So, given the President speaks and acts erratically, assuming this action may have been taken erratically isn't logical?Originally Posted by Wake27
There are already leaks coming out about the decision making. Here's a twitter thread. You can judge for yourself if it's believable.
A pretty good article about the decision to take him out. It's more detailed than a handful of tweets.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/03/polit...ine/index.html
Yes, because he couldn’t do this all on his own. And one guy saying the planning was chaotic isn’t a leak indicating anything. Even the nudge to the impeachment at the end is ridiculous. Could that have been a consideration in deciding to strike now? Absolutely, but who really even gives a fuck because there’s zero chance that was the only reason it was done and the truth is that most of those considerations are probably classified. I’m all for transparency in government but the notion from the American people that they deserve to know everything behind every military decision is retarded.So, given the President speaks and acts erratically, assuming this action may have been taken erratically isn't logical?
There are already leaks coming out about the decision making. Here's a twitter thread. You can judge for yourself if it's believable.
Action is easier to criticize than inaction, that doesn’t mean it’s more dangerous.
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Looks like we're about to see how good the missile defense systems are aboard US warships in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-r...s-persian-gulf
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Honestly, I doubt it.
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I doubt Iran is dumb enough to attack an American warship.
I would question the value of this strike in terms of rallying domestic support in the wake of the impeachment.
From the outside, my sense is that the impeachment itself is already rallying every supporter that would get on side as a result of a military action - as well as rallying opponents to their side. I guess maybe there's an advantage just in the sense that media outlets might have a calculus which involves revenues dropping if they give negative coverage to a war president? But frankly I think that's pretty arcane and presumes a level of self-control that I don't think exists in the media generally. I don't think this serves as an effective distraction from anything, really.
If you want to cast aspersions on the motivations, I would guess there was a desire to underline the difference between the handling of Benghazi and the recent round of US embassy heat in Iran. But there are always domestic political considerations in war; I don't personally find that particularly insidious in this case.
As far as aliens go, I would think any species advanced enough to get here and look at us would have a pretty comprehensive understanding of cold wars, satellite states, allies, competitors, and so on. They wouldn't be comparing the US to Iran in a vaccuum any more than one of us would walk into a village in some remote place, see a father sending a misbehaving kid to bed without his supper, and lose our minds over the fact that a giant dictator was using his physical size to starve a small, fragile being. The moral authority of the west would be pretty apparent to any civilization that I would personally feel was qualified to judge us; freedom, democracy and capitalism aren't perfect but they're the best we've got and the goals of Iran are pretty fundamentally counterposed to at least two of the above.
One man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter, but one state's totalitarianism is not another state's freedom. There is an objective difference and while I am personally comfortable with more moral relativism than a lot of people, that doesn't mean there isn't a huge objective difference in terms of the basic tenets of different civilizations. Killing people in itself may be equivalent in tragedy - presumably the families of German soldiers in WW2 felt exactly the same about losing their loved ones as the families of US soldiers - but that doesn't mean that Germany was the moral equivalent of the US at the time. The goals of the state or the civilization matter, and, to extend my employer - employee analogy, if I work for you and steal stuff, the relative injury I am probably inflicting on you compared to you taking away my entire income by firing me is disproportionately small. But that does not mean you have no moral right to fire me for stealing.
Finally I would agree that Iran is not an existential threat to the US and neither is any other country, for the moment. You must act in such a way that no country or group of countries can BECOME an existential threat to the US.
This is very much the same argument I often see come up in police UOF incidents where people with no exposure to the subject can't understand why the police need to respond to force with overwhelming power. Why can't they just wrestle with him? That was only a punch, they shouldn't need five guys to tackle him to the ground.
But the police can't afford to lose that fight. Loss of consciousness means loss of the gun - I imagine that principle would be well understood here. Well, America can't afford to lose fights either, because, happily for all of us, it's the world's premiere superpower AND it's pro-freedom, pro-democracy, and pro-capitalism. Global order and the continued supremacy of those ideals are totally dependent on America outgunning everyone else, and if you are seen to be weakly led, you and I and everybody in every country coat-tailing under the US military umbrella have a huge problem. And if America tolerates ankle-biting from the yapping dogs like Iran, that's how it looks.
I guess I'll add one postscript onto this: I have noticed that every time America engages a target, no matter how justified, the internet is suddenly filled with apocalyptic predictions about how the entire world is about to get dragged into a global conflict because the stupid Americans didn't understand historical fact X.
Where are all these people every time the Russians hit something? The Russians aren't particularly shy about employing force and the solar system has not collapsed into a black hole just because they weren't culturally aware of some Sumerian prophecy that will call everybody in to war but only if some special part of Syria gets attacked from the air by white-faced devils. But I swear to god, it's like every little thing the West does is going to result in self-immolation because this is what ISIS or whatever psychos of the day actually want.
Here's the reality: go ahead and smack the living shit out of Iranian leadership. Their ability to retaliate in any meaningful way is tiny. I don't intend any disrespect by this but without looking up the numbers, I would guess US casualties in the entire GWOT are comparable to a rough month in either World War. America is perfectly capable of preserving the global order and this targeted strike won't jeopardize anything.
They’ve done it before.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
I should have specified. I mean I doubt they attack one anytime soon.
Sounds like someone just stepped into the crosshairs of another hellfire.
