One massive risk that I don’t hear anyone in the West talking about is the risk of giving Sunni populist rage over Gaza the spark it needs to overthrow US-aligned partners all over the Middle East. This could backfire really badly for Israel and the US if they suddenly lose all of their friends in high places in these countries. 98% of the non-elite Sunnis all over the world are enraged at Israel over Gaza. All of the surrounding countries (Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia) currently employ brutal authoritarian methods to suppress any pro-Palestinian sentiment beyond thoughts and prayers. If the regimes fall, all hell will break loose, and all of the hate will be directed towards Israel.
You mean all those countries that have us troops and massive amounts of us support? That have systematically for decades dismantled any pan-arab or pan-islamic unity?
Come on. Israel might be the most high profile US partner. But they are far from the only one.
The US is not a democracy. The majority did not want this war.
Though the majority will help bear the costs, and several family members will grieve dearly for the sacrifice of entertaining some brutal geopolitics that do not serve America first.
America is a democratic republic, not a direct democracy. The only restriction is the president can’t declare war, only congress can do that.
They are pretending these strikes are “preemptive” in response to a nuclear bomb being developed, just like the “emergency” that was declared to enact the tariffs.
The majority absolutely voted for this war. You're attacking the democracy when you insist that the elected politicians following through on campaign planks are not representing the country. That's exactly how this works.
IDK, "America first" is practically speaking, the financial interests of the current president and his ruling clique, nothing more. This does serve them by, among other things, distracting from the Epstein files and asserting lucrative control over petroleum-producing nations. These brave servicemen died for that.
This war is completely on Trump since he didn't get Congress' approval or even justify it to the American public. I wonder if the "no new wars" voters will condemn him?
I can sort of see his position. When there were mass protests around Jan 2nd he said to the Iranian government don't kill them or else:
>US President Donald Trump has warned Iran's authorities against killing peaceful protesters, saying Washington "will come to their rescue". In a brief post on social media, he wrote: "We are locked and loaded and ready to go," but gave no further details. (bbc)
And the Iranian government are now in the find out stage.
>I wonder if the "no new wars" voters will condemn him?
They'll retcon it and fall in line behind Trump, just like with Venezuela. This is from both opinion polls and also interactions with actual MAGA people.
The Iranian regime funded Hamas that started the last major war and the regime was responsible for the mass slaughter 30 to 40,000 people a few weeks ago.
What does that mean in practical terms though? The absolute worst that can happen to trump is he is both impeached and successfully indicted. When the worst case is maybe by some extremely unlikely "luck" he loses his job and has to sulk back into his billions and golden towers, and on the other hand he can gamble with the lives of million of serviceman and the tax money Americans could otherwise spend on healthy food, healthcare, education and other things they need -- why not? He's not up for re-election anyways.
Trumps an unhealthy older man, with no prospect for re-election, and a big golden parachute even in the worst case scenario. The fact the war is all on him is seen as a plus because he gets all the credit for the history books and the mothers of the dead servicemen are just forgotten trash used to achieve his objective.
Trump is acting completely rationally. His MO is to push the envelope until he is stopped. It is mostly others who are irrationally acting in the service of Trump that are acting irrationally.
Wow, browsing the comments with showdead=1 gives me the highest ratio of flagged vs normal comments ever. Surprised the whole thread is not flagged, yet. I mean, can we expect that more insights come out of this?
It is pretty hard to have a calm discussion about the outbreak of war. War is awful. People will suffer, people will die. Being angry is an appropriate response. The article is just a list of the ap wire briefs, so it does not tell us very much.
>I mean, can we expect that more insights come out of this?
No, because all the points for/against the attacks have already been argued to death in the first thread, and both sides' argument don't hinge on whether there are deaths or not, so this bit of news doesn't really make a difference.
Is it heroic to join the military to pay for school/stay out of jail/escape poverty, and then die because the pedophile president of your country unilaterally decided to begin a bombing campaign against a sovereign nation? And then get unlucky enough to be in the path of retaliation?
That’s not heroism. It’s waste. Their lives were wasted by the MAGA cult, just like the tens of thousands of Iranian civilians and children who are dying to our bombs.
You can't celebrate people's deaths like this on HN, and it's shocking to see. I feel ashamed of HN when I see things like this. I can't believe you did it, and my first response was to ban the account.
After a minute, I reconsidered, especially after I saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930988 (an excellent post) and realized that your account has been around for over 10 years. I've unbanned it now.
Please don't post like this to HN again. The same, of course, goes for any other account, regardless of political angle.
Also, please don't use HN primarily for political/ideological battle—again, regardless of which politics you're for or against. A certain amount of political overlap is necessary and inevitable, but when an account crosses into primarily doing that, it's basically the line at which we ban it (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations).
> Cry no tears for the slaughter of imperial troops
This comment from the same account above is dead so can't reply to it, but you must understand that the troops themselves do NOT want this. They are not clones genetically engineered for war. A very large fraction of them have been effectively conscripted due to economic pressures and lack of other opportunities.
As a data point, I happened to have a couple of brief but very candid conversations with students in the ROTC program just as the Afghanistan war had broken out. Their chances of getting deployed to the frontlines after graduation were suddenly spiking. Despite each conversation being very fleeting, each of them expressed consternation of their prospects and some regret at signing up just for the chance to get a free college education. They all acknowleged that they knew the risks when signing up, of course, but they had taken the chance at a time when the country was not mobilizing for war.
duxup|14 hours ago
znnajdla|23 hours ago
halJordan|18 hours ago
Come on. Israel might be the most high profile US partner. But they are far from the only one.
zht|22 hours ago
mothballed|23 hours ago
Though the majority will help bear the costs, and several family members will grieve dearly for the sacrifice of entertaining some brutal geopolitics that do not serve America first.
repeekad|23 hours ago
They are pretending these strikes are “preemptive” in response to a nuclear bomb being developed, just like the “emergency” that was declared to enact the tariffs.
It’s all illegal
halJordan|18 hours ago
SideburnsOfDoom|23 hours ago
IDK, "America first" is practically speaking, the financial interests of the current president and his ruling clique, nothing more. This does serve them by, among other things, distracting from the Epstein files and asserting lucrative control over petroleum-producing nations. These brave servicemen died for that.
hypeatei|23 hours ago
tim333|3 hours ago
I can sort of see his position. When there were mass protests around Jan 2nd he said to the Iranian government don't kill them or else:
>US President Donald Trump has warned Iran's authorities against killing peaceful protesters, saying Washington "will come to their rescue". In a brief post on social media, he wrote: "We are locked and loaded and ready to go," but gave no further details. (bbc)
And the Iranian government are now in the find out stage.
gruez|23 hours ago
They'll retcon it and fall in line behind Trump, just like with Venezuela. This is from both opinion polls and also interactions with actual MAGA people.
https://files.catbox.moe/h2wqwz.png
https://files.catbox.moe/64uhqw.png
nailer|23 hours ago
mothballed|23 hours ago
Trumps an unhealthy older man, with no prospect for re-election, and a big golden parachute even in the worst case scenario. The fact the war is all on him is seen as a plus because he gets all the credit for the history books and the mothers of the dead servicemen are just forgotten trash used to achieve his objective.
Trump is acting completely rationally. His MO is to push the envelope until he is stopped. It is mostly others who are irrationally acting in the service of Trump that are acting irrationally.
lukan|23 hours ago
blululu|23 hours ago
gruez|23 hours ago
No, because all the points for/against the attacks have already been argued to death in the first thread, and both sides' argument don't hinge on whether there are deaths or not, so this bit of news doesn't really make a difference.
arunabha|20 hours ago
Looks like the flagging brigade got this story flagged as well. Of course, HN mods will do nothing about it as usual.
shablulman|23 hours ago
[deleted]
unknown|23 hours ago
[deleted]
vcryan|1 day ago
[deleted]
rayiner|23 hours ago
[deleted]
2OEH8eoCRo0|1 day ago
[deleted]
mcmcmc|1 day ago
That’s not heroism. It’s waste. Their lives were wasted by the MAGA cult, just like the tens of thousands of Iranian civilians and children who are dying to our bombs.
frob|21 hours ago
[deleted]
frob|23 hours ago
[deleted]
frob|23 hours ago
[deleted]
dang|18 hours ago
After a minute, I reconsidered, especially after I saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930988 (an excellent post) and realized that your account has been around for over 10 years. I've unbanned it now.
Please don't post like this to HN again. The same, of course, goes for any other account, regardless of political angle.
Also, please don't use HN primarily for political/ideological battle—again, regardless of which politics you're for or against. A certain amount of political overlap is necessary and inevitable, but when an account crosses into primarily doing that, it's basically the line at which we ban it (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
keeda|16 hours ago
This comment from the same account above is dead so can't reply to it, but you must understand that the troops themselves do NOT want this. They are not clones genetically engineered for war. A very large fraction of them have been effectively conscripted due to economic pressures and lack of other opportunities.
As a data point, I happened to have a couple of brief but very candid conversations with students in the ROTC program just as the Afghanistan war had broken out. Their chances of getting deployed to the frontlines after graduation were suddenly spiking. Despite each conversation being very fleeting, each of them expressed consternation of their prospects and some regret at signing up just for the chance to get a free college education. They all acknowleged that they knew the risks when signing up, of course, but they had taken the chance at a time when the country was not mobilizing for war.
herruty|23 hours ago
[deleted]