> So your argument is its cool that we killed children because they've also killed children? Hell of a take.

No my take is we do it by accident and they do it on purpose and at a much larger scale and instead of pearl clutching about the US doing it on accident you should be pearl clutching about Iran doing it. I didn’t bring it up, but anytime someone brings up this whole “US killed kids” I’m happy to remind everyone that Iran is far worse.

> The evidence we bombed their nuclear facilities is essentially this administration telling us we bombed their nuclear facilities.

So? Do you not believe anything anyone says unless you see it for yourself?

> If we've successfully stopped them from developing a nuclear weapon, which was stated as the point of our preemptive aggression, I'd need a very good reason why we continue to spend billions attacking them.

Stopping the development of a nuclear weapon is an important goal but not the only one. We keep defending ourselves because they keep doing things like launching rockets at Kuwait, or shooting at American ships, or supporting those committing genocide or murder in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen.

There is a very simple solution. Iran stops funding these groups, stops murdering their own people, stop launching rockets, and stops trying to build nuclear weapons. Once they do that and behave responsibility like just about every other country on the planet there aren’t any problems.

Why is it that they can’t just stop doing these things?

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etchalon 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

We didn't just do it by "accident". We did it through incompetence. This wasn't the unfortunate result of a necessary attack on a valid target. This was the result of stupidity.

"Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country.

I'd believe we'd actually accomplished our goal of stopping their nuclear program if this specific administration hadn't told us, before this attack, we had successfully stopped their nuclear program with a previous attack. Once you've lied to me once, my standard of evidence is a great deal higher than "trust us, bro." and this administration has already shown incompetence at judging the effectiveness of their attacks (or shown a willingness to lie to us about it).

The entire problem with this strategy, from day one, was the completely ahistorical belief that we could punish a country into behaving exactly as we want, in a way that specifically aligns with our interests.

Bullying nations has a tendency to harden them against cooperation and negotiation, as we've seen with Iran.

	▲	ericmay 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> We didn't just do it by "accident". We did it through incompetence. Ok and they did theirs with malicious and clear purpose. Yikes! > This wasn't the unfortunate result of a necessary attack on a valid target. This was the result of stupidity. No. Iran and their militant proxies know that we don't attack civilian targets on purpose. That's why they set up facilities, military equipment, or hide combatants behind children or in hospitals and such because they know we don't want to kill innocent people. Hamas or Iran will tell you this as part of their doctrine. So think about it. You've got the US and allies, Hamas, Hezbollah or whatever, Iran, and they're all saying "The US and western allies don't intentionally kill innocent people" and then there's you who is like sitting here complaining about it and now it's just "incompetence". Give me a break. > "Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country. Nobody is using that metric except you. The US admitted the mistake and apologized at a minimum. I believe there was some talk of compensation though I'm not sure where that has landed. Probably tough to do because the Iranian regime would steal any money we gave to the families. But hey I do agree with you, Iran's government is a terrorist regime. > Bullying nations has a tendency to harden them against cooperation and negotiation, as we've seen with Iran. Well sure but they were never cooperating anyway. If they were, they wouldn't have been taking the actions they've been taking. What does cooperation look like? It looks like not murdering tens of thousands of your own people, it looks like not pursuing nuclear weapons, it looks like not funding militant groups who murder innocent people throughout the region, and it looks like not building up gigantic stockpiles of missiles and drones and then launching them at every country around you. Iran is the only country doing this stuff. Why aren't they cooperating with the rest of the world peacefully?