[mcphage]

> Iran wasn't exactly peaceful before February and attacked shipping regularly before then too. Oh and they attacked their own people, foreign nationals, Iranians abroad, and committed terror attacks abroad.

None of the nations involved in this fight have been peaceful. That's why I'm talking about just this specific war.

> I find declaring the Pax Americana dead somewhat premature.

If America wins, then yeah, probably it'll limp on. If America loses, and Iran gets to dictate terms in the Strait of Hormuz, then I'm not sure how long it will last before other nations follow suit.

[spwa4]

> None of the nations involved in this fight have been peaceful. That's why I'm talking about just this specific war.

Only if you take the 5 year old's definition of peaceful (ie. "not attacking")

Any reasonable moral position will of course mean that doing nothing, even if that means not attacking, is not necessarily a peaceful position. Nor is an attack necessarily not peaceful. For example, how Europe treated Ukraine before and during the war with Russia can easily be argued is not peaceful, it's helping the war criminal and it obviously did not lead to peace. The most generous interpretation you can make is that Europe was funding war. Only an idiot would call that a peaceful attitude. And for another example, what you wrote.

> ... then I'm not sure how long it will last before other nations follow suit.

Strange how you say the US is not peaceful, immediately followed by an argument why US's attack not only leads to peace, but the "non-attacking" nation must be defeated for peace. Which I'm sure we'll agree requires more violence. In fact your argument that Iran "defending itself" leads directly to a bigger war is accurate, I think.

Iran is basically fighting for a resumption of most parts, especially the bad parts, of colonialism (one definition of colonialism would be "taxing foreign nations" after all. I like that definition because a US audience will immediately realize why that leads to war)

That's the moral difficulty here: If the US wins, the west will be at peace with Iran. If Iran wins, war may very well be inevitable. In fact, war with a great many countries may be inevitable (Indonesia has already announced they want to tax the Malacca strait, and China has responded exactly the way you'd expect)

But yes at this point you have the ridiculous soundbite: "war is peace". The irony of that slogan, of course, is that it comes from 1984, as an example of "doublethink" which was George Orwell criticizing communism and totalitarianism. But the slogan is always used to defend totalitarian states, usually ones on the warpath.

[mcphage]

> Only if you take the 5 year old's definition of peaceful (ie. "not attacking")

I'm not sure what definition of "peaceful" you're going with here, if it includes any of the US, Iran, or Israel, prior to the start of this war. I guess I'm not as sophisticated as you.

> Strange how you say the US is not peaceful, immediately followed by an argument why US's attack not only leads to peace, but the "non-attacking" nation must be defeated for peace. Which I'm sure we'll agree requires more violence. In fact your argument that Iran "defending itself" leads directly to a bigger war is accurate, I think.

I'm not sure why you think that's strange. There was a status quo: Iran lets ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It works well enough. Then the US attacked, and that status quo is gone. If the US ends this war without re-establishing the status quo, then the world will be worse for everyone, and other nations bordering critical shipping lanes will be encouraged to follow suit.

So it's better for everybody if the US wins. But the US doesn't have much leverage to do so, and so the situation is: the US started a war that it didn't need to start, but can't easily win. The foreign policies that built the Pax Americana have been abandoned.

[spwa4]

> I'm not sure why you think that's strange. There was a status quo: Iran lets ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It works well enough. Then the US attacked, and that status quo is gone. If the US ends this war without re-establishing the status quo, then the world will be worse for everyone, and other nations bordering critical shipping lanes will be encouraged to follow suit.

There was no status quo, there's just people looking (now, after the fact) for an obvious party to blame for the bucket flowing over. Status quo is just a war that's on pause rather than resolved.

The Iran war is a case of "the drop that overflowed the bucket". There was "peace" because Iran believed it could not win, while Iran's army was strengthening and becoming more extreme constantly. The water level in the bucket was rising, in other words, because of what Iran did. Now I can agree that Trump added a big fucking drop into that bucket (unless he wins, in which case he dropped the water level by A LOT. So to some small extent the jury's still out)

If you look at Iran's economy (which is all that matters), even before the war, the only option for Iran is a big external cash injection, and they are in total desperation since at least April 2025. That's what the IRGC is fighting for. That's the only way to end this war (because without that cash injection the Iranian population will keep attacking the IRGC. They have no choice but to continue attacking).

Oh, and oil is on it's way out, so this will not be the last war in the middle east. China refused the very obvious and cheap fix to their oil problems Putin was offering. They don't think they will still need oil soon.

And yes, people are desperate to look moral, and specifically to make doing nothing look moral. So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.

[mcphage]

> There was no status quo, there's just people looking (now, after the fact) for an obvious party to blame for the bucket flowing over. Status quo is just a war that's on pause rather than resolved.

Status quo is a shipping lane that's been open since the 1980s.

> So we all blame the US and Trump. Great, and I don't like Trump either, but that's the sum total of the depth of that argument.

You think the only argument against starting a war you're not ready to prosecute, doing it badly, disrupting the oil market for months, and potentially encouraging nations all over the world to start tolling international trade... is "Trump Bad"? I guess you were right, I really am the idiot in this conversation.

[spwa4]

> Status quo is a shipping lane that's been open since the 1980s.

Yes, people are incredibly bad at recognizing that something that must change, will change, and instead simply refuse to accept reality. Also see Climate Change. Also see your comment.

It is at this point a certainty that the AMOC (includes the Gulfstream) will shut down, effectively in about 20 years. Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and others WILL be uninhabitable by the turn of the century, plus equatorial countries, for the reverse reason. This has happened, as in this is in the past, even though most of the actual cooling is only starting. Maybe it's just me, but are you seeing anyone reacting?

There are other massive events that are at this point in the past. The Ganges valley (including the entirety of Bangladesh) has dried up, in addition to water level rise that will drown the major cities. So Bangladesh and quite a bit of India is fucked in both ways: it'll both dry up and flood. At almost the same time. Are they, or anyone, adapting?

> You think the only argument against starting a war you're not ready to prosecute, doing it badly,

Given that those consequences were unavoidable at some point, I see the logic of picking the best time to strike and striking, yes. As I said, the only solution for Iran's economy at the moment is a very large cash injection (ie. large amounts of goods from outside the country that aren't paid for). Either that happens, or it'll collapse to the point it cannot feed Iranians anymore. The timing of this war was determined by sanctions (and thus mostly by Europeans), not by the US attack.