@chokem Do you understand the concept of ripple effect?
In a vaccuum of information the US killing a guy with ties to terrorist organizations that weren't US aligned sounds great.
Doing it in a spectacularly blatent way that also killed people from the government of a neutral 3rd party who were meeting with him as part of negotiations with another nation at the behest of the US is kind of a huge problem for several reasons:
1. No one in the middle east is ever going to trust the US ever again. Point blank you can't be sure that there desires to engage in diplomacy aren't part of an assassination attempt.
2. it destabilizes the region which leads to more issues that you need to clean up down the road.
3. It is illegal both as a part of the geneva convention and as a violation of article one of the NATO charter.
4. It prompts retaliation from Iran which given the level of the target is liable to be severe.
5. It isolates the US from major allies in the event of wider conflict in the region since hey check it out: aside from Israel, Saudi Arabia and maaaayyyybe Turkey no one is going to want to support you in this kind of war.
6. In the event of war we're going to see another refugee crisis just like what happened with syria.
7. This is going to be like catnip for Islamic extremists.
Simply put, this is an idiotic mistake perpetrated by someone with less then 30 seconds of foresight.
+8
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
I mean, yeah. That's the primary lesson they're always learning from how we deal with North Korea.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
In this particular action, given the scenario, I am really impressed with Iran if they stop here.
You simply cannot do this shit, it is insane. They're a sovereign country, and it absolutely does not matter that he was a bad person. We're in the middle of fighting proxy wars with their interests, and the point of that is so you do not have an actual war between nation
There is one exception to this. If you are the absolute most powerful country in the world you can do it and other nations just have to accept it as is, because really what can you do?
Develop a nuclear aresenal.
Hey now, you could also develop bioweapons! Don't place all the doomsday at Physics' door. But, bioweapons might be a bit complicated compared to 'big boom boom' that you'd need to make Trump scared. Hmm, and since Trump doesn't care about the American people and would probably survive even the worst bioweapon attack maybe you are right. Vs any sane leader, you have other options, vs Trump, you should go nuclear.
For the record I don't believe remotely that Iran is done retaliating.
Someone or something down the line is going to come to a bad end and it's absolutely going to be over this killing - it'll just have a layer of obfuscation over who did it and why.
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This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
We had a deal with Iran less than 3 years ago. All squandered because the gop are dumb racist fuckheads
I think it might be a mistake to speak about this exchange in the past tense. Retaliatory covert Iranian actions of some sort are almost a guarantee. The simplest option would be increased support for Iranian-favoring militia groups in Iraq, but that might not be direct enough.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
We had a deal with Iran less than 3 years ago. All squandered because the gop are dumb racist fuckheads
A good reminder for every idiot who will say Hilary (or the upcoming D candidate) would have had us at war with Iran over this
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
In this particular action, given the scenario, I am really impressed with Iran if they stop here.
They are dealing with their hawks, too. Such as the millions that marched to mourn Suleimani.
For the record I don't believe remotely that Iran is done retaliating.
Someone or something down the line is going to come to a bad end and it's absolutely going to be over this killing - it'll just have a layer of obfuscation over who did it and why.
I'm pretty sure they're done at this point. The hardliners are probably baying for blood but the simple fact is that unless the government wants the seat of Shiite power obliterated via a war they can't actually win barring fantastical shit going down, there isn't any point in going any further.
That having been said: I could very easily see Iran lashing out at trump once he's out of office and the repercussions wouldn't be nearly as severe.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
IMHO yes.
Depending on the validity of the assertion he was in the process of orchestrating an immediate attack it may have even been legal.
However it still may have been a terrible idea that almost (and still could) make a decades long proxy war go full-on hot.
please imagine if one of our four/five star generals was assassinated while in a different country and the nation responsible publicly said "we did it, because of all the civilians you killed" (which would be accurate, we've killed thousands of civilians in the region)
This country would go apeshit, we would be declaring war on that country within minutes of congress getting into the room.
You simply cannot do this shit, it is insane. They're a sovereign country, and it absolutely does not matter that he was a bad person. We're in the middle of fighting proxy wars with their interests, and the point of that is so you do not have an actual war between nation states.
Iran may back down for now, they may go fully apeshit, they may wait and then plan several devastating attacks. There's no way to know, and that's why what the US did is not only completely indefensible, morally, it's also incredibly irresponsible and stupid, politically/tactically. It's exactly the reason you don't want Trump leading your military efforts. He has no long term vision, and he only thinks like a bully. He's a stupid bully who thinks if he makes a show of power, that makes him strong and unapproachable.
It's like how his reaction to Iraq is so laughable. Obviously they're incredibly pissed and want the US military out of there. And his response is to tell a sovereign nation, a country, publicly, that they don't have a choice about US troops within their borders. It's just...he's so bad at this.
I think you need to re-read what I wrote.
I acknowledged that it was good that he was gone and that it may have not been illegal (again depending on the truth of him being involved in planning an immediate attack) and that it was a bad idea.
What I didn't say is that we should have done it.
If there is a rattlesnake under your bed and then it's gone, ostensibly that is a good thing.
It doesn't mean that setting your room on fire was a good idea.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution to be not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
The Saudis having nukes is the real terrifying part imo. When that happens we will be the closest we've ever been to a non-state-actor nuclear strike happening. Some goddamn 24 shit.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
For the record I don't believe remotely that Iran is done retaliating.
Someone or something down the line is going to come to a bad end and it's absolutely going to be over this killing - it'll just have a layer of obfuscation over who did it and why.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this was just the showy dick-waving part. They are not gonna let it go that easy, but the rest will be like cyberattacks and proxy-attacks and such I assume.
If that's true, then we basically have two undeclared nuclear powers in the Middle East, and two powers (Turkey and Iran) who can become nuclear capable with some achievable time and effort.
+3
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
I mean, yeah. That's the primary lesson they're always learning from how we deal with North Korea.
I don't understand this. North Korea doesn't need a nuclear weapon. It has a ton of cold war-era artillery pointed at Seoul and the world economy.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
IMHO yes.
Depending on the validity of the assertion he was in the process of orchestrating an immediate attack it may have even been legal.
However it still may have been a terrible idea that almost (and still could) make a decades long proxy war go full-on hot.
please imagine if one of our four/five star generals was assassinated while in a different country and the nation responsible publicly said "we did it, because of all the civilians you killed" (which would be accurate, we've killed thousands of civilians in the region)
This country would go apeshit, we would be declaring war on that country within minutes of congress getting into the room.
You simply cannot do this shit, it is insane. They're a sovereign country, and it absolutely does not matter that he was a bad person. We're in the middle of fighting proxy wars with their interests, and the point of that is so you do not have an actual war between nation states.
Iran may back down for now, they may go fully apeshit, they may wait and then plan several devastating attacks. There's no way to know, and that's why what the US did is not only completely indefensible, morally, it's also incredibly irresponsible and stupid, politically/tactically. It's exactly the reason you don't want Trump leading your military efforts. He has no long term vision, and he only thinks like a bully. He's a stupid bully who thinks if he makes a show of power, that makes him strong and unapproachable.
It's like how his reaction to Iraq is so laughable. Obviously they're incredibly pissed and want the US military out of there. And his response is to tell a sovereign nation, a country, publicly, that they don't have a choice about US troops within their borders. It's just...he's so bad at this.
I think you need to re-read what I wrote.
I acknowledged that it was good that he was gone and that it may have not been illegal (again depending on the truth of him being involved in planning an immediate attack) and that it was a bad idea.
What I didn't say is that we should have done it.
If there is a rattlesnake under your bed and then it's gone, ostensibly that is a good thing.
It doesn't mean that setting your room on fire was a good idea.
Except he was the head of a State Agency rather than a Non-State terrorist organization. Quds Force is no less effective today for his assassination, because it's an actual full on Department of Iran with numerous overlapping deputies and redundancies. The rattlesnake is still there, our bedroom just has more ash in it now.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
I think it's more accurate to say that america is unreliable in the long term.
Other nations aren't stupid. They can look at which party is in charge and make judgments based on that, same as any of us can.
The calculus now is not "you can't make deals with the US", it's "you can't expect deals you make with the US to last past the end of the current democratic president's term". That's also bad but it's not the same.
+41
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
We can't reliably keep a decent president in office. It took 7 years for Obama (a decent president by almost any objective measure) to achieve the nuclear agreement with Iran and then we elected this fuck muppet specifically to erase Obama's legacy on all policies foreign and domestic.
No way this Iranian regime or any future one under its current structure ever trusts us or agrees to nuclear nonproliferation again.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
We can't reliably keep a decent president in office. It took 7 years for Obama (a decent president by almost any objective measure) to achieve the nuclear agreement with Iran and then we elected this fuck muppet specifically to erase Obama's legacy on all policies foreign and domestic.
No way this Iranian regime or any future one under its current structure ever trusts us or agrees to nuclear nonproliferation again.
Or they agree to it because it benefits them somehow in the short term and they know that they won't have to abide by the terms over the long haul. Every deal will be looked at through the lens of short-term vs long-term gains and losses and agreed to on those grounds. Deals with short-term pain and long-term gain are now completely pointless with the US.
The people who elect the psychopaths will continue to vote, we will still have FPTP, the EC, Gerrymandering, congress still gives more power to small populations, the Supreme Court is still loaded with corruption, and things are still under the control of numerous parties across the world who don't care about peace.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
The issue here is that it means that you can't effect any sort of long term agreement with the US since every four years some lunatic is liable to come into power and push some insane new policy.
So unless trump goes down hard enough that the republicans are force to walk towards the center to distance themselves from him and the anti-reality cult that is his followers there is little reason to trust the US since hey check it out: everything that trump talked about wanting with iran (prosperity for there country and no nukes) was basically in place and he pissed it away out of sheer spite.
Frankly, putting long term trust in the US at this juncture is simply irresponsible for any head of state.
Iran is refusing to turn over the black box from the Tehran crash. Keep an eye on this - if they stubbornly hold on to it, perhaps there's something on it they don't want anyone to know
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran will not give the black box of the crashed Ukrainian airliner to planemaker Boeing, the head of Tehran’s civil aviation organization was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
Ali Abedzadeh also said it was not clear which country Iran would send the box to so that its data could be analyzed, semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Never heard of Soleimani before he got blown to pieces, but ultimately it’s a good thing he is gone?
I wouldn't call an extralegal murder that has put us on the brink of a potentially multinational war a "good thing".
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution tone not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
Honestly even most Republican presidents have been leagues better than Trump in the semblance-of-good-faith department. I've seen people get irritated by one president or another deciding to walk away from a treaty or agreement or whatever, but this guy's the first one where just about everyone takes as a given, from square one, that the president isn't going to be in the same hemisphere as honesty about anything.
Most of his predecessors would grumble about agreements, but none of them would tear one up on impulse because someone on Fox News was cranky that evening.
The current idiot's different in kind, not just degree.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
I mean, yeah. That's the primary lesson they're always learning from how we deal with North Korea.
I don't understand this. North Korea doesn't need a nuclear weapon. It has a ton of cold war-era artillery pointed at Seoul and the world economy.
That's really only a deterrent to empathic people.
The people who elect the psychopaths will continue to vote, we will still have FPTP, the EC, Gerrymandering, congress still gives more power to small populations, the Supreme Court is still loaded with corruption, and things are still under the control of numerous parties across the world who don't care about peace.
Iran is refusing to turn over the black box from the Tehran crash. Keep an eye on this - if they stubbornly hold on to it, perhaps there's something on it they don't want anyone to know
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran will not give the black box of the crashed Ukrainian airliner to planemaker Boeing, the head of Tehran’s civil aviation organization was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
Ali Abedzadeh also said it was not clear which country Iran would send the box to so that its data could be analyzed, semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Why would they act like they are gonna cooperate with the US on anything right now?
Iran is refusing to turn over the black box from the Tehran crash. Keep an eye on this - if they stubbornly hold on to it, perhaps there's something on it they don't want anyone to know
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran will not give the black box of the crashed Ukrainian airliner to planemaker Boeing, the head of Tehran’s civil aviation organization was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
Ali Abedzadeh also said it was not clear which country Iran would send the box to so that its data could be analyzed, semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
Or maybe they don't trust Boeing to not hand it right over to the US government.
The people who elect the psychopaths will continue to vote, we will still have FPTP, the EC, Gerrymandering, congress still gives more power to small populations, the Supreme Court is still loaded with corruption, and things are still under the control of numerous parties across the world who don't care about peace.
Trusting us ever again would be insane.
Unless we have a revolution...
Post-revolutionary governments, of course, being know for their sense and stability.
This went the best that it possibly could have, I think, given the assassination. Iran did an amazing job in their response, frankly.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
The Saudis having nukes is the real terrifying part imo. When that happens we will be the closest we've ever been to a non-state-actor nuclear strike happening. Some goddamn 24 shit.
When the Saudis have the nuke, I give it a year tops before IS / something similar gets them, too,
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In a vaccuum of information the US killing a guy with ties to terrorist organizations that weren't US aligned sounds great.
Doing it in a spectacularly blatent way that also killed people from the government of a neutral 3rd party who were meeting with him as part of negotiations with another nation at the behest of the US is kind of a huge problem for several reasons:
1. No one in the middle east is ever going to trust the US ever again. Point blank you can't be sure that there desires to engage in diplomacy aren't part of an assassination attempt.
2. it destabilizes the region which leads to more issues that you need to clean up down the road.
3. It is illegal both as a part of the geneva convention and as a violation of article one of the NATO charter.
4. It prompts retaliation from Iran which given the level of the target is liable to be severe.
5. It isolates the US from major allies in the event of wider conflict in the region since hey check it out: aside from Israel, Saudi Arabia and maaaayyyybe Turkey no one is going to want to support you in this kind of war.
6. In the event of war we're going to see another refugee crisis just like what happened with syria.
7. This is going to be like catnip for Islamic extremists.
Simply put, this is an idiotic mistake perpetrated by someone with less then 30 seconds of foresight.
It's a pity that "best it possibly could have" is maybe a chain of Middle Eastern nuclearization that could end with bombs disappearing, but hey, at least Iran has the tiniest of breathing room and we're not at war like, right now =/
It sucks that I’m breathing a sigh of relief when it’s going to be near impossible to get diplomacy restarted with the Middle East after the evil Walder Frey shit we pulled
I mean, that's been the case for a generation. The real long lasting damage here is to nonproliferation. Iran, Saudi, and a handful of other countries are now going to have nuclear weapons in a matter of time. That is not good.
I mean, yeah. That's the primary lesson they're always learning from how we deal with North Korea.
In this particular action, given the scenario, I am really impressed with Iran if they stop here.
Hey now, you could also develop bioweapons! Don't place all the doomsday at Physics' door. But, bioweapons might be a bit complicated compared to 'big boom boom' that you'd need to make Trump scared. Hmm, and since Trump doesn't care about the American people and would probably survive even the worst bioweapon attack maybe you are right. Vs any sane leader, you have other options, vs Trump, you should go nuclear.
Wait not fantastic
Someone or something down the line is going to come to a bad end and it's absolutely going to be over this killing - it'll just have a layer of obfuscation over who did it and why.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
We had a deal with Iran less than 3 years ago. All squandered because the gop are dumb racist fuckheads
A good reminder for every idiot who will say Hilary (or the upcoming D candidate) would have had us at war with Iran over this
They are dealing with their hawks, too. Such as the millions that marched to mourn Suleimani.
I'm pretty sure they're done at this point. The hardliners are probably baying for blood but the simple fact is that unless the government wants the seat of Shiite power obliterated via a war they can't actually win barring fantastical shit going down, there isn't any point in going any further.
That having been said: I could very easily see Iran lashing out at trump once he's out of office and the repercussions wouldn't be nearly as severe.
I think you need to re-read what I wrote.
I acknowledged that it was good that he was gone and that it may have not been illegal (again depending on the truth of him being involved in planning an immediate attack) and that it was a bad idea.
What I didn't say is that we should have done it.
If there is a rattlesnake under your bed and then it's gone, ostensibly that is a good thing.
It doesn't mean that setting your room on fire was a good idea.
Given the reporting about how much Pompeo wanted this shit, I don't think in the end that that was a big factor here.
My rep, Elissa Slotkin, is a former CIA analyst assigned to the Iran book and had what I thought was a good take on Twitter at the time: that we've been considering killing Soleimani for years, but that the cost-benefit analysis never ticked over into the black because they considered Iranian retribution to be not worth it.
In terms of tangible results - Solemani dead and no real damage or causalities in response by Iran - Trump has broken-clocked himself a win by Slotkin's criteria.
The intangible results are really bad - i.e. we breached a ton of norms when we asked Iraq to invite a head of state go negotiate and then assassinated him in Iraq -- but I'm hopeful that the hit will fade with the Trump admin out of office, consistent with Iran's twitter statements that their problem lies with Trump, not America. If Iran can make that distinction, then anyone can.
The Saudis having nukes is the real terrifying part imo. When that happens we will be the closest we've ever been to a non-state-actor nuclear strike happening. Some goddamn 24 shit.
I think the damage the Trump presidency has caused is it shows america is unreliable as fuck even without Trump. That's the lasting damage, showing our country to be a toddler with a gun, hoping we don't pull the trigger.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this was just the showy dick-waving part. They are not gonna let it go that easy, but the rest will be like cyberattacks and proxy-attacks and such I assume.
If that's true, then we basically have two undeclared nuclear powers in the Middle East, and two powers (Turkey and Iran) who can become nuclear capable with some achievable time and effort.
I don't really think that's the case. We're reliably decent-good? with a Dem president. With a Republican president, shit is reliably bad. And they can distinguish that our current foreign policy is a product of Russian information warfare.
I don't understand this. North Korea doesn't need a nuclear weapon. It has a ton of cold war-era artillery pointed at Seoul and the world economy.
Except he was the head of a State Agency rather than a Non-State terrorist organization. Quds Force is no less effective today for his assassination, because it's an actual full on Department of Iran with numerous overlapping deputies and redundancies. The rattlesnake is still there, our bedroom just has more ash in it now.
I think it's more accurate to say that america is unreliable in the long term.
Other nations aren't stupid. They can look at which party is in charge and make judgments based on that, same as any of us can.
The calculus now is not "you can't make deals with the US", it's "you can't expect deals you make with the US to last past the end of the current democratic president's term". That's also bad but it's not the same.
We can't reliably keep a decent president in office. It took 7 years for Obama (a decent president by almost any objective measure) to achieve the nuclear agreement with Iran and then we elected this fuck muppet specifically to erase Obama's legacy on all policies foreign and domestic.
No way this Iranian regime or any future one under its current structure ever trusts us or agrees to nuclear nonproliferation again.
Or they agree to it because it benefits them somehow in the short term and they know that they won't have to abide by the terms over the long haul. Every deal will be looked at through the lens of short-term vs long-term gains and losses and agreed to on those grounds. Deals with short-term pain and long-term gain are now completely pointless with the US.
Trusting us ever again would be insane.
They did 9/11
Changed the world forever
Unified much of the middle East into hating the USA
And have been printing money ever since
Pakistan didn't need nukes either. Then India got them.
The issue here is that it means that you can't effect any sort of long term agreement with the US since every four years some lunatic is liable to come into power and push some insane new policy.
So unless trump goes down hard enough that the republicans are force to walk towards the center to distance themselves from him and the anti-reality cult that is his followers there is little reason to trust the US since hey check it out: everything that trump talked about wanting with iran (prosperity for there country and no nukes) was basically in place and he pissed it away out of sheer spite.
Frankly, putting long term trust in the US at this juncture is simply irresponsible for any head of state.
Honestly even most Republican presidents have been leagues better than Trump in the semblance-of-good-faith department. I've seen people get irritated by one president or another deciding to walk away from a treaty or agreement or whatever, but this guy's the first one where just about everyone takes as a given, from square one, that the president isn't going to be in the same hemisphere as honesty about anything.
Most of his predecessors would grumble about agreements, but none of them would tear one up on impulse because someone on Fox News was cranky that evening.
The current idiot's different in kind, not just degree.
That's really only a deterrent to empathic people.
Unless we have a revolution...
Why would they act like they are gonna cooperate with the US on anything right now?
Or maybe they don't trust Boeing to not hand it right over to the US government.
That seems more likely to me.
Post-revolutionary governments, of course, being know for their sense and stability.
When the Saudis have the nuke, I give it a year tops before IS / something similar gets them, too,