That's actually a horrific bit of revenge fantasy, even including what look like terror attacks on civilian targets. I had to stop watching and it's just Legos. I'm getting really tired of wars with no "good guys" involved on either side.
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
That's actually a horrific bit of revenge fantasy, even including what look like terror attacks on civilian targets. I had to stop watching and it's just Legos. I'm getting really tired of wars with no "good guys" involved on either side.
Betcha I don't get any corresponding relief on my EV registration fees in a couple months.
You know, the ones that supposedly offset my lack of paying fuel taxes.
The worst part about riding that WWII high is the crash and realization that most wars are just bully-on-bully violence.
I haven't read about it in detail yet, but isn't Australia contributing more towards defending the surrounding countries that got dragged into the war by the US on account of hosting US bases in the region?Mine was more just shame that we have become complicit in Trumps war-mongering and Israels genocides. But yeah as a result of the complete lack of spine on the part of Albo, Aus service people are in harms way, and only to make war crimes easier for Israel and the USA.
ETA - corrected genocide to the plural for Israel.
Quite to the contrary ... by being the only sane person left in the room, it is now time for China to shine with soft power. They need the big sticks to counter a bellicose USA and to expand the soft power umbrella of protection eminating from China.
If only I had your faith in the CCP choosing that over the obvious take advantage of the accelerating decline of the US.
If you're right, we're all better off, no argument there.
I just don't believe that the CCP will choose the soft power path a moment longer than is necessary to get to the point they cross the strait.
There are a lot of things that are admirable about Kelly, but I'm generally extremely underwhelmed by his positioning (IIRC, he was also a "we'll see" on the War Powers Act vote). That said, he's right at home with Schumer and Jeffries caucus.
Voters should get what they voted for and they voted for this. Again. To a previous poster's point, US voters, at least, should learn a lesson every now and then. This is a double whammy because, aside from shielding voters from the consequences of their own actions, it will also mean foregoing federal tax revenues that are insufficient to repair the country's crumbling infrastructure.
And by infrastructure, I mean lobster tails and grand piano's for the DoD (see Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab).
Mark Kelly is trying to govern like a responsible adult. But he's in the minority party, so governing isn't really his job right now.
It's possible this stupid war would not have happened, but I think it's quite likely a different stupid war would have happened. Recall Israel's 2024 strikes. Correct me if my memory is failing me, but Biden was President at the time, no? You don't think Iran could have been sufficiently provoked to start interfering with shipping in Hormuz?
Generally speaking when countries sell weapons, especially their most sophisticated weapons, they put limitations on their use specifically to limit the escalation potential. Maybe such commitments can be violated sometimes, but that jeopardizes future shipments. This has been an issue for Ukraine with US weapons, for example. And we can debate different instances of this but I think in general the strategic calculus makes sense: there's an incentive not to retaliate against the seller because they can threaten to remove the restrictions, but it still benefits the buyer because they get weapons they wouldn't otherwise be able to get, and can focus more effort on developing their own systems as Ukraine has done with the FP-1.
The US tolerating that kind of strike against Iran, which would have been impossible without the stealth capabilities of the F-35, risks Iran regarding the US as an accomplice in the strikes. Those kinds of incidents would have inevitably lead to escalation, and there is no indication Biden (had he made it to another term) or Harris (had she been elected) would have been willing to put a stop to it, and blockading Hormuz was always going to be Iran's most effective escalation path. Iran's devolved command structure lead to a lot of strikes that didn't really make sense and that might not have happened, but would we be staring down the barrel of $200/bbl oil? Yeah, I think so. Israel was never going to be satisfied with open conflict with Iran not happening, and was committed to escalation regardless, so the only way to avoid the US being drawn in would be to keep them on a leash or sever the relationship.
Such a thing isn't unheard of. Bush 41 denied Israel IFF codes specifically to prevent strikes in Iraq in 1991 that would have had a lot of escalation potential. But more recently I don't think there's been a willingness to challenge their influence that directly. It's only really in the last few weeks that AIPAC's influence with Dems has deteriorated to the point that it can be openly discussed without ending the career of the person in question. If completely unconditional support is over and done with, it's probably only because of the US being drawn into an extremely unpopular war and facing significant economic consequences. As metlman13 said, seemingly without realizing it applies to them as much as anyone else, "Because people don't learn from history. They don't learn from their elders. They learn from personal experience.".
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Worse the bullies are the Trumps and Putin's of the world and they're sending everyone else's children to die for their evil fantasies of empire. Putin is the most brutal serial killer of Russians Russia will ever know.
Yeah, I'd still much prefer Albanese to have taken the path of Spain. Spain however is tucked up in NATO in Europe proper. We're a tiny country outpost of 'western values'* isolated in Asia.
The US should be sending their own AWACs since they're the ones wanting to stand over countries for oil profits.
We've always been the USA's most willing accomplice on wars of misadventure, as PM's are too scared of losing US allyship given our location.
*NGL I vommed in my mouth typing that...
Our military, as of now, is an entirely voluntary force and Trump is certainly not pulling any triggers or pushing buttons himself. If you volunteer to enforce the will of the state via violence and then voluntarily bomb children in the name of said state, well, you might be the bully too.
You can’t, after all, prosecute a war if no one shows up to do so.
Maybe Albanese should study recent history. Iran lost a million people in the Iran-Iraq war, and were subjected to repeated attacks with weapons of mass destruction (chemical weapons) and didn't back down. Their capacity for absorbing pain is high, particularly if they are agressed against. All that the US has done is to kill the resistance against the theocracy, and it has solidified support for the hard liners who will use that support to make the Iranian people suffer a lot of pain. But of course, Trump and Hegseth probably thinks millions of dead Iranians is a good start. It's not like they value human life or try to limit human suffering.
For the WWII, axis is definitely more evil (the massive murder of civilians, especially Jews/disabled/LGBTQ+ from Germany. Japan's 731 "experiment/torture" Chinese and Koreans, etc.).
One can argue the allies countries have a hand on pushing Germany and Japan to be more "evil" (high amount of reparations, cut off of resource to Japan, etc.). However, these axis countries still chose terrible paths.
So Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Cargo ships were hit.
https://www.reuters.com/world/cargo-ship-hit-by-projectile-strait-hormuz-crew-evacuates-2026-03-11/
https://www.reuters.com/world/cargo-ship-hit-by-projectile-strait-hormuz-crew-evacuates-2026-03-11/
Huh. Who woulda thunk that this would be a problem. Except absolutely everyone not in the Trump administration.
And this is where Tump's stupidity is going to shine, because to get the Strait open, the US will have to intercept 100% of the missiles and deactivate 100% of the mines 100% of the time. For years. And that's a lovely combination of brutally expensive and impossible.
NewNinetyNine
Ars Centurion
Or - hear me out - you could run compelling candidates with a coherent, positive agenda to win voters over.
Because the "they will flock back to us after the other guy faceplants" only works with unfettered elections.
NewNinetyNine
Ars Centurion
In 2022, would you have confidently asserted that Dems would never shovel weapons into the indiscriminate bombing of civilians by a state engaging in mass starvation, in explicit violation of US law?
I have lost a lot of respect for Albanese since we started throwing press tours for Israeli war criminals, and he became a sock puppet for pro-Israel and pro-Zionist voices that immediately dominated our media landscape after Bondi. Even people here who're normally very apolitical were like wtf is with the sudden whitewashing of Israel even as they continued to bomb women and children hiding in the rubble that is present day Gaza? 12 lives vs genocide of a people and the genociders are the god guys? Yeah nah total BS.
All that has done is raise anti-Semitism and risk of harm markedly against both Jewish and Palestinian peoples here, since the gronks that are into that generally don't care what shade of brown or ethnicity someone is. The feeding frenzy of hatred against Palestinians and muslims generally in the media here emboldens and strengthens the hard right Nazi mob, which helps absolutely fucking no-one since that's the cover they use to raise specific anti-semitism against Jews here.
But yeah, as is too often the case, an Aussie PM is acting the lap dog to a Republican warmonger in the White House.
Nothing changes.
Not just cargo ships but Chinese registered ones. So I think Iran is just basically saying it's closed period and if China is pissed to direct that energy toward the US State Department.
There's just no way an oil tanker or worse, LNG ship is going to attempt to run through the Strait now. It's one thing to punch a hole through a cargo ship, an LNG getting hit would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb going off. We already got damn lucky with that Russian LNG ship that lit up in the Mediterranean last week.
I agree in principle but last I checked it's actually fairly tricky to rapidly exit a service contract with the US military because you realised the Commander in Chief was a pedophile loon.
Generals can resign, grunts, not so much if you want an honourable discharge. I am relaying what I remember from a previous Ars discussion on this topic mostly.
The nature of the United States military is not an unknown unknown, and it has been our imperial fist for far longer than Trump has been in power. The prime directive of the military is doing violence in the name of the state. That's not a secret and this time is not some uniquely grotesque outlier.
If my choices were "literally kill those kids" or face contractual punishment, well, I know where I'd fall well enough to not have a kid bombing contract in the first place.
Oh totally agree, for me a dishonourable discharge would be preferable to say bombing civilians.
But that's why the recruitment offices are in the poorest most violent neighborhoods. If you already live in a war zone, why not get paid and travel the world...may as well die somewhere exotic. It works.
Recruitment offices are everywhere and the lower quintile is actually (marginally) underrepresented in our military.
And Trump and Hegseth have no idea how to resolve this.
wait, are you sure there are China's registered ones gotten hit? I do not remember seeing that in any recent articles.
Interesting, I had read a couple of articles quite some time back that were the basis of that opinion, they were either wrong, or the situation has changed if they were accurate at that time (around GW2 IIRC). They basically held a magnifying glass up to aggressive recruiting tactics in poor areas. I forget I've been reading stuff as an adult for over 3 decades sometimes. You're article is much more recent.
Totally fair. It's an oft used factoid to assume the military at large is mostly composed of the lower classes, but I think it's only been true in specific situations and contexts, like during "the surge," or front-line combat units in Vietnam being disproportionately people of color.
NewNinetyNine
Ars Centurion
This assumes information and opinion symmetry across society. Someone growing up in a household of NYU professors is going to have markedly different information sourcea and level of "rah rah rah" than someone with Fox News on the TV and Michael Bay portrayals of the armed forces in their media diet.
Indeed, the US news and media ecosystem tends to be very averse to portrayals of the armed forces in any negative light. Insisting that everyone must/should have the same inputs and conclusions demonstrates a lack of empathy.
I explicitly stated Iran, in which case….yes? I’m perfectly aware of their complicity in Israel’s genocide, but that’s a whole other topic.
Anyway, this loser conman continues to take zero accountability for anything and wants other people to die for his mistakes, as always:
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I suspect this brief respite in terms of economic indicators will start turning back down more quickly in short order, as the ramifications compound and trickle out into the broader economy. God knows the horrors will only continue.
There’s information asymmetry and then there’s, I don’t know, willful and total ignorance? Yes, our media sanitizes and lionizes the military, they do not hide it. They do not hide the violence. They do not hide the displays of imperial power. They do not hide the fact that the military exists to deliver violence to !people over there.
Fox News covered the torture, and the bombings, and the civilian deaths, and the rapes, and on, and on, and on. Our wars have been the biggest and most perpetual topic of my entire life, and the only way to be ignorant of it all is choice. It’s such a known known that Trump ran as the anti-fucking-war President. It was so bad, and so obvious, and so ubiquitous that Fox and their ilk all pivoted to pretending to be doves instead of hawks. For a minute, anyway.
Suffice it to say sure, I absolutely lack empathy for anyone who lived through all of that and signed up to do more of it. My strategic reserves of caring are stretched too thin by children in the dirt to use on the people who put them there.
Speaking of having no plan, guess what we had stationed at Bahrain until late January this year?
Functional minesweepers.
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/last...lass-minesweepers-leave-bahrain-for-disposal/
Those retired ships are being replaced, but their replacements are having teething troubles.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...bat-ships-are-replacing-mcm-ships-in-bahrain/
There's a '60s flashback.
Were you consciously paraphrasing the Carl Sandburg/anti-war slogan?
What if they gave a war and nobody came.
Of course they do.
It was seeing the actual blood and guts of grunts dying in Vietnam on the nightly news that had a decisive role in public opinion turning against that war.
Showing the dignified transfer of soldiers who died in combat is quite a bit different than showing the soldiers getting killed.
To clarify, our media does not hide the violence we inflict on others. That's why the Trump team instantly put out a propaganda roll comprised entirely of things blowing up in Iran. And yes, I was indeed paraphrasing the classic anti-war saying.
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But the govt. wouldn't release the film of of the shipwrecked survivors being killed in the Caribbean.
It's one thing to show things being blown up; another to see actual murder.
We can hold the former at a comfortable psychological video game distance. Seeing people being killed/a war crime would turn too many against the military efforts.
Same reason the govt destroyed the tapes of the Guantanamo/black site tortures.
It's one thing to show things being blown up; another to see actual murder.
We can hold the former at a comfortable psychological video game distance. Seeing people being killed/a war crime would turn too many against the military efforts.
Same reason the govt destroyed the tapes of the Guantanamo/black site tortures.
Well, it would have to be either tariffs or bombs. They don't know anything else.
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Lycanthropos
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
They'll show 'cool' dramatic moments, but acknowledging that they are killing real people is s step too far. They want it to look like a movie or a video game.