late wrote:We are allied to the Sunni, Iran is Shia. That's a mistake, but it's one we've been doing since before anyone here was born. Even me, and I can remember dinosaurs.
The US isn't aligned to any religious sect. The US is aligned to Saudi Arabia for obvious reasons, and it certainly isn't Wahhabism.
late wrote:Iran has about a million reasons to hate us, and they're basically all really good reasons.
From the standpoint of an Islamic Republic perhaps.
late wrote:Most never knew how hard it was to get Iran to cut a deal over the nuke situation.
Whether people knew or didn't know, the point is that such a deal is unenforceable. How did Bill Clinton's deal go with North Korea? We gave them money in exchange for not developing nuclear weapons. They used the money to develop nuclear weapons. Naivete isn't going to deliver peace. Frankly, pursuing nuclear weapons is a fools errand anyway, because they have little or no military utility today. Their military purpose was to destroy war-making industry in industrial districts in a single blow. The economy is diversified geographically today. A nuclear weapon strike would kill a lot of people in an urban area, and piss off everyone else that lives to no end. There is no point in them.
late wrote:As a rule, a military attack does not move things towards a diplomatic resolution. But the middleast is a tangled mess, and after Trump, thinking Iran is pissed is a very safe bet.
What is the justification? The US has no legal basis to even be in Syria whatsoever. If this were George W. Bush, the Democrats would be calling him a war criminal. It just so happens that the deep state wants this war, and they couldn't prosecute it with Trump.
late wrote:Biden will have the dipcorp keep talking to Iran, who knows, we might get lucky again.
Paying people not to develop weapons isn't luck. It's stupidity.
late wrote:But getting back to where we were before Trump will take time. Some of it will take decades, some of it will never happen, and it's not going to be clear when you start if it will take months, years, decades or never.
Much of the logic of your generation will evaporate as populations decline. Much of what worked in the 20th Century won't work in the 21st. The reality is that the reasons for protecting the global order aren't popular in the United States anymore, because the cost was pushing a lot of industrial workers out of the middle class and back down to the working class, and a tenuous one at that.
late wrote: Trump gutted the State Dept, and now they have more on their plate than at any time since the end of the post WW2 era.
The State Department won't enact the foreign policies of the presidents they are supposed to serve. Permanent bureaucracy is a bad idea. In many cases, the State Department is welfare for politicians' otherwise unemployable relatives. In other cases, it's an unelected political bureau pursuing political objectives without the consent of the electorate.
late wrote:You can argue we shouldn't be in this mess. Hop in a time machine and tell a bunch of Republican presidents they are screwing up.
I already did that. I'm no longer a Republican, and haven't been for 14 years.
late wrote:But here we are, there are no answers that don't suck. Just ones that just might avoid a major war.
Why do WE need to be involved in THEIR war? Maybe war cannot be averted. Why SHOULD we be in the middle of something we cannot control, prevent, or at best shape? If the problem of the world is overpopulation, is war a bad thing? What about a pandemic? If overpopulation is a problem, why not let the pandemic run its course? There are too many incongruities in the deep state's rhetoric, because it has no grounding philosophy other than serving themselves and some very narrow interests and they have no disinclination to tell lies to maintain widespread credibility. For a poorer white man who is being told he has white privilege by people who have so much more than he does, what is in it for him to support such policies?
The days of people falling in line behind this stuff are over. I know that escapes you, but that's the reality of the situation today.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden