Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[FourthBase]

Like all would-be bullies you are a coward. You're also disingenuous to the core. You post acre upon acre of truly repulsive openly-fascist flamebait (see above -- ad nauseam, literally): and when people eventually respond with the anger & disgust you knowingly & persistently & deliberately provoked and hoped for, then you cringe & whinge that you didn't really mean it and that the mods are not protecting poor you. Grow up, at long last.

FourthBase wrote:
Yep, from the perspective of America, American lives > the rest of you. I know, you don't like that. But whaddya gonna do, it is what it is. Sucks about that full spectrum dominance. Get used to it.

It is what it is, right. It's there for all to see, it is as fascist as it looks, and sane people everywhere have had enough of it. Those days are gone, Emperor. So get some clothes on you, you're frightening the children.

You still won't answer the fucking question, but I'm the coward?

I know you'd love to think that what you quoted is so fascistic, but it's actually pretty fucking normal. If some fascist country killed 10,000 Scots and you had to defeat that country's government in order to stop them from killing any more Scots, and the only way to defeat that country's fascist government would also necessarily kill 100,000 of that country's citizens, you would absolutely fucking support that and if you say you wouldn't you're a fucking liar and even if you weren't lying but merely ideologically deluded then the vast majority of your not-fascist Scottish countrymen would absolutely fucking support it and your fringe stance would be absolutely fucking meaningless. You now gonna tell me again that I'm a fascist for merely bringing up that hypothetical? Dipshit, it's basically the same situation as World War II. If you're calling me a fascist for that quote, you're basically also calling it fascist to defeat the Nazis. Thank god you all valued British lives over German lives. Like normal people.

As for the full spectrum dominance: Yep. I'm genuinely pleased it's American and not what you'd prefer. If it were up to you, the fucking Soviet Union would control the earth. Or maybe there'd be an Islamic State. Or would we all be speaking Chinese? Anything but evil, evil America!

[RocketMan]

Well, looks like Big Zaddy AmurriKKKahhh is "moving out" of Iraq.. Perhaps in tribute to Billy Joel?

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/m ... etter.html

US military tells Iraq it is preparing to ‘move out’: Official letter

The US military informed its counterparts in Baghdad on Monday it was preparing for “movement out of Iraq,” a day after the Iraqi parliament urged the government oust foreign troops.

The head of the US military’s Task Force Iraq, Brigadier General William Seely, sent a letter to the head of Iraq’s joint operations command, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

The letter said troops would “be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.”

A US defense official and an Iraqi defense official confirmed the letter was real and had been delivered.

[RocketMan]

FourthBase, you can't just force others in the conversation to accept your bullshit parameters for what is relevant or even reality. You can prattle on with your fundamentally inhuman position that we are all supposed to care more for the lives of the people born inside the same arbitrary lines on a map than those on the other side all you like but we don't have to eat that shit sandwich if we don't want to. Your position is fundamentally repulsive to humanity.

[FourthBase]

FourthBase, you can't just force others in the conversation to accept your bullshit parameters for what is relevant or even reality. You can prattle on with your fundamentally inhuman position that we are all supposed to care more for the lives of the people born inside the same arbitrary lines on a map than those on the other side all you like but we don't have to eat that shit sandwich if we don't want to. Your position is fundamentally repulsive to humanity.

No, it's fundamentally repulsive to the far left. It's common sense to the rest of humanity. And if push came to shove, the vast majority of even the far left would cave to common sense. Sorry to keep bringing up the Nazis but they really are a perfect edge case for revealing principles, especially if you're an anti-fascist: You seriously expect a people attacked by the Nazis to refrain from retaliating beyond a 1:1 ratio, even if that means letting the Nazis continue to exist and attack? Talk about bullshit parameters. You also still refuse to answer that very simple hypothetical about nuking Berlin in 1941. It ought to be a really simple answer. Yes, "Drop a nuke on Berlin and stop the war and save tens of millions of lives." Or no, "Don't nuke Berlin, fuck those tens of millions of Jewish, Russian, American, Polish, and German lives because muh self-image as a supposed anti-fascist would be compromised and/or my individual family would have suffered."

[DrEvil]

@fourthbase: By your reasoning Saddam Hussein would have been justified in killing five million Americans, and someone should nuke Washington to prevent Trump from starting a massive war in the Middle East.

And your hypothetical about nuking Berlin is bullshit. You're arguing through 20-20 hindsight goggles.

[FourthBase]

@fourthbase: By your reasoning Saddam Hussein would have been justified in killing five million Americans, and someone should nuke Washington to prevent Trump from starting a massive war in the Middle East.

Right, well, that's where the dominance I'm happy about comes into play. However evil my country can be, to whatever evil extent it has not been genuinely trying to suppress the evil of others: Nobody can out-evil America like that. Unless they want to be exterminated. Call me a smug, ugly, arrogant American and worse. But it is what it is. Any of you who live within the borders of an American ally are probably secretly grateful about it, too.

And your hypothetical about nuking Berlin is bullshit. You're arguing through 20-20 hindsight goggles.

No, it's not bullshit.

You people just can't answer it without losing.

Either you condone nuking a city and you lose face as an anti-fascist who's always condemned evil, evil America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or you condone letting the Nazis kill several million Jews and tens of millions of Soviet comrades. In which case, you really lose face as an anti-fascist.

[MacCruiskeen]

If the Queen had bollocks, would she be the King? I think we should be told.

[FourthBase]

If the Queen had bollocks, would she be the King? I think we should be told.

Yeah, the problem, for you, is that this isn't about the history of the counterfactual, but about the principle. Which is completely, utterly, totally answerable. Hypotheticals like this form the core of practical, ethical, legal philosophy. Again, you just can't answer it, because it's a lose-lose, for you. The entire rest of the normal world -- and probably the vast majority of your fellow leftists (after a minute of painful reflection) -- would answer: "Of course nuking Berlin in 1941 would've been the right call." So, what's your answer?

[MacCruiskeen]

My answer is: No, obviously Berlin should not have been "nuked" (sic), you repulsive fascist warmonger. What the fuck is wrong with you?

As anyone one but a criminally stupid and murderous pervert will acknowledge immediately, first-strike use of a nuclear weapon is always and will always be morally indefensible. Quite apart from that obvious fact (and entirely secondary to it), first-strike use of a nuclear weapon is wholly unpredictable both in its medium-term political consequences (your "allies" might end up hating you and sympathising with your victims / the "Bad Guys" might have weapons you've never even dreamt of) and in its short-to-long-term environmental effects (you might end up making a continent or even a whole planet uninhabitable). These are just a few of the reasons why everyone abhors the damn things and nobody but the fascist US state you worship and inhabit has ever used them.

Only dumbfuck pseudotough powerworshippers like you ever even try to defend such crimes, which are called crimes against humanity for a reason. Only idle fantasists like you get off on even imagining such scenarios, and you do it again and again and again. To any sane human being the use of a nuclear weapon is an abomination. To you it's an obsessive idea and it clearly gives you an erotic thrill to obsess over it ("it" being the indiscriminate mass murder of thousands if not millions of men, women, and children). You simply will not stop -- and this sick S/M fantasy of yours is what you choose to divert this thread into discussing, in a thread about Iran, just one day after your beloved Pentagon comes close to starting World War III through the murderous use of "conventional" weapons alone.

Do not try to think the unthinkable, Fashbase. You are not even capable of thinking the thinkable.

[FourthBase]

My answer is: No, obviously Berlin should not have been "nuked" (sic), you repulsive fascist warmonger. What the fuck is wrong with you?

As anyone one but a criminally stupid and murderous pervert will acknowledge immediately, first-strike use of a nuclear weapon is always and will always be morally indefensible. Quite apart from that obvious fact (and entirely secondary to it), first-strike use of a nuclear weapon is wholly unpredictable both in its medium-term political consequences (your "allies" might end up hating you and sympathising with your victims / the "Bad Guys" might have weapons you've never even dreamt of) and in its short-to-long-term environmental effects (you might end up making a continent or even a whole planet uninhabitable). These are just a few of the reasons why everyone abhors the damn things and nobody but the fascist US state you worship and inhabit has ever used them.

Only dumbfuck pseudotough powerworshippers like you ever even try to defend such crimes, which are called crimes against humanity for a reason. Only idle fantasists like you get off on even imagining such scenarios, and you do it again and again and again. To any sane human being the use of a nuclear weapon is an abomination. To you it's an obsessive idea and it clearly gives you an erotic thrill to obsess over it ("it" being the indiscriminate mass murder of thousands if not millions of men, women, and children). You simply will not stop -- and this sick S/M fantasy of yours is what you choose to divert this thread into discussing, in a thread about Iran, just one day after your beloved Pentagon comes close to starting World War III through the murderous use of "conventional" weapons alone.

Do not try to think the unthinkable, Fashbase. You are not even capable of thinking the thinkable.

Cool. Thanks for sacking up and answering.

So, just for the record now: Mac, because he is not a warmongerer, because he is not a fascist, would prefer letting the Nazis kill 50 million people instead of nuking Berlin to stop the war. His reasoning was really weak, something about how using a nuke first is automatically indefensible...as opposed to the somehow defensible ordinary bombs, bullets, fires, rockets, and gas chambers that were used to kill tens of millions. But he's been conditioned all his life to denounce America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it's not really his fault. He did choose the absolute worst of the two answers, though. He loses, badly. Who's next? Anyone else want to completely fucking embarrass themselves as an "anti-fascist"?

[DrEvil]

@fourthbase: By your reasoning Saddam Hussein would have been justified in killing five million Americans, and someone should nuke Washington to prevent Trump from starting a massive war in the Middle East.

Right, well, that's where the dominance I'm happy about comes into play. However evil my country can be, to whatever evil extent it has not been genuinely trying to suppress the evil of others: Nobody can out-evil America like that. Unless they want to be exterminated. Call me a smug, ugly, arrogant American and worse. But it is what it is. Any of you who live within the borders of an American ally are probably secretly grateful about it, too.

And your hypothetical about nuking Berlin is bullshit. You're arguing through 20-20 hindsight goggles.

No, it's not bullshit.

You people just can't answer it without losing.

Either you condone nuking a city and you lose face as an anti-fascist who's always condemned evil, evil America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or you condone letting the Nazis kill several million Jews and tens of millions of Soviet comrades. In which case, you really lose face as an anti-fascist.

You said 1941. People didn't know just how bad it would get at that point. Bad, yes, but not 50 million bad. It's not as black and white as you want it to be. If that makes me "lose" your little game, so be it.

But let's assume that people back then knew exactly how bad it would get and that they nuked Berlin and cut the war short. Yay!
Except then the Soviet Union wouldn't be an ally, and they wouldn't have a broken back and would be in a much better position to challenge America, which at that point hadn't gotten their war machine up and running. Perhaps the only reason the US is top dog today is because WW2 happened as it did (one dumb hypothetical is as good as any other).

[FourthBase]

Well, looks like Big Zaddy AmurriKKKahhh is "moving out" of Iraq.. Perhaps in tribute to Billy Joel?

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/m ... etter.html

US military tells Iraq it is preparing to ‘move out’: Official letter

The US military informed its counterparts in Baghdad on Monday it was preparing for “movement out of Iraq,” a day after the Iraqi parliament urged the government oust foreign troops.

The head of the US military’s Task Force Iraq, Brigadier General William Seely, sent a letter to the head of Iraq’s joint operations command, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

The letter said troops would “be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.”

A US defense official and an Iraqi defense official confirmed the letter was real and had been delivered.

So it looks like the Iraqi PM was in on the assassination plot, right? He seems to have lured Soleimani to the airport with a peace ruse, which Blumenthal pathetically pretends to think was real, but of course it probably wasn't and Blumenthal knows it, and I seriously doubt Soleimani himself thought it was real. (Sure, the Saudi puppets of America just all of a sudden want peace with Iran, sure. What's really going on?) Then he acts horrified and betrayed and has the parliament vote to expel US forces, i.e., provides Trump with a perfect excuse to withdraw forces from Iraq like he already probably wanted and free up all those resources for a potential invasion of Iran. Makes sense, right?

[FourthBase]

@fourthbase: By your reasoning Saddam Hussein would have been justified in killing five million Americans, and someone should nuke Washington to prevent Trump from starting a massive war in the Middle East.

Right, well, that's where the dominance I'm happy about comes into play. However evil my country can be, to whatever evil extent it has not been genuinely trying to suppress the evil of others: Nobody can out-evil America like that. Unless they want to be exterminated. Call me a smug, ugly, arrogant American and worse. But it is what it is. Any of you who live within the borders of an American ally are probably secretly grateful about it, too.

And your hypothetical about nuking Berlin is bullshit. You're arguing through 20-20 hindsight goggles.

No, it's not bullshit.

You people just can't answer it without losing.

Either you condone nuking a city and you lose face as an anti-fascist who's always condemned evil, evil America for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or you condone letting the Nazis kill several million Jews and tens of millions of Soviet comrades. In which case, you really lose face as an anti-fascist.

You said 1941. People didn't know just how bad it would get at that point. Bad, yes, but not 50 million bad. It's not as black and white as you want it to be. If that makes me "lose" your little game, so be it.

But let's assume that people back then knew exactly how bad it would get and that they nuked Berlin and cut the war short. Yay!
Except then the Soviet Union wouldn't be an ally, and they wouldn't have a broken back and would be in a much better position to challenge America, which at that point hadn't gotten their war machine up and running. Perhaps the only reason the US is top dog today is because WW2 happened as it did (one dumb hypothetical is as good as any other).

Evading the game isn't losing. But it is evasion, which is telling. You obviously know it's a lose-lose for any anti-fascist who's ever condemned Hiroshima. And it's not really a game. It's a hypothetical scenario designed to reveal something real about your principles. As I said, the history of the counterfactual isn't the point. This isn't an alt-history novel being written. This is one question, in a vacuum. Any complications of the nuke relating to which country would then have how much power are irrelevant. Any practical concerns about how the bomb-droppers would know that 50 million lives are on the line are irrelevant. Let's say the bomb-dropper is you, in a time machine. This is basically just a large-scale version of "Would it be okay to assassinate Baby Hitler if it could prevent the Holocaust?" The unintended consequences make for interesting sci fi, the potential precedents set would make for interesting spinoff dilemmas, but to get to the ethics of it, the choice must be simple, no further worse consequences, no precedents set. It's simple: Nuke Berlin, or let 50 million people die.

[JackRiddler]

There is no need to engage with such moronic impossible fake-ethics counterfactuals.

[FourthBase]

There is no need to engage with such moronic impossible fake-ethics counterfactuals.

The board's leftist emeritus speaks...and evades, of course. Jack's smart enough to recognize a double bind. Naturally, it's not a double bind for anyone who's normal. It's actually a really, really easy choice. It's only impossible for people like you.