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| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | ??? Do most of your everyday life decisions involve starting wars or killing people? That's concerning. Are you a high-ranking officer in the US military? As it happens, I'm not, and my decisions do not typically have life-or-death consequences. I also don't even know what you're getting at. There was nothing "relativistic" or "morally grey" about my argument. My point is that in order for any kind of peace to exist, each country must be able to accept that there will be other people in the world who are morally repugnant to them. Because there will always be leaders who consider each other repugnant, so if you endorse starting wars over that, you're committing to a world where everyone is starting wars all the time as the international norm. | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But if you're getting attacked for 4 decades by another country, do you do something about it or are you saying that's also wrong? My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades. It's not just disagreeable. People are seeking justice. It's one thing to dislike another politician. No one needs justice for repugnancy. But if they are committing acts of terror, that's a totally different thing. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world for decades. Among many other things, it overthrew the democratic Iranian government to establish a puppet autocracy in Iran, leading directly to the current one after a revolution. The entire reason Iran funds terrorists that target the US is because the US is an existential threat to it. So your argument basically boils down to "if I shoot someone, and they shoot me back, am I not entitled to self-defense?". The actual answer is to stop shooting them. Stop fucking up the entire Middle East and the people from there won't hate a country across the world so much that they feel a worthwhile use of their life is to strap a bomb to themselves in order to kill people from there. | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Your other comment is locked apparently. Can't reply. But there you suggested that the US should stop because they make Iran want to bomb and that's why there's war. And we can say the same about Iran. So, your solution is hopeless as we already know from centuries of conflict history. Iran wants to kill us for historical events. We want to kill them for those too. Very insightful. But we're bigger and the war is just on the TV in America. You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge. I didn't know why you think America will be easier to convince of that. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Iran wants to kill us for historical events. No, Iran wants to kill you for current events. You're talking like American imperialism in the Middle East is past-tense. It is on-going, constantly. It is happening right now. This, itself, is an imperialist war. Trump is not going to war for whatever fucking reason you think he is, like stopping terrorism or changing the Iranian regime to help the Iranian people. > You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge. They LITERALLY DID THAT. The first invasion striking their nuclear facilities was itself an act of war that would have justified closing the Strait and all other measures they could take to fight back. Yet they accepted such a blatant crime against them and tried to de-escalate, were in the middle of negotiating a humiliatingly one-sided deal (after Trump tore up the one they had made with Obama, for no reason), and then the US attacked them in the middle of negotiations for the second time in a row. This time killing their leader, 150 children, and countless other crimes. Nobody could ever lay down and accept that. You have just created a country full of people that will justifiably hate you for another 80 years, minimum. They have been taught that the only thing trying to appease the US does is embolden the US to take even more from them. I don't know how to communicate this to you, but your country IS THE AGGRESSOR. The US is worse than Iran. Fullstop. The Iranian regime is evil, and despite that, the American regime manages to be multiple times worse. Peace in the Middle East was possible. It is the US who is constantly, constantly, constantly stirring up conflicts there, and you have the gall to blame Iran for it. | | |
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| ▲ | trimethylpurine 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world Yeah, that already happened. Now what? How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed? Your proposed solution is essentially a leader in every country that has suffered from Iran's terror who can convince his/her people that their kidnapped children are worth it. Obviously that isn't feasible. But worse, how is that different than saying it's okay for Iran to kidnap children? | | |
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| ▲ | mikkupikku 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades The list of Iranian terror attacks in America amounts to a whole lot of fuck all. Whatever Iran might be doing elsewhere shouldn't be America's problem. |
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| ▲ | mhb 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't think the point was that subtle. There is good and evil, right and wrong, survival and destruction. You seem to think that drawing a line around some land and calling yourself a country immunizes you from the moral scrutiny of your neighbors. While this certainly accords with the promulgations of the morally bankrupt UN, it is not a recipe for existing in our world. This is why it is important to have a powerful military. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is a matter of pragmatism. Even if I myself consider my perspective on good and evil to be objective, it is a given that each of my neighbors will have their own seemingly-objective sense of good and bad that differs from my own. We are then at an impasse. Do I attempt to kill all of my neighbors in order to rid the world of what I perceive to be evil? Or do I perhaps make peace with an imperfect world in which bad things happen in other countries that are not my jurisdiction to worry about? Apparently you subscribe to the "kill all your neighbors" camp, that your objective brand of morality must be enforced on the entire world by means of military might. World conquest, however, is an utterly irrational thing to attempt, and will only lead to death and destruction, not an idealistic world that conforms to your sense of morality. | | |
| ▲ | mhb 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't know what to tell you. You're restating the paradox of tolerance. You should probably come to some philosophical resolution regarding that before you keep digging. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | What I have said has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance. I am firmly on the side of not tolerating the intolerant, but stating that, "not tolerating" does not extend to "starting wars in an attempt at world conquest to rid the world of the intolerant". | | |
| ▲ | mhb 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If "not tolerating the intolerant" is not actionable, it is just mindless rhetoric. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is actionable. That action is simply not "world conquest", jesus fucking christ. Is America itself a society in which the intolerant have no power? No, it is not. Maybe first it could think about clearing things up in its own borders before trying to use that excuse to invade the whole goddamn world. Indeed it is the intolerant who currently have power in the US. You seem to be projecting your own desire for invading Iran, which is completely incompatible with the people in power's actual reason for invading Iran. They are not invading Iran to make life better for Iranians. But you believe invading Iran to make life better for Iranians is justified, so you lend your support to the current administration, even though that is explicitly not what is going to happen as a result of your support. You are, in short, a useful idiot[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Regardless of why we're there, did you want to keep Khameini in power while he coordinates terror? What is your solution for that? |
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| ▲ | wholinator2 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You'd be hard pressed to find someone more intolerant that the islamic regime of iran. So what are we going to do about it. What actions are we taking to not tolerate them? We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building. We tried sanctions and that crippled their economy and led people to attempt regime change, only to be murdered by the tens of thousands in the streets, brutally suppressed. All this while the regime is funding the majority of terrorism in the world today, fucking with literally every country in the middle east to attempt to assert their regime and rules farther and wider. At what point do we do something? How many have to die for us to decide to act. I'm aware that number is not 1, is it 35,000? 100,000? If not a number then what, what does it take to act? | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > We tried the nuke deal and they lied and kept building This is a lie. A complete fabrication. Trump says this, completely baselessly, without a shred of evidence, as known liars are wont to do. They allowed inspectors in and not one of them ever suggested they were violating the terms of the deal. > How many have to die for us to decide to act. This is a murky question, but if anybody was going to intervene in a country's domestic affairs, it would need to be by broad international consensus to have any legitimacy. It absolutely cannot be a unilateral invasion where one country decides who is worthy of invading and who is not. Moreover, that is not why they were invaded. Whatever qualms you have with the Iranian regime, this war is not a war to instate democracy in Iran. We already saw with Venezuela literally just two months ago that Trump invaded and deposed the leader, only to keep the current regime in place with an agreement to serve as his country's economic vassal. Stop projecting your own justifications for why you would invade Iran if you were President of the United States, to justify the actions of the current one who is not invading for those reasons. The only thing you are doing by justifying his invasion for unrelated reasons is giving your support to the death of more innocent Iranians that you ostensibly want to help. | | |
| ▲ | trimethylpurine 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you support Khameini's call and platform to fund the export of Islamic Revolution? Do you believe that other countries should be allowed to defend themselves from the import of Khameini's Islamic Revolution? Or did you not know that this was his openly stated purpose? How many people have to die before you start blaming the international community for inaction or worse, you start to feel that the international community is complicit because they prevent one country from acting while another funds terror attacks with impunity? | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't know why you decided to hop to multiple unrelated threads of conversation with other people while ignoring my reply to you on this subject specifically earlier, but to restate: wholesale violence does not solve terrorism. You already fucking tried this in Afghanistan, and failed, badly. The solution to terrorism is to stop giving people reasons to be terrorists, which means you must stop killing their people and trying to conquer their land/resources, as the US has been engaged in constantly for the entire post-world-war period. A commitment to peace won't make all of the terrorists disappear overnight, so you will have to deal with a long tail of violence against you for years to come, which is known as "consequences for your actions". You have a right to take measures to defend yourself against individual terrorists, but if you ever want actual peace, those measures can't include actions that will create new generations of terrorists, like invading a fucking country, assassinating its leader, bombing schools, sinking ships on diplomatic missions, and destroying infrastructure. Every single one of these actions will create new terrorists who hate your country so much they will lay down their lives to hurt it. Actually, not only did you ignore my reply, you're ignoring the post you're replying to as well. THIS WAR IS NOT EVEN A REGIME CHANGE WAR. STOP PROJECTING YOUR OWN MOTIVATIONS ONTO THE US GOVERNMENT. | | |
| ▲ | mhb 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > stop giving people reasons to be terrorists FFS they don't need reasons. Their stated goal and actions in support of it is the destruction of the apostatic free world. Your oppressed/oppressor narrative is vapid. Though terrorism is a tool they use, their goal is a caliphate with Sharia law. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You are literally brainwashed by American propaganda, JFC. Iranians do not hate you because you are free, they hate you because you are trying to control their country. Do you understand they are not movie villains? They are real people? Real people who would, in normal circumstances, prefer to live their lives peacefully? Imagine what it would take for you to decide the best way to spend your life is to strap a bomb to yourself and kill people from a country on the other side of the planet? Some reasons that may motivate you so heavily would perhaps include that country overthrowing your democracy and massacring your children. Reasons that are not likely are "jealousy of their FREEDOM". I already know your next tired argument will be BUT THE RELIGION OF PEACE, so I will go ahead and pre-empt it. It is not genuinely religion that motivates people to die in acts of terrorism. If it were, that would still not be a reason to attack America, which is on the other side of the planet, as opposed to any of their closer neighbors who are just as full of heathens. Take, for example, Japan. It is a notable country on the world stage, once the #2 economy in the world. It has never, not even a single time, been attacked by an Islamic terrorist. Why do you think that is? Is it because Japan is not free? Is it because Japan lives in accordance with Islamic principles? Or is it because, maybe, just maybe, Japan hasn't given a single person from the Middle East any reason to want to sacrifice themselves to kill Japanese people? Similarly, note that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with 270 million people, 87% of which are Muslims. Not one of them has ever staged a terrorist attack against the US. Doesn't that seem strange to you? If Muslims are inherently evil people born for the religious purpose of attacking the US, surely Indonesians should be doing it too? Or maybe, just maybe, it's not actually religion that motivates such extreme acts of self-sacrifice, and the real reasons Indonesians don't attack the US is because the US has not given Indonesians reasons to hate it? | | |
| ▲ | mhb 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why are you making this about Muslims generally? | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You were already going there. > their goal is a caliphate with Sharia law. | | |
| ▲ | mhb 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nope. But now that you see how your distorted world view can lead you to the wrong conclusion, you should consider reassessing. |
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