> ignoring the spicier broader debate of if the whole Iran campaign was the right call or not
How spicy of a debate is that really? How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?
Clearly this war isn't popular but that's a far cry from saying there's no debate. Like many other topics/questions we're seeing people following their tribe and bubbles rather than actual debating.
I would question to what extent repeating propaganda, qualifies as debate.
Even if you do say that it qualifies, it doesn't qualify as productive debate.
There is really no productive debate to be had here. Even if you think that Iran needed to be bombed, it took absurd incompetence to start doing so before planning how to handle asymmetric warfare against drones in an affordable way.
I also think there was an initial “euphoria” (I guess) during the initial days of the campaign.
People I know (even Iranian expats) were excited to see the regime get hammered and there was hope for possibility of change (and also a little bloodlust)… but I think as the war drags on and the US is exposed to be in an un-winnable mess, sentiment will continue to sour.
This has already started to happen in Nate Silver’s post you linked.
Trump has been talking about destroying Iranian desalination plants, and "bombing the country back to the stone age". This is no surgical decapitation strike, nor one just targetting Iran's military capabilities. This is a vicious senile old man living out his dictator "I can do anything I like" fantasies, who could care less about helping the Iranian people, or those in America for that matter.
I am shocked that the Democrats are not making clear to the military that engaging in crimes against humanity may have consequences for them -- not to speak, of course, of politicians higher up in the chain of command.
Your first link says 28% support it, so somewhere between 28 and 37%. I do wonder how many of those people could find Iran on a map, though I suppose you could ask the same about the people who are against it.
75 million using the YouGov number and just under 100 million using the Nate Silver average. (I think you must have used the more Trump-favorable number AND included children in your computation, which is not reasonable.)
Also worth noting that Nate Silver's measure has been declining for almost 3 weeks, the majority of the duration of the invasion.
Before the invasion, a University of Mariland poll says 55 million and a YouTov poll says 71 million support. These are useful numbers because we know there's a rally around the flag effect that distorts thinking during a conflict.
20-25% of Americans would support Trump pulling his pants down and taking a shit on the floor in the oval office on live TV. These people's opinions shouldn't be taken into account or respected in these discussions.
That is an interesting take. Seen from elsewhere in the world, we cannot afford not taking into account a big chunk of the American electoral body, which is effectively at war with us (by various means).
Essentially, a MESA movement, “Make the Earth Shit Again”.
The obvious implication is that the rest of the world is at war with the US (by various means), and should act accordingly, starting with a wide-ranging consumer boycott of all US products.
I think that you will find that many people think that we ought to solve the 50 year old problem in the Mideast once and for all. Now that the Russians are busy, that Venezuela is down, that Syria has fallen, and that the Chinese are minding their own business is a good time to decapitate Iran. Also Cuba is next.
Permanently disarming Iran, and creating conditions favorable to the fall of the Islamist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Mideast since 1979.
No idea, but it's safe to say that Iran has lost most of their navy and air force already. It's harder to tell how many launchers, missiles, and drones Iran has left however, as it is deliberately hiding and conserving munitions for what they expect will be a protracted conflict.
The other unknown is how far the U.S., Isreal, and potentially other countries are willing to go. Turning the lights off and literally sending Iran back to the stone age wouldn't be so difficult at this stage, but would probably rule out the possibility of a deal that sees Iran disarm and hand over the enriched uranium.
North Korea was able to get nuclear weapons because we didn't want the carnage of artillery bombardment to Seoul that would have been the retaliation, had we stopped them.
Iran was close to achieving that same thing with ballistic missile bombardment of Europe.
The problem is that Iran, unlike NK, is run by a fanatical death cult with stated goal of attacking United States and history of running proxy militias in every nearby failed state, in a neighborhood that has no shortage of failed states.
The US defense secretary (excuse me, War secretary) is almost covered with tattoos and mottoes celebrating the Crusades [1]. I wouldn't go around accusing other countries of being run by "death cults" if I were you. We have a nuclear-armed death cult called Christian Dominionism here at home.
Surprisingly so, I would say. Without going into any identifying details, my buddy, who is otherwise fairly reasonable, thinks it was. I disagree. Reported country split ( US ) seems to fall some along common political lines though, so maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.
Then again.. I can no longer can rely on those surveys in any meaningful way.
As a person who believes in democracy, I'm pretty on board with it. My only complaint is they didn't do these strikes when the massive street protests were happening a few months ago.
This is what bringing democracy looks like?! The regime is more entrenched than ever and our commander in chief keeps threatening to commit war crimes on a massive scale. If he follows through on what he says he will do and obliterates all the civilian infrastructure in the country it will kill mass numbers of innocent people and turn millions of survivors into impoverished refugees.
As bad as the regime is, and it's very bad, what we're doing is even worse for most Iranians and the odds a democratic government arises from the ashes of our bombing campaign is incredibly unlikely.
Yes, bombing schools, universities and dessalination plants is a sure way to have more democracy in a country. Especially double taps where you kill the rescuers.
The US have so many examples where they did so and worked!
Oh, didn't you hear, we actually _triple tapped_ the school, so after the first wave of rescuers was also hit, anyone who came to help was also attacked.
Even if true, it's legally incorrect, btw. There are 2 kinds of warcrimes: Rome treaty (the only legal definition) and Geneva convention. The Rome treaty allows countries to opt-out of the treaty, and then nothing on their territory qualifies as a war crime. Iran has opted out of the Rome treaty, and so when it comes to international law, nothing that happens on Iranian soil is a war crime.
And we all know WHY islamists want it that way. But of course they will confuse matters as propaganda ...
Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations. And ignoring that EVERY attack Iran executed in the 2 days was a warcrime in that definition. Every last one. They didn't even try to go after military targets for days. But ignoring that.
What warcrimes do, in the sense of the Geneva convention, is that they are justifications for the UNSC to intervene, should it want to. Well, Russia, China and France have just declared that the UNSC does not follow the reasoning that these are warcrimes. Not because they don't believe Geneva convention violations aren't heinous crimes (of course Iran has violated it constantly for 50+ years with constant heinous crimes), but that these states don't see any reason to act.
"According to witness accounts verified by satellite-based analyses, the school was triple tapped by three distinct strikes."
War crime isn't just a legal definition, just like the world was genocide-free before WW2. And by your reasoning it's totally fine to genocide people as long as no treaty/law prevents it. Of course it isn't.
Most people would agree to say that bombing a school or a dessalination plant is a war crime, whatever the convention was signed before. Schoolchildren are not responsible for the IRGC's actions.
> Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations.
The other "colloquial" definition of a war crime is "things we prosecuted the Nazis for at Nuremberg".
One side here is playing "world's police", so this "but those people (that we've painted as fundamentalist extremist terrorists) are committing war crimes so why shouldn't we get to, too?" isn't exactly the fine upstanding argument that you seem to think it is, just as it's not when the IDF responds to children throwing rocks at main battle tanks with live ammunition and turning off the power to a country for three days.
Aren't those war crimes? Will anything be done about that I wonder. And if your goal is bringing democracy and liberating a people from a oppressive regime, then hurting the people by making their air unbreakable or bombing the water plants is NOT how you go about.
I understand that war is not pretty and regime change is brutal to all parties involved, but this is done in the worst way possible.
Most probably nothing. If things get really bad and there is a revolution or something of that magnitude in the US there may be a Nuremberg moment. Don’t count on it. Whatever government will come next will do everything they can to shield American generals and officials because otherwise they would be afraid the same thing would happen to them once they leave office. The only thing that could keep these people accountable is the American people through Congress. So yeah, probably nothing. Which is bad, because these war crimes are up there with what supposedly evil regimes did in the past.
> As a person who believes in democracy, I'm pretty on board with it.
As others have stated. This war will not bring democracy. Bombing Iranians have united them with the regime.
Also, US and Israel do not want a democracy in Iran. Israel would prefer a non-functioning place like Palestine or a mostly non-functional place like Lebanon that they can easily control.
Denazify… oops, wrong country, sorry. "Changing the regime". But it cannot possibly be true because regime change, just like foreign wars are bad according to Trump. So, in reality, who knows?
My guess is that some nutcases at the pentagon got an adrenaline rush during the little adventure in Venezuela and looked for another country to mess with. It’s obvious that no real thought was put into what exactly is the point of all of this or how to actually get to that point. I mean, they were surprised that Turkey was upset and that Iran closed the Gulf. Or that none of the allies Trump has been shitting on for decades showed up. This does not point to any serious thought process.
Well, I have no idea. I'm just guessing it's not the reason I like the war.
I generally only attempt to scrutinize government action, and not government reason for action. Random citizens are at such an information disadvantage that I think it would be impossible to have an informed opinion as an outsider on the reasoning.
It could be as simple as "Iran kept trying to assassinate me so I'm going to assassinate them". Maybe he was pressured by Israel, I really have no idea.
> I generally only attempt to scrutinize government action, and not government reason for action
This might be the wildest opinion I've read.
You're onboard with the US bombing another country ("I like the war"), but you don't know, or care WHY. You just think it was a good idea.
"Random citizens are at such an information disadvantage that I think it would be impossible to have an informed opinion as an outsider on the reasoning."
I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but if you re-read your own words, you've just said a random citizen like yourself can't possibly know enough to have an informed opinion, yet you gave us your opinion, which is that you think they should have bombed Iran.
If this is a troll it is masterful. If it's an honest opinion I would invite you to check your skull for unexpected holes where your brain may have fallen out.
An unfortunate and unintended consequence of counterattacking the invader. Very different from bombing a school due to bad intelligence in an unprovoked attack.
You say this like a system of international law has ever existed that effectively restrains the most powerful nations in the world, democracies or otherwise.
The math teacher was more along the lines of as x approaches zero or was it f(x). It was a really really long time ago since I've had a math teacher, but the approaches zero was something said frequently
Literally none of the fighting countries want Iran to be democratic. Neither USA nor Israel nor Iran. Israel dont want the country functional and would prevent democracy. USA idea of regime change is to keep regime, change head for someone who pays extortion money. And if Iranian leadership wanted democracy they would have one. Not sure if you noticed, but American admin loves dictators and insults democracies
So ,WTF are you talking about here.
Also, bombing city with that double tap tactic during protests ensures you kill protesters.
Having Iran be "non functional" would just be asking for even more hardliners take over, like what happened in syria. I don't take this to be actually indicative of their viewpoints.
Or in Gaza, and it is not an accident. As far as they are concerned it’s working great. Israel is in a state of permanent warfare, which completely silences any kind of debate about what country it wants to be, enables racist nationalists who can freely go about burning villages, and it keeps Bibi out of prison. None of what has happened in the last 20 years or so in the region strikes me as particularly well thought out with a long term strategy besides keeping all their neighbours in the Middle Ages.
Not really. Just that trust ain't binary and the govt is made of people. I don't like this admin but this too shall pass. Cultivate your garden. Electing bad people has consequences.
None of what's happening today could have happened without everything that came before it.
The blue team carries plenty of blame for not fielding better candidates. If nobody is buying your bullshit, it's a little weak to blame the customer.
And all of the us electorate carries plenty of blame for letting our government get so massive and out of control over time. We've let this beast metastasize and grow, and now were stuck with it.
The American people are ultimately to blame for it, they've got the government they deserve, which is actively dismantling the US empire day by day. The American people voted for Trump instead of Kamala, and that is rather damning of the state of the American people, far more so than however damning it may also be for the Democratic party.
As we all know, in this day and age, you need to REALLY sell your story, and have the media behind you. Competence is tertiary.
> Approval of Trump among Republicans has slipped to a second-term low of 84%, down from 92% last March. At the same time, an all-time high 16% of Republicans disapprove. This shift can be attributed, at least in part, to declining support among non-MAGA Republicans, as approval dropped 11 points in the last year among this group (70% in March 2025 to 59% today). Virtually all MAGA Republicans continue to approve of Trump, with 98% approving a year ago and 97% now.
You haven't really made an argument of your own. You've just made a claim and presented no evidence. "Simple as that" is neither argument nor evidence nor rationale. This is no better than the people who fall back on "war is hell" to justify when they've fucked up and caused the deaths and suffering of a bunch of civilians for no good purpose.
You could at least say something like "we have to bomb the people so they can be free" or "don't you know the Iranians were seconds away from nuking new York, because they have no regard for their own survival".
We should "deprecate" offensive wars of choice based on lies because the opportunity cost is enormous (what could we have bought with the 200+ billion they're already looking to spend here?).
Every time we do this we create more terrorists (see the blowback incidents weve already had from this war), which results in more egregious government overreach on the domestic population (see patriot act and the experience of commercial flight in today's world).
And those are just some of the basic reasons. I don't have time to write them all.
Wow. I guess I'm surprised it took this long for banner ads to reach TVs.
I think I have my next startup idea: a physical ad blocker for this thing. We could even have multiple styles: yellow sticky note, duct tape, painters tape.
And if you want cheaper ones, we can print our own ads on your ad blocker!
"Their only possible reaction would be to bombard troops there, destroying their own export infrastructure in the process."
Right, so if that's their only possible reaction, isn't that a bad thing for everyone? It looks like they've made it clear they're not going down without bringing everyone else with them, and why would they? What options do they have?
I mean they seem to have made it clear by their actions. They're in an existential situation, so its not like there is any reason to hold anything back.
If your opponent is trying to turn you into Libya, then whatever you do just has to not fail as badly as that for it to be the right move. You basically become a cornered animal.
The thing about disintegrating regimes is there is no "they".
There's people with power, looking out for their own self interests. You think after a few more weeks all of the newly promoted Iranian military leadership is going to weigh a few million dollars in personal benefit against the glory of the cause and decide on the latter?
OK, so take this back to your boots on kharg island plan, where this "no they" only has the option of bombarding our troops. Are you saying they also have the option of ... Getting a few million dollars in personal benefit somehow?
The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?
> The only option they have on offer is death, either fighting the us and Israel, or fighting in whatever civil war crops up after. Why would they believe in any negotiations after the last two times?
The writing is on the wall that the US wants to end the war (and Israel won't have a choice but to follow). Which means anyone with military command authority in Iran has leverage to extract concessions from the US.
Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?
Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.
The point of regime decapitation, to give the Israeli assassinations (especially of internal security force leaders) their most strategically foresighted interpretation (instead of the more likely opportunistic one), is to shuffle people into power that haven't already made a resist vs cooperate decision.
At some point, everyone cares about their own skin and their future most.
> Do either of us think the current US admin is above causing a few million to appear in a bank account somewhere, in exchange for secret cooperation?
> Especially when the calculus is between stick (Israeli assassination) and carrot (money), and that substantial personal wealth means power in any post-war Iranian order. Or living as a wealthy expat as plan B.
No, of course we wouldn't (and I'd say shouldn't) be above that. The question is how that comes to pass.
Imagine you're some sort of Iranian official that actually has some sway in the country.
1) why on earth would you even entertain negotiations, when your enemy repeatedly uses them as cover for sneak attacks?
2) assuming you get past 1), and the us offers you money. If you take it and leave, you don't have any influence in your country anymore anyway, so what have we gained? If you take it and stay, do the people still follow you if you capitulate? And what's to stop Israel from assassinating you anyway, or launching another war 6 months from now?
The only rational move seems to be to establish deterrence by making this thing as painful as possible for everyone involved, and us invading plays right into that.
One of your "YouTube analysts" is a professor that developed one of the schools of realism, so maybe that's why he's using that "buzzword".
Edit: and varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece. I have no idea if he was any good at it or not, but your characterization is a little silly either way.
Would they be more credible to you if they gave 2 minute soundbites in between advertisements for drugs and gold on cable news?
Maybe I should've added a line break between the sentence.
I'm fully aware of prof Mearsheimers credential, and what realism is. I'm also aware that the biggest proponent of realism with the most power at hand, was Henry Kissinger. Not the brightest shining beacon.
Their worldview is funny. A self fulfilling prophecy kind of take that is most often used to justify heinous behavior by saying "well everyone is doing it" and take a selective look at history and deriving some universal theory of international politics.
So I think the "using one parameter to explain everything" is an apt description of him. A hallmark of pop social science gifter pattern is when they try to apply that one thing to everything. Mearsheimer isn't (wasn't?) that until the podcast fame inevitably asked questions to him that is outside his expertise and audience capture, inevitably, kicked in
Edit: indeed. He was finance minister during the Greek financial crisis. With your appeal to authority Fallacy, Lizz Tuss should still be taken seriously because she was UK prime minister (that was out lasted by a lettuce).
I like Varoufakis. He's at least consistent. His technofeudalism observation have some merit. But still his analysis comes from a limited scope, and (he's open about this) colored heavily by his communist stance.
The point was:
All those expert often have a compelling analysis, but the nuance is often lost in the medium such as YouTube. It's better to dive in to the nuance, critically examine it, and then listen broadly and repeat.
Yeah, I guess I zeroed in on the YouTube part and missed the one parameter part, which I'm not really qualified to speak to. I happen to think audio/video (basically lectures and dialogues) is a fine part of the toolkit for learning.
I was reading it as "look at these dumb tiktok'ers" or something like that, which seems like it would be selling at least those 2 quite a bit short.
You're a lay person. You know there is a thing out there called 'foo'.
You've read things that compellingly claim that foo causes xyz symptoms. You also know that some people that have obviously palpable disdain for you claim that foo could never cause these symptoms.
You have xyz symptoms. Are you mentally ill if you think that foo could be the cause?
What’s “compelling”? I’d suggest that any medical theory that relies upon a vast global conspiracy to hide the truth about 5G cannot possibly be compelling.
If someone can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not, they are not well.
> I’d suggest that any medical theory that relies upon a vast global conspiracy to hide the truth about 5G cannot possibly be compelling.
Except some vast global conspiracy isn't the only way you could arrive at 5g having some deleterious effects on some subset of people. Were xrays for shoe fitting some vast global conspiracy? Or leaded gasoline? Or any number of things that turned out to be more dangerous in hindsight?
Whether you feel this way or not, institutional trust is gone.
And as for what's real or what's not, you're probably decent within your areas of expertise. Once you get outside of that range, you probably don't know the difference between real and not for plenty of things. What the hell does your average person really know about things like 5g? It might as well be magic.
The issue is that the line between "silly conspiracy" and "ignored/suppressed actual problem" is not clear, especially when the topic is politicized even in the face of overwhelming one-sided evidence. "Compelling" is a subjective judgment by the speaker, and for that matter, so is "mental illness"
> Every single plutocrat that pulls the levers that get you riled on your march to becoming Soylent Green got the vaccines. Every single power broker got the vaccines
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am curious how you came to know this so confidently.
While it's clearly rhetorical bombast and zero readers would assume I've actually polled every person in such a position, anti-vax nonsense is a thing primarily among America's bugeoning and incredibly loud idiocracy.
So basically you have a gut feeling that you feel very passionately, but that we have no way of evaluating.
It might be just as likely that zero of the people in such a position took the vaccines for all we know. How is this somehow more enlightened than the idiocracy that you are decrying?
Ignoring that most, like Trump, just outright admitted it, simple logic dictates that reality.
When something has overwhelming scientific and medical evidence in its favour, and the alternative are a bunch of high school dropout conspiracy nuts cheered on by simpletons like Joe Rogan, odds overwhelmingly lean towards the connected and rich going in one direction. Like, this is so blatantly obvious that I find your scepticism laughable.
Checkmate? Are you purposefully trying to fit the cliche?
Just to be clear, you are citing a worthless online Facebook poll. The sort where people like you check "PhD" (the -h is lowercase, bro) because you think it makes your rhetoric more authoritative.
There are countless other studies -- ones that aren't a dogshit, worthless online Facebook poll -- that show an extremely strong correlation between anti-vax beliefs and having a lower education level, and often being lower intelligence. Overwhelming evidence.
But I suspect that you will just flood the space with bullshit from horseshit venues like "unherd", so I bid you goodbye. You mentioned elsewhere, after the ridiculous anti-vax horseshit you said about Zuck, that you aren't an anti-vaxxer. I guarantee you 100% are.
> Ignoring that most, like Trump, just outright admitted it
So if trump said it, it must be true?
The rest of what you said could be translated to: "I believe it was such a good idea, all the rich and powerful must have done it".
How is this not a gut feeling?
My skepticism is solely for your argument, not that these people did or did not take the vaccine, which is something that I consider basically unknowable without a lot of leaps of faith.
Edit: in fact, here's my equally unprovable assertion: most people got the vaccine because they didn't want to lose their jobs. Rich and powerful people don't have to worry about that. Therefore fewer of them got the vaccines.
The amount of regret that exists doesn't fit either, don't forget Biden's warning that those who don't take it will die, the exact opposite of all the fear mongering happened and it's despicable people keep telling all the same lies.
"Regret"? You mean the grifters conning the waves and waves of incredibly stupid Americans? Do you think the million or so people who died of COVID also might have some regrets?
Biden didn't warn that "those who don't take it will die" -- again, why do you people lie constantly about everything? -- he warned that it would be a winter of severe illness and death, which is absolutely, unequivocally, empirically true! In those early days hospitals were legitimately overcrowded with severe cases. Are we pretending that didn't happen now?
I mean, you guys really are. It's incredible.
I get that America is doing a speed-run to being the dumbest idiocracy on the planet, so you guys have this momentary period where you think you "won". Just be aware that to the entire rest of the planet you are a worldwide farce. A "how not to", and it's incredible how much the super rich conned the masses of the stupid to continually act against their own best interests.
By March 2020, the early John's Hopkins data showed a clear trend of those demographics who were actually vulnerable of serious harm, namely the elderly and those with already compromised immune systems. We knew even back then, that children and healthy adults were NOT at risk from COVID-19, even the early strains which were much more virulent than the later ones. It was censored, over and over, by Twitter, Facebook and even HN.
I've only really heard of cisa in terms of "fighting disinformation", which seemed more than a little dubious. Can someone speak to what their mission is and how effective they've been at it?
Or is this like the DHS where you just get to say that we haven't had any more 9/11s, so clearly the money and complete transformation of how we think about personal liberties was worth it?
Theoretically, it makes sense that we would need something like a cyber defense agency. Realistically, this doesn't seem like something the government (even at the best of times) would be capable of doing effectively.
Before its recent extension into the mis/disinformation (censorship) space, CISA was primarily focused on coordinating public/private response to cyber threats and distributing information about known vulnerabilities. It is the primary US sponsor of the CVE system, for instance. It also provides guidance regarding best practices to industry and government agencies.
By getting CISA involved in speech regulation, former directors made CISA into a political football, risking its core mission. (This actually happened during the first Trump admin, under a Trump appointee, but continued into the Biden administration.) There is no reason that an organization established to tackle cyber threats should be involved with regulating speech via third parties in NGOs and industry. None. Not even if that speech takes place “on the internet.”
Reading is worthless if you don't vet your sources. Encyclopedia Britannica and Uncle Johnny's Chemtrail Digest are not equally valid sources of truth.
And there's the actual hard part: institutional trustworthiness is in the shitter. Everyone will have their sources that they trust, and if were honest, none of us can really vet any of them.
A lot of these disputes can be simplified to "I don't trust your sources".
That's true; but I also think a lot of these disputes originate with "your research invalidates my axiomatic beliefs, so I will find whatever 'evidence' needed to counter them." Especially disputes percolating down from the political strata.
How spicy of a debate is that really? How many people outside of the admin and the dwindling hardcore trump base actually thought this was a good idea?
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