This would be true if it was Iran capitulating to US demands because of a genocidal threat.

But look at the 10 point peace plan, every version in the media is telling the same story - the US is capitulating to Iranian demands because of an economic threat.

Worse than Biden’s “We finally beat Medicare”?

Biden’s debate performance was so bad that it got Trump elected.

The label “terrorist” is meaningless in normal discourse, it is overused and it’s original definition has mostly evaporated.

The label “terrorist” is meaningful when the United States government uses it, because a terrorist is a person who can be killed without a trial, without oversight, and without accountability.

That really comes down to what you mean by “war” and “won”.

We won the Korean war by achieving our strategic objectives- we bombed NK back to the stone age, and effectively isolated them from the rest of the world.

Our wars in Central America achieved their objectives- US trained death squads raped and murdered the local populations into submission; US corporations have been free to dominate ever since.

On the list of 80+ countries we have invaded since WWII, I would say well over half of these misadventures have achieved their strategic objectives.

What makes you question the story?

Certainly the Trump administration had been lying about it losses, and they are releasing many face-saving coverup stories. It would be foolish to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But the Kuwaiti friendly fire incident actually has lots of evidence to back it up. You can watch video of the “dogfight”- a Kuwaiti jet is clearly attacking US jet at very close range. The US jet appears to be surprised, as they fail to deploy most counter-measures.

I totally agree that people of conscience resigning from DoJ and other positions of power is a good thing. I’m well aware of what you said, despite your condescending suggestion. I just don’t see how that is relevent to the firing of Bondi.

What gives you the impression that Bondi is fractionally competent, and what gives you confidence that her replacement will be less competent?

You think replacing Bondi with Blanche is “progress”?

Reminder that Blanche was Trump’s defense attorney in multiple trials, and Blanche was the one who interviewed Ghislane Maxwell last year before she got moved to the cushy puppy prison.

Data from 2025 is too old. You have to remember that 18-21 voters were children during Trump’s first presidency, and their political reality was defined by Covid.

They were not happy with the Biden administration, and for good reasons, so they reacted by leaning R. Now they are learning just how deeply depraved and disfunctional the Republican party is. I believe they will be radicalized into lifelong anti-Republican voters.

Check out this CNN poll from a few days ago.

A follow‑up CNN/SSRS poll conducted from March 26 to March 30 found Trump’s approval among 18‑ to 34‑year‑olds had fallen to just 20 percent, while disapproval increased to 80 percent, putting his net approval rating among young adults at minus 60

Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Implodes With Gen Z - Newsweek

Preemptive war and regime change is still a terrible option. If you actually want to solve the problem you have to get to the core of the problem, and decapitating leadership has a consistent history of making things worse.

Take NK for example, how did it get to where it is now? In the Korean War, America bombed everything. We bombed hospitals, schools, water treatment, power, factories, homes. Douglas MacArthur complained that there was nothing left to bomb. Then we set up a brutal sanctions regime, effectively cutting NK off from the rest of the world for many decades.

The Kim dictatorship tried everything they could think of to lift the strangling sanctions. Diplomacy has made some gains with Russia and China, but very little with the West. The Kim regime has been taught that the only way to receive Western goods is through threats, missile tests, and nuclear capabilities.

If we would decapitate the Kim dictatorship and keep the sanctions regime in place, then another brutal dictatorship would just take their place. I’m certainly not a fan of the Kim dictatorship, but regime change war is not a solution, it would just make everything worse.

I find it interesting you mention Saudi Arabia. They are a client state of America, why would we want to decapitate them? There is a mutually beneficial relationship- we get oil and regional influence, they get military toys and legitimacy. This mutual benefit is so strong that we let them get away with 9/11.

Mentioning ISIS is curious too. ISIS is not a state, so the UN was able to vote to attack them. The UN (along with Iranian forces) did decapitate their leadership, multiple times.

Here I don’t agree - I think the 1988 Hamas charter is utterly indefensible.

If the only thing you know about Hamas’ history is one line from one charter, then you haven’t read enough to form a comprehensive opinion on the subject, and I would encourage you to read more.

Blaming ‘older Gazans’ for the way they voted is utterly ridiculous. You do know that Gaza has been an open air concentration camp since at least 2012, right? Their vote has little effect on matters. Gaza would still be a concentration camp if Fatah had won instead of Hamas.

And as for the 2006 election that you blame ‘older Gazans’ for, did you know that election was orchestrated by George W Bush and his “democracy promotion in the middle east”? Are you aware that he was warned Fatah would lose to Hamas? Israel committed many horrific war crimes as they withdrew from Gaza in 2006, so Gazan voters were feeling especially radical at the time. Bush needed a victory so he pushed for early elections. I think Bush has more blame than ‘older Gazan voters’ for the outcome of this election.

How George W. Bush Helped Hamas Come to Power

They’re saying that, when a bullet is fired from an ancient gun and ricochets off of hard objects, then that bullet will likely be mangled beyond identification. This means that there is not enough evidence to positively connect the bullet to the gun in court. This is normal.

I think there’s a list of questionable things about Crooks and the FBI allegations. The timeline, the re-assembly of the gun, the sketchy discord messages, etc. This bullet doesn’t make the list.

Give 1 child a vaccine.

Shoot 1 child in the head.

Under your logic, these two are equal, and cancel each other out.

US imperialism is a disease, please get well soon.

what if not stopping the IRGC ends up causing orders-of-magnitude more suffering and deaths?

This is the logic of preemptive war, and it is blatantly illegal under the UN charter. This type of logic is very dangerous because it can justify any war without evidence.

Would Hamas not be vastly worse than Israel if they had the same military power as Israel? ISIS?

How could they possibly be worse than Israel, who is invading it’s neighbors, starting wars for territory, doing ethnic cleansing, and threatening to drop nukes?

I agree that I do not want to see a Hamas government, and an ISIS government would be horrific, but history shows these type of groups form as a direct result of imperial violence.

Israel funded Hamas and killed it’s more moderate competitors. Hamas’ early leaders like Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi were scholars and academics, serious people interested in peace. Israel killed them and their families, and their successors, over and over until you end up with a violent, uneducated leader like Yahya Sinwar.

The US acted similarly when we meddled in the Syrian civil war, giving weapons and money to ISIS.

Shouldn’t intent count to prevent access to biological and nuclear weapons?

I don’t know how this would work at all. How do you measure intent? Does the US have good intent with its nuclear arsenal? Russia? Pakistan?

I think your question has 2 logical conclusions:

1. There is no possible ‘good intent’ for nuclear weapons, they are horrible devices made to kill millions of people.
2. The intent of nuclear programs is not offensive, but defensive. Recent history shows that nuclear powers live in relative peace, whereas non-nuclear powers get invaded and bullied. Look at what happened to Ukraine after they gave up their nukes.

Why does desire matter?

I have a desire to kill billionaires. Does that matter? Should I be tried for murder? No, because I’m not actually going to kill anyone.

Putting violent desire on the same moral plane as actual murder victims is a silly thing to do.

Do you think that if the socioeconomic positions were reversed, the current Iranian regime would have been any better than the US, or Israel?

In this hypothetical the details really matter, but in general I think no, the current Iranian regime would not be better.

I think a better hypothetical would be that, if the US never did a coup in Iran and overthrow their democratically elected government, and the socioeconomic positions were reversed, would Iran be better then? I think yes.

I don’t think it’s nitpicking at all. There is a serious difference between thousands of dead and millions of dead.

Anyone who ignores that reality is downplaying the evil that the US has wrought.

I’m not forgetting that at all. I have critical support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Huthis in their struggle for freedom and territorial integrity against genocidal Israel.

It is Israel’s invasions and apartheid that causes unrest in the whole region.

America has funded more terror groups in the region than Iran has.

And in terms of numbers of dead, the number of people killed by Iran’s proxies is just another rounding error.

Obviously they’re both evil, but calling them “equal” feels like hegemonic propaganda. What makes them equal?

Over the years, Iran has murdered 10s of thousands of people. Over the decades, a good estimate is in the hundreds of thousands of people murdered.

For the American and Israeli death tolls, you’re going to have to add two zeroes to those numbers.

The Iranian murders are a rounding error when compared to the death America has been exporting for decades.

Unfortunately the hard data on UHC’s denial rate is not public information. The company wouldn’t want all the bad publicity that would come with transparency.

There would be other signs, though. For example, UHC investors suing to increase the denial rate.

The lawsuit argues that the company’s changing corporate practices in the wake of Thompsons murder have been too consumer-friendly, and the investors’ profits are suffering as a result.

This unequal exchange rate logic has been firmly established for decades.

“On October 18, 2011, captured IDF tank gunner Gilad Shalit, captured by the Palestinian militant organization Hamas in 2006, was released in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.”

List of Arab–Israeli prisoner exchanges -Wikipedia

“Palestinian prisoners” have become a form of currency for the Israeli state. Whenever they start to run low, they just go to the West Bank and get more.

You might be right, maybe he was a chud all along, idk.

But c’mon, it’s obvious the stroke broke his brain. Before the stroke he was giving 10 minutes speeches from memory, after the stroke he can’t finish a sentence.

Yes, I was never attempting to steelman OP’s argument. I was pointing out the flaws of the argument as it is given.

Steelmanning is a tool that is helpful in many situations, but that does not mean it is useful in every situation. Perhaps there is an ideal version of OP’s argument, a steelman, that I would agree with. But the actual argument that OP laid out is not ideal, it is hypocritical, and I am pointing that out.

A student who gets a poor grade on a paper does not get to go to the professor and ask them to “steelman” their argument for a better grade. The paper is judged as it is written.