War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
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I do know that, but Europeans seem to forget that and all the other atrocities they've committed.
I don't know why you keep making it sound like your far right isn't using Christianity...I've seen the marching, the flags they waive. You think all of the anit-muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric is being done in the name of Odin or something?
There's an entire city in Europe that is the seat of a giant multi-national church. You have several heads of state that are also heads of the national religion.
What, the fuck, are you actually talking about in terms of ancient history?
Ancient or not, Europe choosing to boot out any religious sect that didn't adhere to the various European crowns is at the very root of why the US has such a problem with fundamentalists and other forms of religious charlatans.
Can this discussion about religious fundamentalism in the USA and Europe be taken to a different thread?
Don't think it's that easy to brush off.
Head to Berlin, for one. There's a pretty sizable Holocaust memorial in the city center. Germany was forced to come to terms with their crimes. Some other nations may not have had to reconcile their past as deeply, but it's not like everyone's having a bout of amnesia regarding recent history.
Mmm, maybe.
I think we are already too far a field from the OP anyway to talk about that.
All that said, maybe we find a way where you guys actually read the articles that get posted instead of taking the click bait title of the article and descend into the normal European America bashing that adds no value?
Al Jazeera has an article that looks at the explosion at the Shajareh Tayyebeh (The Good Tree) school in Minab, Iran. I don't necessarily agree with their conclusions but it does have some interesting points (assuming they are correct on the facts).
They have both Iran's claimed casualty total (165 people died and at least 95 others were wounded) and investigate the claim that the school was "part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base". They find that it has been clearly separate from the military base for at least 10 years:
They have both Iran's claimed casualty total (165 people died and at least 95 others were wounded) and investigate the claim that the school was "part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base". They find that it has been clearly separate from the military base for at least 10 years:
They also bring up that there was another portion of the base that was converted to a civilian clinic, the Martyr Absalan Specialised Clinic, in 2025. This building was not struck.
Do you have 2 bonafide sources that collaborate what some dude is posting on his “Substack” “News”
You still don't get it: Unless you're of 100% native or eastern ancestry, your're in the same boat. Not that this kind of badly understood and childish finger pointing about ancient history matters, anyway. We bashed our heads in for little reason in all quarters of the world at that time.
There are religious symbols in use by the right (Poland, Hungary and Italy mainly) but that is more about cultural christianity and identity. The more extreme right is not in sync with church doctrine and most of them are not religious motivated or even go to church at all. Also the mainstream churches denounce the more extreme positions, even the Catholic Church. The evangelical movement in the USA is quite unique for the western influenced world.
Fake claims being believable doesn't make them not fake, and I would greatly appreciate it if the Soap Box isn't used as a vehicle for spreading misinformation.
The Trump administration has no shortage of vile, reprehensible, and outrageous behavior to point to, both in this conflict, and practically everything else they're involved in. There's zero need to invent falsehoods.
That’s not a random dude, he’s a respected journalist.
Actually, I think I am the one that gets it...
I am 100% aware of the fact that the United States was founded as a smattering of European colonies. I am 100% aware of the fact that they speak Spanish in both Central and South America even though that's not a language indigenous to either. I am 100% aware that Europeans decimated the continent of Africa. I am 100% aware of the fact that Christianity would not have even spread if it wasn't, initially, for Hellenization and then subsequently due to the Roman Empire.
I am 100% aware that Europe sprouted two of the worst and most vile wars in living memory that subsequently led to the rise of both the USSR and US as global powers, due to their own inability to contain it.
Europe is basically the genetic melting pot and cultural mind virus that's infected the world with utter nonsense for over two thousand years.
So yes, it's a little frustrating every time America comes up that I have to listen to how amazing Europe is and how hideous America is. How you guys have somehow acknowledged your past and you're somehow morally above it all now. It's a crock of shit, and it always has been.
Especially considering in this particular instance none of you used your superior European educations to even read what the fuck was posted.
But this is the last I will say on this in general. It's got nothing to do with the thread at this point.
Yeah, the problem is not the article.
The problem is that people in this thread did not read it.
Instead, many people just took the poster's word on the contents of the article because it confirmed their biases.
The take aways really should have been:
1. It wasn't said directly by Hegseth, but it is still shitty that he's doing things that are emboldening this behavior (prayer meetings at the Pentagon, etc.).
2. It is FUCKING AWESOME that over a hundred complaints have been filed by NCOs over the remarks made.
Someone not reading the article before commenting, on the Internet? UNPOSSIBLE!
I’m glad service members are filing complaints. I imagine they’ll go exactly nowhere.
Maybe, but I'm still glad they are making them. It at least means there is a non-zero chance of someone doing the right thing instead of the "Right" thing at a crucial moment.
Netanyahu's own Goebbels, journalism-trained Amit Segal, has said that only some of the members were there.
I'm not surprised, since the civilian landline and cell networks in Iran still work (the cyber attack on state & military digital infrastructure did not include them, to allow the opposition to organize), so most probably phoned their vote in.
Yeah, talk to yourself in future and take out your anger and imagined confllicts on sb. else. Blocked for obnoxiousness.
Edit: Just to be clear for all other US Arsians, I don't think that Europeans are "better", all humans and therefore countries they set up have done pretty evil (and sometimes good) stuff over the ages. Pretty pointless to run a ledger of blanket statements to compare them over hundreds of years, or even more ludicrous, imply some "heredetary sin" on a continent scale. It's just at the moment in the US there is a fundamental Christian movement very close to government, that I don't see over here. We do have other shit going on (in Germany the AfD - they're big on other "crosses" -speaking of, there would be a very, very big minus) and if we were in the position (of power) the US is in, who knows? For me the fault line is more along rich vs. poor and ethics vs. no ethics, not where you or your parents parents were born or live.
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While I happen to agree, only 25 countries of the world's near-200 have formal full separation of church and state.
If you add the UK and several European countries where's there's formally a state religion of the monarchy and/or a religious tax collected by the state (Switzerland, Scandinavia), you still only get ~30.
The US is borderline -- it doesn't have full separation.
Yikes. I knew about the alcoholism & tattoos, but a woman writing a letter like that about her own son? Should have been a disqualifier for Senate approval.
Possibly. My Egyptology professor disagreed
that Atenism was monotheistic, but not enough is known -- it was only a state religion for 20 years .(FWIW, I don't consider Christianity, any version with a tripartite deity, monotheistic).
I will agree that Europe has done all sorts of shit over the years, if you can agree that we (outside Russia) have refrained from that sort of madness after 1945.
(I have a larger, semi-serious theory about the evolutions of societies after massive destructive wars, but it is way off topic for this thread.)
The news post you cite does not say what you claim it does. It's one of those "live updates" feeds, so here's the full text:
The claim that the 88-member assembly was "taken out" in the strike is entirely your own. The text at The Guardian does not make that claim nor quote such a claim from anyone else.
At the moment the only thing reported as fact is that the building was flattened, and that the intent was to disrupt the process of selecting a new leader.
While I consider Al-Jazeera a Qatari (#2 state sponsor of terrorism) mouthpiece, that fits my earlier post.
I've no idea whether they will or won't, was just reporting on the Axios piece.
Certainly the lack of any Western country even condemning the Syrian gov't (assisted by Turkey) attacks on Kurds wouldn't be confidence-inspiring.
I can admit to that, because it's mostly true. You certainly came along for some rides though, eh?
I'd also just like to point out that refraining from the activity isn't really the same as making up for it. I can't really think of anything that Europe in general has done to repair the damage they did to the world. So it just rings a bit hollow when they try and act like the moral center of the western world...
If you want to go down that route, I read the article at the time it was posted.
Religious fundamentalists have enormous influence within the US Government in a way that they do not in Europe; no European ambassador could state that Israel is entitled to the entire Middle East based on Biblical claims [1] without losing their job.
Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist through and through: he has Deus Vult (a crusader battlecry) tattooed on his arm [2,3], retired from the National Guard due to his religious beliefs identifying him as a potential insider threat [4], and wrote a book entitled American Crusade which calls for a '360 degree holy war' against 'the forces of [...] “Islamism” [...].' [3].
To bring this back on topic, it is hardly unreasonable to connect the emboldening of religious extremists within the US military's command structure, and the effect that will have on decisions made regarding the aerial bombardment campaign in Iran, to Hegseth's documented behaviour and attitudes.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5gkkgdzkyo
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/2024120...om/2024/12/05/us/hegseth-church-crusades.html
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/22/trump-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-book
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20241117035159/https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/11/16/pete-hegseth-tattoo-national-guard
The previous post where you said this was off topic seemed more effective, it was short and didn’t continue the argument much. Writing a long post about a topic and then ending it with “It’s got nothing to do with the thread at this point” seems a bit unsporting IMO, kind of takes the last word.
The trend in the US is toward Christofascism. For many currently driving the agenda, the separation of church and state is viewed with the same disdain they have for other constitutional rights.
Which bringing this back to the topic of the thread is quite ironic—it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
... after 1945 mostly.
Edit: France in Vietnam if an example is demanded but definitely not the only instance
Thanks for sharing, this article gives a great discussion of how the school is laid out in relation to the military facility and nearby hospital that has been missing from other coverage I've seen. I have been trying to square the few-hundreds-meter distance I read in a BBC article with all the "adjacent" or even "attached" descriptions I've been seeing here. Al Jazeera puts the distance at 200 to 300 meters. It's close enough, I guess, easily within sight and only a minute or two to walk the distance. But it's still multiple football fields (either American or everyone else's) away. Both Israel and the US have demonstrated capability to hit a specific moving vehicle with their bombs and missiles while hitting nothing else, so there is no way this was a "miss". It could certainly still be a case of mistaken target, or a bad targeting decision that didn't sufficiently review information, or a targeting decision based on 13 years old outdated information; but it wasn't just collateral damage from a legitimate strike.
This does make rumors about AI software being involved in targeting decisions in Iran in general all the more concerning, if true.
They don't use that type of munitions for every attack. Nor has it been proven to be a US or Israeli weapon that did this yet (although that seems like the most likely explanation)
They fucking better be in downtown Tehran.