a lost pilot, Israeli journalists jeopardized the safety of hundreds of Americans by reporting first on the second lost pilot.

The takeaway for the average American is not going to be “aw, the innocent scapegoat Israel is getting blame”, it is probably going to be “get these people as far away from power and influence as humanly possible”, which I think is the rational assessment based on two decades of their pernicious influence. Trump is 80yo, the Israelis should not have the influence they have on him, not with the team of 140iq psychologists behind them who know exactly how to zero-day his personality vulnerabilities.

Another way to put it: okay, we have blamed Trump, and he should get blame, but is that where the blame should stop? What about the false-ally — the traitor-ally — that tricked us into war by taking advantage of the cognitively-vulnerable 80yo Trump? It is more useful to blame this entity, because they may continue to exert a pernicious influence on American politics into the future.

Dealing with lobbying is part and parcel of being President. If he's "vulnerable" to persuasion that's not the fault of the persuader, it's a skill issue.

And when we have finished blaming Trump, we still have the important question of how to prevent this from happening again. The obvious answer is to significantly curtail the influence of pro-Israelis, as this is the second war they managed to get in just 23 years. Israeli lobbying is unusually influential in America, and so we can simply curtail it to regain sovereignty. Why allow the risk of another war? Especially in light of Epstein!

Do we want to prevent this from happening again? We took a gamble and losts. Unlike every other American POTUS it’s not turning into a forever war. If we get out of this without a toll of the straits and still limiting Iran going nuclear it would seem ok. Fog of war still exists and we still don’t know if what remains of the Iranian regime can consolidate power.

If it’s an example of taking a gamble and taking a quick L it can be ok.

This isn’t turning into Vietnam or Putin’s 3 day war.

Most recent American wars didn't turn into forever wars, though. The first Bush's Gulf War, Clinton's Kosovo War, Obama's Libya war. I'm not a fan of any of those wars, but to be fair to those Presidents, they managed to get in and get out pretty quickly.

The big difference is that Iran will continue to have the capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz, barring total defeat on the ground and an US occupation. Serbia in 1999 or Iraq in 1991 or Libya in 2011 had no such comparable options to sabotage US interests at all.

Fair. But I feel like in those wars there was less a feeling we losts and found our way out. This war I believe regime change was the primary goal and we clearly did not achieve that. Libya I don’t know our goals. Gulf 1 was a win.

As did Trump with Venezuela.

The real question is “what happens when you meet with determined resistance.” Option 1 is forever war. Option 2 is get out quick.

Trump may take Option 2. Iran is heavily degraded but putting up enough fight that it ain’t worth the squeeze

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