In the early hours of March 4, 2026, in international waters off the coast of Galle, Sri Lanka, the USS Charlotte, a Los Angeles–class nuclear-powered attack submarine, closed in on the IRIS Dena, a new Iranian Moudge-class frigate.
Submerged, the Charlotte fired a heavyweight, acoustic-homing torpedo at the hull of the Dena. It missed. It fired another. It connected. The periscope footage of the attack was released by the United States Department of War. It shows the shockwave of the torpedo fracturing the Dena’s hull and sending its helicopter flight deck metres into the air.
Within seconds, what was left of the Dena was plummeting to the depths of the Indian Ocean, carrying at least sixty of its crew of 180 to their deaths.
Some moments later, an email was sent from US Indo-Pacific Command to Sri Lanka’s maritime rescue agency. Twenty miles from Galle’s coast, a ship is in distress. Sri Lanka immediately engaged a search and rescue effort that included its air force and navy. The surface of the sea contained clues that a vessel had been attacked and had likely been sunk. But it was not clear whether the attack had come from above or below. They were able to rescue thirty-two sailors, and recover the bodies of eighty-seven others, many of whom had mysteriously broken legs.
The Charlotte had long vanished like an apparition beneath the waves.
This was on the fifth day of the US–Israeli war on Iran, 2,000 nautical miles from the immediate conflict zone.
oPeN tHE sTraIt
US are not the good guys since WWII.
Since ever.
America was leaning towards the Nazis before Pearl Harbor.
America was sharply divided between socialism and fascism in the run up to the collapse of the Russian Empire and emergence of the Soviet Union. Consequently, American leftists saw a ray of sunlight in the path Lenin took to revolutionizing the Russian socio-economic system. At the same time, American corporationists saw the USSR as an opportunity to describe American Leftism as a Foreign Invasion.
The adoption of European political theories and figureheads on the left triggered the hysterical anti-immigration reflexes on the right, polarizing and galvanizing the general public which had already grown deeply anti-European in the wake of the First World War.
This culminated in the Palmer Raids of 1919, split the union movement going into the Roaring Twenties, and - in a hat trick of reactionary revisionism - managed to unify Dixiecrat bigots, big money Industrialists, and evangelical Christians (both Protestant AND Catholic) into a single suffocating mono-party that would dominate American politics for the next twelve years.
The Neo-Confederates, the Industrial Fascists, and the Evangelical Paleo-conservatives congealed into the Coolidge/Hoover Republican Party and managed to govern virtually uncontested until the Great Depression upended their coalition.
But at this point, leftist organizing and activism had rebuilt and reorganized around generally palpable national socialist principles. And over the subsequent decade leading to Pearl Harbor, established a left-leaning national government coalition that was broadly sympathetic to the Russian and Chinese Communists to the point that we were openly aiding them in their wars against Germany and Japan.
Pearl Harbor was an attempt by the Japanese military to cut the US out of the Pacific Rim, precisely because we’d undermined their access to Middle Eastern petrochemicals and smuggled arms to the KMT/Communist coalition on mainland China. It was “unprovoked” in a very technical sense, but far from unanticipated given our open aiding and abetting of anti-Japanese forces all across the East Pacific.
America was leaning Communist by 1944. If FDR hadn’t plotzed and handed the keys of the country to a reactionary like Truman, we might have avoided the Cold War entirely. Or, at least, forestalled it for a few more years.
Who Are the Good Guys Again?
Nobody this time. Especially those holding absolute power.
Nobody this time.
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American Fascists
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Scary Muslims
Well, I don’t want to align with the fascists. But also I do kinda agree with them on the scariness of Muslims.
I guess I’ll do the Radical Centrist power move and say “Both Sides are Wrong”.
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Unfortunately what is allowed in war is still pretty brutal. This was a warship and it would be a legitimate target from the moment the war started, without exception.
Let’s focus on the actual war crimes, like the Pentagon redefining “military target” to include destroying energy, food, and fresh water infrastructure because soldiers need to drink water too… Hitting those targets would still be a war crime, the Pentagon is not the arbiter of what is and isn’t a military target.
The thing is, the side that perpetrated this action is still denying that this is an actual war. In such a case, is this a legitimate target?
They aren’t the arbiter of what is and isn’t a war.
This was a ship that was participating in war games with other nations and had no armaments on it. So the US fired on and sank an unarmed ship.
Yes, that is technically true. It is also completely legal. For reference it is also legal to shoot an enemy soldier in the back as they run away. It is legal to shoot an enemy soldier in any case except where they are clearly trying to surrender, including if they are just laying there unconscious.
The rules of war allow for far more than people realize. And Again, I’m not trying to let them off the hook. There’s real questions about this entire thing being a war crime and about their targeting of bombs.
America and Israel are the common enemies of humanity
Add Russia to that
China and North Korea too while at it, please?
Iran goes on that list as well.
Absolutely, and probably a few more countries still
Yeah, they’re not attacking anyone at the moment. Let’s hope they don’t join the club soon
While the war in Iran should not be happening remember that at Rimpac they were doing live fire excercises and not US and Iranian ships attended, this means that while tragic the ship was not unarmed. I keep seeing some factual errors repeated to try and make things sound worse than they are leading to easy dismissal of arguments due to factual errors and complete dismissal of the point.
The US have never been ‘the good guys’.
If it was unarmed they could have effortlessly captured it. Imo this is just going to crystallize US opposition.
Hegseth and trump playing with lethal toys like a sociopath torturing animals.
A non-hostile ship being targeted because “Just do it and see what happens. “
And the biggest stupidity is having an easy target to seize, as a ship from a nation they are at war, they chose to sink it committing a war crime.
The US has been the main villain ever since they inherited the role from the British. None of this is surprising if you’ve been paying attention.
The 40k universe is clearly inspired by real-world politics. There are only bad guys, villains, and monsters. Nobody has the moral high ground in this mess.
“There is no such thing as innocence; only degrees of guilt.”
“Everyone is guilty in MegaCity-1. We’re here to decide how much they are”.
Oh that’s a nice one. Where did you steal that from?
It’s from 40k. Specifically I think it’s the librarians from the Dawn of War games.
piefed.social/u/QuantumStorm@lemmy.world has it right, i believe - but i’m ashamed to admit that i only know that because i had to look it up after originally hearing it from … a fanfic, of all things.
So I have stolen what was already stolen! The writer of said fic was making a direct WH40k reference
(the fanfic in question is “Shinji and Warhammer 40K” and i cannot possibly describe the appeal of it more adequately than TV Tropes did.)
Centrist, politically relativist nerds unite; incidentally, relativism is a useful cope if you are one of the baddies.
We bombed only seven hospitals, whereas those guys bombed eight. They are clearly the worst, while we are the good guys, relatively speaking.
one side (the americans and their zionist allies) are perpetrating obvious genocide and threatening atrocities to the rest of the world, while the people in Iran are defending themselves; Man why is morality so difficult!?
Morality DLC was too expensive… Well, actually cheaper than the Ethnic Cleansing DLC, Dictatorship DLC or Warmongering DLC etc. So many to choose from, so obviously American got all of them, but ran out of money just before clicking buy on the Morality DLC. Oh well…
Anyway, Imperialism DLC just got updated, so maybe it’s about time to finally try that out.
They already tried the imperialism expansion; it ended up in a lot of dead nazis. I am eager to see the imperialist and nazis screaming and burning once again.
Ah yes, if only we’d let moral absolutists like you take the wheel, we’d finally have a world where every conflict is solved by pointing at the other side and yelling “No, you’re the baddie!” Heaven forbid anyone try to classify things at a level above a kindergarten playground.
If anything, you’re the one closer to being a moral absolutist. Iran does some bad things, but they’re also at war with genocidal nazi pedophiles who want to destroy their country. You equivocate the two so that you don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
Nowhere in that comment was I equivocating the two. It’s not like the only two options are “USA bad, Iran good” or “USA bad, Iran bad”. That’s just a false dichotomy and more of the kind of black and white thinking I was criticizing. I also don’t have to find ways to not feel uncomfortable about it simply because I am not an American.
USA is bad, Iran’s kinda good. I admire their work with regards to ballistic missiles and drones, and grand strategy
thank you for making a perfect example of what a nazi would say! Can you say that again while goose stepping doing the roman salute and threatening the destruction of a whole civilization? Your type of people will be remembered as the ghouls that were doing defense for the mass murderers that are set to wreck the earth and that stain will never come off.
Yes, Nazis famously made nuanced moral judgements and never sought to demonize or thought certain groups were unequivocally bad at all. LMFAO.
They also killed a lot of innocent civilians and they were experts at handwaving those murders.
I don’t know about that. I think they were pretty unapologetic about and certainly provided (bad but clear) ideological reasons for all the murdering they did, even making them official government projects. Don’t remember reading much about handwaving except in the context of certain types of salutes.
I hate this comment.
Hey, we were happy dicking around in our own backyard for the first 150 years or so. We even attacked ourselves, we were so bored.
Then you people asked us to join WW1, and we got a taste of World Domination, and we loved it. So, y’know, you started it.
We’re Frankenstein’s Monster, and you let us loose.
/S, just kidding, America sucks, we know it. A lot of us want to do better, and we’re hoping for a different future. We’re at a crossroads, things are going to be very different in the future. I just hope it’s our difference that prevails, and not MAGAs.
Spain has something to say about that. Cuba, Philippines, … And Hawaii has also something to say.
I want to put this very recognizable meme on lawn signs (like the plastic political candidate ones) and hand them out and put them everywhere.
The US has rarely been “the good guys”, and even then mostly by accident.
Mark my words, by the end of Trump’s term the United States is going to have no allies left in the entire world.
Hell, we barely have any left as it is now.
comment Africa comment in articles in the WSJ saying the US has only “fair weather allies” and it’s good they show how useless they are now so the US can discard them.
exactly 0 self awareness.
The only one thinking the US are the good guys it’s the US.
As of right now, you’re no better… scratch that, you are actually worse than Putin.
Oh I don’t know. I think the Israelis are convinced they’re the good guys.
Now that the United States is trying to do a Russian Ukraine upon Iran…
yyyyeah there is no moral highground anymore.
just an immoral crater filled with mud and viscera.
No state is moral. People are (or can be) moral.
honestly TRUUUUUUE!!
This is the case with pretty much all collective entities, they’re all cut from the same cloth:
businesses, sports teams, fandoms, private clubs, political parties - they’re all manifestations of tribal instinct and one of its “”“features”“” (which, in this very synthetic habitat we’ve created for ourselves can become quite maladaptive if not toxic) is the displacement of personal accountability.I’m saying, yes, groups are not moral but people can be moral - and I am hypothesizing THAT is why.
Parallel processing has enabled humans to do absolutely incredible things.
But it has also enabled humans to do truly heinous things too.
Bystander effect, “just following orders”, toeing the party line, passing the buck, riding the bandwagon… I think it’s not enough to teach people that only people themselves are capable of making moral judgments, but that we absolutely should also teach people that abstract gestalt entities that we become part of, that we allow to subsume us, are not.
Even the ones that aren’t outright evil are only so by the individual decisions of the people it comprises–through either luck or mindfulness–steering it away from brutal shortcuts that spend others’ lives for the sake of its own perpetuation.
It’s kind of ironic though that the people who decry “groupthink” the loudest are the ones that seem to be doing it the most. I’d sure like to think that we’ll learn to do a better job of identifying that blindspot (which such distributed collective entities exploit to enhance their own survival odds) and countering it, then teaching the next generations to look for it and counter it too.
… if we’ll even be around to see any generations that may exist after us.
The USA is bad but it’s nowhere near russian level of bad. You are, however, moving in that direction at a rapid pace. It does help that American president sees russia as a role model.
Trying to paint either nation as “less bad” is incredibly naive. Both have murdered millions.
And the US has, this year, kidnapped a head of state, started a war and is also trying to starve another country. Not to mention how they are treating its own citizens and how are they giving all they need to Israhell so they can keep going with their genocide.
It’s not naive, it’s absolutely essential that one is able to assess differences even between two bad actors. What I would suggest is naive is to deny this. Coincidentally such thinking also played a part in electing Trump instead of Kamala because people suggested there was no difference.
Yet, no such distinction can be made between Russia and Magastan. If anything, Russia has done more killing internally, and the US have murdered more people abroad. Telling yourself one of them is less bad is - as stated - incredibly naive.
What world do you live in!?
Kinda thinking about leaving the USA at this point.
