It’s always hard to know to what extent “Iranian backed militias” are just a proxy for Iran and I wouldn’t blame the US for wanting to retaliate for the Baghdad embassy attack, but this seems like the most inflammatory option possible, I mean it’s not exactly a warning shot. It doesn’t seem like Iran will have any option but to retaliate in turn. There’s also the small matter of the fact that it seems pretty obviously illegal on its face.
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The replies to his tweet are severely depressing. Seeing the unfiltered cheers for an illegal act that could lead to another Middle Eastern boondoggle really drives home how fucked we are. Feels like we’re watching the start of a slow motion car crash and all we can do is hope the airbags deploy.
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We can’t even keep our embassy in the Green Zone safe, I’d love to know how in fuck the media knows where these Iraqi militias are getting their funding from. That’s either some absolutely incredible reporting or else they’re just parroting out whatever narrative the State Department is peddling.
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It was about 50/50 by election time, 2004 was a close race and Bush won as much by Karl Rove’s gay marriage scaremongering than whatever ‘stay the course’ bullshit they were trying to sell. Plus John Kerry was hard to distinguish from a felled thousand year old oak tree, so there was that too.
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As he notes, I too think major cyber attacks are going to be coming pretty aggressively now.
The “idk this just gives America a chance to see what a bad statesman trump is” takes are just awful
Worse is the fact there are democrats who are aggressively attacking anyone who raises any questions about what happened and is happening.
Ugh this is so bad on so many fronts.
So Iraq War III is gonna be us defending the Good Guy Iraqis from the Evil Iran-Backed Iraqis, that’s gonna work out just great so long as the bad guys are wearing nametags or whatever. Also, the Bad Guys Iraqis are fighting ISIS, who are also Bad Guys, which is a little confusing. Also our good friends the Good Guy Iraqis just sat on their hands and let a mob overrun our embassy. So yeah, this is all going to pan out well.
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Put me in the “helps Trump” camp, I would brace yourself for a bump in approval rating. Surgical striking the “head bad guy” is going to be appealing to the infantile reactionary mind. Most people are not going to draw any lines between this and potential bad outcomes for the US.
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Does it surprise anyone that with a list of options on the table, Trump would go for the most inflammatory one possible?
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Maybe Iran retaliates by taking out Trump?
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Not sure about that. Is there one among us who is flipping to Trump because of this? No, but other Democrats who think like us generally, will not think like us in this case? Is that what we’re saying?
I think it’s just the one that appeals to him personally the most, which is why I think it will also appeal to the masses, because as we’ve talked about before, Trump is basically just a Fox watching grandpa who happens to be rich.
Also, there would be factions in the US military who would be keen on this. There’s an article in FP here where Gen. McChrystal discusses passing up an opportunity to kill Soleimani in 2007:
The decision not to act is often the hardest one to make—and it isn’t always right. In 2007, I watched a string of vehicles pass from Iran into northern Iraq. I had been serving as the head of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for four years, working to stem the terrorism that had devastated the region, and I had become accustomed to making tough choices. But on that January night, the choice was particularly tricky: whether or not to attack a convoy that included Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force—an organization roughly analogous to a combination of the CIA and JSOC in the United States.
There was good reason to eliminate Suleimani. At the time, Iranian-made roadside bombs built and deployed at his command were claiming the lives of U.S. troops across Iraq. But to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately. By the time the convoy had reached Erbil, Suleimani had slipped away into the darkness.
My bolding. McChrystal drops several unsubtle hints in the article that he wishes he had pulled the trigger. Maybe it would even have been a reasonable decision. The shitstorm back then would probably not have been as bad as it’s going to be now.
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Would Iran respond by going after one of the Trump offspring? That would ignite a severe shit storm.
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I’d say that yes, there will be some people who would have considered voting against Trump, or at least sitting it out, who will instead vote for him because he killed a bad guy and they like his bluster in a time of war.
Anyone who recognizes this as a bad thing was already a guaranteed vote against Trump.
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That’s the thing, yeah.
Ari Fleischer on Fox News just now:
I think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani
Sigh.
[https://twitter.com/Wwm_Shakespeare/status/1212941757392064513?s=20
quote=“ChrisV, post:52, topic:834, full:true”]
Put me in the “helps Trump” camp.
[/quote]
W’'s approval skyrocketed after 9/11. Barbara Lee was literally the only one in Congress who stood up to him. 420 to 1. This whole country is full of boot-licking, trigger-happy cowards who are ready to send someone else’s kids off to war at the drop of a hat. A real shooting war with Iranian proxies makes Trump a lock to win.
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If not Tiffany or Barron I don’t know how plussed people would be.
Hate to say it, but I think this is great for Trump politically. He just took America’s big dick and smacked Iran in the face with it. And from what we know about what he has said, he won’t get into a ground war. My guess is that whatever Iran does to retaliate, he will just start bombing them and killing innocents without two fucks given.
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