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.
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?
I pretty much agree. The Iran war was utterly stupid for the US to launch in 2026, because there was no way to finish it in successful fashion, because the capital really wasn't there. I could sense this from Europe. I have no idea why so many Americans don't seem to have a sense of the level of capitals present in their own society.
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