The war must continue in order to bring us to the status quo that was in place before we started the war.
I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
The war must continue in order to bring us to the status quo that was in place before we started the war.
I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
> I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
As if the people responsible actually feel the impact of their choices to that degree.
Maybe at least the people that put them in power (voters). But being honest, it wasn't just voters.
Nonvoters would win the Electoral College if that was a thing.
Nonvoters implicitly consent to the outcome ahead of time. Which means that they can carry part of the blame--if they didn't like it they could have voted against it.
Hot take: if <80% of eligible voters show up, nobody wins and the same politicians stay in office for another year, even if term limits would normally apply.
That means the politicians currently in power only need 20% to stay in power, instead of 50%.
It should be mandatory voting like in Australia instead. You don't cast a ballot, you get fined, and voting day is a mandatory national holiday. If you really don't want to cast a ballot, you cast a blank or invalid one.
Yes, in Australia we have compulsory voting, but no national holiday. Polling day is on a Saturday, so most people can get to their local polling booth pretty easily. And since COVID, pre-poll postal votes have become even more popular and the Australian Electoral Commission has a really secure and streamlined process for these, proved over decades.
True. I'd support national holiday for it in US. Also the fine I would support, but it might require a constitutional amendment (seems unlikely these days).
How about instead it immediately triggers another new election and the people who ran previously are not eligible to run ever again
Slightly less left field proposal: failure to pass a budget should immediately force fresh elections (both houses plus presidency), as it would in a Parliamentary system. None of this "shutdown" nonsense.
Arguably people who voted for Trump are somewhat responsible, and include a lot of car drivers.
(Not to imply that many Democrat politicians aren't also owned by AIPAC and big business.)
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It was pretty obvious he was wanting to enter a conflict with someone, and was mostly held back in his first term by the actual professionals in his cabinet at that time. But the guy wanted a military parade with tanks rolling through DC on his birthday, wanted to nuke a hurricane, and forcibly annex Greenland. It isn't really surprising that once he replaced the sane people with sycophants, he would start something.
Or, more specifically, by 2020 he was sending military boats to attack Iranian targets and trying to force Russia to respond.
He only stopped because of COVID.
If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted. Maybe someone did but I didn’t hear it, and I listen to politics daily.
Expressing a desire to take Greenland but not actually doing so was a move out of his book Art of the Deal.
You knew airstrikes and Maduro ops were on the table from his first term (e.g. Soleimani).
You knew his idea of negotiating vehicle lease terms starts with "I will burn this dealership to the ground if I don't get my way!" (Art of the Deal).
What did you think was going to happen when he actually encountered serious people?
it was patently obvious. people were just blinded by xenophobia as the primary issue facing the nation and they bought it, peripheral consequences be damned
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/255784560904773633
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/379717298296086529
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/399731975432728576
These were 13 and 14 years ago. His patterns became obvious in his first term and reaffirmed during his second and third time running.
Even more specifically, these examples were all before the 2024 election:
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-could-try-buy-greenlan...
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-cia-venezuela-maduro-regim...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-trumps-wish-for-more-f...
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/end-f...
What politics do you listen to daily?
What exactly do you want people (who exactly?) to have predicted that they didn't?
> If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted
People absolutely predicted Trump military adventurism in the 2024 election cycle! It failed to break through in the media because of a deliberate reflection attack that leveraged a bunch of leftie memes about Biden/AIPAC/Israel to pretend that it was really the democrats who wanted endless war.
So that's what low info voters heard on their televisions. But the smart people in print were 100% warning about this kind of thing.
The million dollar question is how america occupies Greenland.
As always Europe does nothing
America attacks Greenland? Europe liberating bases on their soil would be the obvious response
You make a good point. At the same time, when he broke his electoral promise to stop foreign interfefence and kidnapped Maduro, his voter base did not turn against him. That seems to have emboldened him to pursue more military actions abroad.
Now let's see how long until he invades Cuba, and how his voters will react.
God, they're going to love that - provided it's a swift victory, of course. They've wanted that since the Bay of Pigs.
I wonder what Cuba would look like now if Batista had never been overthrown. That's probably on par with how it would have worked if US meddling were more successful. I can't say I know it would be worse.
Difficult to separate "Cuba is bad because it is badly governed" from "Cuba is bad because it has been heavily sanctioned and no longer gets help from the Soviet Union", really. Too many different variables. Hard to imagine it being worse than Haiti or El Salvador, but also hard to imagine it having free elections (because that would immediately elect an anti-US socialist who would be overthrown again).
On the other hand, Cuba could have turned out like the Bahamas or Trinidad & Tobago.
Unlike Venezuela and Iran, Cuba doesn't really fuel China, so I assume it's not such a priority.
I mean, in that case why rattle about Greenland?
I think that was just silly. Nothing actually happened in Greenland. His whole thing is about slowing China down. That explains Venezuela, Iran, and a lot of the price-rising tariffs are explained by wanting to choke Russia's oil and gas revenues, which also has the secondary effect of hitting China.
Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.
Reportedly, Rare earth minerals.
America also has those; and it’s not like we’ve had a bad trading relationship with the EU until fairly recently.
Almost everyone's asking the same question regardless of what they think's going on inside Trump's head. The two most coherent answers I've seen are "to soothe his narcissistic injury from being told he can't" and "feels entitled to it because NATO", you will note neither of these was his stated reason, and all of this is still catastrophically poor judgment on his part.
At what point people will realize "his first term" isn't a good bar and its certainly not because "he resisted" rather he at least had some better advisors and GOP had some control over him.
This time around GOP has been flattened into his mouthpiece and the government is fully of sycophants. Its not that he's in his final years more like his yes-men are afraid of being booted out and replaced with another power hungry nincompoop sycophant.
If people fell for this "but this didn't happen in the first term" even then they are to blame for this mess, they voted for this person in the first place. Just like being ignorant doesn't let you escape from legal consequences, it should let people escape from outcome of their actions.
Trump's statements on these issues have always been self contradictory.
On the one hand he says Russia would never have dared invade Ukraine if he was President, yet he was also against military support for Ukraine before the full scale invasion, and says that Ukraine's plight is basically their and Europe's problem.
He was adamantly against bombing Syria in response to Assad using chemical weapons while Obama was president, then when they used chemical weapons as soon as he became President he bombed them for it.
He's advocated for the USA not getting involved in military conflicts, while also advocating for massive increases in military spending and capability.
This has always been his approach, say one thing while very often actively doing the other. Promote domestic manufacturing, while putting massive tariffs on the inputs on which American manufacturing depends, many of which are only available in the required quantities abroad even for current production.
Trump voters have been scammed by a self-professed scammer that's been successfully prosecuted for scamming, and they know it. They were quite happy for him to betray, backstab, double-deal and scam whoever he liked on whatever issue he liked, as long as it was people they didn't like or care about.
He's notoriously unpredictable. I would agree that it's more obvious now, but I think it was still quite obvious in his first term, especially after inciting a riot at the Capitol.
Given the rashness that he displayed prior to his second term, I don't see why it's at all surprising that he would start a war. To think otherwise just seems like wishful thinking.
Yeah, Trump showed the world exactly who he is even before his first term. He has absolutely no principles other than feeding his own wealth and ego. Anybody who is surprised by what has happened is either an incredibly bad judge of character or hasn't been paying attention.
"We didn't see it coming" is not very believable. Trump campaigned on a general theme of chaos and griefing, and he is delivering on exactly what he promised.
The inauguration alone was ominous enough to expect all the current and future shitshow.
Ordo ab chao in full swing.
It was obvious that Trump is unstable and has extreme and volatile views on foreign policy. So yes, I think it is entirely fair to blame anyone that voted for Trump in the last election.
I absolutely blame the voters. Vote for a clown and you get a circus.
The man is a pathological liar and nothing he says can be trusted, although it's pretty reliable to consider every accusation is an admission.
Last term he had grown ups in the room to contain him -- this term he's surrounded himself by enablers and acts as if he is now god emperor for life.
People voting for a convicted felon should definitely be held partially responsible for the looting of the country. Also, considering the various rape accusations, his constant lies and his obvious narcissism makes it absolutely insane to vote for him and expect any kind of predictable good to come from it.
There were plenty of warnings about electing Trump and people chose to ignore them.
Anyone with half a brain knows Trump is an actual idiotic person. So yes, we could foresee him doing this, because it was a dumb fucking plan and Trump is the dumbest person who has ever been president.
He can absolutely counted on to do stupid, corrupt shit. We saw plenty of it when he had 4 years in office and was somewhat held in check by having hired some more or less 'normal' Republicans.
It was entirely predictable that he would fuck things up in some way. He's demented (although the press stopped caring about that sort of thing when Biden dropped out), deeply corrupt, narcissistic, and was never particularly intelligent to begin with.
A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning. I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist (I didn’t vote for Trump) but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected. We should also ask ourselves who really wanted this war and how they have so much leverage over our country to instigate it when 50-60% of Americans do not support it. We should ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support. We should also ask ourselves how Congress failed to stop this war which has been illegally executed without congressional approval. It’s all very curious if you think about it.
We can’t just keep finger pointing at the other party whenever things go wrong. There are systemic issues and outside influences destroying this country. Some people think this will all be fixed when democrats take over again in November but they’re wrong and the cycle will continue just with a more presentable veneer of decency.
> Tucker Carlson
I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
> I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist
At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
> ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support
Americans love war and guns! This is like, #1 national characteristic as observed by other nations. Especially because America always wins in the movies! The reason Americans are complaining about the Iran war and not the illegal Venezuelan invasion or whatever is because they are losing.
(who on earth is Dave Smith?)
> At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
Well, he did win Democrat votes as well because the party put up such horrible candidates twice.
> Well, he did win Democrat votes as well because the party put up such horrible candidates twice.
In the last cycle, the Democratic Party stumbled egregiously, no question; but the functionally binary choice was between a predictable, if unoriginal bureaucrat vs. a documented prodigious liar and adjudicated rapist. I suppose for some tiny number of self-identifying progressives that would be toss-up, but I would love to understand the value system that could produce such a decision.
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> ... because they are losing.
The pnly unforgiveable sin in USA politics.
> I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
Do you have any evidence that this was the reason?
I don’t think we need to be providing proof that the sky is blue at this point but here you go.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/31/tucker-carlson...
The article doesn't even include the words "ideologue" or "extreme" or make a similar claim.
Very weird and defensive response.
It really isn’t. The fact that it seems like people can’t use descriptive adjectives on HN is always so bizarre to me.
You should try using better description adjectives, like "rude", "racist", "uppity" instead of spreading misinformation.
"But ultimately Carlson’s escalating toxicity, which included an undercurrent of white supremacy and a penchant for demeaning women and minorities, led Lachlan Murdoch, the then chief executive of Fox Corp, to pull the plug, the book says."
How obtuse are you being?
You are being deliberately obtuse. Unbearably rude and "extreme ideologue" are completely different things.
There are many Nice & Respectable people who are extreme ideologues. Words have meaning.
The article says too big for his boots and part responsible for a $787m libel judgement. Also called Senior Executive Vice President for Corporate Communications a cunt. Doesn't mention idealogue.
>At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
The challenge is that with a 2-party system it was take a chance Trump wouldn't be worse than he was the first time, or continue with the Democratic platform, which is not necessarily in alignment with a LOT of people. My personal feeling is that this administration has driven the country off a cliff in a spectacularly fast order. I also think the Democrats positions had us heading for a cliff, but it was at least further away.
Trump ran on solving SOME of the right problems. He and all the Republican leadership unfortunately have NONE of the right solutions. I fear the Democrats will think that a rebuke of Trump this election would be a mandate for many of their polices. It isn't, it is a rebuke of the horrible job Trump has done.
Tax the rich, solve healthcare, take note that our country is in an economic battle with other countries, and realize the best form of freedom is when everyone has economic opportunity and stability. Both parties "say" they want these things, the Republicans outright lie about it and the Dems do nothing.
> but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected.
Education. Actually teaching people how to think critically about what they see and hear needs to start as soon as they get a phone in their hand, if not sooner. That education in critical thinking needs to come from family, school, social clubs and religious institutions. I don't think that'll ever happen in America though. Our economy depends on people not thinking critically.
Time and time again, I keep finding that the people insisting schools teach "Critical thinking" were the exact people who didn't pay attention in English class when that was taught.
Like when people used to say that "Schools should teach useful things like balancing a checkbook or paying your taxes". Which is funny, because the skills required to do those two things are addition, subtraction, and reading.
Americans don't learn because Americans are adamant that they shouldn't have to pay attention to learn, that school is a liberal scam, that broad willful ignorance is not something to be ashamed of, that they have more important things to care about.
Families who value education have always gotten a good education in the USA, and that isn't about choosing a private school either. It's about the person needing an education getting personally invested in gaining that education.
Meanwhile Bush Jr gave us an educational regime where schools cannot at all hold back someone who really needs to be held back. So the curriculum needed to be dumbed down to accommodate people.
> Americans don't learn because Americans are adamant that they shouldn't have to pay attention to learn, that school is a liberal scam, that broad willful ignorance is not something to be ashamed of, that they have more important things to care about.
That's why it can't just be school. It needs to be a societal thing that goes beyond schools to all the other places people get socialized and learn. I mean maybe churches, social groups, and families are all teaching the willful ignorance you're talking about, but if they are that's what needs to change. People need to hear the same thing from different places before they'll believe it sometimes.
How do you do that when the ruling class has a vested interest in preventing it?
This comment contains so many different issues that it is impossible to say why it is downvoted. My guess is that any comment that mentions bipartisanship is going to be downvoted.
US foreign policy is and has always been bipartisan. One side is a bit more restrained and has better manners, the other overtly says what is going on.
Yes, Tucker Carlson should have known what was going to happen because he has been in politics for so long. For the average voter who is busy with other things, it takes at least 8 years of intensely following one Democrat president and one Republican. The mainstream media is of little use, since they report daily statements and political theater.
You need to read the think tank papers and follow bipartisan hearings like the Senate Armed Services Committee where there is no difference between R/D except for blaming the other side for current events.
"lying is free" and it has no consequences for these people. whether it is WMDs or war or fiat money printing with trillions or killing millions. What you people call justice is, well it's obv. so no need to write about it. These facts dont change with two party or three party, it's cultural btw.
We all know how some cultures are violent and backwards to each other? some or like this, just different culture
> A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning.
That was just their nice-sounding excuse for voting for him. It's not like they are going to go out and say that they like him because of his jingoistic machismo authoritarian 'strong'-man bullshit.
They'll performatively grumble for a bit, but are all ready to vote for the guy a fourth time in 2028.
Well the simple reason they voted for him is that they are all extremely rich capital owners who wanted his tax cuts. That's the same reason that farm megacorps voted for him even though he destroyed tens of billions of farm revenue with his stupidity in trade wars.
Rich people would rather the country burn than pay 1% more in taxes. It's purely ideological too, as they regularly spend tons to save a little in taxes.
they earned millions off it, how would they even feel fuel price ?
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And what did the attack accomplish? It did degrade the Iranian military somewhat. It killed the Iranian leadership, but odds are the replacements are simply even more radical and opposed to the US.
The nuclear material is probably still buried in the facilities attacked in the earlier strikes (not the war this year). That is a delay on any potential nuclear weapons development, but not more than that.
It showed Iran and the world just how much damage they can cause with their control over the strait. And it removed any factor that previously led Iran towards not blocking the strait even when attacked. In the end the odds are that this whole mess will cause death and suffering, damage the world economy and we'll likely end up with an even more dangerous Iran in the future.
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That’s not what US intelligence says.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
https://www.factcheck.org/2025/06/trump-gabbard-comments-on-...
This article seems irrelevant.
It cites a publication dated March of '25 that must be compiled from information preceding that by a few months.
The US didn't go to war in or around that time period.
The US did in fact bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.
Doesn't March come before June?
And? What actually changed during those few months?
Maybe US intelligence wasn't perfect and they found a clandestine Iranian nuclear program? Maybe Iran restarted it. Who knows?
Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land. And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region. I’m in favor of that scenario.
> Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land.
Aside from the fact that Iran and its proxies do this, you have to remember that Israel very likely has nukes and so if Iran gets a nuke what exactly are they going to do with it in the scenario you described? Nuke Tel Aviv? Israel would just nuke them back.
> And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region.
Idk if your figure is right, seems too high, but you are incorrect here because if Iran had a nuke the US could still invade Iraq or Afghanistan.
And honestly maybe it wasn't worth the money but Iraq is doing much better, has a functioning parliament, &c. Maybe that's the problem - it's like Iran's regime is jealous that people can live in peace and don't have to be whipped up into a fury to go murder other people and Iraq is just showing them how it's done. It reminds me of the former Soviet countries where Russia sees they are doing much better without Russia and gets jealous.
I was not implying that Iran would or should use nuclear weapons. Only acquire them. For the same reason I think it’s a good thing the USSR acquired nuclear weapons. Mutually assured destruction has proven to be incredibly effective at preventing the use of nuclear weapons, and preventing hot war (not proxy wars though).
I think if Iran acquired nuclear weapons the region would stabilize. Israel would be forced to stop the genocide and land grabs, because they would no longer hold a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region.
Regarding the cost of the Iraq war it was at least $3T. Likely a lot more. My $10T estimate isn’t exactly mainstream but $3T is a solid floor: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-...
“Maybe it wasn’t worth the money”
You say that casually. As of $3 trillion wouldn’t have dramatically improved the lives of tens of millions of Americans. As opposed to killing several thousand military members and a million+ Iraqi civilians.
Evil really is pretty banal I guess.
> For the same reason I think it’s a good thing the USSR acquired nuclear weapons.
Well by your own logic this was a bad thing because it lead to the nuclear arms race and all that money could have been spent making the lives of Soviet citizens better instead. Of course, the Soviet Union just made the lives of millions of people worse for a long time, murdered millions of its own citizens, and the vestiges of that evil and stupid government are yet again today attacking the peaceful people of Ukraine.
> I think if Iran acquired nuclear weapons the region would stabilize. Israel would be forced to stop the genocide and land grabs, because they would no longer hold a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region.
Iran is going to nuke Israel over some settlements? Yea no. Plus Israel would nuke them back. It’s a good thing though that Israel has nuclear weapons right? Seeing as you are in favor of nuclear proliferation. Once Iran gets them the US should give the Gulf States[1] nukes too so next time Iran thinks it can shut down maritime trade they can be on the receiving end of a nuke. Yay! But let’s pretend you care about the lives of others, in fact you care so much you want to make nuclear conflict more likely.
> You say that casually. As of $3 trillion wouldn’t have dramatically improved the lives of tens of millions of Americans. As opposed to killing several thousand military members and a million+ Iraqi civilians.
Sure it would have, not going to find disagreement from me there. But we did the war, and Iraq is much better off now. It was probably worth it from the Iraqi perspective. I think the long arc of history will prove that out. But, as an isolationist like you we could have better spent that money at home. Same thing with all the free stuff we give other countries for military stability. I’m sure you appreciate Trump’s approach though with beginning to charge countries money for our military protection. Have to ensure our people are better off.
> Evil really is pretty banal I guess.
Which evil? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine supported with Iranian weapons? Iran’s murder of 30,000+ civilians? Iran’s giving money to terror groups to murder people and destabilize countries like Lebanon? Perhaps it’s the banal evil of Maduro causing 1/3rd of the population of Venezuela to flee and ruining the country’s economy?
I’d recommend less pearl-clutching and more contact with the facts. It seems that you’ve become confused to the point where you are advocating for genocidal maniacs like Iran’s regime to have nuclear weapons. Mind you, the Iranian people don’t want this. Why is it you stand against America and the people of Iran in favor of the IRGC and Ayatollah. Does that not seem strange to you?
[1] If you want other countries to get nukes, the US can supply the following countries: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, Gulf States, Israel Ukraine, any anyone else we think we should give nukes to.
Go fuck yourself you fucking snake
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Every time this gets repeated without a shred of evidence I have to think of the "beheaded babies" thing. "Feel better about the crimes against humanity you see us doing and bragging about by reading this spam email from a Nigerian prince once again, this time with even more pomp and even less details, even less pretense of actually caring or being honest."
And killing Iranians and destroying their assets helps how the Iranian opposition?
The Iranian opposition is against Iranians.
Almost all the troops that committed those massacres are still there, and if anything even more ready and willing to do it all over again, and have a leadership ready to give the order.
Odd thing to blame on a bunch of schoolgirls!
I thought it was a lot more than that, Gaza is not a small place
Can you formulate in a short paragraph, why you think US attacked Iran, exactly.
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