Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.
Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. If youāre wondering why this went up late, I was doing other shit)
(EDIT: Changed ā29th Februaryā to ā1st Marchā - its not a leap year)
While there is absolutely a large segment of the Iranian population that isnāt satisfied with the theocratic dictatorship, the same could also have been said of Iraqis who didnāt like the baathists or Afghans who hate the Taliban. Once you start dropping bombs on these people - to say nothing of the violence that necessarily follows a boots-on-the-ground occupation - youāre going to start driving them into the waiting arms of factions that oppose you. Especially because the current administration has shown a less-than-comforting attitude towards civilian casualties, war crimes, and genocide.
Letās also not lose sight of the role that US and British intervention played in creating the circumstances for the Ayatollahs to come to power in the first place. The Shah wasnāt exactly any kinder to the Iranian people and was a foreign puppet to boot.
Harrisās take only works if, like him, you assume that the fundamental problem with Iran is Islam, rather than actually bothering to look at the history of the country and how it became what it is today. Because in that case once you get the ayatollah out of the way and introduce the light of Science! to the people theyāll immediately become rational civil libertarians and believe exactly the same things he does. The Irreligious Right is exactly as reductive and stupid as the worst evangelicals, but can better use the language of STEM to hide it.
I doubt there are going to be boots-on-the-ground. Not for any good reasons, just because Trump lacks the commitment (or even capability of commitment).
That cuts both ways, you just need to be the last person in the room to speak with Trump
Looking at the bloodthirsty freaks heās put in charge of our military / intelligence / diplomatic apparatus, and I donāt like them odds
I can see a situation where his bombing campaign fails to achieve the objective, a special operation like in Venezuela fails, and Hegseth or Rubio or someone (Putin? Netanyahu? Kanye?) convinces him to invade long enough that inertia carries it forward.
Of course, anything we do is going to take us to the same result weāve seen with all these interventions. The US military and whatever allies join us will be, broadly speaking, terrifyingly effective at achieving their tactical and operational goals, but because the overall strategic plan is somewhere between non-existent and backwards those successes will fail to actually do anything. We will inflict and suffer that much more death and devastation, and all it will accomplish is making the world less stable and less safe for everyone.
i also think that americans are currently allergic to boots on the ground involvement* so itās not likely. my best guess is airstrikes only, then ??? then i guess they expect regime change to materialize out of thin air. only time will tell
* unless itās not theirs, but for example kurds, this way they donāt care
@YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare Yes, absolutely, civilization (or whatever word you like better here) will not happen automatically or magically.
And Iām not finding an answer: How do you /properly/ remove an oppressive theocracy, in such a way that the country has good starting conditions to prosper?
Two things seems clear to me: the theocrats will not go by themselves, and the country will not prosper under them.
@Ardubal @YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare This hasnāt happened in Iran, but oppressive theocracies *have* decayed from inside elsewhereānotably Ireland since 1980 (the difference now is as night and day, yet there was no revolution and no shooting, and the country has prospered). Arguably Spainās clerico-fascist system went the same way in the 1970s. And so on.
Iran is different, though, in that it faces a violent, powerful external superpower, which indirectly props up the priesthood.
@cstross @YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare OK, but I donāt see the automatism in that direction either. And just letting them simmer in their own little cosmos doesnāt seem very sustainable when they organize and support e. g. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi.
Starting a war now is not the answer, Iām pretty sure, but the question remains.
@Ardubal @YourNetworkIsHaunted @fullsquare Bear in mind theyāre also locked in a long-term cold war with Saudi Arabia (sunni v. shiāite islam) and Israel (increasingly resembling a religious ethno-supremacist fascist state with regional territorial ambitions). Peace with Iran is a non-starter unless Israel and the Saudis can be forced to back the fuck off at the same time.
the answer is definitely not to sanction and attempt to destabilize them on behalf of your two equally evil regional client states. The corollary to that is that you cannot produce the necessary conditions for future prosperity by destroying their economy in a way that harms the average person more than the elites.
And thatās assuming that we (the west) even want them to prosper or care about their future as a nation. Perhaps in an alternate universe, that would be the motivation for regime change but that is not and has never been the case.
last time iāve checked, wandel durch handel style approach was determined to not work as intended, not that it matters in this case anymore
From the outside? Iām gonna be honest and say I donāt know that you do.