War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
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Plenty parts of the Old and New Testaments are also completely incompatible with a modern, western secular democracy. You have to look bo further than the ten commandments, framing women as the property of their men, or normalizing slavery; or things like the Catholic Catechism placing serving God before obeying secular laws or trying to lead a good life.
And that's even before taking into account how the religion was actually practiced.
As a matter of fact Christianity as lived within Western, liberal democratic states had traits that we today, would they come from a Muslim, would identify as completely incompatible with our values.
My mother grew up in a town in a small valley in Northern Italy. She was the first woman in her village to learn how to drive a car. For this she had to travel several times a week to the nearest city, because all of the driving instructors in the valley refused to teach women how to drive, that it would be an affront to God, and that God had not intended women to have the abilities required to drive a car.
She herself was born before the fall of Mussolini, but her ten-year younger sisters was not. After my aunt had been born the local Catholic priest took it upon himself to visit my grandfather in his own home, and harranged him for having sinned but trying to absolve him because his sin has resulted in a child.
My grandfather noted that he hadn't become a partisan against the Fascists to be talked to like that by some priest inside his own home, and threw the bum out. The resulting scandal rocked the town for a year.
All of the above are how Christianity was practiced in some parts of Western democracies within living memory.
Are some parts of Islam, as practiced, incompatible with our values? Sure, yes. So are some parts of Christianity.
Are Muslims capable of transcending those issues? Evidently Christians were, and I have never seen an argument of why Christians could but Muslims could not that wasn't ignorant of how Christianity was practiced, in some cases within living memory.
And while we do no favor to liberal Muslims to look away from the excesses of their Islamist relatives in faith out of misguided tolerance, we also do not them (or ourselves) any favor by declaring that their religion and our society cannot coexist peacefully.
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I don’t care if people agree or not, just please don’t call people names when you don’t agree with their position.
I personally think there is an actual thoughtful debate to be had on the topic. I just don’t feel like trying to have it right now. So I did not engage.
This entire war is deeply depressing to me personally. The truth as I see it is the people involved don’t give a single solitary shit about religion, religious freedom, or anything but their own selfish goals.
In my mind debating that aspect gives them more credit than is deserved. Nothing sums up my disdain for their position better than this:
The naked profiteering in plain sight says it all.
They would love for this to be a debate about religion.
Edit: apologies I meant to source that image, I know many people block X embeds. It’s from this quote tweet:
View: https://x.com/chrismurphyct/status/2027899652226326800?s=46
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I’m with @ramases on any religion getting super weird when it goes traditionalist. Muslims are just a little father back on the scale than Christianity (which was pretty bad even within living memory).
If you look at the Middle East today it’s already seen massive progress in the last 50 years. Whether they like it or not, western ideals are seeping in. With widespread western media and the internet it’s happening increasingly rapidly. Some folks are pushing back (a lot of them died yesterday) but the trend is in the right direction.
It won’t be overnight. Don’t expect pride parades and women burning their burqas in the street tomorrow. But I bet the next 50 years the region will look even more different than it did 50 years ago.
If you look at the Middle East today it’s already seen massive progress in the last 50 years. Whether they like it or not, western ideals are seeping in. With widespread western media and the internet it’s happening increasingly rapidly. Some folks are pushing back (a lot of them died yesterday) but the trend is in the right direction.
It won’t be overnight. Don’t expect pride parades and women burning their burqas in the street tomorrow. But I bet the next 50 years the region will look even more different than it did 50 years ago.
Rerouting of ME11 and MECL Service around the Cape of Good Hope
I found the reference to shipping on AP but thought ARS would appreciate the source documents. So how will this affect affordability in the U.S. coming into the midterms? I think it depends on the length of time shipping is rerouted and underinsured in the region. I sincerely hope that Trump is punished for this illegal and murderous attack but at the same time he is called teflon for a reason.
I found the reference to shipping on AP but thought ARS would appreciate the source documents. So how will this affect affordability in the U.S. coming into the midterms? I think it depends on the length of time shipping is rerouted and underinsured in the region. I sincerely hope that Trump is punished for this illegal and murderous attack but at the same time he is called teflon for a reason.
IMO betting on a war in which you have some direct insider knowledge because of a government position or a position with a military contractor should be a capital offense.
And I wish I lived in a country that took government corruption seriously enough to prosecute such offenses.
I could argue the fact that we're seeing a surge in fundamentalist christianity in the US is because society at large is progressing. Church attendance is way down and it stands to reason that the folks that are staying are going to be the more hardcore ones. But the fact that going to church isn't considered downright mandatory like it was in the 1950s is a sign that we're moving forward.
OK, here's a weird thing that happened, according to the WSJ.
They're saying US forces used Anthropic tools to help with the Iran attack despite Trump's order banning US from using Anthropic tools at all, and because of Anthropic's qualms about using their tools for military uses.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/ir...ic-hours-after-trump-ban-ozNO0iClZpfpL7K7ElJ2
They're saying US forces used Anthropic tools to help with the Iran attack despite Trump's order banning US from using Anthropic tools at all, and because of Anthropic's qualms about using their tools for military uses.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/ir...ic-hours-after-trump-ban-ozNO0iClZpfpL7K7ElJ2
This. About 10,000% this. Given the available evidence, nobody should be lecturing Islamic nations about much of anything.
Hell, even the whole, “But they just slaughtered tens of thousands of anti-regime protesters!?!?!?!”, shtick rings hollow. Because… isn’t that EXACTLY what everyone says the U.S. would do to its own people if they ever tried to substantially disrupt or oust the government?
It’s the relentlessly repeated reason for why Americans can’t risk being too uppity. If it’s true that Americans can’t risk ousting the regime because they’ll be gunned down in cold blood by their government, then that’s just an admission that the U.S. government and the Iranian government aren’t all that different.
On the day-to-day, they just pick different sh*t to unapologetically oppress you over. Being black vs. being gay. Speaking out against the regime vs. …er… speaking out against the regime.
The whole thing is just a half-dozen malignant narcissist egomaniacs leveraging the autocratic power we all allowed them to amass to feed their narcissistic supply using the blood and treasure of everyone else. There are no good guys here, and “The West” has as little moral authority as everybody else (indigenous genocide, slavery, lynching, internment, torture, etc., etc.).
It’s just a**holes all the way down. Humans have an inherent biological flaw that they have not out-evolved, and that is… giving sociopaths control of society.
I'd add to this that while they are behind right now, the development isn't a straight road going up the hill. In the west now we have large part of our population, MAGA and a lot of the European far right, looking back to the glorious 50s, when women and the gays weren't ruining everything. Will the pendulum swing back towards progress for us? Maybe, hopefully, but let's not pretend it's only Muslims who cling onto traditional ways of living.
Iran was seeing massive progress under Mosaddegh and that came to an abrupt halt due to the Brits and the CIA who propped up the Shah and his hard liners. Madeleine Albright, even conceded that U.S. intervention in Iran's internal affairs was a setback for democratic government.
I don't see any of our actions as boding well for the ME. From the beginning our interests have almost always been about the money, fighting communism or radical Islam or the boogieman du jour has always been an afterthought or justification for its pursuit.
That would be really cool in a universe where the U.S. had politically uncomfortable laws that were actually enforced by anybody who matters against anybody who matters.
His father was also a "constitutional monarch." I suspect he'd like the same power as his brutal father.
Oh, I quite agree; I wasn't 'portraying' recent actions as anything other than being several decades too late and as being necessary despite whatever rhetoric is spewing from the orifices of the White House right now. I was pointing out how you DO effect real change in principle. I've no confidence it will actually happen and certainly not under the current US government... who can't even agree that Russia's genocidal military aggression on its borders is a problem.
No-one else is going to do it. So we should. The Soviet Union is gone, Russia is swirling the plug hole, the islamic world - however much it has been portrayed as the 'next big enemy' only needs to be properly bombed into submission from time to time. Which leaves China as the real replacement of the Soviet menace. And a smattering of small, potentially rogue states with - or seeking to acquire - nuclear weapons. All good cause for a 'World Police'. It's not that the West has some special right to perform that role, it's just that no-one else can and no-one else should (right now). I don't want the CCP running the world, but they will (eventually) if we let them. But Republican foreign policy has come a long way from the 1980s... now it's just libertarian/Kochian commercial interests uber alles. Which is a disaster by itself and a topic for another thread of course.
I don't know about church attendance rates in the US, but the increasing intersection between conservative politicians and conservative christians is NOT progress. Roe vs Wade was progress; the Southern Strategy is not. National prayer breakfasts are not. MAGA, which hangs on the coattails of all of that, is not progress. There are groups/sectors of society for whom there HAS been real progress in the last 50 years - women, gays, blacks, trans people - but all that progress is already firmly under attack right now. Religious fundamentalists (let's not call them extremists) don't need numerical superiority to take power much less to keep it. Ask the Taliban or the Ayotollahs... ISIS reeked havoc before the US bombed them into submission (though only just... Trump of course wanted to bring the troops home, leaving that job unfinished).
I mean.. once countries started telling people to get out of dodge TODAY (meaning Friday).. it was pretty obvious what was coming. The specific timing.. on a Friday after markets have closed.. fits with the current occupant of the white house’s MO.
It certainly wouldn’t require any special foresight or insider knowledge to make this prediction.
Have you ever seen the ME's actions bode well for them? We've left behind some fucked-up messes for sure, but having pulled out (again and again) they were always free to building the islamic paradise they've always dreamed of. They never did. Don't you ever wonder why? It's cheap leftwing rhetoric to blame The CIA all the time. At some point the arab/islamic world has to look to itself for the final answer as to how the ME is and long was a fucking shithole and the only path out of that has been western liberalism and western petro-dollars. Somewhere in MEMRI's archives there is a video clip from a mullah giving a speech about this - pointing out how the arab (islamic!) world basically produces nothing and is wholly dependent on imported western education, wealth and technology. Dubai wasn't funded with oil, they didn't have any. It was funded by and built with western capital (and slave labour). I know I'm getting off topic a bit perhaps, but as long as the arab world remains islamified, it will not even begin to produce anything of any good for itself. It cannot. Islam, not the CIA, is the millstone around its neck.
I'll put in my prediction here so I can refer to it later, right or wrong.
Because Trump won't put troop on the ground (which would be another Iraq) and the Iranian people do not hate the power to take on the security apparatus, the status quo will hold. The Islamic state will still be in power, albeit militarily damaged. Trump will move the goalpost, declaring victory and claim he 'taught them a lesson.' Meanwhile the Islamic state will declare victory having fended off the enemy.
All this with live lost, markets disrupted, and international relations in taters.
Because Trump won't put troop on the ground (which would be another Iraq) and the Iranian people do not hate the power to take on the security apparatus, the status quo will hold. The Islamic state will still be in power, albeit militarily damaged. Trump will move the goalpost, declaring victory and claim he 'taught them a lesson.' Meanwhile the Islamic state will declare victory having fended off the enemy.
All this with live lost, markets disrupted, and international relations in taters.
Obviously this is borderline pie-in-the-sky optimism but we're hopefully seeing the dismantling of one of the last major sources of islamic fundamentalism in the region disappearing. It does appear that the other ME states have all come to your same conclusion that the path forward is western liberalism (or at least heading that direction). Iran was really the last hold out and notoriously funded extremist groups throughout the region. So now that there's nobody left to seriously oppose modernization, I wonder if we will see the region transform relatively quickly.
Again, this is all in relative terms to the ME. Don't expect Abu Dhabi to turn into Amsterdam even within our lifetimes. Then again who knows.
I honestly can't even guess what Trump's intentions are. But this is a far cry from past US actions (under past presidencies/congresses). Indeed no appeal to the UN Security Council (though given the undue influence that nations like China and Saudi Arabia has, one has to question the moral legitimacy of the UN these days...), and absolutely no authorisation from Congress. As much as I firmly believe war with Iran should have been fought decades ago, this is not how it should have been done. Trump won't run again, whether because of his age/decrepitude or the US Constitution, so if he breaks his 'bring the troops home' campaign rhetoric (one of the few things he kept his word on, sort of... I think?) there will be no repercussions. MAGA are easily sold on war in the ME after all. Though I cannot see 'boots on the ground' at any scale.
What we should be really asking is 'where next'?
What we should be really asking is 'where next'?
We didn't prosecute Cheney or the Bush's for war profiteering in Iraq the sequel. That's as insider as you can get. There was an absolute feeding frenzy there with Haliburton, Carlyle, Bechtel, Blackwater, SAIC, etc. participating. Prior to that, Cheney violated the trading with the enemy act numerous times and several trade embargoes, notably with Iraq and Iran.
It's just not Cheney et al during the run up to and post Iraq war, of course, our businessmen/representatives have a long history of doing such, so long ago, I stopped expecting any justice in this area.
Some people betting on us bombing Iran is peanuts, (and reprehensible), compared to the likely war profiteering grift that Trump and his lackeys are running right now.
Well, it might, with the way sea levels are rising
Sadly in the realm of geopolitics this may just be "good enough" for everyone's sake. It sucks for the Iranians but taking them off the world stage is going to be a huge lift for the rest of the region and maybe even the rest of the world. And they may just "get there" eventually but it'll be on their own.
Look at Iraq. We left it in a sorry state of affairs 10+ years ago but today they're actually doing pretty good for themselves. Lots of new construction, economy is bouncing back and they're even surprisingly pro-West/Israel with trade between the countries and newfound diplomatic relations with the US. Obviously it's not great by our standards but for the region the progress alone is notable.
This all happened after the US left, which in the end forced the country to stand up on its own feet. Not saying the invasion and occupation was right, far from it. But I think that's also going to heavily influence how we treat Iran (and even Venezuela) going forward. They don't need an oppressive US military presence to hold themselves together. What they need is to be given the opportunity to rebuild on their own terms and, if anything, with the promise that if they do it the right way they too can have a place in the world economy.
I disagree on this point. Iran will still be a force that will leave the region nervous. They'll still have their proxies in the region, and their missiles which they will rebuild probably with more urgency.
I never quite understood why their drone/missile capabilities weren't annihalated under a rainstorm of iron bombs when they started supplying Russia. Oh wait, the US was and is aiding Russia... sigh.
Bringing Iran to heel, at least militarily, is quite straightforward.
Polymarket already bans U.S. residents from using it. Kalshi allows Americans, but the account setup requirements are ludicrous (government ID plus face video). "U.S. strikes Iran by 2/28" was paying out at 25 to 1 like three weeks ago.
I decided to watch Threads today. And had not realized the trigger conflict was Iran. And doubly thankful that we no longer have small field deployed nuclear arms. I mean, what is there isn't great if it comes to that, but no unit popping off a backpack nuke in Tehran. In theory what is there should allow some time to prepare, should it come to that.
And fascinating enough the events happen during May in that movie.
And fascinating enough the events happen during May in that movie.
This is a big assumption that Iran will not collapse after this war ends. The decapitation strike mentality is and always has been a bandaid but it has shown us that many states do collapse with enough disruption of leadership and resupply from allies. There is an underlying strategy here that is directly attempting and succeeding already at removing Iran’s revenue streams and organizers of them from its partners in Russia and China (oil and arms for starters), so the post-war maintenance of trade disruption will be key to stopping a military rebound.
We also do not yet know if any neighboring countries will seize the moment to take portions of Iran for their own uses.
Now if the US just …leaves my bet is that with a bit of time in tasting the waters, you may be correct. China needs energy, and allies, and of course stable export partners. Iran will become less relevant as an exporter of terrorism if defunded and tossed back into the Stone Age.
Russia is both supplier and customer of Iran’s MIC, and that relationship needs to be shattered for a net good outcome for the world stage, then perhaps we see a rollback of Islamic jihadism, and even that of Russia’s imperial aspirations
Meanwhile, Donald is turning his braincell at Cuba a bit harder at least apparently, with babbling Friday that Cuba could be taken over by the US. Wag that dog, man.
Hasn't really come up in the thread so far but at this point I'm assuming that Iran's air force must not meaningfully exist any longer.
Trump cited Iran being the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world as a reason to attack.
Yeah, is this going to lead to more or less terrorism?
Who else is celebrating?
Israel, particularly the far right in Netanyahu's coalition.
Also I question the claim that Iranians outside of Iran are celebrating, particularly those who still have family and friends. Because they're still vulnerable to the armed militias who killed thousands of protesters only a few weeks ago.
They've also been remitting money and goods to family back home, now even that route may be closed.
WTF does the military need an LLM to carry out an attack??!! Fill out the fluff text of orders? Crank out some PowerPoint slides for political command? I am honestly very flabbergasted.
My assumption is based on the history of dictatorships that were not militarily invaded. I'm hard pressed to think of any states that collapsed that way. Argentina after the Falklands is one. But look at Sadam in 1991. The typical way it happens is when the dictator falls is when he looses the backing of his military, and I don't see the Revolutionary Guard turning on the regime.
Ummm, Saudi Arabia is still a fundamentalist state which funds Wahhabism world wide and whose leader has no qualms about ordering the murder and dismemberment of journalists he doesn’t like. But they are happy to ship us oil on favourable terms, so that’s alright then.
The Iranians who want Reza Pahlavi probably want a constitutional monarch in the style of various European countries, and will settle for someone like the King of Jordan with the hope to get back to something like what they had before Operation Ajax (1953). They do this because they a) realize that creating an entire government out of whole cloth is hard, and having a king might be a good way to get from A to B, b) mostly don’t remember that last shah and his celebrating of the anniversary of the old Persian Empire and whatnot (you need to be well over 50 to remember that), and c) putting up another candidate is likely to sentence that guy to death, whether it is from official government action or a random fanatic.
The Israelis and Saudis probably fed Trump a line about how he'd be the biggliest strongliest boy ever if he just blew up Iran for them. So now America is blowing up Iran on behalf of the other two shittiest states in the middle east.
It sure as fuck probably isn't serving American interests.