[bigstrat2003]

It seems pretty damn unjust to indiscriminately punish people (the Iranian citizens) who may or may not even agree with what the government is doing and certainly have no power to change it in any case. Unfortunately I, too, have no power over my government or else I would lean on them to stop making life worse for people who did nothing wrong.

[weatherlite]

Interesting take. Do you feel the same about boycotting/sanctioning Israel? The general sentiment I see in HN is definitely pro boycots on Israel.

[skeaker]

Yeah, it sucks. The only silver lining I see is that it seems this is the alternative to war, in which case people would be indiscriminately enlisted and killed. Maybe things wouldn't go that far either way but it's all I can think of.

[webninja]

Look at how well sanctions worked on Russia. /s. They sure backfired. Especially the USD based sanctions. The idiots who thought them up managed to do more harm to the U.S. than Russia with them. Just go ahead and send in real troops already. At this point, it’ll be better for the US economy and Ukraine.

Putin claims the US already pays mercenary forces from the U.S, UKraine, and elsewhere already. He also makes the claim that “talk about Russia using a nuke is just U.S. propaganda” from the government to gather consent from the general population to raise taxes.