The Pax Americana is great, but given America was one of the countries to start this war, I don't know how much credit they can get for something they just ended.
Are you sure? I am actually somewhat ambivalent on this. Iran wasn't exactly peaceful before February and attacked shipping regularly before then too. Oh and they attacked their own people, foreign nationals, Iranians abroad, and committed terror attacks abroad. They were involved in the Brussels Metro and airport bombing, not 2km from where I'm sitting right now.
> The Pax Americana is great, but given America was one of the countries to start this war, I don't know how much credit they can get for something they just ended
As I said, I'm sitting in Brussels, and everyone here is far more worried about the Ukraine war. Plus nobody's dying, nobody's making life impossible here. I find declaring the Pax Americana dead somewhat premature.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong, I guess. But people here are far more worried about Ukraine than Iran. I think they're wrong ... or at least, that's only a short term threat. The Iran war ... will end the strategic significance of the middle east if it lasts any longer. It will end oil. This is not 1972. Iran may destroy the middle east and itself, they will not destroy the EU, or even significantly hurt it. If their threats materialize, the EU is not America. We will simply say "No. Go F- yourself. Kthxbye", and that will only really suck for the middle east, not for us.
None of the nations involved in this fight have been peaceful. That's why I'm talking about just this specific war.
> I find declaring the Pax Americana dead somewhat premature.
If America wins, then yeah, probably it'll limp on. If America loses, and Iran gets to dictate terms in the Strait of Hormuz, then I'm not sure how long it will last before other nations follow suit.
Only if you take the 5 year old's definition of peaceful (ie. "not attacking")
Any reasonable moral position will of course mean that doing nothing, even if that means not attacking, is not necessarily a peaceful position. Nor is an attack necessarily not peaceful. For example, how Europe treated Ukraine before and during the war with Russia can easily be argued is not peaceful, it's helping the war criminal and it obviously did not lead to peace. The most generous interpretation you can make is that Europe was funding war. Only an idiot would call that a peaceful attitude. And for another example, what you wrote.
> ... then I'm not sure how long it will last before other nations follow suit.
Strange how you say the US is not peaceful, immediately followed by an argument why US's attack not only leads to peace, but the "non-attacking" nation must be defeated for peace. Which I'm sure we'll agree requires more violence. In fact your argument that Iran "defending itself" leads directly to a bigger war is accurate, I think.
Iran is basically fighting for a resumption of most parts, especially the bad parts, of colonialism (one definition of colonialism would be "taxing foreign nations" after all. I like that definition because a US audience will immediately realize why that leads to war)
That's the moral difficulty here: If the US wins, the west will be at peace with Iran. If Iran wins, war may very well be inevitable. In fact, war with a great many countries may be inevitable (Indonesia has already announced they want to tax the Malacca strait, and China has responded exactly the way you'd expect)
But yes at this point you have the ridiculous soundbite: "war is peace". The irony of that slogan, of course, is that it comes from 1984, as an example of "doublethink" which was George Orwell criticizing communism and totalitarianism. But the slogan is always used to defend totalitarian states, usually ones on the warpath.
I'm not sure what definition of "peaceful" you're going with here, if it includes any of the US, Iran, or Israel, prior to the start of this war. I guess I'm not as sophisticated as you.
> Strange how you say the US is not peaceful, immediately followed by an argument why US's attack not only leads to peace, but the "non-attacking" nation must be defeated for peace. Which I'm sure we'll agree requires more violence. In fact your argument that Iran "defending itself" leads directly to a bigger war is accurate, I think.
I'm not sure why you think that's strange. There was a status quo: Iran lets ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It works well enough. Then the US attacked, and that status quo is gone. If the US ends this war without re-establishing the status quo, then the world will be worse for everyone, and other nations bordering critical shipping lanes will be encouraged to follow suit.
So it's better for everybody if the US wins. But the US doesn't have much leverage to do so, and so the situation is: the US started a war that it didn't need to start, but can't easily win. The foreign policies that built the Pax Americana have been abandoned.
There was no status quo, there's just people looking (now, after the fact) for an obvious party to blame for the bucket flowing over. Status quo is just a war that's on pause rather than resolved.
The Iran war is a case of "the drop that overflowed the bucket". There was "peace" because Iran believed it could not win, while Iran's army was strengthening and becoming more extreme constantly. The water level in the bucket was rising, in other words, because of what Iran did. Now I can agree that Trump added a big fucking drop into that bucket (unless he wins, in which case he dropped the water level by A LOT. So to some small extent the jury's still out)
If you look at Iran's economy (which is all that matters), even before the war, the only option for Iran is a big external cash injection, and they are in total desperation since at least April 2025. That's what the IRGC is fighting for. That's the only way to end this war (because without that cash injection the Iranian population will keep attacking the IRGC. They have no choice but to continue attacking).
Oh, and oil is on it's way out, so this will not be the last war in the middle east. China refused the very obvious and cheap fix to their oil problems Putin was offering. They don't think they will still need oil soon.
And yes, people are desperate to look moral, and specifically to make doing nothing look moral. So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.
Status quo is a shipping lane that's been open since the 1980s.
> So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.
You think the only argument against starting a war you're not ready to prosecute, doing it badly, disrupting the oil market for months, and potentially encouraging nations all over the world to start tolling international trade... is "Trump Bad"? I guess you were right, I really am the idiot in this conversation.
Yes, people are incredibly bad at recognizing that something that must change, will change, and instead simply refuse to accept reality. Also see Climate Change. Also see your comment.
It is at this point a certainty that the AMOC (includes the Gulfstream) will shut down, effectively in about 20 years. Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and others WILL be uninhabitable by the turn of the century, plus equatorial countries, for the reverse reason. This has happened, as in this is in the past, even though most of the actual cooling is only starting. Maybe it's just me, but are you seeing anyone reacting?
There are other massive events that are at this point in the past. The Ganges valley (including the entirety of Bangladesh) has dried up, in addition to water level rise that will drown the major cities. So Bangladesh and quite a bit of India is fucked in both ways: it'll both dry up and flood. At almost the same time. Are they, or anyone, adapting?
> You think the only argument against starting a war you're not ready to prosecute, doing it badly,
Given that those consequences were unavoidable at some point, I see the logic of picking the best time to strike and striking, yes. As I said, the only solution for Iran's economy at the moment is a very large cash injection (ie. large amounts of goods from outside the country that aren't paid for). Either that happens, or it'll collapse to the point it cannot feed Iranians anymore. The timing of this war was determined by sanctions (and thus mostly by Europeans), not by the US attack.
I can see people attributing this to the US as well after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta....
Oh and it was Britain that was supporting the Shah. The US was involved, mostly to counter the KGB, but not much at all. I totally don't understand why Britain gets a free pass.
And you'd think communists would stop supporting the mullahs, especially after the killings. You'd be wrong:
http://marxist.com/imperialists-and-pahlavis-hands-off-iran....
Sometimes one gets the impression the left now is reduced to ... well. Iran's government massacres protestors, tortures women, represses it's own people, has committed genocides and tries actively to commit more genocides, attacks and murders innocent people outside of Iran and makes weapons for Moscow.
Leftists, at least the ones on online fora, care about exactly 1 of those things.
1.5M dead Koreans
3M dead Vietnamese
500,000-1,000,000 dead or displaced Iraqis
Coups in Honduras, Chile, Haiti, Guatemala, Venezuela, Syria, Libya...
Pax Americana my ass. Tell that to the global south
Oversee is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Oh, and levels of taxation even Karl Marx would immediately agree are theft. In fact, ending the pre-pax-Americana period is what the manifesto is about. (the period stupidly referred to as "modern times", where the rich aren't fighting over who gets to mars first, but massacring poor people to gain a few square kilometers of land, which ironically Soviets know all about)
I get that that's hard to see for anyone born far enough away from the beginning of the pax Americana, ie. let's say 5-10 years after world war 2 but that's really how things work.
And that means that you just won't believe the consequences of any real victory against the US either: a return to the norm. If Iran wins, immediately, 50 genocides will start. Not just in Iran. Global trade will freeze 90%, not just oil. Inequality will explode worldwide. And that's just the start. In a way, that's what Iran is fighting for.
Ignore the genocide the US is engaged in right now, if it loses the war it started with Iran there will be 50 hypothetical genocides that I made up! Why stop at 50? Maybe there will be 500 or 5,000 genocides! If not for the benevolence of the US, we'd be having another world war every 2-3 years. It just stands to reason I suppose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZT-wVnFn60
And how it affected normal people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgyB6lwE8E0
My grandfather explained this in much harsher terms to me (he's dead now, even though he got past 100 years), with explicit mention of which of 2 options is the better one: killing 100 people in your own city or returning to this situation again. He was a baby at the end of WW1 and lived through (with kids of his own) WW2.
(but even that beats how Iran's islamic government treats it's own citizens. Did you know primary school children make excellent demining equipment, and on top of that make very cheap poison gas detectors? The islamic mullahs sure do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_key_to_paradise )
Back in the day, during WWII, he was defusing bombs and mines while a young boy scout.
So, you know, not just Iran - the UK also.
They would compel them, by law, to be fed to the meat grinder. And not to defend their homeland, but to murder civilians in another hemisphere, and apparently i must remind you, TO THE TUNE OF 4,500,000 DEAD CIVILIANS IN KOREA AND VIETNAM ALONE.
Well having just checked the stats i think you're very much wrong, and taking a lot of credit for the US where it isn't due.
The situation can't improve while the USA are doing everything they can to antagonize these places, isolate them, alienate them from their neighbors. Seeing ruthless authoritarians prevail there is completely expected.
"it's purely a reaction to the authoritarian regime of the Shah previously used to further American interests"
Seriously? THAT is what you think Khomeini wanted and his grandson or whoever wants now?
"And same goes for Cuba, Venezuela, etc."
Oh, you're a "communism really only ever wanted good things for it's people, and it's America's fault they started shooting their own citizens" ... got it.
But Cuba and Venezuela govts deserved what they got, and it was plenty of our business being in our backyard.
And we haven’t even gotten to the impacts of fertilizer shortages during growing season.
And either way, how is replacing the leader of a terrible regime, with his even more hardline son, help with the killing in any ways?
The pro Democracy forces in Iran have been completely discredited and the one best opportunity they would have had to reclaim their country, during what was likely to be a contested transfer of power if the 80+ year old Ayatollah had passed naturally, has been lost. Instead the U.S. allowed the Iranian regime to transfer power without any challenges, transfer power to a guy who is the son of the old Ayatollah and even more close aligned with the IRGC, and has destroyed the pro-Democracy bases in Iran while strengthening the orthodoxy because the U.S. has been blowing up cities, where the anti-regime forces live, while the rural areas, where the regime’s supporters live, have been largely untouched.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8621gnknjo
Calling in a massive airstrike on a prison where the opposition is being held isn't exactly the way to support the opposition.
"When you are in prison, it becomes your home. When I heard this morning that Evin prison was bombed, I felt a sharp pain in my heart. When I was released, I left a piece of my heart there."
Racism really makes people dumb.
Oh, I’ve read it. Including this gem:
"When you are in prison, it becomes your home. When I heard this morning that Evin prison was bombed, I felt a sharp pain in my heart. When I was released, I left a piece of my heart there."
Racism really makes people dumb.
> Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who was imprisoned for years at Evin, told the BBC she felt "sick" with concern following the strike.
It seems pretty clear that Israel struck regime targets, and at worst there was relatively minor collateral damage (still unclear), which is a risk with just about any strike.
One side is responsible for the "pax Americana" (but everyone here was born into the time period and so doesn't realize how exceptionally peaceful it is)
One side is responsible for at least 20.000 but more likely 60.000 Iranian deaths, just this year (and nobody seems to mind)
Not having big issues to figure out between these 2 who is the good guy ...