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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1056 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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OK, now that Lindsay Graham, a sitting United States Senator “died suddenly after a brief illness” when a massive Russian missile strike occurred during his visit to Kyiv, are we now allowed to contemplate that this might not be the true story?

What would anybody gain by hiding this? If he was killed by the Russians that would be a tremendous leverage point in negotiations, probably infuriate Trump and bring him in line with the average governmental employee about Russia.

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

You'd also have to work tremendously hard to hide the outcome from his family.

Some military deaths are sus - those usually involve the bodies being unavailable and no utility in revealing the truth.

This is not that.

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

No it wouldn't. It would be same portion of the public who wants war everywhere anyway, except smaller. The constituency you would have to go to war with Russia let alone "WHATEVER" over Russia killing a very unpopular US senator in a warzone is single-digit territory. And once you assign the real costs of such a thing to the question in polling, support amounting to saying yes to a pollster would be single-digit as well. And the majority of that small group would be draft dodging boomers.

A lot of you here continue to think you live in an America which doesn't exist anymore. We've already blown the social and military capital on decades of idiotic wars and immigration. Anchor baby Jose Gonzales or insert other foreigner here isn't signing up for US military to fight Russia to avenge a POS senator getting killed in a war zone.

I think you underestimate America's ability to come together and be disgruntled, we are still willing to spend tremendous effort on these things (see the pilot rescue).

America didn't come together and be disgruntled in order to spend the effort to lose at least 5 manned aircraft in a bungled special ops raid inside Iran, that happened because the US President told the military to do it during a conflict which was already happening with the US military already there. The difference between baseline and continuing attacking Iran while attacking and going to war with Russia or "WHATEVER" is a categorical difference.

And the reason the US military did even that is because the US military is incapable of coming together to launch something like the Iraq invasion right now if the US was 9/11d right now, let alone because some POS elderly senator gets killed in a warzone on the other side of the world.

That America is gone and it's why this idiotic war for Israel is being done in such a bungled and unserious manner. The US is correctly terrified of any serious casualty event because they know that will end the already low public support for war. Are you doing your part? The enlistment age limit is 42 now. Have you signed up to be ready?

It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.

Why? If Russia killed him on US soil or blew some skyscrapers on US soil, that would be another thing, but in if it was in Ukraine, why would Americans care?

  1. Because a representative democracy cannot function if your opponents (who are themselves not democracies and don't have this weakness) can assassinate your representatives at will.
  2. Because Russia doesn't get to do that to America.

Graham visited a munitions factory in an active war zone. Even if the factory was blown up by the Russians while he was there, that still wouldn’t count as an assassination. Besides, we didn’t go to war the last time the Russians killed one of our congressmen.

Americans believe you don't fuck with America and Americans. So does everyone else. We are still heavily protected from drug cartels because of a tantrum the U.S. had in the 80s. It's a large part of our foreign policy.

Assassinating a sitting politician on purpose would be true casus belli. By accident would require a significant amount of reparations.

I mean look at how Iran acted when we did something similar.

Enforcing “you can’t touch Americans” can get very expensive. That’s basically the Iraq War. Which is why you might want to cover up “touched an American” so you largely preserve the taboo against touching Americans without needing to spend $10 trillion.

Trump is strangely soft on Putin and seems to want to avoid a (further) conflict with Russia at all costs, so Russia could probably get away with doing it "accidentally on purpose".

You said exactly why Trump etc would hide it.

“It would justify whatever with a large portion of the American public”

If your goal is to NOT have a Presidency defined by war then you do not want the populace inflamed for war. Reverse if your George Bush and you already decided to war Iraq.

Trump seems to personally love American power and want to retain it, hiding the assassination of a high profile public figure goes against everything he's done with his presidency and his revealed personality.

At the same time he'd have two MAJOR prongs trying to force the information out there - the majority of the American political and military establishment (which supports pressure on Russia) and any adversaries who find out (because Trump hiding it and then it being revealed would be a massive embarrassment).

It doesn't make any sense.

You would also need to hide it from his family who would presumably have similar political inclinations.

Whether you could successfully muzzle it is a different question than whether you would want to muzzle.

Trump is 100% would want to cover it up because he 100% does not want to be a war time President. Atleast at the group group escalation point of war.

His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.

His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.

With respect to Iran, that question hasn't come up yet, I think he'd be willing if he isn't getting what he needs - but the posters like me who think things are going fine feel like the question of ground war isn't being asked yet.

With respect to Ukraine he seems to think this isn't really any of America's business and that our involvement is unnecessary, with a side helping of "Europe needs to solve their own fucking problems." American military support has become necessary because That Is What We Do but he doesn't seem to care about it, and in contrast with Iran because the hostage crisis was a formative thing for men of a certain generation.

I would bet money that part of Russia's political calculus is "how do we approach this without pissing Trump off enough to get him involved and interested."

An assassination would do that.

Note that Russia's threats toward the US have been very mild by their standards since Trump 2 came on board.

What are you disagreeing with?

I am saying Trump does not want to escalate either war so would have motive to cover up an assassination if it would greatly increase war risks.

I'm saying he would be pissed and want to go to war if the Russians did that?

Maybe. Maybe not. I’d prefer to cover it up if I were him because being a war POTUS would fundamentally change why we voted for him.

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With respect to Ukraine he seems to think this isn't really any of America's business and that our involvement is unnecessary, with a side helping of "Europe needs to solve their own fucking problems." American military support has become necessary because That Is What We Do but he doesn't seem to care about it, and in contrast with Iran because the hostage crisis was a formative thing for men of a certain generation.

The hostage crisis was formative but not the Cold War?

I think a reading of Trump that's compatible with all of this is that he's a flat-track bully who wants easy wins. Or, more charitably, holds his allies to a higher standard based on the view that they're either more malleable or already possess a large enough collection of military and economic power as to solve regional problems if they would but apply it.

This is why he's so harsh towards allies, including in ways that are unprecedented, but willing to find some deal with people he understands he cannot only coerce. It's easier to coerce Ukraine to sign unto a deal than Russia. At least, that was the theory of the case when he ganged up on Zelensky.

Iran was in a liminal zone: an uppity Third World pissant that did things like kidnap US staff, but a dangerous one as pissants go. So no attack, until it looked incredibly weak.

I don't think Trump wants or expects to be in anything like the sort of generation-defining conflict a war with Iran or the reprisal for the assassination of a US Senator would demand. He wants Venezuela-wins (not a surprise the attack on Iran was after that)

Well yes your not suppose to contemplate and it’s for your own benefit. International Diplomacy kind of works like that sometimes. You, us, the government may not want to escalate things if he was actually killed by Russia/Iran.

So the warmonger in chief is dead. That complicates the picture a lot for Republicans in November and for the whole strategy of US in Ukraine.

Probably not, because unlike the military men I don't think senator's staffers know how to really keep their mouth shut. And unlike the alleged military dead in Ukraine, this is a story the liberal medial would love to blow to put Trump in a bad place.

I think it's more likely that an old man who flew a lot developed blood clots, but at this point I can't confidently rule out the alternative.

Died suddenly after brief illness is such weird phrasing and reporting.

Wouldn’t “old senator found unresponsive after cardiac arrest, dead” make a lot more sense if it was as you suspect?

Sudden deaths of famous people almost never have their cause of death immediately reported these days, no matter how mundane or obvious the acute reason. I'd guess there's this perception among journalists that if you make the obvious conclusion but somehow end up wrong, then you're instantly transformed into a TMZ-level rag. This is compounded by the fact that family of the deceased often refuse to give media any direct information for several days.

Remember there was live footage of Kirk being shot through the neck and having blood gush out while he slumped over, and yet the media refused to declare him dead for like a day.

What's the proposed mechanism? Are we suggesting he died in the missile strike? The reporting says a cardiac event at home - maybe the FSB slipped something into his viagra?

No, he just got blown up and they didn’t declare him dead until his remains got home stateside. They do this all the time, there was a marine general who died the day after getting back from Kiev to 29 Palms the exact same way. Graham was touring an advanced strike-drone factory that got unexpectedly hit by 8 Iskander missiles.

Graham was touring an advanced strike-drone factory that got unexpectedly hit by 8 Iskander missiles.

Source?

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