Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread

chop2chip said:
Is your principle objection to this war actually process based? I’m skeptical you’d have a different opinion if a bunch of republicans in Congress voted Yes.

Regardless, the specific criticisms you’ve had seemed centered around this being a violation of universal human rights. I question the exercise of condemning harm and refusing action when the moral standards aren’t being applied symmetrically
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The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of it. I of course have my own personal moral objections to our involvement in this situation, but that’s a much separate issue from whether or not such action is justified and legal. My criticism here is on the latter issues. While you’re right that it’s unlikely I’d find our involvement agreeable to me, I think there are also valid questions the government must answer regarding our actions thus far. If we indeed killed a bunch of kids, that’s one additional question to answer.

As far as moral equivalence, I understand your point but it does come back to a prior point of mine on protesting against or criticizing Authoritarian regimes vs. criticizing our own actions as American observers. That criticism will inherently be applied asymmetrically because of the shared underlying assumption that we are morally superior. It’s generally understood that authoritarian regimes such as Iran are both bad and generally not responsive to public criticism. And while that’s important to keep in mind, it does not absolve the United States of its own moral and legal obligations. So when a bomb goes off at a school, my primary complaint here is the idea that we can just hand wave off any possibility of the United States being responsible by blindly appealing to our relative sense of morality compared to Iran, while also dismissing criticisms that rest on that same disparity.
 
mqt said:
The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of it. I of course have my own personal moral objections to our involvement in this situation, but that’s a much separate issue from whether or not such action is justified and legal. My criticism here is on the latter issues. While you’re right that it’s unlikely I’d find our involvement agreeable to me, I think there are also valid questions the government must answer regarding our actions thus far. If we indeed killed a bunch of kids, that’s one additional question to answer.

As far as moral equivalence, I understand your point but it does come back to a prior point of mine on protesting against or criticizing Authoritarian regimes vs. criticizing our own actions as American observers. That criticism will inherently be applied asymmetrically because of the shared underlying assumption that we are morally superior. It’s generally understood that authoritarian regimes such as Iran are both bad and generally not responsive to public criticism. And while that’s important to keep in mind, it does not absolve the United States of its own moral and legal obligations. So when a bomb goes off at a school, my primary complaint here is the idea that we can just hand wave off any possibility of the United States being responsible by blindly appealing to our relative sense of morality compared to Iran, while also dismissing criticisms that rest on that same disparity.
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I agree the legal and justification questions are distinct from personal moral discomfort, and the US should be held to the highest standard of accountability — as should Israel and Iran. But asymmetrical criticism isn’t an appeal to moral superiority; it reflects where we actually have influence. Americans can pressure our own government in ways we simply can’t with authoritarian regimes like Iran. Evaluating a strike requires context: the question isn’t just whether civilians (or Americans) could die, but whether action reduces or increases overall harm and complies with the law. Demanding accountability and acknowledging that intervention might sometimes be justified aren’t mutually exclusive.
 
chop2chip said:
I agree the legal and justification questions are distinct from personal moral discomfort, and the US should be held to the highest standard of accountability — as should Israel and Iran. But asymmetrical criticism isn’t an appeal to moral superiority; it reflects where we actually have influence. Americans can pressure our own government in ways we simply can’t with authoritarian regimes like Iran. Evaluating a strike requires context: the question isn’t just whether civilians (or Americans) could die, but whether action reduces or increases overall harm and complies with the law. Demanding accountability and acknowledging that intervention might sometimes be justified aren’t mutually exclusive.
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But this is my attempt at steel manning the case for bombing Iran. At the end of the day, I’m not really convinced American interests support getting involved, including “liberating” Iranians.
 
Iran and Venezuela are interesting tests of certain doctrines.

One is the notion of pre-emptive strikes. I don't think we were pre-empting anything imminent in either case. Where Venezuela and Iran cause a lot of harm is through the destabilization of entire regions by being bad actors in various ways. To justify intervention in either case you need a broad view of the national interest. I can't criticize either intervention because I think a broad view of the national interest is the appropriate way to look at these situations. "America first" is a slogan that encompasses a narrow view.

The other interesting angle comes from those who cite places like Libya where what came after a dictator was deposed is not obviously better. Sometimes intervention will make things worse. We always need to weigh the probabilities. And of course the resources expended need to correspond in some way to the potential costs and benefits. None of these interventions are guaranteed to be slam dunk successes. We have to accept some degree of uncertainty. To refuse to do so is a formula for paralysis.
 
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nsacpi said:
Iran and Venezuela are interesting tests of certain doctrines.

One is the notion of pre-emptive strikes. I don't think we were pre-empting anything imminent in either case. Where Venezuela and Iran cause a lot of harm is through the destabilization of entire regions by being bad actors in various ways. To justify intervention in either case you need a broad view of the national interest. I can't criticize either intervention because I think a broad view of the national interest is the appropriate way to look at these situations. "America first" is a slogan that encompasses a narrow view.

The other interesting angle comes from those who cite places like Libya where what came after a dictator was deposed is not obviously better. Sometimes intervention will make things worse. We always need to weigh the probabilities. And of course the resources expanded need to correspond in some way to the potential costs and benefits. None of these interventions are guaranteed to be slam dunk successes. We have to accept some degree of uncertainty. To refuse to do so is a formula for paralysis.
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Iranians are not Libyans

There is a much higher degree of success with the end result being a democratic self governing system in Iran.
 
chop2chip said:
I agree the legal and justification questions are distinct from personal moral discomfort, and the US should be held to the highest standard of accountability — as should Israel and Iran. But asymmetrical criticism isn’t an appeal to moral superiority; it reflects where we actually have influence. Americans can pressure our own government in ways we simply can’t with authoritarian regimes like Iran. Evaluating a strike requires context: the question isn’t just whether civilians (or Americans) could die, but whether action reduces or increases overall harm and complies with the law. Demanding accountability and acknowledging that intervention might sometimes be justified aren’t mutually exclusive.
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I agree on this, and that was part of my argument that I probably didn’t articulate clearly enough. But I think the assumption of moral superiority and of our influence on how our government acts go hand-in-hand quite a bit. To me, that we have that influence to begin with implies an understanding that we should and will act more righteously than a brutal regime such as Iran. So when someone like thethe attempts to shield the United States or Israel from any possible accountability by simply making shit up and then responds to any questions by simply appealing to that moral superiority, I think it distorts that relationship between us and our government. At that point we’re no longer pressuring our government to live up to our standard, we’re using that standard to dismiss any possible need for accountability.
 
mqt said:
I agree on this, and that was part of my argument that I probably didn’t articulate clearly enough. But I think the assumption of moral superiority and of our influence on how our government acts go hand-in-hand quite a bit. To me, that we have that influence to begin with implies an understanding that we should and will act more righteously than a brutal regime such as Iran. So when someone like thethe attempts to shield the United States or Israel from any possible accountability by simply making shit up and then responds to any questions by simply appealing to that moral superiority, I think it distorts that relationship between us and our government. At that point we’re no longer pressuring our government to live up to our standard, we’re using that standard to dismiss any possible need for accountability.
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What shit was made up?
 
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