Foreign Policy

drayer54 said:

I have no shame because this is not a war. It’s an operation. I was not angry when Democrats launched bombs to kill bad guys for the right reasons. That is consistent. I am similarly not angry here. The reflexive griping about going to Congress is stupid. Presidents shouldn’t signal attacks in the modern era. We don’t march in columns towards the enemy position anymore. If anything, it was signaled with the massive troop buildups and movement in the weeks prior, but I don’t give a shit if they do it for the right reasons and it’s short. I do think longer operations should have some approval.

I am only angry when they are incompetent (Afghanistan departure) and put our people at unnecessary risk. Stabilizing Iran is 100% worth it.

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Bishop2b5 said:

The first day of the operation against Iran, I joked to a family member that the leftists and the usual useful idiots would probably decry decapitating Iran's crazy regime and find a way to complain about us removing them as a threat. I was joking. I was sure even the worst of the bunch wouldn't actually do that. I stand before you admitting that I was so very very wrong.

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Criticism of this war, or whatever we want to call it, isn’t coming only from the left. There is a very real critique grounded in observable outcomes. Just look at the cause and effect over the past twenty years.

Iraq - Overthrew Saddam Hussein, spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of American lives, and the country has experienced two decades of instability
Libya - NATO intervention (effectively an american intervention), killed Gaddafi. After the regime collapsed, the country fractured and created chaos. Was teh catalyst for refugee crisis in Europe (exactly as Gaddafi predicted).
Syria - US and Israel effort to overthrow government. Led to long deadly civil war, total instability and millions of refugges into Europe
Afghanistan - Twenty years of war occupation ended with the Taliban returning to power. Trillions lost, American lives lost. No stability gained.
Gaza - The US provides billions of military aid and political support to Israel. Repeated wars and conflict. Result is outrageous levels of civilians dead and widespread destruction of infrastructure.
Yemen - US backed the Saudi-led war and I beleive did their own bombing as well. Years of fighting, no stability and enormous levels of civilian suffering.
Lebanon - US funds Israel bombing them. Many factors here but that's a huge component and country completely collapsed
Egypt - US meddling helped remove Mubarak. The great color revolution resulted in military governing, removal of political opposition, economic disaster, and American taxpayers giving their gov't over a billion a year to capitulate to Israel.

The US helped create the conditions that led to the current regime taking power in Iran, and now many of the same people who supported all the nonsense listed above are telling us we need to use our money, our weapons, and American lives to hammer Iran in the name of stability and American safety. That's what the same policymakers and politicians who promoted all of this shit claim now.

I don't believe them. I believe the opposite is true - they want instability and a result of that instabity is americans are less safe. I'm sure some will disagree, but does the motive really even matter? Let's just just use our fucking brains and examine the results, and it's very obvious how this ends if they topple Iran - decades of instability, millions of refugees and Americans eating a pile of shit and payin the tab.

I dont have a super strong opinion on war powers but I do find it disturbing that legislators are not more protective of their authority.

Seems like things are going well for us in Iran but I dont really care for our presidents just doing things without a green light from congress.

NDVirginia19 said:

The Fact that the engagement was at PD has no correlation to whether or not the ship was incapacitated

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Either that or they all but guaranteed they weren't detected. No reason to launch at periscope depth with any threat

Regardless. Super impressive vid

NorthDakota said:

I dont have a super strong opinion on war powers but I do find it disturbing that legislators are not more protective of their authority.

Seems like things are going well for us in Iran but I dont really care for our presidents just doing things without a green light from congress.

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Is that not everything though? We have alphabet agencies and executive orders for everything now. The only redeeming thing about it is that a lot of our legislators appear to be really dumb or corrupt, so it may be for the best.

drayer54 said:

Is that not everything though? We have alphabet agencies and executive orders for everything now. The only redeeming thing about it is that a lot of our legislators appear to be really dumb or corrupt, so it may be for the best.

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Agencies have authority granted by congress. That authority should be much more narrowly defined. Congress is absolutely full of corrupt losers but they need to be running the show on this. It's not the end of the world obviously, things are probably working out fine. But yeah we need the legislators to do their job.

ozzman said:

Either that or they all but guaranteed they weren't detected. No reason to launch at periscope depth with any threat

Regardless. Super impressive vid

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there are plenty of reasons to launch at PD. Better weapons placement, classification for ROE purposes, immediate BDA

Meanwhile back to Latin America...

US, Ecuador launch joint operations targeting narco-terror groups: SOUTHCOM

Seems harmless enough and apparently key cities in Ecuador are very violent and are hubs for transporting cocaine from Colombia and Peru to Europe and the U.S.

Seems like the admin is also happy to work w/ Ecuador so they also can have them help put pressure on Cuba: On the same day as the joint operations...

Ecuador declares Cuba’s ambassador 'persona non grata,' orders mission to leave the country

NDVirginia19 said:

there are plenty of reasons to launch at PD. Better weapons placement, classification for ROE purposes, immediate BDA

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Imagine how insufferable that crew is going to be for years getting a torpedo kill.

Also- imagine how Democrats are in hell seeing this.

Apparently, now Israel and the US are training and equipping The Kurds to be able to attack Iran.

It will be interesting to see how that works out.

NDWarrior said:

Apparently, now Israel and the US are training and equipping The Kurds to be able to attack Iran.

It will be interesting to see how that works out.

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Can you believe the Kurds would trust us again? We've screwed those people so many times

It's like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football

ozzman said:

Can you believe the Kurds would trust us again? We've screwed those people so many times

It's like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football

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That is what I'm thinking, we must give them some serious money for what they do for the US only for us to turn on them.

The history of the ME is crazy. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Can't be going too bad if the dummy to the north is willing to take his fourth position in as many days on the strike.

The Iran war has been a stunning aerial success
Even if, at the political level, its direction is a mess

Wild Bill said:

Criticism of this war, or whatever we want to call it, isn’t coming only from the left. There is a very real critique grounded in observable outcomes. Just look at the cause and effect over the past twenty years.

Iraq - Overthrew Saddam Hussein, spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of American lives, and the country has experienced two decades of instability
Libya - NATO intervention (effectively an american intervention), killed Gaddafi. After the regime collapsed, the country fractured and created chaos. Was teh catalyst for refugee crisis in Europe (exactly as Gaddafi predicted).
Syria - US and Israel effort to overthrow government. Led to long deadly civil war, total instability and millions of refugges into Europe
Afghanistan - Twenty years of war occupation ended with the Taliban returning to power. Trillions lost, American lives lost. No stability gained.
Gaza - The US provides billions of military aid and political support to Israel. Repeated wars and conflict. Result is outrageous levels of civilians dead and widespread destruction of infrastructure.
Yemen - US backed the Saudi-led war and I beleive did their own bombing as well. Years of fighting, no stability and enormous levels of civilian suffering.
Lebanon - US funds Israel bombing them. Many factors here but that's a huge component and country completely collapsed
Egypt - US meddling helped remove Mubarak. The great color revolution resulted in military governing, removal of political opposition, economic disaster, and American taxpayers giving their gov't over a billion a year to capitulate to Israel.

The US helped create the conditions that led to the current regime taking power in Iran, and now many of the same people who supported all the nonsense listed above are telling us we need to use our money, our weapons, and American lives to hammer Iran in the name of stability and American safety. That's what the same policymakers and politicians who promoted all of this shit claim now.

I don't believe them. I believe the opposite is true - they want instability and a result of that instabity is americans are less safe. I'm sure some will disagree, but does the motive really even matter? Let's just just use our fucking brains and examine the results, and it's very obvious how this ends if they topple Iran - decades of instability, millions of refugees and Americans eating a pile of shit and payin the tab.

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Looking at the last 20+ years, it’s hard not to notice the pattern, as you've listed. Interventions in these places keep ending with fractured or unstable states. Whatever the intentions were, that seems to be the consistent outcome. However, regional fragmentation isn’t exactly a new concept. People have been talking about that playbook in the Middle East for 40+ years. I’m not saying the U.S. set out to make that happen intentionally, with some sort of long-game in mind. But when the outcome keeps being weaker or fragmented states, it does raise a question: who actually benefits from that kind of landscape?

Maybe it sounds conspiratorial or fringe, but that’s part of why people bring up the Greater Israel idea in these conversations. It may be more ideological or religious than actual government policy, but the fact that it keeps coming up probably says something about how much skepticism these interventions have created. It also raises some basic questions: what exactly is Israel’s true motive? What’s the end game? And why is the U.S. so involved?

Mike Huckabee recently said on Tucker he’d be fine if Israel “took it all,” referring to the land promised in Genesis. That may just reflect a personal theological belief—but when the person saying it is the official U.S. ambassador to Israel, it’s hard to argue that it’s irrelevant to the broader conversation. And when Netanyahu has talked about being on a “historic and spiritual mission” and expressed attachment to the idea of a Greater Israel, it’s not surprising that people start asking questions about long-term motives and where all of this is ultimately heading.

At the very least, past results should make people cautious about assuming another war—especially with Iran—is going to magically produce stability. And we should all be asking the appropriate questions as it pertains to motive, goals, end game, worst case scenarios, etc.

BleedBlueGold said:

Looking at the last 20+ years, it’s hard not to notice the pattern, as you've listed. Interventions in these places keep ending with fractured or unstable states. Whatever the intentions were, that seems to be the consistent outcome. However, regional fragmentation isn’t exactly a new concept. People have been talking about that playbook in the Middle East for 40+ years. I’m not saying the U.S. set out to make that happen intentionally, with some sort of long-game in mind. But when the outcome keeps being weaker or fragmented states, it does raise a question: who actually benefits from that kind of landscape?

Maybe it sounds conspiratorial or fringe, but that’s part of why people bring up the Greater Israel idea in these conversations. It may be more ideological or religious than actual government policy, but the fact that it keeps coming up probably says something about how much skepticism these interventions have created. It also raises some basic questions: what exactly is Israel’s true motive? What’s the end game? And why is the U.S. so involved?

Mike Huckabee recently said on Tucker he’d be fine if Israel “took it all,” referring to the land promised in Genesis. That may just reflect a personal theological belief—but when the person saying it is the official U.S. ambassador to Israel, it’s hard to argue that it’s irrelevant to the broader conversation. And when Netanyahu has talked about being on a “historic and spiritual mission” and expressed attachment to the idea of a Greater Israel, it’s not surprising that people start asking questions about long-term motives and where all of this is ultimately heading.

At the very least, past results should make people cautious about assuming another war—especially with Iran—is going to magically produce stability. And we should all be asking the appropriate questions as it pertains to motive, goals, end game, worst case scenarios, etc.

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There's been turmoil in the ME for as long as I can remember. It's like each country takes a turn. I'm a firm believer there will never be peace over there.

Sea Turtle said:

I know it's a popular opinion but it's actually the opposite. We tell Israel what they can and can't do.

We tell them when they can go to war and how long they have to do it.

We did not supply them in 1948. They were reduced to using Warsaw Pact planes.

We were the ones who ordered them out of the Suez In 1956.

They asked us if the could launch a pre-empted war in 1967. LBJ said 'you have two weeks to get it done'.

We told them to stay out of the Gulf War, even though they were attacked repeatedly.

They wanted to continue the 12 day war last summer but we said no.

Israel is a very close and important ally of ours. We give them a pretty long leash. They are an attack dog of ours. But they do what we tell them to do when it counts. Not the other way around. This has been coming since 1979 on our end. Trump was just the one who had the guts to actually do it.

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This is a foolish group of statements as lists of absolutes.

calvegas04 said:

Uh wtf

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This may be a radicalized pilot-this kind of stuff happens. Unsure what LLF is laughing about. Could it be the US pilots were in the Epstein files?

Who has the cards? Did Vance say thank you once?

Defending drones is all technical. I highly doubt UKR is developing new drone tech-they're likely using ours.

Fbolt said:

Defending drones is all technical. I highly doubt UKR is developing new drone tech-they're likely using ours.

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Nah, they didn't call them before the attacks, but we and all of our allies have called them since...




They have definitely developed their own

Fbolt said:

Defending drones is all technical. I highly doubt UKR is developing new drone tech-they're likely using ours.

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You would be wrong

calvegas04 said:

You would be wrong

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Ukraine has actually done a good job figuring this out.

drayer54 said:

Ukraine has actually done a good job figuring this out.

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It would be insane if we didn't have a large amount of observers in Ukraine studying the war.

calvegas04 said:

It would be insane if we didn't have a large amount of observers in Ukraine studying the war.

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I'm sure we have more than observers

calvegas04 said:

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Really has more to do with the entire continent of Europe cucking itself into shutting down their own domestic power production and becoming completely reliant on Russian energy.

Whiskeyjack said:

Starting a new thread for debate regarding American foreign policy.

The Atlantic's Robert Kaplan just published a compelling article titled "Warming to Iran":



Détente with Iran should be our top foreign policy goal for the reasons listed above. Once that's accomplished, we can stop pouring obscene amounts of American blood and treasure into that miserable backwater and pivot towards Asia, where the survival of our empire is actually at stake.

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So sad, but there it is.

Whiskey, I wish you all the best.

Fuck all you all dumb MAGA pricks, Bishop in particular.