Starts out ok and then starts cheering for the terrorizing of the children of Iran's political caste abroad. Don't waste your time reading this. Attacking the children of your enemies doesn't win your cause.
There's no doubt what's happening in Iran is a massacre by a dictatorial regime, but good grief the parallels between the rhetoric now and that of 2003 are impossible to ignore. I thought we had moved past the idea that the US could just bomb a country into a better future.
I don't recall that being any part of the rationale for the US war in Iraq (which, to be clear, will hopefully go down as the least just war the US ever instigated). "We'll be greeted as liberators" was trotted out as a mitigation for how bad occupations normally are, but we were going whether or not that was true. The Iraq war was not a war of liberation against an unjust government. It was a war of choice against a country that happened to have a horrendously unjust government.
The pretext for the Iraq war was that they were involved in 9/11 and possessed weapons of mass destruction.
I doubt there will be a ground invasion this time. The current US administration cannot build a coalition (and logistics without a coalition is hard), not will the US public go for it.
And is there really much you can do from the air that wasn't done already?
Either the Iranians do it themselves or it doesn't happen. Sadly, I don't see any good outcomes for the protestors. But you never know, oppressive regimes appear stable, until they are not.
But unfortunately it does sometimes work, for example in Yugoslavia. And it would have worked in Iraq if we hadn't dismantled the entire civilian infrastructure.
The killing in Bosnia and Kosovo were stopped by Bill Clinton. The bombings were what brought all sides to the table to broker the Dayton agreement. The siege of Sarajevo ended. The peace has held for nearly 30 years now.
Seems clear they were talking about NATO intervention in 1999 and the ouster of Milosevic. Also notable as a military intervention that was at the time widely seen as a "Wag The Dog" scenario.
The "politician's fallacy" (we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this) is at its strongest when it comes to massacres in other countries. Nobody wants to sit around and just watch it continue, and it's really hard to put yourself in the frame to accurately analyze "is there actually anything I can do about this which won't make the problem worse?"
It's a hard problem and I don't know what to do about it, especially since (as a sibling comment mentions), sometimes you can improve the situation. Other times you will make it much worse. And I haven't seen a trustworthy way to distinguish the two (lots of interventionist-minded folks claim they have one; I think they're kidding themselves).
The something in question is bombing. Didn't Israel and the US try that last year?
Maybe the objective wasn't regime, but I doubt more bombs will do that? Not after so many years of sanctions.
Sadly, I don't see any positive outcome, short of the regime gracefully collapsing on itself.
Hardening sanctions won't do Iranians any good, but it will make the country poorer and less able to inflict violence on other countries. Which is guess is the logic.
And following the export of drones to Russia, I doubt Europe, which has previously been in favor of fewer sanctions, will oppose more sanctions on Iran.
If only the US administration had friends, they could do something with sanctions. But I guess useless bombing it is, or maybe just nothing -- this is Trump after all.
Sadly, I doubt it matters either way.
The regime sponsors terrorism, not reason they wouldn't do it at home.
There's nothing left in the files, so there's no need to overwhelm it. If there were anything incriminating, it would outlast the weekend news cycle and displace anything short of an attack on American soil. But anything incriminating has been redacted, so it might as well be the weekend news cycle.
The hard things about having rule of law, is that you generally can't disqualify people from VISAs based on who parents are.
And revoking visa granted years ago is even harder.
I think maybe the EU did something like this with some Russian elites, but as I recall they put names of the people into a law.
The rule of law has downsides, but as a whole I'll take it over the alternative any day.
Starts out ok and then starts cheering for the terrorizing of the children of Iran's political caste abroad. Don't waste your time reading this. Attacking the children of your enemies doesn't win your cause.
There's no doubt what's happening in Iran is a massacre by a dictatorial regime, but good grief the parallels between the rhetoric now and that of 2003 are impossible to ignore. I thought we had moved past the idea that the US could just bomb a country into a better future.
I don't recall that being any part of the rationale for the US war in Iraq (which, to be clear, will hopefully go down as the least just war the US ever instigated). "We'll be greeted as liberators" was trotted out as a mitigation for how bad occupations normally are, but we were going whether or not that was true. The Iraq war was not a war of liberation against an unjust government. It was a war of choice against a country that happened to have a horrendously unjust government.
The pretext for the Iraq war was that they were involved in 9/11 and possessed weapons of mass destruction.
I doubt there will be a ground invasion this time. The current US administration cannot build a coalition (and logistics without a coalition is hard), not will the US public go for it.
And is there really much you can do from the air that wasn't done already?
Either the Iranians do it themselves or it doesn't happen. Sadly, I don't see any good outcomes for the protestors. But you never know, oppressive regimes appear stable, until they are not.
But unfortunately it does sometimes work, for example in Yugoslavia. And it would have worked in Iraq if we hadn't dismantled the entire civilian infrastructure.
what on earth could you mean by it working in yugoslavia
The killing in Bosnia and Kosovo were stopped by Bill Clinton. The bombings were what brought all sides to the table to broker the Dayton agreement. The siege of Sarajevo ended. The peace has held for nearly 30 years now.
OK, but this was more like Serbia/Kosovo/Bosnia.
Maybe GP was asking about previous Yugoslavia war, where AFAIR there was no intervention and massacres continued for quite long.
Seems clear they were talking about NATO intervention in 1999 and the ouster of Milosevic. Also notable as a military intervention that was at the time widely seen as a "Wag The Dog" scenario.
The "politician's fallacy" (we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this) is at its strongest when it comes to massacres in other countries. Nobody wants to sit around and just watch it continue, and it's really hard to put yourself in the frame to accurately analyze "is there actually anything I can do about this which won't make the problem worse?"
It's a hard problem and I don't know what to do about it, especially since (as a sibling comment mentions), sometimes you can improve the situation. Other times you will make it much worse. And I haven't seen a trustworthy way to distinguish the two (lots of interventionist-minded folks claim they have one; I think they're kidding themselves).
The something in question is bombing. Didn't Israel and the US try that last year?
Maybe the objective wasn't regime, but I doubt more bombs will do that? Not after so many years of sanctions.
Sadly, I don't see any positive outcome, short of the regime gracefully collapsing on itself.
Hardening sanctions won't do Iranians any good, but it will make the country poorer and less able to inflict violence on other countries. Which is guess is the logic.
And following the export of drones to Russia, I doubt Europe, which has previously been in favor of fewer sanctions, will oppose more sanctions on Iran.
If only the US administration had friends, they could do something with sanctions. But I guess useless bombing it is, or maybe just nothing -- this is Trump after all.
Sadly, I doubt it matters either way. The regime sponsors terrorism, not reason they wouldn't do it at home.
How do you mean? The US attacked the Iranian nuclear program; they very deliberately didn't attempt to escalate to an attack on the regime itself.
Fair enough, but would more bombs do anything?
No, I don't think so.
Whether or not we have, this probably has more to do with bombing the huge, late night Friday Epstein files dump off the front page.
There's nothing left in the files, so there's no need to overwhelm it. If there were anything incriminating, it would outlast the weekend news cycle and displace anything short of an attack on American soil. But anything incriminating has been redacted, so it might as well be the weekend news cycle.
They've been moving ships and positioning assets for more than a week now. Not everything is related to a document dump.
What does? This post?
> There are countless examples...
The hard things about having rule of law, is that you generally can't disqualify people from VISAs based on who parents are. And revoking visa granted years ago is even harder.
I think maybe the EU did something like this with some Russian elites, but as I recall they put names of the people into a law.
The rule of law has downsides, but as a whole I'll take it over the alternative any day.