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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   988 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.

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.

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".

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