US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1567

On June 22 2019 05:00 Nouar wrote:

Maybe it has to do with SA and USA pressuring Iran every step of the way, retiring from a nuclear deal and choking the country.
Put yourself in Iran's shoes for a moment (don't worry I know about hezbollah and overall terrorism funding) : your enemy neighbors and the rich bully from overseas are miles away from your coasts, sometimes even over your airspace, not respecting your country and sovereignty every step of the way. You are funding open or covert military actions or militia in other countries, so are the others. The world cop usually does its own stuff while caring about no ones feelings, ordering other countries around, building up and selling weapons to your closest enemies, parading its war vessels and spying drones miles from your coasts.
What would you do in their steps ? Just shut up, become a vassal state and surrender ? Like the USA would do that when it's all about liberty (its liberty, not others). No, you would try to continue to assert your own leadership over the region, fighting for influence against richer countries, so you get what you can : the support of questionable actors (like yourself). And overall, you defend your country. What would be the USA reaction if military vessels were juuuuust miles away from the coasts, at the limit of international waters ?

Currently the US has got a team at its helm that is doing the bidding of SA, every step of the way. What does SA want to do ? Gain leadership regionally by *all* means. The track record of the USA and SA at showing proof of wrongdoing is really bad.

I am telling you this while being currently stationed a few dozen miles from where the mines have blown up, and the drone has been shot. There is NO consensus, like there was in Syria, that Iran is the culprit of this shit. Same for the drone. There is clearly a lead-up to something, hopefully it ends up a nothingburger, but it is very rich to say a country is breaking a red line when you are pushing it the hardest you can to break that line. By trampling on their sovereign rights, asphyxiating their economy, complaining about nuclear industry when you just left the treaty, shoving military vessels and spy drones by their coasts.

"Trump may not have much of a choice" ? Don't reverse the situation, SA (through US) is baiting Iran to go to war. He had the choice to stay in the treaty, not fly drones that close (as if the US never had/has spy planes going over foreign air space), not listen to everything SA says, and the list is long.
Can you imagine that he may not have given Iran an opening by chalking up this to a "mistake" from Iran (when they clearly assessed it was intentional on their part), but tried to exit a self-created crisis as that drone might have effectively been in Iran's airspace ? Imagine that, and then look at what happened with the bombing threat just afterwards. It makes one afraid.


Oh, I forgot to mention that oil prices have to be kept rather high, for shale oil to be profitable... So disturbing the global oil market is actually overall beneficial to the US (and SA who is struggling a bit, with a recession and increased debt last year)... Take it as you will.

On June 22 2019 02:05 On_Slaught wrote:


I mean, if the goal was to surveil Iranian territory then the drone was certainly in the right place. However, as Kwark pointed out, we shouldn't then be surprised when a country reacts poorly to us going into their airspace uninvited. There's a reason these drones are unmanned.

On June 22 2019 08:46 micronesia wrote:

This doesn't really address my question. You said there's plenty of airspace the drone could have used... what airspace? To do what?

For the record, I don't advocate for the drone flying through Iranian airspace uninvited.

On June 22 2019 07:01 Artisreal wrote:
What's a crawl in this context? And as a minor aside I'd appreciate a link to the article without the facebook stuff attached, like this

Regarding the Trump administration doing god knows what shitty thing to people they don't consider human, I'm very sorry to say that it's shocking and at the same time not suprising at all.

On June 22 2019 09:22 Doodsmack wrote:
If I'm not mistaken this is only the second rape allegation against trump (the first being from his first wife, under oath). I say only because there are a number of lesser sex crime allegations against him.

https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1142112657845235713

On June 22 2019 09:16 On_Slaught wrote:


Google US bases around Iran and it's easy to see how much airspace we have access to around the country and which countries let us fly basically unbridled. If the drones job was to surveil space around Iran, then it doesnt need to go into Iranian airspace and has a bunch of room to work with. If its job was to surveil Iranian land, then it very well may have straddled, and likely crossed, the border in an attempt to do so. If it did, then it runs the risk of being shot down by invading another countries' airspace. What do you think we'd do to an Iranian drone flying over our airspace? The same thing they did to ours.

Again, there is an advantage to using unmanned surveillance craft; you can push the limit more without putting lives on the line. I wouldn't be surprised if that was what they did here.

On June 22 2019 09:45 micronesia wrote:

Again, I'll point out that I'm not advocating for the drone flying in Iran's airspace. I'm not as convinced as you are that the drone was likely in Iran's airspace when it was shot down.

The question was more about, what airspace would be acceptable and still accomplish the mission. The mission I was referring to was monitoring the Straight of Hormuz given the recent threats to non-military shipping. Drones don't need to fly in Iranian airspace to do that. Drones likely do need to fly over the Straight of Hormuz in order to do that. You said, "There is a lot of airspace it could have used instead. What airspace allows the drone to monitor activity in the international waters of the Straight of Hormuz, where shipping goes? It seems to me like most of that airspace is in a place that is >12 nautical miles from Iran's coastline, but close enough that Iran still dislikes it. The airspace you are referring to does not seem to exist.

If the drone is in Iran's airspace, and it's confirmed to be an unmanned drone, then I have no issue with Iran shooing it down without warning. If the drone was outside Iran's airspace and gets shot down, then since no lives were lost, the U.S. response should be an economic one rather than a military one.

On June 22 2019 09:22 Doodsmack wrote:
If I'm not mistaken this is only the second rape allegation against trump (the first being from his first wife, under oath). I say only because there are a number of lesser sex crime allegations against him.

https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1142112657845235713

On June 22 2019 08:29 Danglars wrote:

I'm in a little awkward position here. As I said in prior posts, I don't think the current conclusions are valid predicates for bombing campaigns. But we're here talking about the broader issue of what our posture towards Iran should be, in the wake of actions that I don't think change that posture all that much. So I must reiterate, I treat the mining and drone intercept as more likely Iranian aggression than not, but not a certain enough conclusion from the outside reporting to put that as a basis for reprisal attacks.

Now, you don't devote a lot of post real estate to "hezbollah and overall terrorism funding." That's my primary reason for supporting economic sanctions, and oppose a treaty that gives Iran cover to pursue nukes in the next decade. I don't think any broad discussion of US acts overseas and Saudi Arabian acts in their region overcomes the basic truth that Iran funds terrorist attacks on our ally Israel and killed our soldiers in Iraq. I'm aware that the economic (and banking financial) pressure campaign is not a perfect mechanism to force Iran to play nice with it's near neighbors or suffer an economic collapse. Incidentally, I'm all right with them having less money to fund terror. They surely have the option to flame out in aggression towards our forces in the area. If that's their choice of response (they haven't attacked our ships or other personnel quite yet), then it was still right to not back off the economic sanctions and patrols in the Strait of Hormuz. Thank god they presumably don't have nuclear weapons yet to really deliver on their promise of Death to the Little Satan.

Those are my overall priorities on Iran. Stop the state funding of terror against our allies, stop the threats on boats in international waters (going back literally decades), or suffer isolation and economic collapse. These are backed by US military might and willingness to take casualties in an exchange of fire.

I know there's diverse opinions on who's the real culprit. I reject the ones that say the US is the provocateur and bad actor when weighed against Iran on the evidence. The US is keeping international waters open in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened that with stupidly reckless behavior for decades. The US did not seize embassies, Iran did. The US did not sell explosively formed penetrators for use against the Iranian military in Iran, the Iranians did that to our military in Iraq.

I do want to add, for the sake of your inclusion of being stationed so close, that we had squads stationed in Iraq a few years ago eating Iranian EFP's, mortars, and RPGs. They were stationed deep in Iraq, and knew if the Iranian EFPs were fired at them, they were likely to die. Other Americans they knew had died despite our best defensive armor. One of our senators, Tom Cotton, told those stories in interviews over his recent book. I'd lay Iranian intervention in arming aligned rebels in Iraq, stationed very close to Iran as you are now, against these provocations and culpability you bring up. Also, as the article cites in the same post you quoted, a history of provocations from Iran. Even further back than the article, I'd cite the two hundred American military personnel killed in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.

Let the chips fall where they may on global oil markets. We have a responsibility to protect US interests in trade through the Persian Gulf area. I'm happy about comparative US independence from oil in that region, but that really doesn't enter into my thinking on that issue.

I'm nonetheless happy to hear your substantive explanation of why you think Iran had no other rights, and why they would think America is the real culprit and cares little about liberty.

On June 22 2019 10:20 KwarK wrote:

There are some of the Epstein children who allege Trump was among their abusers. Trump has admitted knowing that Epstein liked his girls young, and to flying on the Lolita Express to Epstein's private parties.

On June 22 2019 08:29 Danglars wrote:

I'm in a little awkward position here. As I said in prior posts, I don't think the current conclusions are valid predicates for bombing campaigns. But we're here talking about the broader issue of what our posture towards Iran should be, in the wake of actions that I don't think change that posture all that much. So I must reiterate, I treat the mining and drone intercept as more likely Iranian aggression than not, but not a certain enough conclusion from the outside reporting to put that as a basis for reprisal attacks.

Now, you don't devote a lot of post real estate to "hezbollah and overall terrorism funding." That's my primary reason for supporting economic sanctions, and oppose a treaty that gives Iran cover to pursue nukes in the next decade. I don't think any broad discussion of US acts overseas and Saudi Arabian acts in their region overcomes the basic truth that Iran funds terrorist attacks on our ally Israel and killed our soldiers in Iraq. I'm aware that the economic (and banking financial) pressure campaign is not a perfect mechanism to force Iran to play nice with it's near neighbors or suffer an economic collapse. Incidentally, I'm all right with them having less money to fund terror. They surely have the option to flame out in aggression towards our forces in the area. If that's their choice of response (they haven't attacked our ships or other personnel quite yet), then it was still right to not back off the economic sanctions and patrols in the Strait of Hormuz. Thank god they presumably don't have nuclear weapons yet to really deliver on their promise of Death to the Little Satan.

Those are my overall priorities on Iran. Stop the state funding of terror against our allies, stop the threats on boats in international waters (going back literally decades), or suffer isolation and economic collapse. These are backed by US military might and willingness to take casualties in an exchange of fire.

I know there's diverse opinions on who's the real culprit. I reject the ones that say the US is the provocateur and bad actor when weighed against Iran on the evidence. The US is keeping international waters open in the Persian Gulf. Iran has threatened that with stupidly reckless behavior for decades. The US did not seize embassies, Iran did. The US did not sell explosively formed penetrators for use against the Iranian military in Iran, the Iranians did that to our military in Iraq.

I do want to add, for the sake of your inclusion of being stationed so close, that we had squads stationed in Iraq a few years ago eating Iranian EFP's, mortars, and RPGs. They were stationed deep in Iraq, and knew if the Iranian EFPs were fired at them, they were likely to die. Other Americans they knew had died despite our best defensive armor. One of our senators, Tom Cotton, told those stories in interviews over his recent book. I'd lay Iranian intervention in arming aligned rebels in Iraq, stationed very close to Iran as you are now, against these provocations and culpability you bring up. Also, as the article cites in the same post you quoted, a history of provocations from Iran. Even further back than the article, I'd cite the two hundred American military personnel killed in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.

Let the chips fall where they may on global oil markets. We have a responsibility to protect US interests in trade through the Persian Gulf area. I'm happy about comparative US independence from oil in that region, but that really doesn't enter into my thinking on that issue.

I'm nonetheless happy to hear your substantive explanation of why you think Iran had no other rights, and why they would think America is the real culprit and cares little about liberty.

A survey conducted in Iran during his presidency (1997-2005), revealed a large proportion of Iranian youth favouring normalization of relations with the West. Following the September 11 attacks, large crowds in Tehran were moved into a spontaneous display of solidarity with the victims in New York. This was far removed from the scenes of the 1979 hostage taking crisis.