As far as I can tell, a huge amount of it is butthurt over Iran “humiliating” America during the revolution and the following hostage crisis.
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I think you’re right. WIth a big heap of helping from the media – the same media who was happy to give Trump airtime in 2016 because it brought viewers and sold ads.
Maybe the media learned something from Iraq? No, we saw in 2016 that they didn’t.
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And if the job is to create enough fear and jingoism to re-elect Il Douche? That’s the equation I see playing out.
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Oh, yeah, that too, for sure.
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…and whatever remains of Al Qaeda and ISIS, and our very own domestic terrorists, the GOP.
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It’s “simple”, if the US doesn’t rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran, war or acts of war is the outcome.
Rejoin the deal and all parties came play games forever but, at least nobody gets killed needlessly.
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Are you familiar with the US history of involvement in Iran? We tend to get pissed and want retribution when we have the CIA or similar entity enter a nation that isn’t playing ball our way, leave a power vacuum that is then filled with people who remember our meddling and hate us for it. Especially if they’re Muslims or communists. See also: Afghanistan, Nicaragua, S Korea and on and on and on…
It’s the perfect storm of bigotry, foreign meddling, lack of historical comprehension and resource hoarding. All of which the GOP particularly relish. Oh, and add the soviets into any of this and you get some really confusing, long-lasting outcomes.
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FYI
Guess Pat passed his audition with flying MAGA hats and Boeing stock options.
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War will start the same day Congress gets ahold of Trump’s tax returns.
If we have learned anything, it is that Trump’s system for distracting from a major clusterfuck is to start a new, bigger one somewhere else.
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Aren’t you forgetting all the American arm’s dealers, and the American politicians?
That’s not just the GOP, that’s the current American policy. It’s straight up Kirkpatrick doctrine, that certain dictators we align and deal with (while in theory working behind the scenes to bring them in line with democratic norms, which LOL, yay right!). Others we can’t ever align with, because they are so “evil” they are not normal. This is Cold War thinking mapped onto the current Cold War in the middle east, with far less Marx and far more variants of Islamism.
They’ll just reinstate the draft…
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This shit show, if really hitting the fan, will spread like shit hitting a fan and make everyone sick.
I just spent several minutes ordering my thoughts on how complicated international politics would get if a US-Iranian war happens. I started writing but deleted it.
It is to terrible to think through. And the US or Iran themselves are only of minor concern in my view.
Someone please, pretty please with sugar on top get sense in every US citizen and get them off your asses to prevent a war in the middle East. This must not happen.
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I tend to agree and I hope that the democratic congress wont rubber stamp another war authorization. I think the Tumpsters are going to try to provoke Iran into doing something “bad,” thereby manufacturing a pretext for a bombardment with the help of our good friends Israel (who will probably help Bolton cook up some flimsy intelligence to sell to the security council). Hopefully Iran can keep it’s hawks in check and not fall for the ruse. Wont be easy in the face of sanctions.
And about those sanctions… The US has kinda put our allies in a bind since they still support the Nuclear deal… Whoever comes after Trump will have a hell of a time getting deals made with the kind of goodwill he’s shown to both foes and friends…
Lucky for everyone, Bolton doesn’t seem all that capable at rallying people to his cause, but the msm sure loves a good bombing… Look at the cruise missile strike in Syria a couple years ago.
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American arms dealers are hardly the force they were 40-50 years ago. The nature of warfare these days makes puts them in greater bind. They can barely supply much of our military with spare parts (especially the big money services Navy and Air Force). Our largest international deal lately was flooding Israel with M-4 rifles, which the Israelis promptly dumped as inferior to their own rifles. No factories in the world will increase recruiting, which is at abysmal levels.
As for American politicians, it will blow up in their face because it will be a clusterfuck of incompetence and insufficient actions. We don’t have the manpower to do more than just annoy Iran. You might get one year of patriotic fervor and then it will die off quickly and blow up in their faces.
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Problem being that the Iranian nuclear program was largely a bluff even back in the Obama days. Between Stuxnet and targeted assassinations, Iran lost most of its ability to do much. Hence the bellicose ranting about its uranium enrichment. An expensive and time intensive process that countries who actively seek nukes do underground and unnoticed. They were puffing themselves up like a fugu.
The entire point was to provoke a small scale half-baked reaction from the US or Israel. Iran’s military and proxy forces are largely locked up in Syria and Iraq. They aren’t looking for anything beyond token air strikes against them.
Which means the US would not be able to operate out of countries which would be necessary for any sustained activity against Iran.
That is pretty much what Iran’s government and Trump are looking for.
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Interesting thought! I hadn’t considered that the chicken-hawks on both sides need each other to remain hostile, but only up to a point… I do think Trump only wants a few “beautiful” strikes to sail into 2020, though I’m afraid Bolton might truly believe he can reshape the middle east. But I can see that the wider security state & Iran would both like to be in a military bear hug just to keep the gravy train rolling. Although in Iran, the sanctions will be truly devastating to ordinary people. Ugh, it’s so fucking disgusting.
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I don’t think that’s a realistic way to frame this. We have enough conventional power to devastate Iran and kill millions of people if we want to without having to occupy the country or take and hold any cities. Tehran has millions of people in it–what happens to those people if we destroy their electrical network and cripple their transportation systems while bombing the hell out of anything within a mile of any site we deem to be a legitimate target?
To be clear, I’m not saying this out of anything but horror at the prospect, I’m just arguing that we should recognize how much death and destruction we are capable of inflicting, particularly if we aren’t all that concerned with what comes after. I’m not saying we would take this strategy, and definitely not that we should, but the ability is there if Trump wants to use it.
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Don’t forget Boeing. Luckily they aren’t the ones calling the shots in the Department of Def—oh nuts.
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. . . 40 years ago.
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I wouldn’t be so sure… The DOD budget is larger than ever, as we carry on numerous wars and proxy wars, that go largely ignored by the American public. The defense industry is still a major employer in some areas, and there is still a steady and hungry international market for our weapons. Our defense contractors sell to all sorts of people, not just our core allies, like the Israelis.
Will it? It didn’t last time.
Maybe, but they could also be legitimately pursuing nuclear power, with the possibility of nukes being much more about self-preservation. They saw how the world changed how it dealt with NK, once they got nukes.
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. . . with enough loopholes that kids with rich daddies get a pass, of course.
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