> If the enemy does the same kind of mindless killing to the civilians, then I would have different ideas.
You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
The USA had a lot of local support and goodwill in Afghanistan, and turned it into support for the Taliban, because they kept killing civilians in their attempts to beat the Taliban with bombs, because they wanted to limit the unpopular ground troop deloyments. The chance that the same will happen in Iran is precisely 100%
> You mean like bombing a school and killing about 150 schoolgirls?
Even Hamas knows western powers don’t do this on purpose - which is why they take up arms inside of civilian facilities. The Iranian people know the US doesn’t intentionally kill little girls.
Meanwhile the Iranian government quite literally has killed upwards of 30,000 people (maybe some were little girls even) and is hanging people in the public square for protesting.
Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region. Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school? We should be talking about Iran and their revolting crimes instead.
The US attacked Iran because Israel was going to do so anyway. If they didn't attack, that missile wouldn't have killed 150 schoolgirls. Sure, the target was a mistake, but mistakes happen when you shoot thousands of missiles and drop thousands of bombs. If they had not attacked, the girls would be alive.
If Iran hadn't funded and supplied Hamas who then attacked and killed how many people (how many were little girls who were murdered and raped by Hamas?) then Israel wouldn't have had to bomb Iran.
You can go back and forth on who did what first but it ultimately accomplishes nothing in this scenario.
> Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region. Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school? We should be talking about Iran and their revolting crimes instead.
My family are in the GCC, and my parents live near the coast. Iran has not once targeted a civilian infrastructure there directly, except for specific landmarks (Burj al Arab, the Palm, etc.). Whenever Iran prepares a barrage, they usually announce it on state TV, which is then picked up by local authorities or by social media channels. All the attacks that have resulted in deaths in civilian settings are due to intercepted debris falling on civilians. If Iran wanted to destroy Dubai and kill civilians, they could've easily done that by just swarming the skies with drones and exact maximum damage - but they haven't done that. It also doesn't help their case either - most civilians in the GCC are foreign expats, and the backlash against Iran from most countries like Russia, India, China and Pakistan would be severe. Iran isn't stupid, as much as you'd want to believe that.
Civilian life in the GCC is still pretty normal, except for the downturn in business and the lack of tourists during the season. People are losing jobs and Airbnbs are turning into long-term stays. But otherwise civilian life is still pedestrian - heck, my younger brother is going to the Atlantis water park tomorrow because they offered him free tickets.
Israel is obviously a different story, being directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Iran.
> My family are in the GCC, and my parents live near the coast. Iran has not once targeted a civilian infrastructure there directly, except for specific landmarks (Burj al Arab, the Palm, etc.).
That's still not ok, still targeting civilian settlements and infrastructure which is of no military value. Stop making excuses.
> But otherwise civilian life is still pedestrian - heck, my younger brother is going to the Atlantis water park tomorrow because they offered him free tickets.
That's really cool. Life is pretty normal here in the US too. In Israel from what I understand most folks just have to go to the air raid shelters once in a while but life is otherwise pretty normal.
> Israel is obviously a different story, being directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Iran.
Likewise Iran is directly responsible for attacking civilian targets in Israel and other gulf states. I'm not sure life in Iran is really all that normal though. Tehran ran out of water in part because Iran instead spent money on offensive war capabilities and funding terrorist groups, and then they murdered around 30k of their own people. Sounds like most everyone else is living normal lives (Israel, Gulf states, US) but things are not great in Iran under the current leadership and their mismanagement of the country.
> Even Hamas knows western powers don’t do this on purpose - which is why they take up arms inside of civilian facilities. The Iranian people know the US doesn’t intentionally kill little girls.
You really think someone who just had to bury the mangled, burned corpse of their daughter cares whether it was intentional, or because the US military couldn't be arsed to update the data their targeting system operates on?
And it's not going to end with that one "accident". The war hasn't even really started, and the US military is led by a vaguely human-shaped lump of feces who absolutely will start ordering the intentional bombing of civilian targets and gleefully boast about it once he's starting to feel personally offended by the continued failure of "the Iranians" to submit to his will.
> Why are we even talking about the US accidentally blowing up a school?
Asking that question puts you outside the boundaries of polite conversation, so I'll end with a hearty "may you get what you deserve".
> Not to mention Iran intentionally targeting apartment complexes and other civilian targets throughout the region.
You realize that Iran provided 24h notice about attacks that were upcoming today advising people to evacuate and Israel bombs hospitals without warning, right?
Who cares if you are super happy, you get force-drafted with alternative either harsh deadly jail or firing squad. You have 10 seconds to decide. Good luck on having strong opinions in such case.
The truth barely matters anymore. People believe whatever they want to believe, or whatever they are told to believe. You can be sure that Iranians are being blasted with propaganda just the same as Americans are being blasted with propaganda, except that currently Iran is cut off from the internet so the effect is much stronger.
You can't say for sure that you wouldn't wilfully join up if you were in that kind of information environment.
Information does go around even without the internet - doubt that iranians do not know about the things their government is doing in those mass executions.
Knowing is not the same as believing. ICE shoot innocent people in the street but there's still enough Fox News watching idiots who believe the victims somehow had it coming. Now take that and add no Internet access, no independent media, living under sanctions, etc.
If the Fox news watching Americans can be broadly supportive of this war, you'd best believe that there's an equally large contingent of Iranians who feel an equal and opposite antipathy towards the US.
German geography makes it much easier to invade (most of the country except for the far south is a relatively flat plain). And it still wasn't much fun for the troops who had to do it in 1944 and 1945 even against a significantly weakened force fighting on multiple fronts at once
Weird that we can afford how many hundreds of thousands per bomb but can't be bothered to pay entry level wages to manually verify each site. I'm sure the DoD has access to something even better than Google Maps.
Does it matter, at this point? If you go and tell someone who’s lost their home and half their family in a strike, "oops, it was just bad intel", do they hate you less?
Yeah, but… I think if you’re bombing a child’s school because of bad intel, the deaths are on you either way. We’re not going to be like “oh, this war was necessary, which means it’s no biggie that you accidentally killed two hundred children because you didn’t do your DD”
I sometimes wonder if our modern philosophy of requiring intentionality for crimes is the wrong way. You can launder intentionality be not trying too hard. If you try really weakly, it's called negligence but even that isn't as morally bad as intentionality. Perhaps we should forget about trying to read the mind of a state or criminal and only judge them by their actions.
In my country, punishments for killing people with deliberate violence varies from 8 months home detention (bus driver punched a passenger in the face, knocking him out so he fell backward and cracked his head on the ground), to several decades (man grabbed scissors from the kitchen, ran to his ex girlfriend's room, and stabbed her repeatedly). Both victims are equally dead but the courts decided that the perpetrators' feelings mattered far more than what they did. Perhaps if the bus driver had been weaker and needed a weapon, he'd be in prison for 10 years instead of free? Perhaps if the ex-boyfriend had used his fists outdoors on a concrete pavement, he'd be free? Seems grossly unfair.
Was it true for Japan and Germany post WWII? Or between European nations after the same said war?
On the other hand, until a couple of years ago, Iranians and Israeli never directly exchanged even a bullet between them and yet Iran was dedicated to the destruction of Israel, so YMMV.
The threat of Japanese people all waging guerrilla warfare was considered real enough that the US decided to keep the Japanese Emperor as figurehead (even though the US had enough power to sentence or even execute him for war crimes), just so that the Emperor could order his people to surrender and obey US forces.
Something the current US regime might have forgotten.
> Something the current US regime might have forgotten.
Nah, it wouldn't have worked with Khamenei after a few decades of destroy America and Israel rhetoric. It was a good decision to eliminate him and most of Iran's hardliner senior leadership. Now maybe they can make a "deal" with whoever they're replaced with, but I doubt it. The trouble was going all in without a clear plan. Or maybe they have one but they keep it to themselves?
Second, Khamenei in fact presided over Iran who exercised restrain in their responses to attacks and was willing to enter international agreements. And followed them to reasonable level. They did cause destabilization by proxis, they were still regime they were. But like, what Iran regime learned was that restraint makes them look weak and makes them be bombed every couple of months. And that negotiation and international agreements mean nothing.
Third, frankly, as evil regime was, American history and role in Iran was destructive one. You cant take down elected president, put cruel monarchy in power and then play victim when revolution happens. And yes, who ends up winning bloody revolution does not tend to be nice pro-democratic side either. It tends to be the side willing to kill and risk more.
The zionists do not want an economically prosperous Iran. They actually want Iran to descend into civil war and starvation.
Also the reason why Europeans hate this war- we all know were the refugees will end up.
Israel didn't take responsibility for those until October 7th. Now clandestine operations happen all the time, like the Iranian bombing on Jewish center in Argentina in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing
While I understand why Israel would want to target Iranian nuclear scientists, I find it much harder to comprehend why Iran would go out of their way to bomb a Jewish community center in South America.
Germans were salty about being bombed and Germany destroyed. They were also occupied for years and also victory forces made sure the victory was absolute - no peace agreement but armies everywhere. There were other aspects too - like nazi doing a lot of destruction of the Germany by themselves. Germans back then seen the whole thing as a tragedy for Germany and Germans.
The rebuild phase where allies put a lot of effort and money into rebuilding Germany did a lot to ensure good result there. And you still see fascists being popular in Germany, especially in former easter block. It is just that everyone else is still traumatized by the past, school system make sure everyone knows past and nazi propagation is literally illegal.
There is a good case to be made that if it weren't for the consistent pressure, sanctions and assassinations from US/Israel, the moderates would have prevailed in Iran.
You know what engenders nationalism? Attack on your way of life and the murder of someone you know by said attack.