The violation of international norms will lead to a collapse of those norms. But how many times before have these norms been violated? The "Nuremberg norms" only lasted about 8 years, from 1945 to 1953. Then, in 1954, the CIA began to fund the French colonial war against Vietnam. I'm sure there were other violations in that 8 year period, but Vietnam was a big one.
Maybe these private violations don't matter; it's public violations that weaken the norms. Well, Vietnam in 1964 was a big violation. Iraq and Afghanistan were violations. It doesn't seem like these Nuremberg norms have ever stopped America from doing anything.
Nuremberg norms against wars of aggressions seem about as effective as Constitutional norms against executive war powers. When those norms promote the American interest (in Ukraine), they are upheld. When they contradict the American interest (Iran), they are ignored.
I think the only honest, practical position is to either argue from the perspective of the American imperial interest or to support some kind of "Axis of Resistance." I prefer the former. But trying to avoid taking a side doesn't seem to be an option.
Vietnam was an intervention on behalf of the lawfully recognized Vietnamese government, the Geneva conventions don't even apply in internal conflicts like these, only in conflicts between states. The US was at war with Afghanistan and the Taliban due to it protecting Al Qaeda within its borders.
Iraq - yes, the only way to stop that from eroding norms would be for Obama to have prosecuted Bush and co for making up a fraudulent causus belli.
Is there any evidence the Taliban was protecting Al Qaeda? The presence of Al Qaeda in the mountains, ignored or neglected by the Taliban, isn't the same as providing protection. Was there any attempt to negotiate with the Taliban for the extradition of Al Qaeda terrorists? Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
This is once of those times that demonstrate you are ahistorical, argue from first principles, and need to go live irl for a while. The war happened bc the US demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden and they refused, and Bin Laden was in Tora Bora and went to Pakistan later. Please go live IRL and come back to this in a decade.
This is a very weird personal attack. Me going to the gym, having sex with women, and touching grass has nothing to do with empirical facts, which in this case are quite obscure and unknown to most Americans. I'm asking you questions, not asserting my confidence about these matters. If I knew I wouldn't have asked.
you make some good points but lose all credibility claiming Israel was 'unprovoked'. Are you kidding? Iran was behind Oct 7, the Second Intifada, and hundreds of Israeli and Jewish deaths going at least as far back as the 1994 attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish community center. They sponsored Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. And of course they directly attacked Israel twice in 2024. What would it take for Israel to be sufficiently 'provoked' in your mind -- do the Israelis need to wait for a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv?
“Historically, preventive attacks on nuclear facilities, like Israel’s attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981, have only intensified countries’ nuclear ambitions and driven their programs further underground.”
Doesn’t make it the right move, but they never made a nuke so uh, clearly the US was successful at that goal in the long run. You even make that argument yourself wrt aluminum tubes
To be fair to the particular chumps you've got on the front page, I'm not sold that this was something that they actually wanted to do. I'm sure you're familiar with the amount of influence that the Israel lobby and other perverse actors in the FP blob hold over the white house (ANY white house). Seems to me that pinning the blame on the individuals that hit the green light for this particular op misses the forest for the trees - especially when we consider that the groundwork for this conflict has been being laid for years.
Iran probably won't meaningfully retaliate precisely because Trump is not seeking a war or even regime change via serbia-style bombing campaign. Zero upside for them to escalate, they'll just do more performative strikes on Israeli cities or US bases. the likeliest outcome is that this is going to be stage-managed like Soleimani was.
Trying to tie the justified concern about the strike to pie in the sky visions of international law and attempts to impeach Trump is gay and retarded.
Every single cretin that would go after Trump using international law as a basis was also jerking off when Ukraine did that big drone attack on Russian assets just a few weeks ago. The ability to conduct """unlawful""" attacks on international enemies on a whim will always be a coveted asset. The Democrats just have a different list of targets than the traditional GOP snakes.
If you actually want to stop this war from happening, there are lots of people in the GOP this time who also don't want to see it happen. But they want to see another idiotic impeachment circus happen even less.
You're right that at the end of the day the country with the biggest gun makes the rules, but treating Ukraine and Iran differently isn't hypocritical. Ukraine is in the middle of a shooting war and they hit ru military targets and didn't cause disproportionate collateral damage.
If what the US and Israel did was unlawful it's because they aren't at war with Iran and have no basis to be at war. My view is that strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were justified bc Iran would conduct a first strike with nukes once they got them, but that's a question of fact you could argue either way in good faith.
The international law everything here is based on gives privileged votes to China and Russia because they happened to be on the winning side of WWII. Would the """international community""" ever consider expelling them from the general UN council to try and enforce international law better? Lol.
No most international law including the ICC are done by treaties between states, the UN doesn't legislate international law. The UN is a talk forum and only does anything operational when there is consensus about it.
But why was enrichment at 60% if they weren't planning to make a bomb? Also, Israel's official argument for why a nuclear Iran is so dangerous is that they might give the bomb to terrorists. Wouldn't that be so bad that we shouldn't even allow a small chance of that happening?
1. Because they wanted to keep open the option of acquiring nuclear weapons in the future if the circumstances compelled them to do so, just like plenty of other countries including Japan and South Korea. That doesn’t mean they were planning on building nukes, and even if it did, they weren’t imminently going to acquire them and there was still time for diplomacy to work.
2. That’s absurd and there’s essentially zero chance it would happen. Giving nukes to terrorists would undermine deterrence (which is, like, the only point of acquiring nuclear weapons) and undermine Iran’s own security and its leverage over non-state proxies. Plus, nuclear weapons are traceable so there’s no advantage of it. Anyone who thinks this would happen is delusional or a liar.
The violation of international norms will lead to a collapse of those norms. But how many times before have these norms been violated? The "Nuremberg norms" only lasted about 8 years, from 1945 to 1953. Then, in 1954, the CIA began to fund the French colonial war against Vietnam. I'm sure there were other violations in that 8 year period, but Vietnam was a big one.
Maybe these private violations don't matter; it's public violations that weaken the norms. Well, Vietnam in 1964 was a big violation. Iraq and Afghanistan were violations. It doesn't seem like these Nuremberg norms have ever stopped America from doing anything.
Nuremberg norms against wars of aggressions seem about as effective as Constitutional norms against executive war powers. When those norms promote the American interest (in Ukraine), they are upheld. When they contradict the American interest (Iran), they are ignored.
I think the only honest, practical position is to either argue from the perspective of the American imperial interest or to support some kind of "Axis of Resistance." I prefer the former. But trying to avoid taking a side doesn't seem to be an option.
Vietnam was an intervention on behalf of the lawfully recognized Vietnamese government, the Geneva conventions don't even apply in internal conflicts like these, only in conflicts between states. The US was at war with Afghanistan and the Taliban due to it protecting Al Qaeda within its borders.
Iraq - yes, the only way to stop that from eroding norms would be for Obama to have prosecuted Bush and co for making up a fraudulent causus belli.
Is there any evidence the Taliban was protecting Al Qaeda? The presence of Al Qaeda in the mountains, ignored or neglected by the Taliban, isn't the same as providing protection. Was there any attempt to negotiate with the Taliban for the extradition of Al Qaeda terrorists? Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
This is once of those times that demonstrate you are ahistorical, argue from first principles, and need to go live irl for a while. The war happened bc the US demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden and they refused, and Bin Laden was in Tora Bora and went to Pakistan later. Please go live IRL and come back to this in a decade.
This is a very weird personal attack. Me going to the gym, having sex with women, and touching grass has nothing to do with empirical facts, which in this case are quite obscure and unknown to most Americans. I'm asking you questions, not asserting my confidence about these matters. If I knew I wouldn't have asked.
What is meant by “Axis of resistance” and why do you take the former position?
The recent events shouldn't distract anyone from the urgency of dealing with bug suffering
When the aluminum tubes are for piping water to a children’s hospital instead of a nuclear centrifuge. —>🥺
you make some good points but lose all credibility claiming Israel was 'unprovoked'. Are you kidding? Iran was behind Oct 7, the Second Intifada, and hundreds of Israeli and Jewish deaths going at least as far back as the 1994 attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish community center. They sponsored Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. And of course they directly attacked Israel twice in 2024. What would it take for Israel to be sufficiently 'provoked' in your mind -- do the Israelis need to wait for a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv?
“Historically, preventive attacks on nuclear facilities, like Israel’s attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981, have only intensified countries’ nuclear ambitions and driven their programs further underground.”
Doesn’t make it the right move, but they never made a nuke so uh, clearly the US was successful at that goal in the long run. You even make that argument yourself wrt aluminum tubes
To be fair to the particular chumps you've got on the front page, I'm not sold that this was something that they actually wanted to do. I'm sure you're familiar with the amount of influence that the Israel lobby and other perverse actors in the FP blob hold over the white house (ANY white house). Seems to me that pinning the blame on the individuals that hit the green light for this particular op misses the forest for the trees - especially when we consider that the groundwork for this conflict has been being laid for years.
Iran probably won't meaningfully retaliate precisely because Trump is not seeking a war or even regime change via serbia-style bombing campaign. Zero upside for them to escalate, they'll just do more performative strikes on Israeli cities or US bases. the likeliest outcome is that this is going to be stage-managed like Soleimani was.
Trying to tie the justified concern about the strike to pie in the sky visions of international law and attempts to impeach Trump is gay and retarded.
Every single cretin that would go after Trump using international law as a basis was also jerking off when Ukraine did that big drone attack on Russian assets just a few weeks ago. The ability to conduct """unlawful""" attacks on international enemies on a whim will always be a coveted asset. The Democrats just have a different list of targets than the traditional GOP snakes.
If you actually want to stop this war from happening, there are lots of people in the GOP this time who also don't want to see it happen. But they want to see another idiotic impeachment circus happen even less.
You're right that at the end of the day the country with the biggest gun makes the rules, but treating Ukraine and Iran differently isn't hypocritical. Ukraine is in the middle of a shooting war and they hit ru military targets and didn't cause disproportionate collateral damage.
If what the US and Israel did was unlawful it's because they aren't at war with Iran and have no basis to be at war. My view is that strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were justified bc Iran would conduct a first strike with nukes once they got them, but that's a question of fact you could argue either way in good faith.
The international law everything here is based on gives privileged votes to China and Russia because they happened to be on the winning side of WWII. Would the """international community""" ever consider expelling them from the general UN council to try and enforce international law better? Lol.
No most international law including the ICC are done by treaties between states, the UN doesn't legislate international law. The UN is a talk forum and only does anything operational when there is consensus about it.
I like Trump’s new hat. Very sparkly.
But why was enrichment at 60% if they weren't planning to make a bomb? Also, Israel's official argument for why a nuclear Iran is so dangerous is that they might give the bomb to terrorists. Wouldn't that be so bad that we shouldn't even allow a small chance of that happening?
1. Because they wanted to keep open the option of acquiring nuclear weapons in the future if the circumstances compelled them to do so, just like plenty of other countries including Japan and South Korea. That doesn’t mean they were planning on building nukes, and even if it did, they weren’t imminently going to acquire them and there was still time for diplomacy to work.
2. That’s absurd and there’s essentially zero chance it would happen. Giving nukes to terrorists would undermine deterrence (which is, like, the only point of acquiring nuclear weapons) and undermine Iran’s own security and its leverage over non-state proxies. Plus, nuclear weapons are traceable so there’s no advantage of it. Anyone who thinks this would happen is delusional or a liar.