[applfanboysbgon]

> someone worse

You do not get to decide that. If we allow everyone to invade other countries and murder leaders because they deem those people worse than themselves, the world will be engaged in endless war. Or do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?

[trimethylpurine]

If a guy pays soldiers to sneak into another country, kidnap rape and murder children, and continues similar behavior for 4 decades I can decide he's worse than Trump. I do get to decide that. Some things are worse than others.

The preceding comment was about holding someone responsible. It appears you might have misunderstood that mine points out that this is exactly how the school was hit.

[mhb]

With this reasoning, how do you make any decisions in your everyday life? Does everything look like a morally relativistic gray to you?

[applfanboysbgon]

??? Do most of your everyday life decisions involve starting wars or killing people? That's concerning. Are you a high-ranking officer in the US military? As it happens, I'm not, and my decisions do not typically have life-or-death consequences.

I also don't even know what you're getting at. There was nothing "relativistic" or "morally grey" about my argument. My point is that in order for any kind of peace to exist, each country must be able to accept that there will be other people in the world who are morally repugnant to them. Because there will always be leaders who consider each other repugnant, so if you endorse starting wars over that, you're committing to a world where everyone is starting wars all the time as the international norm.

[trimethylpurine]

But if you're getting attacked for 4 decades by another country, do you do something about it or are you saying that's also wrong?

My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades. It's not just disagreeable. People are seeking justice.

It's one thing to dislike another politician. No one needs justice for repugnancy. But if they are committing acts of terror, that's a totally different thing.

[applfanboysbgon]

The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world for decades. Among many other things, it overthrew the democratic Iranian government to establish a puppet autocracy in Iran, leading directly to the current one after a revolution. The entire reason Iran funds terrorists that target the US is because the US is an existential threat to it. So your argument basically boils down to "if I shoot someone, and they shoot me back, am I not entitled to self-defense?". The actual answer is to stop shooting them. Stop fucking up the entire Middle East and the people from there won't hate a country across the world so much that they feel a worthwhile use of their life is to strap a bomb to themselves in order to kill people from there.

[trimethylpurine]

Your other comment is locked apparently. Can't reply.

But there you suggested that the US should stop because they make Iran want to bomb and that's why there's war. And we can say the same about Iran.

So, your solution is hopeless as we already know from centuries of conflict history. Iran wants to kill us for historical events. We want to kill them for those too. Very insightful.

But we're bigger and the war is just on the TV in America. You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.

I didn't know why you think America will be easier to convince of that.

[applfanboysbgon]

> Iran wants to kill us for historical events.

No, Iran wants to kill you for current events. You're talking like American imperialism in the Middle East is past-tense. It is on-going, constantly. It is happening right now. This, itself, is an imperialist war. Trump is not going to war for whatever fucking reason you think he is, like stopping terrorism or changing the Iranian regime to help the Iranian people.

> You have a much better shot of convincing them that we'll stop bombing them if they just take it for a while and then don't seek revenge.

They LITERALLY DID THAT. The first invasion striking their nuclear facilities was itself an act of war that would have justified closing the Strait and all other measures they could take to fight back. Yet they accepted such a blatant crime against them and tried to de-escalate, were in the middle of negotiating a humiliatingly one-sided deal (after Trump tore up the one they had made with Obama, for no reason), and then the US attacked them in the middle of negotiations for the second time in a row. This time killing their leader, 150 children, and countless other crimes. Nobody could ever lay down and accept that. You have just created a country full of people that will justifiably hate you for another 80 years, minimum. They have been taught that the only thing trying to appease the US does is embolden the US to take even more from them.

I don't know how to communicate this to you, but your country IS THE AGGRESSOR. The US is worse than Iran. Fullstop. The Iranian regime is evil, and despite that, the American regime manages to be multiple times worse. Peace in the Middle East was possible. It is the US who is constantly, constantly, constantly stirring up conflicts there, and you have the gall to blame Iran for it.

[trimethylpurine]

>The regime in the US has been terrorizing around the world

Yeah, that already happened. Now what? How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed?

Your proposed solution is essentially a leader in every country that has suffered from Iran's terror who can convince his/her people that their kidnapped children are worth it.

Obviously that isn't feasible. But worse, how is that different than saying it's okay for Iran to kidnap children?

[applfanboysbgon]

> How do we stop more kids from getting kidnapped, raped, murdered, or bombed?

Not launching missiles at schools would be a great start to stopping kids from being bombed!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479695

[mikkupikku]

> My understanding is that the regime in Iran has been terrorizing around the world for decades

The list of Iranian terror attacks in America amounts to a whole lot of fuck all. Whatever Iran might be doing elsewhere shouldn't be America's problem.

[trimethylpurine]

They are doing it in the US, so it is America's problem.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/03/06/iranian-and-iranian-...

And anyway, even if that weren't happening, most Americans are immigrants within two or three generations. This is a country of immigrants. A huge number of Americans have families that are affected by Islamic Republic terror attacks outside of the US. India, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, basically all of the countries in northern and eastern Africa, France, Germany, the UK.

The list of countries that haven't been attacked by terror groups funded and/or organized by Iran's Islamic Republic is pretty short.

[mhb]

I didn't think the point was that subtle. There is good and evil, right and wrong, survival and destruction. You seem to think that drawing a line around some land and calling yourself a country immunizes you from the moral scrutiny of your neighbors.

While this certainly accords with the promulgations of the morally bankrupt UN, it is not a recipe for existing in our world. This is why it is important to have a powerful military.

[applfanboysbgon]

It is a matter of pragmatism. Even if I myself consider my perspective on good and evil to be objective, it is a given that each of my neighbors will have their own seemingly-objective sense of good and bad that differs from my own. We are then at an impasse. Do I attempt to kill all of my neighbors in order to rid the world of what I perceive to be evil? Or do I perhaps make peace with an imperfect world in which bad things happen in other countries that are not my jurisdiction to worry about? Apparently you subscribe to the "kill all your neighbors" camp, that your objective brand of morality must be enforced on the entire world by means of military might. World conquest, however, is an utterly irrational thing to attempt, and will only lead to death and destruction, not an idealistic world that conforms to your sense of morality.

[mhb]

I don't know what to tell you. You're restating the paradox of tolerance. You should probably come to some philosophical resolution regarding that before you keep digging.

[applfanboysbgon]

What I have said has nothing to do with the paradox of tolerance. I am firmly on the side of not tolerating the intolerant, but stating that, "not tolerating" does not extend to "starting wars in an attempt at world conquest to rid the world of the intolerant".

[testaccount28]

> do you think perhaps deciding who to invade and kill is a special privilege reserved only for your country, which should be emperor of the world?

yes. we got the bomb before they did, because our policies are better than theirs.