Well… Yeah.
No one’s claiming that.
I’m just talking about your basic garden-variety rationality here. Self-preservation, self-interest and that sort of thing. Their strategy has been described as one of “cunning and far-sighted self-aggrandizement.” They’re “a rational aggressor”.
The same can not be said about the current American leadership, whose self-aggrandizement is neither cunning nor far-sighted, and whose aggressions seem wholly irrational.
Well, not the Christian ones.
Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, and people who can be proved to have ever voted for a Democrat…
probably…
Round one
I hope the troops were in reenforced bunkers.
Iran has not been in a shooting was since 1988, except for aiding the government of Syria against ISIS. How would the US have responded if Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Miller had been killed visiting Canada by an Iranian drone? And Iran shrugged and said “We were protecting our interests”.
Iran has been in every shooting war in the Middle East for decades. The guy in charge of that was blown up a couple of days ago.
Hezbollah has publicly stated that any retaliatory attacks should be on US military, not civilians. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/hezbollah-says-retribution-for-soleimanis-death-must-target-us-military-not-civilians/2020/01/05/50869828-2e62-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html
This is interesting, because I used to do some work with the US military on war games and I was on a team that devised asymmetrical responses to US military action. When Trump got elected, my first thought was that Trump branded properties around the world were much easier targets than US embassies and bases for terrorist attacks. It would also make the fight very personal between Trump and the attackers.
Why would they do that? As far as Iran is concerned, Soleimani was killed by the United States of America, not by Donald Trump. Making it personal is an American thing, not a Middle Eastern thing. Here, we’re all about the collective responsibility.
As for why they would make it personal, it makes a lot of sense. Trump is incredibly unpopular in the world and with about 56% percent of the US. By making it personal, they would make this Trump’s war. A lot of us already feel like this is between Trump and his cult and Iran. Making it all about Trump freaking out that one of his tacky palaces got bombed would make it even less likely that blue state America is going to rally around the troops for Trump’s war.
I missed the edit, but the Iranian government has explicitly said that their problem is with Trump, not the American people.
This is red state America’s war, even more so than Iraq.
Maybe, but it doesn’t fit the Iranian M.O. at all.
Besides, America is the Great Satan, not Trump. Trump is just the temp the Great Satan has answering the phones. He wasn’t a factor a few years ago, he won’t be a factor a few years from now. Iran doesn’t concern itself with transient elements like the President.
SO sorry, but I said fuckall about Obama.
I mentioned the organization that considers the murder of people at range using drones to be a valid political tool.
That organization is, unfortunately, the government of the united state of america.
It is not the US military that is doing this. They provide the tools, they execute the strikes, but they are merely the gun. The one pulling the gun’s trigger is the US government.
In any other organization was to do the same, even if another government were to do the same, their actions would be decried as Terrorism.
Why is the US leadership allowed to murder people, when no-one else is allowed to do so?
Of course they did. It is a disinformation theme just begging to be used given our internal discord. That discord includes a recent impeachment vote.
Why would you trust what they say more than their actions? The support they provided to Iraqi insurgents helped kill hundreds of American service members when Trump wasn’t even on the radar. They supported proxies that conducted multiple small attacks on Americans in Iraq last year. Across the decades since the revolution their issue has pretty clearly been with America not some loudmouthed property developer. What Iraqi actions would make you think they suddenly only have a problem with Trump?
Name a couple of them. I named one, in which they supported a lawful government against America’s ISIL buddies. What else have you got?
You could say the same about the US, couldn’t you? And with less reason. After all, the Iran is actually located in the Middle East, the US not so much.
Whereas the guy who killed their government official is still walking around, still making threats. You don’t think they might be pissed off about that?
[QUOTE=jtur88;22068759How would the US have responded if Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Miller had been killed visiting Canada by an Iranian drone? And Iran shrugged and said “We were protecting our interests”.[/QUOTE]
^ This.
What about the recent actions of the US?
Since Trump got in agreements and treaties have been smashed. Before that, Saddam Hussein was eliminated on falsified “evidence” and hysterical lies about weapons of mass destruction. Why the [expletive deleted] would ANYONE trust the US right now?
How many Iraqis have been killed by the US since Bush’s little war?
290,000 give or take a few, most of them civilians
We get pissed off about hundreds, but nations in the Middle East are supposed to be complacent when we kill hundreds of thousands? WTF? Just maybe when Iran says “self defense” they aren’t totally off base.
They don’t ONLY have a problem with Trump, but I do think they have a particular problem with Trump. True, since 1979 they’ve been opposed to the US government but right now Trump ordered a targeted assassination of a member of the Iranian government. That is an act of war. Then Trump threatened to bomb 52 locations in Iran, including ones that would qualify as war crimes if destroyed. The US started this, not them. And the Iranians know that the guy giving these orders is Donald Trump. That “loudmouthed property developer” currently is using the world’s most powerful military to attack Iran, THAT’s why the Iranian government has a personal beef with Trump.
I never said that I believed the statement, only that it is a smart tactic. If I were advising the Iranians, I would also advise them to launch Russian style influencer campaigns on social media: Not My President, Not My War. Isolating Trump and making this a war with him, not the US is in their interests. Iran can’t win a war against the US, but it can win a public opinion war with the rest of the world and blue state America.
Like I said, I once got paid by the US Army to come up with asymmetrical attacks on America and the shit we came up with was terrifying.
To be clear, America is on the ropes and this conflict with Iran has the potential to make our internal split permanent. Other nations know this. Iran is in a very precarious position, but if it plays it right, they can use Trump as the wedge that will ensure that we are never countrymen again (personally, I think that is already the case), thus taking the US off the board as the single most important piece. We’ve entered the end of pax-Americana and other nations need to be thinking about how they manage our decline. It’s not that I’m saying that Iran thinks Trump is that important, it’s that he can be a tool in their efforts.
Americans also tend to forget that America literally overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran and installed a puppet authoritarian government for the next quarter century before the angry mobs overthrew that one. Imagine if Iran had ousted Eisenhower by force and put Ayatollah Bob in charge of the US until the late 1970s when we chucked him out in a “Red Dawn” style insurrection. We’d still be pretty pissed at them now. Hell, we’re still made at them about the hostage thing, which is at least an order of magnitude or two less damaging than a full-on CIA-organized coup.
I’m not saying that the regime that followed has been a beacon of freedom and democracy - far from it* - but the fact remains that much of the current problem with Iran can be traced back to what the US did and a lot of Iranians (both moderate and radical) have longer memories than Americans appear to.
*see also: Batista/Castro.
I’m moderately optimistic that the missile attack will be the end of it. Iran saves face and we don’t get into an all out war. I guess we’ll see what Trump says later today.
I’m also somewhat concerned that it won’t be the end of it and the missile attack is an overt response that will give some extra deniability to covert/terrorist proxy responses later.
Yup. If I had a few million dollars hanging around with nothing to do, I’d love to do a remake of red dawn, with a last minute reveal where all of the Korean invading troops morph into American soldiers, while the wolverines morph into Iraqi insurgents. Its easy to misunderstand the motives and capabilities of your enemy if you always assume that your side is the heroes of the movie. So that your side is the only side that is brave and resourceful, while their opponents side is always cowardly and deceitful.