[bink]

There's no doubt what's happening in Iran is a massacre by a dictatorial regime, but good grief the parallels between the rhetoric now and that of 2003 are impossible to ignore. I thought we had moved past the idea that the US could just bomb a country into a better future.

[tptacek]

I don't recall that being any part of the rationale for the US war in Iraq (which, to be clear, will hopefully go down as the least just war the US ever instigated). "We'll be greeted as liberators" was trotted out as a mitigation for how bad occupations normally are, but we were going whether or not that was true. The Iraq war was not a war of liberation against an unjust government. It was a war of choice against a country that happened to have a horrendously unjust government.

The pretext for the Iraq war was that they were involved in 9/11 and possessed weapons of mass destruction.

[dTal]

It absolutely was a large part of the general snowstorm of rationales offered. "Regime change" they called it, remember?

This Guardian article[0] is a wonderful little window into the zeitgeist of the time. You can see that many commentators explicitly cite the "brutal dictator" rationale, notably Salman Rushdie.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jan/19/foreignpoli...

[Analemma_]

The "politician's fallacy" (we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this) is at its strongest when it comes to massacres in other countries. Nobody wants to sit around and just watch it continue, and it's really hard to put yourself in the frame to accurately analyze "is there actually anything I can do about this which won't make the problem worse?"

It's a hard problem and I don't know what to do about it, especially since (as a sibling comment mentions), sometimes you can improve the situation. Other times you will make it much worse. And I haven't seen a trustworthy way to distinguish the two (lots of interventionist-minded folks claim they have one; I think they're kidding themselves).

[jopsen]

The something in question is bombing. Didn't Israel and the US try that last year?

Maybe the objective wasn't regime, but I doubt more bombs will do that? Not after so many years of sanctions.

Sadly, I don't see any positive outcome, short of the regime gracefully collapsing on itself.

Hardening sanctions won't do Iranians any good, but it will make the country poorer and less able to inflict violence on other countries. Which is guess is the logic.

And following the export of drones to Russia, I doubt Europe, which has previously been in favor of fewer sanctions, will oppose more sanctions on Iran.

If only the US administration had friends, they could do something with sanctions. But I guess useless bombing it is, or maybe just nothing -- this is Trump after all.

Sadly, I doubt it matters either way. The regime sponsors terrorism, not reason they wouldn't do it at home.

[throw310822]

> when it comes to massacres in other countries. Nobody wants to sit around and just watch it continue

Oh really? I was under the impression that the US actually armed and funded for two years a genocidal war on Gaza. (Btw in that case Scott Aaronson, far for being concerned, actually argued that Israelis can and should kill as many people as they need to feel safe).

[mgraczyk]

But unfortunately it does sometimes work, for example in Yugoslavia. And it would have worked in Iraq if we hadn't dismantled the entire civilian infrastructure.

[throawayonthe]

what on earth could you mean by it working in yugoslavia

[jopsen]

I doubt there will be a ground invasion this time. The current US administration cannot build a coalition (and logistics without a coalition is hard), not will the US public go for it.

And is there really much you can do from the air that wasn't done already?

Either the Iranians do it themselves or it doesn't happen. Sadly, I don't see any good outcomes for the protestors. But you never know, oppressive regimes appear stable, until they are not.

[bink]

There definitely won't be boots on the ground and that's kinda the point. Even if we had boots on the ground there's no guarantee that the US getting involved will make things better for the people of the region. We couldn't deliver democracy for Afghanistan after two decades but there are still people who think we'll be greeted as liberators in Iran and we'll be able to claim "mission accomplished" after a few months.

[linhns]

> Either the Iranians do it themselves or it doesn't happen.

Second this. And it's unlikely to succeed this time as Iranian people sadly do not really want to right now.

[aaronbrethorst]

Whether or not we have, this probably has more to do with bombing the huge, late night Friday Epstein files dump off the front page.

[jfengel]

There's nothing left in the files, so there's no need to overwhelm it. If there were anything incriminating, it would outlast the weekend news cycle and displace anything short of an attack on American soil. But anything incriminating has been redacted, so it might as well be the weekend news cycle.

[docdeek]

They've been moving ships and positioning assets for more than a week now. Not everything is related to a document dump.

[tptacek]

What does? This post?

[Drupon]

This insipid "it's all a distraction about the Epstein files" cliche is so nonsensical. We're talking about massacres here. The weak ass Epstein file "releases" are more likely to themselves be the distraction.

[cosmicgadget]

Certainly not but if the regime is forced to flee to Russia it gives the people a better chance.