Yet another war, this time with Iran

[Arctish]

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

You keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring a new nation in Palestine and everything that happened in the days, weeks, months and years leading up to it, and how it impacted those neighboring countries.

Why do you do that?

It can't be because you don't know about the terrorism, murders, kidnappings, coordinated attacks on villages full of unarmed civilians, etc. It's not because you are simply unaware of the careful planning and decades of efforts to acquire weapons and other resources necessary to carry out those plans. And it's not because you don't know the ambition of the Zionists who founded Israel was to seize even more territory and resources than they had on that day in May of 1948.

The Arab/Israeli conflict could not have started before 14th May 1948 as Israel did not exist beforehand (well not since c. 63BC).

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

Plans were proposed that might have allowed a measure of co-existence but nothing was done to take them seriously. More's the pity.

I take it you're a fan of the Arab Proposal?

You need to spell that out more clearly if you want to be understood in these threads. And even then you'll probably have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

The Jews were evicted from Europe, not their choice. Just like they were evicted by the Romans. Notice a pattern?

I notice an exaggeration.

Jews were evicted from some places in Europe and not evicted from others. Thousands of Jews were enslaved by Romans, just like thousands of Greeks, Ethiopians, Gauls, Celts, Germanic peoples, etc., from areas the Romans conquered.

The Jews are not welcome anywhere and are never left in peace no matter where they reside. Fix that and perhaps a lot of problems will go away.

You are ignoring 400 years of peaceful relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine from the early 1500s to the early 1900s.

You appeared to know about the Ottoman Turks rescuing Sephardic Jews from Spain, and that Jews were welcome in the Ottoman Empire.

You said you knew about Tantura. You said you knew about the peaceful relations between Native Palestinians and Jewish immigrants during the 1st and 2nd Aliyah.

And yet, you seem to forget all that whenever you want to make an appeal to emotion to justify the violent takeover of Palestine and the purging of non-Jews by Zionist extremists.

So, why? Why does the history of the conflict start for you on May 14th and not before? Why were the on-going ethnic cleansing and massacres which resulted in close to a million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring countries not a good enough reason, in your opinion, for those countries to get involved?

Jews have been living in the ME since at least 1000BC. Their ancestors predate pretty well every one else in that area. They were evicted by others viz. Romans in particular.

You're talking about the ancient Canaanites. And I'm sure you know that some of them had religious beliefs that eventually evolved in to the modern Jewish faith while others didn't, that some Jews converted to Christianity, that some Christians and some Jews converted to Islam, and that you can't use religion as proof of ancestry because a person's religion can change while their ancestry doesn't.

Also, the Romans didn't remove all the Jews from the area and carry them off to Italy. Palestinian Jews were there when the Crusaders arrived, when the Ottoman Turks took over, when the British took over, and when the State of Israel was founded.

They never gave up on their quest to return to the their ancestral lands. The UN does look favourable upon peoples begin able to return to their homelands.
If you are going to mention the flight out of the ME by non-Jews (refugees) then we should also include all the Jews (also refugees) that were forced out of lands from Morocco to Afghanistan and beyond. They like the non-Jews need to be taken care of.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine? Members of the European branch of the Jewish diaspora show a significant degree of European ancestry, and it's impossible to determine which persons are descended from those who were forced out. Whereas the refugees who fled when Plan Dalet was implemented, and their descendants, have solid evidence to back up their claims to a Right to Return to villages that were conquered by Zionist forces in the 1940s.

IMO, the people with the best evidence to support their claim to Palestine as their ancestral homeland are the ones known to be from there, i.e. recent refugees, not the ones who might have some ancestors who were enslaved by Romans but might also be the descendants of shepherds who moved to Ukraine because they wanted to be farmers and seafarers who got stuck living in Greece when their boat sank.

Also, I have addressed the point of Jews being forced out of countries like Morocco many, many times.

Perhaps you were not party to those discussions. Usually it's Loren trying to slip in bullshit about Algerian Jews that prompts a dive into that history. If you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do that. But if you're going to try claiming that what happened to Jews in the 1970s justifies what happened to Palestinians in the 1940s, or that Palestinians have to pay the price for what Italians did, or that 2 wrongs make a right when it's the Right of Return for Jews alone, then you'd better bring your A game. I have links and I'm not afraid to use them.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What's wrong with wanting to wipe a terrorist organization that wants to exterminate you off the face of the Earth?

At the moment, Israel and US are no better.

While US and Israel are certainly no perfect, is it incredibly ignorant to say that they are "no better". They are many, many orders of magnitude better than IRGC and the islamofascist terror group it funds, arms and controls.

The depends entirely on what end of America's petrodollar system and guns you're on.

Stop this moral relativisation. It's like saying that Trump is just as bad is Hitler. No he's not. It's an incredibly ignorant thing to say. I think you're better than this

I think you’re missing the point. Judgments like that depend a lot on where you’re standing. From the perspective of people who have been on the receiving end of U.S. foreign policy, the moral picture doesn’t look nearly as clear-cut.

That doesn’t mean I'm saying that “everyone is equally bad.” It means that’s Derek’s opinion, not a universal truth. Depending on where you’re standing, the “world police” doesn’t look as spotless as Derec's making it out to be.

You're acting like the USA could pass a criminal background check for the “world police” job and not have HR frightened to death halfway through its file.

I concede that it's better, but many of magnitudes?

USA is the most benign imperial power humanity has ever witnessed. Not to belabor the point, but living under the thumb of an imperial power has been the norm for humanity since Sargon of Akkad. The British empire being in close second place as far as benign imperial rulers go.

If we take imperialism as the historical norm, and that our choices are, "which imperial power would we like to live under the thumb of" USA wins every day. Imperial powers are, as a rule, horrific. The Assyrians would flay anyone who criticised them openly alive. And let them scamper off home without skin. The Aztecs would take enemy captives, flay them, and walk around in their skin, just to terrify their underlings. Egyptians would cut off the hands of anyone who complains. Yes, we've found the mass graves of these hands. The Mongols exterminated entire cities for minor infractions. That's how Bagdad went. The Romans famously "created a desolate depopulated wasteland and called it an empire". The Spanish empire in the Americas... better than the Aztecs or Incas... still horrific. The USSR, thought policing, and gulags. Muslim despots of the Middle-East, electrodes to the testicles of decenters.

And it's not like our choices are hypothetical either. We have some very clear contenders to imperial powers. It's now China or USA (Russia is now firmly under Chinese domination).

Who would you rather swung around their imperial dick smashing you in the face, China's or USA's? China has actual concentration camps.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely USA has managed to be the least corruptible power in human history. I think that's something to celebrate.

Sure, Trump is a horrific ogre of a man. But he's not as bad as the leaders of Iran, Russia, China or Venezuela. He's NOT Hitler. He's NOT a fascist. And he's not an autocrat. He could be so much worse, and still look good in comparrisson.

Imperial powers, historically, have been absolutely horrific. Great Britain created an imperial power that encouraged free thought which is awesome and amazing. USA continued the tradition. I don't think you quite apreciate how much we have to be grateful for because those two powers in particular shaped, and still shape, the modern world.

I also don't think you quite appreciate quite how evil authoritarian regimes tend to be and how normalised and systematic that evil is.

USA isn't perfect. Far from it. But it's good to have some perspective here.

I’m not really interested in revisiting one of your carved-out wall-of-text history lessons. Your whole argument boiling down to ‘we’re not the Mongols,’ is hillarious. Anyway here is the ugly truth you seem to be missing. Even within systems you and I both agree are oppressive, there are people who support or benefit from them, and that effects how they view both their own government and countries like the U.S. That doesn’t make those systems ‘good,’ it just shows that perspective isn’t universal. The same way Americans who benefit from U.S. power tend to see it more positively than those on the receiving end of it.

No offence, but you seem to need the history lesson. Your lack of interest in history might be your problem in maintaining a more objective view on USA. And it's not just history. You seem unaware of the ongoing atrocities of the regimes USA is up against. USA attacking Iran is pretty bizarre and god knows what goes on in Trump's pinball of a brain or what he thinks will be the positive outcome of it. But does Iran deserve being attacked like it is now? Hell yes. Reagan was a cunt. But the USSR really was an evil empire. And so is China now.

Yes, there's most likely better ways to help transition Iran to democracy. But doing nothing isn't going to help either. At least Trump is signalling to Iran that their behaviour has limits. Taking out their leaders was a good move.

Based on human history, USA might be as good as an empire gets. All the other ones were and are worse.

That’s all I’m saying, so you can drop the usual, predictable, and intellectually lazy attempt to reframe my point.

You're the one who can't be bothered to look stuff up. So I don't think I'm the lazy one.

I'm on the left, so I don't really care what the right are up to. They usually oversimplify stuff. But what I am seeing happening, increasingly on the left, is wholesale delusion. Creating complete fantasies about what USA is about, has done, and what other countries have done. That's also incredibly lazy. The "white bad" intellectual stance of the left (of which I think you're guilty of) is incredibly intellectually lazy imho. As well as dishonest. And dangerous. The fact that a majority of the western left is now in bed with Islamist extremists is alarming imho.

 

[Gospel]

What's wrong with wanting to wipe a terrorist organization that wants to exterminate you off the face of the Earth?

At the moment, Israel and US are no better.

While US and Israel are certainly no perfect, is it incredibly ignorant to say that they are "no better". They are many, many orders of magnitude better than IRGC and the islamofascist terror group it funds, arms and controls.

The depends entirely on what end of America's petrodollar system and guns you're on.

Stop this moral relativisation. It's like saying that Trump is just as bad is Hitler. No he's not. It's an incredibly ignorant thing to say. I think you're better than this

I think you’re missing the point. Judgments like that depend a lot on where you’re standing. From the perspective of people who have been on the receiving end of U.S. foreign policy, the moral picture doesn’t look nearly as clear-cut.

That doesn’t mean I'm saying that “everyone is equally bad.” It means that’s Derek’s opinion, not a universal truth. Depending on where you’re standing, the “world police” doesn’t look as spotless as Derec's making it out to be.

You're acting like the USA could pass a criminal background check for the “world police” job and not have HR frightened to death halfway through its file.

I concede that it's better, but many of magnitudes?

USA is the most benign imperial power humanity has ever witnessed. Not to belabor the point, but living under the thumb of an imperial power has been the norm for humanity since Sargon of Akkad. The British empire being in close second place as far as benign imperial rulers go.

If we take imperialism as the historical norm, and that our choices are, "which imperial power would we like to live under the thumb of" USA wins every day. Imperial powers are, as a rule, horrific. The Assyrians would flay anyone who criticised them openly alive. And let them scamper off home without skin. The Aztecs would take enemy captives, flay them, and walk around in their skin, just to terrify their underlings. Egyptians would cut off the hands of anyone who complains. Yes, we've found the mass graves of these hands. The Mongols exterminated entire cities for minor infractions. That's how Bagdad went. The Romans famously "created a desolate depopulated wasteland and called it an empire". The Spanish empire in the Americas... better than the Aztecs or Incas... still horrific. The USSR, thought policing, and gulags. Muslim despots of the Middle-East, electrodes to the testicles of decenters.

And it's not like our choices are hypothetical either. We have some very clear contenders to imperial powers. It's now China or USA (Russia is now firmly under Chinese domination).

Who would you rather swung around their imperial dick smashing you in the face, China's or USA's? China has actual concentration camps.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely USA has managed to be the least corruptible power in human history. I think that's something to celebrate.

Sure, Trump is a horrific ogre of a man. But he's not as bad as the leaders of Iran, Russia, China or Venezuela. He's NOT Hitler. He's NOT a fascist. And he's not an autocrat. He could be so much worse, and still look good in comparrisson.

Imperial powers, historically, have been absolutely horrific. Great Britain created an imperial power that encouraged free thought which is awesome and amazing. USA continued the tradition. I don't think you quite apreciate how much we have to be grateful for because those two powers in particular shaped, and still shape, the modern world.

I also don't think you quite appreciate quite how evil authoritarian regimes tend to be and how normalised and systematic that evil is.

USA isn't perfect. Far from it. But it's good to have some perspective here.

I’m not really interested in revisiting one of your carved-out wall-of-text history lessons. Your whole argument boiling down to ‘we’re not the Mongols,’ is hillarious. Anyway here is the ugly truth you seem to be missing. Even within systems you and I both agree are oppressive, there are people who support or benefit from them, and that effects how they view both their own government and countries like the U.S. That doesn’t make those systems ‘good,’ it just shows that perspective isn’t universal. The same way Americans who benefit from U.S. power tend to see it more positively than those on the receiving end of it.

No offence, but you seem to need the history lesson. Your lack of interest in history might be your problem in maintaining a more objective view on USA. And it's not just history. You seem unaware of the ongoing atrocities of the regimes USA is up against. USA attacking Iran is pretty bizarre and god knows what goes on in Trump's pinball of a brain or what he thinks will be the positive outcome of it. But does Iran deserve being attacked like it is now? Hell yes. Reagan was a cunt. But the USSR really was an evil empire. And so is China now.

Yes, there's most likely better ways to help transition Iran to democracy. But doing nothing isn't going to help either. At least Trump is signalling to Iran that their behaviour has limits. Taking out their leaders was a good move.

Based on human history, USA might be as good as an empire gets. All the other ones were and are worse.

That’s all I’m saying, so you can drop the usual, predictable, and intellectually lazy attempt to reframe my point.

You're the one who can't be bothered to look stuff up. So I don't think I'm the lazy one.

I'm on the left, so I don't really care what the right are up to. They usually oversimplify stuff. But what I am seeing happening, increasingly on the left, is wholesale delusion. Creating complete fantasies about what USA is about, has done, and what other countries have done. That's also incredibly lazy. The "white bad" intellectual stance of the left (of which I think you're guilty of) is incredibly intellectually lazy imho. As well as dishonest. And dangerous. The fact that a majority of the western left is now in bed with Islamist extremists is alarming imho.

You haven’t actually engaged with my argument. Nothing you’ve said reflects my position or my understanding of the regime in question. Instead, you’re responding to a version of my views that is based on your assumptions about me, rather than by what I’ve explicitly stated. It's getting old.

 

[Playball40]

Jordan Klepper Gets MAGA's Take on the Iran War & Trump's War with the Pope | The Daily Show​

Horrifying

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I’m not really interested in revisiting one of your carved-out wall-of-text history lessons. Your whole argument boiling down to ‘we’re not the Mongols,’ is hillarious. Anyway here is the ugly truth you seem to be missing. Even within systems you and I both agree are oppressive, there are people who support or benefit from them, and that effects how they view both their own government and countries like the U.S. That doesn’t make those systems ‘good,’ it just shows that perspective isn’t universal. The same way Americans who benefit from U.S. power tend to see it more positively than those on the receiving end of it.

No offence, but you seem to need the history lesson.

Teaching about history, when you don't seem to understand what is happening right in front of you would probably be a bad idea.

Yes, there's most likely better ways to help transition Iran to democracy. But doing nothing isn't going to help either. At least Trump is signalling to Iran that their behaviour has limits. Taking out their leaders was a good move.

Good move? Due to Trump and Netanyahu, Iran's global influence hasn't been this big since Cyrus. Somehow, the US/Israel militaries managed to kill the Theocratic leader of Iran... and made Iran more powerful. You want to call that a good move, so be it, I can't fix stupid.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Written to Gospel:

The "white bad" intellectual stance of the left (of which I think you're guilty of) is incredibly intellectually lazy imho.

Since Gospel does not have that view, it is actually your claim that is intellectual lazy.

Written to Gospel:

As well as dishonest. And dangerous.

Again, given the lack of accuracy here in your claim, the assignment of these qualities [to a fictitious argument] appears to be projection.

The fact that a majority of the western left is now in bed with Islamist extremists is alarming imho.

Speaking of intellectually lazy, here is a statement of this form:
"The fact that ... [INSERT SOME ALLEGATION] ... in my humble opinion."

You're calling something a fact and then backing away from it by adding that it's your "humble" opinion.

That's as unproductive in creating an atmosphere of rational discussion as if someone else wrote that:
"The fact that REPUBLICANS LOVE TO KILL MUSLIM WOMEN AND CHILDREN is alarming imho."

Let's try again.

This thread is specifically about the war with Iran. What are some reasons there is opposition to it?

1. Broken Promises: We were told this administration wouldn't start new "forever wars," yet Operation Epic Fury has us deeper in the Middle East than in the last two decades.
2. The Credibility Gap: The administration keeps moving the goalposts on "success." First, it was about surgical strikes; now we’re looking at a full-scale regional collapse.
3. Intelligence Failures: The "one week from a nuke" claim feels like 2003 all over again. We had IAEA monitoring, and we traded it for a vacuum of information.
4. The Regime Change Myth: Killing the Supreme Leader hasn't brought democracy; it has brought chaos and a divided leadership that is now too fractured to even sign a ceasefire.
5. Global Economic Blowback: The blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and the seizure of ships like the Touska have sent oil prices into a tailspin, hurting American families more than the Iranian government.
6. Regional Spillover: The war has already displaced nearly one-sixth of Lebanon’s population and dragged neutral countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia into the crossfire. We aren't "containing" Iran; we're setting the whole neighborhood on fire.
7. Strategic Overextension: By focusing so heavily on Iran, we are leaving power vacuums elsewhere that our actual "Great Power" competitors are more than happy to fill.
8. Lack of International Mandate: This was a unilateral move without UN Security Council backing. Even our closest allies, like the UK, have expressed that they "don’t believe in regime change from the skies."
9. The "Boots on the Ground" Trap: Air strikes haven't ended the threat; they’ve only necessitated an eventual ground occupation to "stabilize" the chaos we created—exactly what the public was promised would not happen.

Finally, a point of clarification: as a member of the "Western Left," I am not opposed to the idea of regime change in Iran. I would welcome a transition to a secular, liberal democracy led by the Iranian people. The fundamental question is one of methodology—how can external actors foster that change through long-term, peaceful influence rather than kinetic chaos? The current leadership—Trump, Hegseth, and their "Christian Nationalist" base—is simply the wrong vehicle for this mission. They lack the international credibility, ethical consistency, and commitment to multilateral cooperation necessary to manage such a complex global obligation without it devolving into a permanent disaster.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And Trump is withholding cash from Iraq because he isn't pleased that they aren't doing enough about pro-Iran militias.

The United States has suspended air shipments of dollars to Iraq, according to two senior Iraqi officials, withholding money that Iraq earned from its own oil sales.

It is part of a vigorous pressure campaign by the U.S. administration to force the Baghdad government to distance itself from Iran. Washington has also suspended cooperation with and funding for Iraq’s security services, two Iraqi officials said earlier this week.

The State Department referred questions on the dollar shipments to the Treasury Department, which declined to comment.

The U.S. measures could potentially cripple Iraq’s already wobbly economy, which relies on cash. Demand for dollars began to rise as news of the halt in shipments spread, stoking anxiety.

The money consists of oil revenue (ie, it belongs to Iraq). The cash is generally to help the currency of Iraq stay afloat. It is a small percentage of how oil revenue money gets to Iraq, but it isn't insignificant.

And Trump is putting negative pressure on an "ally" that we really don't want to pressure at all as we need every "friend" we can get in the region. But Trump has no problem razing whatever he wants, as he strong arms America into success, just like all of his fallen business ventures.

 

[laughing dog]

Based on human history, USA might be as good as an empire gets. All the other ones were and are worse.

Repetition of an irrelevant position does not make it relevant nor does it justify current US policy and actions against Iran.

[

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Based on human history, USA might be as good as an empire gets. All the other ones were and are worse.

Repetition of an irrelevant position does not make it relevant nor does it justify current US policy and actions against Iran.

[

Yeah but... what about what the Mongols did to western Asia?

 

[Toni]

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

You keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring a new nation in Palestine and everything that happened in the days, weeks, months and years leading up to it, and how it impacted those neighboring countries.

Why do you do that?

It can't be because you don't know about the terrorism, murders, kidnappings, coordinated attacks on villages full of unarmed civilians, etc. It's not because you are simply unaware of the careful planning and decades of efforts to acquire weapons and other resources necessary to carry out those plans. And it's not because you don't know the ambition of the Zionists who founded Israel was to seize even more territory and resources than they had on that day in May of 1948.

The Arab/Israeli conflict could not have started before 14th May 1948 as Israel did not exist beforehand (well not since c. 63BC).

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

Plans were proposed that might have allowed a measure of co-existence but nothing was done to take them seriously. More's the pity.

I take it you're a fan of the Arab Proposal?

You need to spell that out more clearly if you want to be understood in these threads. And even then you'll probably have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

The Jews were evicted from Europe, not their choice. Just like they were evicted by the Romans. Notice a pattern?

I notice an exaggeration.

Jews were evicted from some places in Europe and not evicted from others. Thousands of Jews were enslaved by Romans, just like thousands of Greeks, Ethiopians, Gauls, Celts, Germanic peoples, etc., from areas the Romans conquered.

The Jews are not welcome anywhere and are never left in peace no matter where they reside. Fix that and perhaps a lot of problems will go away.

You are ignoring 400 years of peaceful relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine from the early 1500s to the early 1900s.

You appeared to know about the Ottoman Turks rescuing Sephardic Jews from Spain, and that Jews were welcome in the Ottoman Empire.

You said you knew about Tantura. You said you knew about the peaceful relations between Native Palestinians and Jewish immigrants during the 1st and 2nd Aliyah.

And yet, you seem to forget all that whenever you want to make an appeal to emotion to justify the violent takeover of Palestine and the purging of non-Jews by Zionist extremists.

So, why? Why does the history of the conflict start for you on May 14th and not before? Why were the on-going ethnic cleansing and massacres which resulted in close to a million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring countries not a good enough reason, in your opinion, for those countries to get involved?

Jews have been living in the ME since at least 1000BC. Their ancestors predate pretty well every one else in that area. They were evicted by others viz. Romans in particular.

You're talking about the ancient Canaanites. And I'm sure you know that some of them had religious beliefs that eventually evolved in to the modern Jewish faith while others didn't, that some Jews converted to Christianity, that some Christians and some Jews converted to Islam, and that you can't use religion as proof of ancestry because a person's religion can change while their ancestry doesn't.

Also, the Romans didn't remove all the Jews from the area and carry them off to Italy. Palestinian Jews were there when the Crusaders arrived, when the Ottoman Turks took over, when the British took over, and when the State of Israel was founded.

They never gave up on their quest to return to the their ancestral lands. The UN does look favourable upon peoples begin able to return to their homelands.
If you are going to mention the flight out of the ME by non-Jews (refugees) then we should also include all the Jews (also refugees) that were forced out of lands from Morocco to Afghanistan and beyond. They like the non-Jews need to be taken care of.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine? Members of the European branch of the Jewish diaspora show a significant degree of European ancestry, and it's impossible to determine which persons are descended from those who were forced out. Whereas the refugees who fled when Plan Dalet was implemented, and their descendants, have solid evidence to back up their claims to a Right to Return to villages that were conquered by Zionist forces in the 1940s.

IMO, the people with the best evidence to support their claim to Palestine as their ancestral homeland are the ones known to be from there, i.e. recent refugees, not the ones who might have some ancestors who were enslaved by Romans but might also be the descendants of shepherds who moved to Ukraine because they wanted to be farmers and seafarers who got stuck living in Greece when their boat sank.

Also, I have addressed the point of Jews being forced out of countries like Morocco many, many times.

Perhaps you were not party to those discussions. Usually it's Loren trying to slip in bullshit about Algerian Jews that prompts a dive into that history. If you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do that. But if you're going to try claiming that what happened to Jews in the 1970s justifies what happened to Palestinians in the 1940s, or that Palestinians have to pay the price for what Italians did, or that 2 wrongs make a right when it's the Right of Return for Jews alone, then you'd better bring your A game. I have links and I'm not afraid to use them.

People are very short sighted. Post WWII, there was a great deal of collective guilt and horror over the attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe ( for starters) as well as enough anti-semitism that the Allied nations did not want to have mass immigration of Jews—well, to be fair: the US. There was a lot of blame towards the Jews as if they caused WWII, just as there was blame towards black people for causing the Civil War. It’s nonsense of course and rooted in the worst kind of racism and bigotry. Deeper than that, I think is guilt and grief that has no place to go so it looks for some group to blame.

I absolutely understand that European Jews very much wanted a ‘homeland,’ a place they could live as a majority, and have a Jewish state. It made sense that this Jewish state would be centered on places of historic importance to Judaism. Much of the world wanted that for them, too. The trauma of WWII was, well, world wide.

Of course that’s a fairly shallow understanding of events but it’s also largely true. Another shallow way of looking at things is that there are multiple Islamic states. There are multiple Christian based states. Why could there not exist a single Jewish state?

Unfortunately people living in Palestine wanted to keep living as they had. And why should they not? And unfortunately, all people are flawed and too often want to impose their beliefs on others or to blame others and are often driven by greed and lust for power and fear.

It is also convenient for Arab states to have someone to revile as the interloper, the stock bad guy. Easier than dealing with domestic dissatisfaction. Better Jews than other Arabs. And of course for Israel, easier to blame Arabs and anti-semites for their own internal troubles.

Again, a very shallow understanding but also not confined to the Mid East: Trump is doing the same thing to distract the populace from troubles at home and also to stoke fear and build tribalism so that we have someone else to blame for high prices and lower standards of living and bad work-life balance —and so we don’t notice the greed and power grabbing within our own borders

 

[Colonel Sanders]

I’m not really interested in revisiting one of your carved-out wall-of-text history lessons. Your whole argument boiling down to ‘we’re not the Mongols,’ is hillarious. Anyway here is the ugly truth you seem to be missing. Even within systems you and I both agree are oppressive, there are people who support or benefit from them, and that effects how they view both their own government and countries like the U.S. That doesn’t make those systems ‘good,’ it just shows that perspective isn’t universal. The same way Americans who benefit from U.S. power tend to see it more positively than those on the receiving end of it.

No offence, but you seem to need the history lesson.

Teaching about history, when you don't seem to understand what is happening right in front of you would probably be a bad idea.

Yes, there's most likely better ways to help transition Iran to democracy. But doing nothing isn't going to help either. At least Trump is signalling to Iran that their behaviour has limits. Taking out their leaders was a good move.

Good move? Due to Trump and Netanyahu, Iran's global influence hasn't been this big since Cyrus. Somehow, the US/Israel militaries managed to kill the Theocratic leader of Iran... and made Iran more powerful. You want to call that a good move, so be it, I can't fix stupid.

I don't know that it made them more powerful but it did more deeply entrench them due to the potential loss of power. Or maybe that's the same thing as making them more powerful. Whatever the case, their stranglehold over the citizenry will only increase because now they understand that they could actually lose the power they've had since the late 70s.

The only thing Iran has going for it is oil. Ironically, the right would rather go to war and remain beholden to oil than do everything possible to reduce that reliance. OTOH, Greta Thunberg is clearly one of Satan's most insidious tools so maybe they have a point.

 

[bilby]

We'll stop Iran no matter what you have to pay!

“For the second time in less than five years, Europeans are paying the price of Europe’s dependency on imported fossil fuels,” the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said in a statement detailing the measures.

The bloc has spent an additional €24 billion ($28 billion) on energy imports since the start of the war due to higher prices – or more than $587 million a day – “without receiving a single extra molecule of energy,” it added.

And the goods.

Businesses and households could also be hit by soaring prices for plastics and detergents. Germany’s BASF, one of the world’s largest chemicals makers, has hiked prices for everything from formic acid, used in animal feed, to homecare products – in some cases by more than 30%.

....

Vital materials could also soon be in short supply. Last month, the UK government temporarily restarted a mothballed bioethanol plant to shore up supplies of carbon dioxide, which is critical to healthcare and the production of some foodstuffs. A spike in natural gas prices caused by the war has disrupted EU fertilizer production, making imports of CO2, a byproduct of that process, less readily available.

Airlines are cutting flights to save fuel, some in the sense of expense, some in the sense of supply.

Never mind the airlines. This should put terror in the hearts of every European:

Vital materials could also soon be in short supply. Last month, the UK government temporarily restarted a mothballed bioethanol plant to shore up supplies of carbon dioxide, which is critical to healthcare and the production of some foodstuffs.

"some foodtuffs" is a transparent effort to avoid panic, but let's not prevaricate about the bush - without carbon dioxide, beer supply as we know it would be impossible.

 

[bilby]

IRGC only knows the language of force

I am pretty sure they know Farsi and probably some Russian, too.

What's the Farsi for "The more the US bombs Iran, the stronger the IRGC gets, at the expense of the other elements of tne Iranian regime"?

Bombing Iran to weaken the IRGC is like trying to put out a fire by spraying gasoline on it.

 

[bilby]

Seems extra pointless in a forum for atheists.

Many leftist atheists, including on this forum, have a soft-spot for Islam. We also see a growing influence of Islam on the DSA-wing of the Democratic Party. This makes me very concerned for the 2026 Midterms and also going forward to 2028.

Not having a raging hard on to destroy Islam is not actually the same as having a ‘soft spot for Islam.’

I’m neutral on Islam because I know enough to realize that, like every other religion, there are destructive radical violent sects as well as the majority who really just want to live in peace and harmony, with a more live and let live world view.

I’m considerably more enraged by pseudo Christians and White Nationalist Christians as well as the ultra conservative LDS branches that practice forced polygamy involving children.

I don’t paint all Christians ( or Jews or Hindus or Sikhs, etc.) with the same brush. Nor do I do that with Muslims.

It's also a well tested fact that violent opposition to a religion causes it to become both stronger and more radicalized.

Religions thrive on persecution. The way to kill them is through apathy and gentle ridicule.

 

[Tigers!]

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

You keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring a new nation in Palestine and everything that happened in the days, weeks, months and years leading up to it, and how it impacted those neighboring countries.

Why do you do that?

It can't be because you don't know about the terrorism, murders, kidnappings, coordinated attacks on villages full of unarmed civilians, etc. It's not because you are simply unaware of the careful planning and decades of efforts to acquire weapons and other resources necessary to carry out those plans. And it's not because you don't know the ambition of the Zionists who founded Israel was to seize even more territory and resources than they had on that day in May of 1948.

The Arab/Israeli conflict could not have started before 14th May 1948 as Israel did not exist beforehand (well not since c. 63BC).

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

Plans were proposed that might have allowed a measure of co-existence but nothing was done to take them seriously. More's the pity.

I take it you're a fan of the Arab Proposal?

Be careful of claiming positions of me that might not be true.

The Arab League had a plan
The Jewish Committee had a plan
The UN had a plan
The US had the Henderson plan
Count Bernadotte (Sweden) had a plan but his tragic assassination caused it to die too.
Many plans and nobody was prepared to compromise.

You need to spell that out more clearly if you want to be understood in these threads. And even then you'll probably have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

The Jews were evicted from Europe, not their choice. Just like they were evicted by the Romans. Notice a pattern?

I notice an exaggeration.

Jews were evicted from some places in Europe and not evicted from others. Thousands of Jews were enslaved by Romans, just like thousands of Greeks, Ethiopians, Gauls, Celts, Germanic peoples, etc., from areas the Romans conquered.

The Jews are not welcome anywhere and are never left in peace no matter where they reside. Fix that and perhaps a lot of problems will go away.

You are ignoring 400 years of peaceful relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine from the early 1500s to the early 1900s.

You claim that the relationships were peaceful. The Jews, Christians were 2nd class (at best) citizens of the Ottomans. Subject to arbitrary rules enforced by an iron hand. Certainly peaceful, if the alternative could be mass slaughter.

You appeared to know about the Ottoman Turks rescuing Sephardic Jews from Spain, and that Jews were welcome in the Ottoman Empire.

Jews were welcomed at times esp. if they had treasure or knowledge. But it depended so much on the Sultan of the day. New Sultan, new rules, usual worse.

You said you knew about Tantura. You said you knew about the peaceful relations between Native Palestinians and Jewish immigrants during the 1st and 2nd Aliyah.

And yet, you seem to forget all that whenever you want to make an appeal to emotion to justify the violent takeover of Palestine and the purging of non-Jews by Zionist extremists.

I do not forget. I acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining peaceful relations and the unwillingness of any it seems to compromise.

So, why? Why does the history of the conflict start for you on May 14th and not before? Why were the on-going ethnic cleansing and massacres which resulted in close to a million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring countries not a good enough reason, in your opinion, for those countries to get involved?

Jews have been living in the ME since at least 1000BC. Their ancestors predate pretty well every one else in that area. They were evicted by others viz. Romans in particular.

You're talking about the ancient Canaanites. And I'm sure you know that some of them had religious beliefs that eventually evolved in to the modern Jewish faith while others didn't, that some Jews converted to Christianity, that some Christians and some Jews converted to Islam, and that you can't use religion as proof of ancestry because a person's religion can change while their ancestry doesn't.

Also, the Romans didn't remove all the Jews from the area and carry them off to Italy.

I never claimed the Jews were taken to Italy. That is your own editorial assertion. They were expelled by force from their own homes.

Palestinian Jews were there when the Crusaders arrived, when the Ottoman Turks took over, when the British took over, and when the State of Israel was founded.

Thank you for acknowledging the long standing claim of long Jewish habitation of areas under dispute. The Jews, Christians were there too when the Muslims invaded in the 7th C.

They never gave up on their quest to return to the their ancestral lands. The UN does look favourable upon peoples begin able to return to their homelands.
If you are going to mention the flight out of the ME by non-Jews (refugees) then we should also include all the Jews (also refugees) that were forced out of lands from Morocco to Afghanistan and beyond. They like the non-Jews need to be taken care of.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine?

In the US at the moment IIRC you have disputes about whether people have the right to live in the US when coming from other lands. How is that going? Do you have a resolution?

Members of the European branch of the Jewish diaspora show a significant degree of European ancestry, and it's impossible to determine which persons are descended from those who were forced out. Whereas the refugees who fled when Plan Dalet was implemented, and their descendants, have solid evidence to back up their claims to a Right to Return to villages that were conquered by Zionist forces in the 1940s.

IMO, the people with the best evidence to support their claim to Palestine as their ancestral homeland are the ones known to be from there, i.e. recent refugees, not the ones who might have some ancestors who were enslaved by Romans but might also be the descendants of shepherds who moved to Ukraine because they wanted to be farmers and seafarers who got stuck living in Greece when their boat sank.

Also, I have addressed the point of Jews being forced out of countries like Morocco many, many times.

Perhaps you were not party to those discussions. Usually it's Loren trying to slip in bullshit about Algerian Jews that prompts a dive into that history. If you want to discuss it, I'd be happy to do that. But if you're going to try claiming that what happened to Jews in the 1970s justifies what happened to Palestinians in the 1940s, or that Palestinians have to pay the price for what Italians did, or that 2 wrongs make a right when it's the Right of Return for Jews alone, then you'd better bring your A game. I have links and I'm not afraid to use them.

 

[Tigers!]

Have started a thread on Sudan. Died of disinterest.

India's interest in Sudan is limited.

Precisely the point. Africans slaughtering Africans interests no one.

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

Israel was an imposition by the British.

The British just wanted to get out. It was the UN.

The UN does look favourable upon peoples begin able to return to their homelands.

UN does does support refugees going back, but kindly provide evidence that UN accepts 3,000 year-old 'historical rights'.
That way Palestinians have the better, moire recent right to Israel.

 

[Arctish]

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

You keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring a new nation in Palestine and everything that happened in the days, weeks, months and years leading up to it, and how it impacted those neighboring countries.

Why do you do that?

It can't be because you don't know about the terrorism, murders, kidnappings, coordinated attacks on villages full of unarmed civilians, etc. It's not because you are simply unaware of the careful planning and decades of efforts to acquire weapons and other resources necessary to carry out those plans. And it's not because you don't know the ambition of the Zionists who founded Israel was to seize even more territory and resources than they had on that day in May of 1948.

The Arab/Israeli conflict could not have started before 14th May 1948 as Israel did not exist beforehand (well not since c. 63BC).

True, there were no Israelis before Zionists claimed they had founded the State of Israel. That's something I have often pointed out.

But that does not explain why you keep trying to sever the connection between Zionists declaring Israel existed and all the bloodshed and upheaval that went into Israel's founding, and how that bloodshed and upheaval affected neighboring countries.

It's like you're trying to claim Israel had some kind of virgin birth with no blood, no trauma, and nobody getting fucked.

Plans were proposed that might have allowed a measure of co-existence but nothing was done to take them seriously. More's the pity.

I take it you're a fan of the Arab Proposal?

Be careful of claiming positions of me that might not be true.

The Arab League had a plan
The Jewish Committee had a plan
The UN had a plan
The US had the Henderson plan
Count Bernadotte (Sweden) had a plan but his tragic assassination caused it to die too.
Many plans and nobody was prepared to compromise.

I am being careful. But perhaps I am being too optimistic.

I provided two links to the Arab Proposal, one of them a PDF of the document stored in the Library of Congress and the other a summation of the main points, in a post in this thread that was a direct response to you (#11124). I was under the impression you had at least skimmed them. When you said "Plans were proposed that might have allowed a measure of co-existence but nothing was done to take them seriously" I thought you were referring to it. When I said "I take it you're a fan of the Arab Proposal?", I was seeking confirmation.

Did you think the Arab Proposal had merit? Would you have supported it if you'd been there at that conference negotiating Palestine's future?

You need to spell that out more clearly if you want to be understood in these threads. And even then you'll probably have to keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

The Jews were evicted from Europe, not their choice. Just like they were evicted by the Romans. Notice a pattern?

I notice an exaggeration.

Jews were evicted from some places in Europe and not evicted from others. Thousands of Jews were enslaved by Romans, just like thousands of Greeks, Ethiopians, Gauls, Celts, Germanic peoples, etc., from areas the Romans conquered.

The Jews are not welcome anywhere and are never left in peace no matter where they reside. Fix that and perhaps a lot of problems will go away.

You are ignoring 400 years of peaceful relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine from the early 1500s to the early 1900s.

You claim that the relationships were peaceful. The Jews, Christians were 2nd class (at best) citizens of the Ottomans. Subject to arbitrary rules enforced by an iron hand. Certainly peaceful, if the alternative could be mass slaughter.

I don't just claim it, I have supported that assertion with scholarly articles, essays written by historians, and links to sites like the Jewish Virtual Library and My Jewish Learning.

I have pointed out the two times that Jews in Palestine were victimized over the 4 centuries of Ottoman rule, both of them when the Ottomans briefly lost control. I have provided evidence that Jews were sheltered by their Muslims neighbors during those riots. So before you try to bring up something we have already discussed, perhaps you should review my posts, especially the ones I wrote in response to one of your posts, and try to remember what I said.

I have never said, suggested, hinted, or implied that the Ottoman Empire was perfect. I have plainly stated what I believe are its flaws and areas where it could have been greatly improved. What I have said was that Palestinian Jews had peaceful relations with their Christian and Muslim neighbors in Palestine for 400 years. You seem to want to ignore history and keep claiming that Jews never had anyplace where they could live in peace with their neighbors. I understand that claim is an important pillar in the argument in favor of seizing land by force in order to create an exclusive State for Jews, but it's not factual.

Palestinian Jews were living in peace in Palestine before Zionist European immigrants started arriving in force with the intention of carving out a territory for themselves and kicking out the majority of the indigenous population. If you think you can prove they weren't, go ahead and make your case.

You appeared to know about the Ottoman Turks rescuing Sephardic Jews from Spain, and that Jews were welcome in the Ottoman Empire.

Jews were welcomed at times esp. if they had treasure or knowledge. But it depended so much on the Sultan of the day. New Sultan, new rules, usual worse.

You said you knew about Tantura. You said you knew about the peaceful relations between Native Palestinians and Jewish immigrants during the 1st and 2nd Aliyah.

And yet, you seem to forget all that whenever you want to make an appeal to emotion to justify the violent takeover of Palestine and the purging of non-Jews by Zionist extremists.

I do not forget. I acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining peaceful relations and the unwillingness of any it seems to compromise.

Unwillingness of any?

You are completely discounting the willingness to compromise shown by the villagers of Tantura, Deir Yassin, and others who had pacts and agreements with the local Jewish communities. You are ignoring the Arab Proposal, which was all about willingness to compromise. You are ignoring the people Count Bernadotte was working with and why Zionist terrorists thought it best to murder him before all that compromising resulted in them getting less than everything they wanted. ***

So, why? Why does the history of the conflict start for you on May 14th and not before? Why were the on-going ethnic cleansing and massacres which resulted in close to a million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring countries not a good enough reason, in your opinion, for those countries to get involved?

Jews have been living in the ME since at least 1000BC. Their ancestors predate pretty well every one else in that area. They were evicted by others viz. Romans in particular.

You're talking about the ancient Canaanites. And I'm sure you know that some of them had religious beliefs that eventually evolved in to the modern Jewish faith while others didn't, that some Jews converted to Christianity, that some Christians and some Jews converted to Islam, and that you can't use religion as proof of ancestry because a person's religion can change while their ancestry doesn't.

Also, the Romans didn't remove all the Jews from the area and carry them off to Italy.

I never claimed the Jews were taken to Italy. That is your own editorial assertion. They were expelled by force from their own homes.

Palestinian Jews were there when the Crusaders arrived, when the Ottoman Turks took over, when the British took over, and when the State of Israel was founded.

Thank you for acknowledging the long standing claim of long Jewish habitation of areas under dispute. The Jews, Christians were there too when the Muslims invaded in the 7th C.

I'm not gonna lie. ^This^ really pisses me off.

I have been acknowledging Jewish habitation of Palestine for over 20 years on this board, it predecessors, and its offshoots. I have been linking to the work of archaeologists, historians, geneticists, and others that provide clear, unambiguous support for the ancestral claims of the people descended from the ancient Canaanites. And I have been providing solid evidence of the ancestors of modern Semitic peoples, including but obviously not limited to Jews, living in Palestine since the founding of Jericho.

Did you not notice?

Or are you trying to imply I have somehow denied the connection between Jews and Palestine because I pointed out that the Ashkenazi Jews have a significant amount of European ancestry, a distinctly European culture, over a thousand years of European heritage, and arrived in Palestine in the early part of the 20th century with a very European attitude about colonizing the area and driving out the locals?

They never gave up on their quest to return to the their ancestral lands. The UN does look favourable upon peoples begin able to return to their homelands.
If you are going to mention the flight out of the ME by non-Jews (refugees) then we should also include all the Jews (also refugees) that were forced out of lands from Morocco to Afghanistan and beyond. They like the non-Jews need to be taken care of.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

But why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine?

In the US at the moment IIRC you have disputes about whether people have the right to live in the US when coming from other lands. How is that going? Do you have a resolution?

We had one but the current Administration didn't like it so they trashed it.

We need to improve our immigration process. That's been apparent for decades. That doesn't mean it's okay to brutalize people, imprison them indefinitely, treat them like slaves and garbage, or any of the other moral outrages happening under our Nazi fanboy immigration officers and the wanna-be Fuhrer in the Oval Office.

But my question to you was "why would European Jews have more of a Right than Palestinians to live in Palestine?" What is your answer?

-------------------


***The Zionist terrorist group known as Lehi used to kidnap wealthy Jews they accused of being traitors (i.e. willing to compromise and live in peace with Christians and Muslims) and use the ransom money to fund more terrorism. Here is some more information on that:

• A Legacy of Assassinations: More than any other Jewish terrorist group, Lehi was known for using assassinations as a terror mechanism, even using them against Jews they accused of being traitors. Lehi carried out 42 assassinations, more than twice as many as the Irgun and the Haganah combined. Of its politically-motivated assassinations, over half of them were carried out against other Jews. <a title="">^[7]</a>

I'll see if I can dig up some of the old links to articles about Lehi. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was one of their leaders. I don't think you and I ever discussed him specifically but he has been mentioned in a few recent threads.

 

[Patooka]

Israel was invaded by 5 countries on its 1st day of independence and you claim those countries are hurt that Israel defeated them? Diddums.

Not only was this last century but this was wayyy back last century. Piss weak argument.

 

[Jarhyn]

Seems extra pointless in a forum for atheists.

Many leftist atheists, including on this forum, have a soft-spot for Islam. We also see a growing influence of Islam on the DSA-wing of the Democratic Party. This makes me very concerned for the 2026 Midterms and also going forward to 2028.

Not having a raging hard on to destroy Islam is not actually the same as having a ‘soft spot for Islam.’

I’m neutral on Islam because I know enough to realize that, like every other religion, there are destructive radical violent sects as well as the majority who really just want to live in peace and harmony, with a more live and let live world view.

I’m considerably more enraged by pseudo Christians and White Nationalist Christians as well as the ultra conservative LDS branches that practice forced polygamy involving children.

I don’t paint all Christians ( or Jews or Hindus or Sikhs, etc.) with the same brush. Nor do I do that with Muslims.

I would love specific references to the LDS shit involving child polygamy.

For reasons.

Also, how far from "mainstream" LDS can a church go? Aren't they something like mail-order churches, where you get materials and a central authority essentially just preaches at you long-distance via Watchtower publications?

Because of the centralization of literature I was under the impression that pretty much all their churches were about the same level of crazy? Then, I've only seen how LDS churches behave based on the groups I've encountered.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What's wrong with wanting to wipe a terrorist organization that wants to exterminate you off the face of the Earth?

At the moment, Israel and US are no better.

While US and Israel are certainly no perfect, is it incredibly ignorant to say that they are "no better". They are many, many orders of magnitude better than IRGC and the islamofascist terror group it funds, arms and controls.

The depends entirely on what end of America's petrodollar system and guns you're on.

Stop this moral relativisation. It's like saying that Trump is just as bad is Hitler. No he's not. It's an incredibly ignorant thing to say. I think you're better than this

I think you’re missing the point. Judgments like that depend a lot on where you’re standing. From the perspective of people who have been on the receiving end of U.S. foreign policy, the moral picture doesn’t look nearly as clear-cut.

That doesn’t mean I'm saying that “everyone is equally bad.” It means that’s Derek’s opinion, not a universal truth. Depending on where you’re standing, the “world police” doesn’t look as spotless as Derec's making it out to be.

You're acting like the USA could pass a criminal background check for the “world police” job and not have HR frightened to death halfway through its file.

I concede that it's better, but many of magnitudes?

USA is the most benign imperial power humanity has ever witnessed. Not to belabor the point, but living under the thumb of an imperial power has been the norm for humanity since Sargon of Akkad. The British empire being in close second place as far as benign imperial rulers go.

If we take imperialism as the historical norm, and that our choices are, "which imperial power would we like to live under the thumb of" USA wins every day. Imperial powers are, as a rule, horrific. The Assyrians would flay anyone who criticised them openly alive. And let them scamper off home without skin. The Aztecs would take enemy captives, flay them, and walk around in their skin, just to terrify their underlings. Egyptians would cut off the hands of anyone who complains. Yes, we've found the mass graves of these hands. The Mongols exterminated entire cities for minor infractions. That's how Bagdad went. The Romans famously "created a desolate depopulated wasteland and called it an empire". The Spanish empire in the Americas... better than the Aztecs or Incas... still horrific. The USSR, thought policing, and gulags. Muslim despots of the Middle-East, electrodes to the testicles of decenters.

And it's not like our choices are hypothetical either. We have some very clear contenders to imperial powers. It's now China or USA (Russia is now firmly under Chinese domination).

Who would you rather swung around their imperial dick smashing you in the face, China's or USA's? China has actual concentration camps.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely USA has managed to be the least corruptible power in human history. I think that's something to celebrate.

Sure, Trump is a horrific ogre of a man. But he's not as bad as the leaders of Iran, Russia, China or Venezuela. He's NOT Hitler. He's NOT a fascist. And he's not an autocrat. He could be so much worse, and still look good in comparrisson.

Imperial powers, historically, have been absolutely horrific. Great Britain created an imperial power that encouraged free thought which is awesome and amazing. USA continued the tradition. I don't think you quite apreciate how much we have to be grateful for because those two powers in particular shaped, and still shape, the modern world.

I also don't think you quite appreciate quite how evil authoritarian regimes tend to be and how normalised and systematic that evil is.

USA isn't perfect. Far from it. But it's good to have some perspective here.

I’m not really interested in revisiting one of your carved-out wall-of-text history lessons. Your whole argument boiling down to ‘we’re not the Mongols,’ is hillarious. Anyway here is the ugly truth you seem to be missing. Even within systems you and I both agree are oppressive, there are people who support or benefit from them, and that effects how they view both their own government and countries like the U.S. That doesn’t make those systems ‘good,’ it just shows that perspective isn’t universal. The same way Americans who benefit from U.S. power tend to see it more positively than those on the receiving end of it.

No offence, but you seem to need the history lesson. Your lack of interest in history might be your problem in maintaining a more objective view on USA. And it's not just history. You seem unaware of the ongoing atrocities of the regimes USA is up against. USA attacking Iran is pretty bizarre and god knows what goes on in Trump's pinball of a brain or what he thinks will be the positive outcome of it. But does Iran deserve being attacked like it is now? Hell yes. Reagan was a cunt. But the USSR really was an evil empire. And so is China now.

Yes, there's most likely better ways to help transition Iran to democracy. But doing nothing isn't going to help either. At least Trump is signalling to Iran that their behaviour has limits. Taking out their leaders was a good move.

Based on human history, USA might be as good as an empire gets. All the other ones were and are worse.

That’s all I’m saying, so you can drop the usual, predictable, and intellectually lazy attempt to reframe my point.

You're the one who can't be bothered to look stuff up. So I don't think I'm the lazy one.

I'm on the left, so I don't really care what the right are up to. They usually oversimplify stuff. But what I am seeing happening, increasingly on the left, is wholesale delusion. Creating complete fantasies about what USA is about, has done, and what other countries have done. That's also incredibly lazy. The "white bad" intellectual stance of the left (of which I think you're guilty of) is incredibly intellectually lazy imho. As well as dishonest. And dangerous. The fact that a majority of the western left is now in bed with Islamist extremists is alarming imho.

You haven’t actually engaged with my argument. Nothing you’ve said reflects my position or my understanding of the regime in question. Instead, you’re responding to a version of my views that is based on your assumptions about me, rather than by what I’ve explicitly stated. It's getting old.

If I reformulate your argument does it boil down to, because some people in USA benefit from conflict, and that's why USA keeps being aggressive, therefore USA is evil?

This will always be the situation in every imperial power. Or in any power structure that exists. Any power structure will give some people the opportunity to exploit it. And they will invent whatever bullshit moral justification because absolute power corrupts absolutely. Any power structure will be dominated by those who have the means and inclination, ie its going to be some cunt or another. Always a cunt.

If your demand is that the powerful always need to be well behaved or they are evil, then any power is by definition evil. That's not a helpful guide to the world, and won't make the world a better place.

Stable power structures are hard to design and maintain. They can only work if those in it have an incentive to continously work towards maintaining it. Or to speak more plainly, the fact that there are those in USA who benefits from continued US agression might be a big contributing factor to why USA has a dominant position. That's obviously true. If USA wouldn't be as agressive and expantionist as they are we'd (Europe for example) be dominated by some other cunt. I can't see that being a good thing, considering how the world looks right now.

The historical factors that led to the current world order are bizarre. USA (and the US world hegenomy) is basically lessons learned from Cromwell's Protectorate, a couple of years in England in the middle of the 1600's. Butterfly effect. Not inevitable. Not a natural evolution. Really cool that it still survives. And like no other empire that has ever existed (in a good way). I think its lile a rare and precious flower that is worth protecting

And finally, Trump is an authoritarian populist with strong fascist tendencies. But he is American. As such the American people have him by the balls. There's limits to his power. And I think American culture, in general, has healthy values. That's what really matters. Way more than Trumps personality.