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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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I don't understand how anyone, regardless of his position on the war, can defend Trump right now.

Main defenses I'm seeing:

  1. This was actually a win, the biggliest win in the history of warfare. Trump utterly destroyed Iran and they came to the table begging for forgiveness.

  2. We were tricked by the Jews.

  3. The ceasefire and horrible terms are just part of Trump's 5D chess; he'll renege when the time is right and bring us to a true victory.

Comparatively little "we could have won if we were willing to man up and roll in the dirt with the cheating Iranians, but the backstabbing liberal media and pencil necks in the DoD prevented us" so far.

Seems like there is a third choice: sometimes paper tigers are actually dogs. Trump attacked Iran and weakened them militarily. He expected to create internal instability leading to regime change within but Iran grouped together like a pack of dogs.

So Trump’s hope for a quick victory was not realized. He was then given the choice of either a prolonged attack against a determined but weakened foe or cutting bait. He seems to have chosen the latter.

The question is how big of a cost was the gambit and what does Iran look like in five years. If the answer is “not much” and “the same or slightly degraded then it’s largely a whole lotta nothing.

AIUI, the protestors came first. The US was too slow to respond; by the time the air support showed up their infantry and their command structure were already dead.

If that's the case, this suggests an intelligence failure more than anything else- if they had waited for the US to show up, maybe they'd be in charge now. But they aren't.