Shadowy Man
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If it is such a good idea and can result in much good for the world then it shouldn’t have been difficult for Trump to have convinced Congress to authorize it.
Yet another war, this time with Iran
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DrZoidberg
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That's not how politics work
Jimmy Higgins
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DrZoidberg
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If you want a politician to vote for your thing you need to give them another thing, they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. That's how politics work.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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"They're going to throw roses at our feet!111!"
DrZoidberg
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Why? You make it sound there's some sort of manual for this sort of thing. Iran, is not an Arab country. There's no reason to think they'll fall apart and start murdering eachother. Iranian culture is a consunsus culture along the lines of Sweden or Japan. They're really well organised and cooperative.
Ok. So you're a conservative now?
There's no guarantee for anything. Iraq could have worked out fine. In hindsight it was a mistake to fire all the officers of the army and put them in the same (Islamist radicalisation) camp. Not so good at the peak of Al Qaeda's influence in the Middle-East. It's easy to judge in hindsight. I think it was still worth it. There's no guarantees for anything. Evel Knievel got paid for the attempt. Not the landing.
You don't sound pragmatic. You sound like a coward. Good wishes aren't enough to evoke change. Usually it needs to be paired with the willingness to commit violence, and having the balls to take risks and to stand for something. Why do you think Islamists are so attactive by young people today? One thing Islamists have got is balls. Something missing from western leaders today.
I don't think boots on the ground in Iran is a good idea. And I don't think it's necessary. The Iranians hate hate hate the regime. All they need is an opening. edit: btw, Trump is such an inept loser of a politician, if anyone can fuck up a sure win, it's him.
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DrZoidberg
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A politician doesn't put forward legislation he doesn't know will be passed. If he puts forward legislation that fails. That means he wanted it to fail. If Congress voted against his thing that means Trump had planned for it. He is an idiot. But I'm sure he's got enough politicians around him to explain the rules
Jimmy Higgins
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None of the errors made by the W Admin were judged as errors in "hindsight". They were warned about before the invasion. The W Admin's occupation was a thoroughly under planned and poorly executed effort that ignored every warning, every piece of intelligence.
The Allies didn't win WWII because the Allies "had balls". The had something called a "plan". Iraq had no plan, Iran appears to have absolutely no plan. You can't win military efforts without a plan. The US is dismantling the military Iran has, yet seem to be no closer to regime change... and oil / gas is much more expensive as Iran is utilizing geography as a weapon.
Many of them do. That is why there are reminders on the street, radio, and TV from the Theocratic leadership that the Iranians must watch what they say or else.
Also, you are ignoring the tiny issue of the Iranians don't have a replacement for the existing regime (this isn't Burma) and the IRGC is deeply embedded in the Iranian economy and aren't going anywhere issues.
Playball40
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Well yes, that's exactly how it works. Or is supposed to work....until Dumpf
I remember a think tank (RAND if memory serves) saying minimum for an occupation to be successful it requires 20 soldiers per 1,000 civilians. That's at least 1.8 million for Iran.
Shadowy Man
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I agree, when the politician is a criminal.
Toni
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Aside from all of that, with which I do not really disagree: Iranians do not want to be a vassal state.
The truly tragic thing is that, as horrible as the Shah ( who we installed) was, Iranians the rest of the Mid-East was modernizing. There was a huge movement towards progress, largely fueled by oil wealth and the West opened its universities to students from the Middle East as a firm of soft diplomacy. Moving towards democracy requires an educated population. With an educated population, it is impossible to stop democracy.
Which explains the GOP war on education since Reagan.
Toni
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In the US? With majorities in both chambers? Yeah, it is.
Shadowy Man
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So, is he tacitly admitting that even Congress knew it was a bad idea, despite the implication above that it would be good?
When Congress won’t agree to it the President doesn’t get to just do it. There are certainly many of us who are against the war not because we like the Iranian regime.
Toni
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Oh, I think most of us think it’s a terrible idea, no matter what our political leanings.
I was just suggesting that Trump has an inordinate amount of power over both the Senate and the House. To the detriment of t of all US citizens and frankly, the world. Trump at his best is a greedy bastard who is only ever in anything fur whatever he can get out of it. But even with a more benign POTUS, POTUS should never have extreme sway over Congress. No Kings or Queens, and all that jazz.
Jimmy Higgins
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It occurred to me, the solution to the Social Security shortfall would be to invest 1/2 of the FICA funds in a way that matches the investments of those in Congress.
Toni
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My father was always very adamantly opposed to the government investing SS in markets. Although I did not agree with him much politically, I agree with that.
The better solution is to collect SS on earnings at higher earned income than is currently taxed for SS. For 2026, the current amount of labor income subject to SS tax is $184,500. I think it should be significantly higher. That would help.
Younger generations than we Boomers are and will increasingly complain that there will be nothing left in SS for them. It is the consequence of generations having much smaller families or foregoing children altogether. I wrote this without any judgement at all: it is what it is.
Now, before the deluge of how good we boomers always had it begins, I’d like to point out some things:
1. We were raised by traumatized parents born into or just before the Great Depression during which there was no social safety net and people died of starvation here in the US. Including at least one of my relatives. Their parents endured WWI with all of those traumas and privations as well. They endured WWII with all that meant. Rationing, air raids, loss of fathers, sons, brothers. More deprivation. Some of our fathers served in Korea as well. Some of us were conceived to keep our fathers out of Korea.
Of course the 50’s, much sanitized were times of prosperity. That prosperity was relative. My kids consider how I grew up to be ‘poor.’ We were not poor. We did not have much money but my parents bought Avery modest house when their 4th child was born. AFAIK, there was never any worry about not being able to make re t or the mortgage. My mother was a stay at home mother, which was living the dream. Both of my parents were raised on families where one of their parents was chronically ill until they died early in their childhoods, and mostly raised themselves. My grandparents were poor during their kids’ childhoods and in fact, I remember when both of sets of grandparents got indoor plumbing.
We endured measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox because there were no vaccinations against such. Fortunately there was a vaccine for smallpox which is why we all have scars on our upper arms.
Our parents were thrilled to be able to have only one parent working, at least when we were small. That does not mean all the mothers were happy at home but had to listen to society tell them they were happy and lucky even if they felt trapped.
More of us got to finish high school and avoiding the draft (Viet Nam) encouraged more boys to go to college. We girls had to fight to be allowed to play sports, wear pants to school or take classes that were considered ‘too hard’ or too masculine. A friend in high school who dreamed of becoming an architect was not allowed to take a drafting class in high school. Homecoming was required for girls and forbidden to boys.
We had fewer siblings because our mothers could get the Pill and some of us managed to do it as well. Some of us had abortions. Some of us got married at 14 or 15 or 16. We had to drop out of school.
Women could not get credit in their own names nor a mortgage until 1974. When I was in college, in order to go on the Pill, you needed to want it for menstrual cramps. Not to prevent pregnancy. Guys did not like condoms. It made it harder to delay or refuse sex if you were t sure about whether the guy ‘really liked you.’ We were just beginning to talk about whether or not we wanted to have sex or if we really liked the guy. It was a bit scandalous if you didn’t like a guy back in high school. You hid your loss of virginity from your parents.
Help wanted ads were divided by male or female. Males got paid substantially more. One job I had, I was told to wear my skirt shorter and almost got fired when I discouraged a customer from hitting on me with some gentle humor. I was far less gentle when threatened by a make coworker who was more than twice my size. Fortunately he did not complain. I needed that lousy job.
We also got to experience the drug revolution, with lots of pot and in my day, mostly Fuentes rather than speed. Unfortunately that did not go away but only exoanddd to our current situation.
That only takes into account what one faced if one was white and straight. I barely knew what ‘gay’ was until I was in college—that is, I heard the word, mostly as an insult, and was vaguely aware that one of my classmates was gay, which was far from the worst problem he had. I had a couple of black classmates in the first school ( first grade) I attended and none after my parents moved to the town I grew up in. I did not meet anyone not born in the USA until I was in college. This was common unless you lived in major metropolitan areas, especially in the Midwest.
Most people had a single television which received 4 stations, all controlled by the father when he was home. Stereos? One was shared by my family. A guy I dated bought his own from money he earned at jibs that pays a lot more than the $0.50/hr I got babysitting, the only job I was allowed to have.
This was all just normal. Just middle class normal.
bilby
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bilby
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FTFY. Germans in the Soviet Occupation Zone were not happy at all.
And when the German Nazi regime went, the German people had endured three years of disaster, including the demolition of their cities, starvation level rationing, and increasingly harsh security measures that applied even to middle class aryan Germans with no history of association with communists.
Even so, the immediate feeling, even in the American, British and French Zones, was fear and uncertainty. They may not have loved Hitler, but they didn't want him to lose, when losing meant the enemy, who had been dropping bombs on their homes, would turn up in person and put boots on their doorsteps, and rifle muzzles in their faces.
It took years of Marshall Plan largesse and denazification programs to make even the West Germans happy about the result; Any immediate happiness was more relief that the war was over, rather than embracing of a change in regime.
Particularly as the vast majority of Getmans had overwhelmingly supported and loved the regime as recently as 1941 - and why not, when it had made them rich, and had conquered the world? Most Germans in 1941 felt about as much dislike for the Nazi regime, as Americans in 1991 felt for the US regime.
Three years is a long time in politics.
The Iranian people may have been mostly keen on regime change a couple of months ago (though they would never have wanted the US or Israel to be involved in such change). I sincerely doubt that they are more keen on regime change now. Now they are at war (which always bolsters a regime); Their leaders have walked the walk as regards self-sacrifice and martyrdom; And the Americans and Israelis have demonstrated with high explosives dropped from the skies that the propaganda about their evil was true and justified.
It's very hard to believe that the good guys are the ones who drop bombs on your kids, and the bad guys are the ones who try to shoot back at them.
Geopolitics and political philosophy don't play much of a role in people's loyalties, when they are running for an air raid shelter while explosives and shrapnel rain from the skies.
Politicians and political thinkers almost always overestimate the role political philosophy plays in ordinary people's everyday opinion forming. Most people don't support (or oppose) a regime because they sat down and studied the policies and actions of the leaders. That's why students are over-represented at every revolution.
Ordinary people care about the price of eggs. They couldn't care less if their leaders are evil, or stupid, or paint themselves orange.
bilby
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Sure they could. Things could always be worse.
You know what's worse than a really horrific government? No government at all.
As the Somalis.