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3 yr. ago

  • I didn't say violence was always wrong. I said it was always the result of failure. There are of course plenty of times when violence is justified.

    But let's not lose sight of the fact that the country that was bombed literally murdered forty thousand protesters in the past month. To put that in perspective, the total number of protesters deaths in Minneapolis is under ten, and that's a hugely tragic situation. And the leaders who ordered those forty thousand people murdered are the ones who were just blown up in that bomb strike.

    And I'm still saying the bombing in Iran was a bad thing.

    If the goal was regime change (which is a noble pursuit here in the same way it would be a noble pursuit to work to unseat Netanyahu), Iran was already well on its way to that, and there are dozens of things the US could have done to push for that without escalating to a full scale kinetic war. The bombing, if anything, is regressive to those goals.

    And to your final point, yes, there comes a time when a situation has deteriorated to the point that there is some actor that is an existential threat to one or more people groups and the only mechanism to stop them is violence. There's an argument that literally either side of this conflict represents one of those existential threats. But I'm unconvinced that any have progressed past the point of intervention via non-violent means.

    Which is why I asked earlier "why is it a good idea to bomb Israel," as so far the best answer I've gotten is "because Israel is bad," which isn't a reason. If that's the standard, I've got a list of about 20 countries to give you that were gonna have to bomb as well. If it's "we need to bomb countries that are conducting genocide," then there's a list of about half that we need to be actively bombing.

    Genocide is bad and needs to be stopped. That goes without saying, obviously. But the answer isn't just "have the US bomb every country that's perpetrating a genocide." It turns out that that will often do more harm than good, and sometimes there are more effective "non-bomb" solutions that will do much more in the long run. Even if "bombing the bad people makes the lizard brain feel good."

  • I didn't say bombings were always a failure. I said they were always the result of failure.

    Or is your argument that there was literally zero chance to stop the fascist decline of Germany at any point prior to full scale war?

  • Bombings are always the result of failure. Violence is the final refuge of the incompetent. Sometimes necessary certainly, but never correct with appropriate foresight.

    And revenge being the reason behind any action is foolish. It's like making the focus of prison punishment instead of rehabilitation. When you drop bombs, it should be with particular policy goals in mind.

    I also think that it would be preferable if things in the Middle East got calmer, not more escalated. If I had the choice between less violence there and more, I will certainly chose the less.

    So, we then have to define what we mean by "bombing Israel." Wanton bombing I can see no argument for that isn't simply punitive, which is clearly bad under the aforementioned criteria.

    There may be an argument for a targeted strike to just target Netanyahu. You have to ask yourself what the goals and effects of such a strike would be. I think it is unlikely to greatly change Israel's posture. Netanyahu is unpopular domestically, as is this war, but the nation of Israel has a history of rallying around martyrs that would probably overwhelm any gains by having Netanyahu out of the picture. This would also likely lead towards an even greater retaliatory strike against Iran (which, again, would also be bad.)

    So what's the benefit of bombing Israel other than "it makes me feel good to hurt a bad guy"? Why is it actually good?

  • I didn't say that, for one. For two, I have no idea what "Stephen Universe reasons" means.

    In general, I don't cheer for escalation in the Middle East. I think bombing Iran was bad. I think bombing Israel would also be bad. I can agree that Netanyahu is bad without championing for more bombs.

    The ideal would be that he is removed from office and tried for war crimes. Not that we have a continuing and escalating war.

  • Is anyone claiming that this isn't a reasonable stance for them to take?

    Like, plenty of people I'm sure don't want them to succeed, but I don't think anyone is a shocked Pikachu that they want to.

    Iran hasn't been historically shy about calling for people's deaths, and as you say, their head of state was just killed. Of course they want to retaliate. That is the natural and expected thing for them to want.

    It may or may not be a good thing if they're able to succeed, depending on your perspective. But I don't think anyone thinks it would be an "unfair" thing of them to do.

  • This has some "Obama wears brown suit," vibes.

    I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but I think there are more substantive things to criticize than that he wore a hat.

  • I grew up on 150 acres in a very rural part of the Southern US.

    This could also be an age thing though. There is now a county animal control and some animal shelters. That wasn't true in the early 90s.

    But the area has grown a bunch since then too. What used to be farmland for ages has started to turn into suburbs and subdivisions. I'm sure what I've described is still pretty normative in places that are still underdeveloped.

  • Did you not see the part where I said I wasn't defending Noam and that what she did wasn't what I'm describing?

    Two things can be true. Noam can be a bad person, and people in rural areas can, unfortunately, sometimes have to put down feral dogs.

  • I get that you're mocking her, but genuinely sometimes, when you're particularly rural, you do in fact have to shoot a dog.

    Where I grew up, there was no animal control. There was no one to call if there were loose animals. Combine that with the fact that it was an area where people would just dump unwanted animals, and we had a real feral dog problem.

    When you have dangerous dogs show up a couple of times a month, and your only other option to get rid of them is to try and catch them, load them up in a crate, drive them an hour into town, just to give them to a pound that's gonna put them down anyway; yeah, sometimes you kinda don't have much other option but to shoot them.

    My dad put down a good few dogs when I was young. It wasn't something he liked doing. But when you have young kids running around, you can't just let a bunch of feral dogs run loose.

    What should he have done? What was the "correct" decision for him to make?

    Edit: Not defending Noam here. Her story about shooting her dog has a lot more wrong with it than simply shooting the dog. She's a monster.

  • Listen my guy, I definitely don't read all these dude's usernames when I post.

    But while I'm sure being misgendered is upsetting to any hombres I've mistakenly done it to, I feel like there's a difference between misgendering some bro in real life and over a faceless medium like a message board. Or, as I like to call it, a man-ssage board.

    ... And yeah, I'm overly wordy. It's just how I post. Stream of consciousness bby!

  • My guy, the hypothetical was if Iran had bombed Israel instead of the other way around. Reading comprehension is important.