I stopped the video as soon as he said “according to Seymour Hersh…”
Correction: he said, “the LEGENDARY JOURNALIST Seymour Hersh”.
Kyle Kulinski has had an appropriate level of pushback and vitriol towards certain things that the Trump Admin was doing. That’s just about the only nice thing I can say about him. And of all of his flaws, his shitty foreign policy takes are the worst.
Well for what it’s worth, I’d be happy if he’s wrong. Trump deciding this is an ideal time to pop off a nuke would be a nightmare. Absolutely no good could come of it. By all means, destroy Fordow. Just don’t use a nuke to do it.
Yes, the Marshall Plan was as much about securing the US’s position as the pre-eminent economic and political power as it was about “restoring” Europe. The US is unable to do that today for a host of reasons.
That is the Republican mindset in a nutshell, and it makes sense on a simplistic (i.e. incorrect) level. It is easy to understand that if someone is doing bad things, that you might need to punish them, and that it is worthwhile to spend the effort and resources to do it. But when it comes to helping people who have been doing bad things, the question gets raised, why are we helping these bad people, when we could spend the money helping ourselves who are much more worthy?
So you end up spending billions more on defense to bomb civilians unstable rogue regimes while cutting USAID which for a fraction of the cost could prevent those regimes from being unstable in the first place. See also spending on law enforcement vs fighting poverty.
Minor (very) disagreement, I could see the current administration figure they could gain economic and political power by stepping in and taking over Iran (something nearly unthinkable in prior years) and running it as a protectorate petro state. Because, well, someone could convince Trump that he’d make money off the deal, like some of his “plans” for the Gaza Strip.
Yes, it would be even more selfish and self-serving than the worst elements of the Marshall Plan, and would be naked neo-colonialism, but it’s well within Trump’s personality type.
And it could be combined (to double down on the evil) with Chronos/Buck_Godot’s point about claiming to manage the oil to repay America’s costs in bringing “peace”, and meanwhile letting everything else rot into violence and reprisals.
I don’t think this is related but wow with the timing:
I don’t disagree, but this would be very different from the nature and aims of the Marshall Plan. It wouldn’t be “nation-building so they can buy our stuff and be a bulwark against the USSR as we expand our economic system around the world,” but a naked grab, as you note.
Well, it seems the US is involved now although it is still vaguely possible Trump is just talking out of his ass:
https://news.yahoo.com/diplomatic-breakthrough-elusive-israel-iran-041120123.html
Well, at least Trump fired all of the generals and admirals and Intelligence officials who knew anything about defending the United States. That’s something, right?
As much as I detest most military action, a part of me feels bad that the bombing of Iran is likely the one action Trump has taken that I hate the least.
Rare Trump W
I’m not sure I’d qualify it as a W. Just not an obvious L as just about every other step he has taken.
There’s no way to know right now. We may not even have destroyed the facility. We may have done nothing significant more than tying ourselves to a new ongoing war. And one we have no idea of the medium and long term ramifications.
For those cheering on these attacks, what if they failed? What if Iran already moved everything important, and now knows the only guarantee to avoid further attacks is to get those nukes?
If that’s the case, are you in favor of boots on the ground invasion to change their leadership? Or dropping nukes on Iran? Because if this attack failed, probably no conventional air attack could be successful.
If these attacks failed, all they might have accomplished is to supercharge Iran’s race to get nukes.
Of course it’s a Trump W from a domestic politics POV. He’s won a ton of MAGA converts with this, all of the enlightened centrists who wage a never ending war on “woke”, they’ve just been waiting for the excuse to jump on the MAGA train.
It’s from Buzzfeed via Yahoo News but not all the MAGA reaction has been positive:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fully-regret-voting-donald-trump-151839672.html
He’s definitely losing the Groyper vote over this.
Lol, come on. They will all fall in line. Every one. And now there’s a large new group that’s been begging for a reason to come in.
No he isn’t. The groyper vote will remain 95%+ Republican/MAGA. They’re bitching now but they’ll remain deep deep red.