Many countries have nuclear weapons and all of them make me uncomfortable.
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I think I'm being gaslit by the media into feeling like this is too complicated for me to understand when it's really very simple. Nothing the US is doing is about pursuing peace, or making the lives of any ordinary person in any country especially the US any better.
These guys are excited to have control of the US military and all of that power and are just making up excuses to do things with it.
There is no justification. No benefit.
@futurebird I have a BA in international studies and an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies: you are right and it really is that simple. This admin does not have a coherent set of policy goals and is just starting a war to start a war, basically.
The idea that the best way to prevent nuclear arms proliferation was proved decisively wrong by the examples of North Korea under Kim and Libya under Qaddafi, Iraq under Saddam, and others. North Korea got nukes, and the Kim family stayed in power. Other countries made deals to stop pursuing and those regimes were overthrown either directly or with US assistance. The lesson to authoritarians has been clear for a very very long time. This has been the rational calculus in global affairs for two decades now, and leaders all over the world know it.
And regime change as a goal of US military action has been an unmitigated failure that just brings violence and death, and makes things worse for the people in those countries.
We should all be uncomfortable and it is evil for mass media to launder propaganda to manufacture consent for these fascists
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Most people are not paying attention. I think they have realized that.
But we could change this I think.
I hope this is true.
@FediThing -
Many countries have nuclear weapons and all of them make me uncomfortable. Russia, North Korea, the US...
Is "this country might get a powerful bomb, possibly maybe later, we swear to God it's real this time" a good reason to attack them? Is anyone buying this at all?
I think attacking a country gives them more reasons to make bigger bombs and ... attack back?
Am I too naive to understand international politics?
No, you're willing to look at the power dynamics with the understanding that regular people are who pay the price for this bs. You're willing to be real about the costs. That is what we all need to foster in ourselves and each other.
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I think I'm being gaslit by the media into feeling like this is too complicated for me to understand when it's really very simple. Nothing the US is doing is about pursuing peace, or making the lives of any ordinary person in any country especially the US any better.
These guys are excited to have control of the US military and all of that power and are just making up excuses to do things with it.
There is no justification. No benefit.
@futurebird Even here in the UK this is painfully obvious. Literally intoxicated by power to 100% blindsight themselves to what they are really doing to millions of decent Americans .. and now Iranians ... and indirectly to Palestinians via Israel.
If only we could have political systems across the world that vetted EVERY candidate at every level to weed out psychopaths and the like and ensured they attracted people who care and want to help others.
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Many countries have nuclear weapons and all of them make me uncomfortable. Russia, North Korea, the US...
Is "this country might get a powerful bomb, possibly maybe later, we swear to God it's real this time" a good reason to attack them? Is anyone buying this at all?
I think attacking a country gives them more reasons to make bigger bombs and ... attack back?
Am I too naive to understand international politics?
The people defending this, the ones calling us hippies and shutting us down, they are the deluded ones. They think if they sign off on these power abuses then they can keep on living like... oh there's a whole rant here. The way middle class USians feel entitled to travel the world, to use all the ai, to ssign off on despoiling the commons. It is gross. Anyway. Many of them are losing access to that fantasy right now. And they aren't able to understand that because they see the fantasy as more real than the little girls murdered by taxpayer funded bombs.
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@futurebird I have a BA in international studies and an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies: you are right and it really is that simple. This admin does not have a coherent set of policy goals and is just starting a war to start a war, basically.
The idea that the best way to prevent nuclear arms proliferation was proved decisively wrong by the examples of North Korea under Kim and Libya under Qaddafi, Iraq under Saddam, and others. North Korea got nukes, and the Kim family stayed in power. Other countries made deals to stop pursuing and those regimes were overthrown either directly or with US assistance. The lesson to authoritarians has been clear for a very very long time. This has been the rational calculus in global affairs for two decades now, and leaders all over the world know it.
And regime change as a goal of US military action has been an unmitigated failure that just brings violence and death, and makes things worse for the people in those countries.
We should all be uncomfortable and it is evil for mass media to launder propaganda to manufacture consent for these fascists
@JoscelynTransient @futurebird This one has been very strange for me. My French teacher is Iranian. She was young when the revolution happened but is old enough to remember the before times.
She's been writing or calling every US politician she can find contact info for every day for the last month, asking them to start this war. The atrocities being committed by the Iranian government against its own people (her people) have been terrible and the Iranian people are, by and large, defenseless against it. To her, this is the only way. She's watching her own people get slaughtered in the streets en masse by their own government. To her, war, if it brings about change, might be better.
But for myself... I can't bring myself to have any kind of faith in the US. This won't be a war of liberation.
It might be a regime change. The new regime might be better in some ways. The US might even set up another puppet democracy like they did in Afghanistan just so Trump can win another FIFA prize. Absolute best case, it buys Iranians a few years of pseudo-democracy before the US gets bored and lets the country collapse again.
But at the end of the day, Trump and Israel do not have good motivations of any sort. Their goal is to take Iran down a peg and maybe get some cheap oil out of the deal. For Israel, they've always hated Iran and they now have a moment where they can strike without worrying about international backlash. This is just more of the usual international bullying the US has been doing for a century. The protests and things have just given the political cover to do the thing US conservatives have been salivating over for decades.
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@FediThing @futurebird and they were in the middle of negotiating with the US government when the strikes started the last year, too!
Not to mention that years before that, they negotiated to the end, signed the deal, fulfilled their part of the deal, and then US just said "you know what, we changed our mind, we're cancelling the deal", and all the other signatories in EU went like "well, if Trump said so, guess we won't be fulfilling our part either".
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@futurebird @FediThing it was pretty clear the negotiations didn't yield the results the admin expected though (realistic or not), so many people are unsurprised by the escalation, and certainly the iranian gov isn't either.
recent events globally made it clear nukes are the only real garantee of not being attacked (ukraine/russia, but also the dprk), and everyone who doesn't have them certainly want them now.
my only hope is that this get rid of this terrible regime and make the iranian free
@tshirtman @futurebird @FediThing I don't know how bombing primary schools and killing children will make people who are getting bombed free.
Especially because these people still remember what it was like for them to live under dictatorship installed by those who are currently doing the bombing.I'm not a geopolitician but I have a vague suspicion that if anything, this war will set back the fight of Iranian people against their regime, because they now have some more pressing goals (not to be killed in the strikes, also maybe not becoming US puppet state because it worked so well for Iran the last time).
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@JoscelynTransient @futurebird This one has been very strange for me. My French teacher is Iranian. She was young when the revolution happened but is old enough to remember the before times.
She's been writing or calling every US politician she can find contact info for every day for the last month, asking them to start this war. The atrocities being committed by the Iranian government against its own people (her people) have been terrible and the Iranian people are, by and large, defenseless against it. To her, this is the only way. She's watching her own people get slaughtered in the streets en masse by their own government. To her, war, if it brings about change, might be better.
But for myself... I can't bring myself to have any kind of faith in the US. This won't be a war of liberation.
It might be a regime change. The new regime might be better in some ways. The US might even set up another puppet democracy like they did in Afghanistan just so Trump can win another FIFA prize. Absolute best case, it buys Iranians a few years of pseudo-democracy before the US gets bored and lets the country collapse again.
But at the end of the day, Trump and Israel do not have good motivations of any sort. Their goal is to take Iran down a peg and maybe get some cheap oil out of the deal. For Israel, they've always hated Iran and they now have a moment where they can strike without worrying about international backlash. This is just more of the usual international bullying the US has been doing for a century. The protests and things have just given the political cover to do the thing US conservatives have been salivating over for decades.
@faithisleaping @JoscelynTransient @futurebird
More likely, they end the protests and unite the people and the regime against the common enemy.A regime like that needs an outside enemy to point at, and Israel and the US are happy to give them exactly what they need.
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@JoscelynTransient @futurebird This one has been very strange for me. My French teacher is Iranian. She was young when the revolution happened but is old enough to remember the before times.
She's been writing or calling every US politician she can find contact info for every day for the last month, asking them to start this war. The atrocities being committed by the Iranian government against its own people (her people) have been terrible and the Iranian people are, by and large, defenseless against it. To her, this is the only way. She's watching her own people get slaughtered in the streets en masse by their own government. To her, war, if it brings about change, might be better.
But for myself... I can't bring myself to have any kind of faith in the US. This won't be a war of liberation.
It might be a regime change. The new regime might be better in some ways. The US might even set up another puppet democracy like they did in Afghanistan just so Trump can win another FIFA prize. Absolute best case, it buys Iranians a few years of pseudo-democracy before the US gets bored and lets the country collapse again.
But at the end of the day, Trump and Israel do not have good motivations of any sort. Their goal is to take Iran down a peg and maybe get some cheap oil out of the deal. For Israel, they've always hated Iran and they now have a moment where they can strike without worrying about international backlash. This is just more of the usual international bullying the US has been doing for a century. The protests and things have just given the political cover to do the thing US conservatives have been salivating over for decades.
@faithisleaping @JoscelynTransient
"It might be a regime change."
It's a huge country and it's gonna be a big mess. I have no doubt the government is terrible. But, people need to stop believing US propaganda. There is no magic infinite army that could topple any nation.
It's gonna be bad if that's what they want. Bad all around.
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@JoscelynTransient @futurebird This one has been very strange for me. My French teacher is Iranian. She was young when the revolution happened but is old enough to remember the before times.
She's been writing or calling every US politician she can find contact info for every day for the last month, asking them to start this war. The atrocities being committed by the Iranian government against its own people (her people) have been terrible and the Iranian people are, by and large, defenseless against it. To her, this is the only way. She's watching her own people get slaughtered in the streets en masse by their own government. To her, war, if it brings about change, might be better.
But for myself... I can't bring myself to have any kind of faith in the US. This won't be a war of liberation.
It might be a regime change. The new regime might be better in some ways. The US might even set up another puppet democracy like they did in Afghanistan just so Trump can win another FIFA prize. Absolute best case, it buys Iranians a few years of pseudo-democracy before the US gets bored and lets the country collapse again.
But at the end of the day, Trump and Israel do not have good motivations of any sort. Their goal is to take Iran down a peg and maybe get some cheap oil out of the deal. For Israel, they've always hated Iran and they now have a moment where they can strike without worrying about international backlash. This is just more of the usual international bullying the US has been doing for a century. The protests and things have just given the political cover to do the thing US conservatives have been salivating over for decades.
@faithisleaping @futurebird there was a panel at my wife’s university earlier this week of an Iranian doctor living overseas and an Iranian-American professor who immigrated decades ago. They expressed similar opinions, and were actually advocating for the return of the monarchy because they see basically anything as better than what is happening right now, which is absolutely fair. The regime there has just gone full tilt into massacring their own people in mass to maintain power.
…and I can sympathize with the desperation, as I would also take anything right now over the fascists in power in the US, just about.
But the thing about war, as Clausewitz famously said, is that war is just the continuation of politics by other means: you need a clear set of policy goals, and to engage in war with an eye to accomplishing those goals. What happened with the Iraq War under Bush and Obama is a good example of what happens when one goes to war without any real political goal. There is no real endpoint, no victory, just something that sucks everyone in deeper and deeper into death and violence.
And right now, the US military and government are acting on theatrical impulse. Maybe something good can emerge from this, but it’s much much more likely the US and the surrounding region are going to get sucked in deeper and deeper, and Iranians are going to suffer even more.
I would, under other circumstances, absolutely support the US helping the Iranian people fighting for freedom, but this is not going to be that…at least that’s my prediction. Trump has a demonstrated record of engaging in military action as a transaction, and he is going to want something in exchange, and when that doesn’t come, things will get worse.
…this is just my impression and predictions. I could be wrong and I hope I am
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@faithisleaping @futurebird there was a panel at my wife’s university earlier this week of an Iranian doctor living overseas and an Iranian-American professor who immigrated decades ago. They expressed similar opinions, and were actually advocating for the return of the monarchy because they see basically anything as better than what is happening right now, which is absolutely fair. The regime there has just gone full tilt into massacring their own people in mass to maintain power.
…and I can sympathize with the desperation, as I would also take anything right now over the fascists in power in the US, just about.
But the thing about war, as Clausewitz famously said, is that war is just the continuation of politics by other means: you need a clear set of policy goals, and to engage in war with an eye to accomplishing those goals. What happened with the Iraq War under Bush and Obama is a good example of what happens when one goes to war without any real political goal. There is no real endpoint, no victory, just something that sucks everyone in deeper and deeper into death and violence.
And right now, the US military and government are acting on theatrical impulse. Maybe something good can emerge from this, but it’s much much more likely the US and the surrounding region are going to get sucked in deeper and deeper, and Iranians are going to suffer even more.
I would, under other circumstances, absolutely support the US helping the Iranian people fighting for freedom, but this is not going to be that…at least that’s my prediction. Trump has a demonstrated record of engaging in military action as a transaction, and he is going to want something in exchange, and when that doesn’t come, things will get worse.
…this is just my impression and predictions. I could be wrong and I hope I am
@JoscelynTransient @faithisleaping @futurebird i believe the US actors have goals that they are intent on achieving, they just aren’t the stated ones. Because they are quite simply war crimes.
Make no mistake, i hate all war. But what they are doing would get the Israeli and US actors arrested by the ICJ if they couldn’t couch it all in lies.
I’m furious and heartbroken today at this senseless loss of life, all in the name of racist imperialism. -
@faithisleaping @futurebird there was a panel at my wife’s university earlier this week of an Iranian doctor living overseas and an Iranian-American professor who immigrated decades ago. They expressed similar opinions, and were actually advocating for the return of the monarchy because they see basically anything as better than what is happening right now, which is absolutely fair. The regime there has just gone full tilt into massacring their own people in mass to maintain power.
…and I can sympathize with the desperation, as I would also take anything right now over the fascists in power in the US, just about.
But the thing about war, as Clausewitz famously said, is that war is just the continuation of politics by other means: you need a clear set of policy goals, and to engage in war with an eye to accomplishing those goals. What happened with the Iraq War under Bush and Obama is a good example of what happens when one goes to war without any real political goal. There is no real endpoint, no victory, just something that sucks everyone in deeper and deeper into death and violence.
And right now, the US military and government are acting on theatrical impulse. Maybe something good can emerge from this, but it’s much much more likely the US and the surrounding region are going to get sucked in deeper and deeper, and Iranians are going to suffer even more.
I would, under other circumstances, absolutely support the US helping the Iranian people fighting for freedom, but this is not going to be that…at least that’s my prediction. Trump has a demonstrated record of engaging in military action as a transaction, and he is going to want something in exchange, and when that doesn’t come, things will get worse.
…this is just my impression and predictions. I could be wrong and I hope I am
@JoscelynTransient @futurebird Yeah... If people are hoping for a surgical strike that takes out the current Iranian leadership and then sudden mass support for a new monarchy or democracy that's fair and equitable, they're not going to get it.
We know what war against a bunch of religious zealots looks like. It's not pretty. It's not fast. There is no "surgical strike". There's a queue a mile long of potential leaders with exactly the same values as the current leadership. As long as the people with the guns still want strong-arm theocracy, that's what it's going to be.
What they're going to get is either a long, drawn-out semi-occupation that wrecks the country while the US takes whatever they want for free. Or Trump is going to get bored in a few weeks and the US is going to be the common enemy they need to cement their power for another few decades.
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@JoscelynTransient @futurebird Yeah... If people are hoping for a surgical strike that takes out the current Iranian leadership and then sudden mass support for a new monarchy or democracy that's fair and equitable, they're not going to get it.
We know what war against a bunch of religious zealots looks like. It's not pretty. It's not fast. There is no "surgical strike". There's a queue a mile long of potential leaders with exactly the same values as the current leadership. As long as the people with the guns still want strong-arm theocracy, that's what it's going to be.
What they're going to get is either a long, drawn-out semi-occupation that wrecks the country while the US takes whatever they want for free. Or Trump is going to get bored in a few weeks and the US is going to be the common enemy they need to cement their power for another few decades.
@faithisleaping @futurebird there’s actually another set of possibilities that are very likely. A regime of any kind stays in power, in part, by continuing to keep the money/resources flowing to the people with guns. And if those people don’t feel confident that the regime can deliver or for other reasons decides to no longer back it, they will let the regime be overthrown or do a coup themselves.
This was largely what happened during the Arab Spring, as aging authoritarians named successors that seemed unlikely to be able to keep the system functioning well enough to benefit the military leaders. And they just weren’t willing to commit atrocities for them anymore, so stood aside as people overthrew them. This happens in Southeast Asia frequently too. It’s a very common pattern.
And that’s where I don’t know the Iranian government well enough. It is not a monolith, but I don’t have confidence to say what the non-theocrat factions may be seeing as their incentives/options.
