One great thing about the Internet is it lets you see how other people live, if you want to go looking for it. Think about all the things you want in your life: a house to live in, a car to drive, children (maybe), your children being able to get an education safely, good health, time with family and friends and so on.

The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.

Now I want you to think about what you'd do if you sent your 11 year old daughter to school one day and some foreign government double tapped that school with 2 Tomahawk missiles killing almost 200 people, most of them children.

We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else. Remember that Afghanistan offered to hand bin Laden over after 9/11 [1].

The Trump administration tried (badly) lying about what happened. First it never happened. Second, it wasn't us. But nobody else has Tomahawk missiles so that was never going to work.

The only question is where the targeting information came from and what verification was done. I am not convinced that Israel didn't supply this information so the US military would commit atrocities to keep them in a war that Israel had desperately wanted for decades. Every president since Reagan had been begged by Israeli PMs to invade Iran. All of them refused. It's widely believed that Netanyahu threatened to use nukes if Obama wouldn't do it. Obama called his bluff. Until Trump. And here we are.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

> The point is that Iranian families want all of those things too. Because they're people just like you are. You can see videos of ordinary Iranians going to the market, going to work, having family over, eating a meal together and so on. It saddens and frightens me how easy it seems to dehumanize other people and basically be OK with killing them en masse.

The IRGC/regime is what prevents them from living normal lives. The Iranian diaspora is protesting in favor or removing the regime since they know who the real enemy is.[0]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4w728kl4ko

> We kind of do know because it's basically what happened after 9/11. We spent $8T+ on a 20 year war to kill over a million people in vengeance that really didn't do anything else

The 'we' in your first sentence is not the same 'we' that is in your second sentence.

I don't think you've done this intentionally but this kind of talk is how propagandists conflate what the masses want and do with what people in power want and do.

This conflation is hugely problematic - it's like saying sometimes we go to the movies, sometimes we murder children. No, no, 'we' are not murdering children, some people are murdering children and those people are a problem.

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