Trump may have just started a war with Iran

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Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby KleinerKiller » Fri Jan 03, 2020 8:54 pm

One of Iran's top military leaders was assassinated in a drone strike on Iraqi soil early this morning, along with seven other people. Trump reportedly ordered the strike personally. Iran is obviously furious, and our allies and enemies alike are voicing disapproval and fear for the future; Trump responded to the global outcry by tweeting an image of an American flag.

Regardless of whether you think it's justified because of Iran's past actions, this was an unprovoked act of war that is going to send shockwaves through the world. We know why he did this. It's an election year in which Trump is facing scrutiny over the impeachment proceedings, and war guarantees reelection, meaning yes, Trump is almost certainly getting reelected no matter how the rest of the year shakes out. Now we just have to wait and see how Iran retaliates, and how many thousands of innocents die when they do.
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby Absentia » Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:12 am

I'm going to have to push back on the "unprovoked act of war" thing. Soleimani had no legitimate business being in Iraq, and according to the government's account he was there to direct Iran-backed militias against American targets. And as much as I may not trust this administration to tell the truth, the fact that Iran's paramilitary-terrorist-in-chief was in Iraq a couple of days after a paramilitary attack on the American embassy in Baghdad is, uh, suggestive that he wasn't there as a tourist. Under normal rules of engagement, this was probably a legal preemptive strike.

That doesn't make it a good idea, of course. If this were a chess game, I'd notate the move as "?!": surprising, risky, and probably more likely than not to blow up in our face. Iran has a real military of its own, and extensive ties to militias all over the Middle East and terrorist organizations around the world. They have (non-nuclear) ballistic missiles pointed at Baghdad. And Soleimani was hugely popular both within the regime and among its supporters. There is a real danger that shit is about to get serious, and it's not clear whether anyone in Washington (certainly not Trump) has a good plan for what happens next.

And as to whether this "guarantees" that Trump gets reelected:



People are not excited about the prospect of another war in the Persian Gulf, and in the absence of a clear explanation of why this is good for America, I would expect it to hurt his chances rather than help them.
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:35 am

We all know that this wasn't Trump starting the war. It was Micheal Bolton. Yes. First he tortures us with his country & western musics and now he's started World War III. The bastard.
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby Pedgerow » Sat Jan 04, 2020 1:49 pm

Michael Bolton? The guy from Office Space?!?!

On a more serious level, this probably won't be the incredibly exciting end of the world that some people are predicting (unless they're just joking when they predict it, as I was, honest, please believe me). It's definitely a diplomatic apocalypse, and a war would be a terrible idea, but Iran are basically a pariah state. Hating Iran is pretty much the only thing Israel and Saudi Arabia agree on. They don't really have any allies to help them out. So this is more an act of international bullying than an act of planetary suicide. So that's something, I guess.
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby Krashlia » Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:02 pm

And, if we get away with it (Iran resorting to little asymetric attacks and proxies at worst), it'll tell us a thing or two about our status.

That 4chan conspiracy theory would've been on to something calling the US a "Gunslinger".
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jan 06, 2020 7:04 pm

So, this is even a stupider move than I thought, and I already thought it was pretty fucking stupid.

For one thing, it killed any hope of (archive) resurrecting the Iran deal when Trump is out of office, though that was surely part of the benefit for Trump. If he loses, Iran will get nukes under his successor, and the GOP will talk about how Iran became a nuclear state under president Biden. And if he wins, well, his supporters will see Iran getting nukes as proof that he was right all along.

For another thing, between this, Trump blowing up the Iran deal, and the betrayal of the Kurds, US soft power in the Middle East is basically dead. (Archive) Though Trump and his supporters may see this as more proof of his worldview that soft power doesn't work.

And for a third thing, the Pentagon apparently offered Trump a "menu" of options, with the Soleimani strike being added to make the other options look more palatable, and being reportedly "stunned" when he chose it. These are people who've apparently worked with Trump before, and yet they acted as if they've been in a coma since about 2014.

The frustrating thing is that I'm seeing all these right-wing commentators saying "but he was a bad dude, he deserved it!" No shit he deserved it, but that's not the fucking point. Do the people who are going to be killed by Iranian retaliation deserve to be killed, do the anti-Iranian movements in Lebanon and Iraq deserve to have their feet cut out from under them, do the brave Iranians struggling against the regime deserve to see that end date pushed further away, does the entire Middle East deserve to live under threat of Iranian nukes, all so that one (already very old) terrorist asshole can die?
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Re: Trump may have just started a war with Iran

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:43 pm

In 2012 Trump tweeted how Obama was going to do something in Iran in order to get re-elected.

So it's not like the idea just came to him. It's been floating around in there for years. Can you imagine? Being that thought? Trapped in there, being aware of the other thoughts around you. Never mind, don't. I like you all.
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