At the moment the US should be concentrating on getting rid of the evil sitting at the center of its own government that is not interested in liberating the Iranians. Nor is it interested in making Americans safer. It is entirely focused on Donald Trump's insatiable need for power, for which he is raping his own country and destabilizing the world. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to wake up. And yes, the most devastating thing that can happen here is that democrats will not stand up to this evil with every fiber of their being.
This is probably the most important paragraph in the whole piece:
"What does the day after look like? Who governs? What fills the vacuum? These are not defeatist questions. They are the only questions that matter, and the absence of clear answers is what separates strategy from improvisation."
Like you, I've got no love lost with the Iranian regime. They're just as brutal as the Taliban or ISIS and better armed. That said, as you know first hand how terrible war is. It's not something to choose just because we can.
This entire piece is written from the comfortable assumption that the United States gets to sit around and deliberate whether it should “obliterate” another country’s government, as if that decision belongs to Washington in the first place.
You reference the Iraq War as a cautionary tale but conveniently manage to omit the unfathomable scale of Iraqi suffering. Estimates put the death toll in the hundreds of thousands to over a million Iraqis - many of them CIVILIANS, many of them CHILDREN. That’s not a footnote. That’s the central moral fact of the war. When those numbers disappear from the conversation, it reinforces the idea that some lives matter more than others.
And the moral high ground argument rings hollow when the United States still struggles with its own serious human rights failures affecting women, minorities, and the poor. From the outside, it just looks less like a crusade for freedom and more like a country lecturing others while ignoring its own problems.
More fundamentally: what exactly gives the United States the right to decide the fate of Iran at all? After Iraq and Afghanistan, the record of “intervention” in the Middle East is not liberation - it’s destabilisation, destruction, and generations of people you don’t care about living with the consequences.
Try a simple thought experiment. Imagine another country deciding that the United States had become morally intolerable - citing racism, mass incarceration, attacks on reproductive rights, paedophilia among those in power, or the poor treatment of migrants - and concluding that the only solution was to bomb Washington and assassinate American leaders.
Imagine a foreign missile strike killing the President, senators, cabinet members. Imagine them calling it “spreading democracy.”
Would you deliberate on it as you have here? Would that still sound like a sober geopolitical calculation? Or would it suddenly look like exactly what it is: violence justified by moral self-righteousness.
Debating whether to “spread democracy” through bombs isn’t thoughtful reflection. It’s the same imperial logic that has already left entire countries shattered.
The real lesson of Iraq isn’t that the messaging was muddled. It’s that the premise - that one country gets to remake another through force - was disgusting and wrong.
This should be titled: Dear President Trump, What’s the Game Plan for our Iranian brothers and sisters in peril and how does this impact the American people, especially those who voted for your team?
That said, it’s mystifying why the first order of business, prior to the initial strike on this cruel regime, wasn’t to secure the Straight of Hormuz.
This is interesting, but it's not an either/or proposition as to how gov't money is spent. Some people complain about building rockets to go to space when there are people without homes and going hungry. Are we supposed to fix every problem in the U.S. before we can help people in other parts of the world or explore space or the oceans? At that rate we would never do anything other than throw money at social problems and hope that things get better, which they probably won't. Look at Venezuela, rich with oil money the socialist gov't tried to spread the wealth around and solve "the poors" problems. Years later the whole economy was in shambles and massive corruption destroyed trust in gov't institutions. Yes, America has serious problems. We can and should address those problems but we don't have to disengage from the rest of the world to do it.
I’ve been delighted to get to know you through SmartherNews interviews also.
Your words are thoughtful, concise, and incredibly thought provoking. Thank you for this!
I appreciate this thoughtful reflection.
The cruelty of a government is real, and so is the danger that war will add new suffering to people who have already carried far too much of it.
A Very Convenient Apocalypse. Is it a "biblically sanctioned" war, or just a digital smoke machine? 💨💻 https://austinsikora.substack.com/p/a-very-convenient-apocalypse?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=32cg97
#EpsteinFury #NoWarWithIran #65000Pages #DonroeDoctrine
At the moment the US should be concentrating on getting rid of the evil sitting at the center of its own government that is not interested in liberating the Iranians. Nor is it interested in making Americans safer. It is entirely focused on Donald Trump's insatiable need for power, for which he is raping his own country and destabilizing the world. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to wake up. And yes, the most devastating thing that can happen here is that democrats will not stand up to this evil with every fiber of their being.
Well written and spot on Hollie!
This is probably the most important paragraph in the whole piece:
"What does the day after look like? Who governs? What fills the vacuum? These are not defeatist questions. They are the only questions that matter, and the absence of clear answers is what separates strategy from improvisation."
Like you, I've got no love lost with the Iranian regime. They're just as brutal as the Taliban or ISIS and better armed. That said, as you know first hand how terrible war is. It's not something to choose just because we can.
Your privilege is showing.
This entire piece is written from the comfortable assumption that the United States gets to sit around and deliberate whether it should “obliterate” another country’s government, as if that decision belongs to Washington in the first place.
You reference the Iraq War as a cautionary tale but conveniently manage to omit the unfathomable scale of Iraqi suffering. Estimates put the death toll in the hundreds of thousands to over a million Iraqis - many of them CIVILIANS, many of them CHILDREN. That’s not a footnote. That’s the central moral fact of the war. When those numbers disappear from the conversation, it reinforces the idea that some lives matter more than others.
And the moral high ground argument rings hollow when the United States still struggles with its own serious human rights failures affecting women, minorities, and the poor. From the outside, it just looks less like a crusade for freedom and more like a country lecturing others while ignoring its own problems.
More fundamentally: what exactly gives the United States the right to decide the fate of Iran at all? After Iraq and Afghanistan, the record of “intervention” in the Middle East is not liberation - it’s destabilisation, destruction, and generations of people you don’t care about living with the consequences.
Try a simple thought experiment. Imagine another country deciding that the United States had become morally intolerable - citing racism, mass incarceration, attacks on reproductive rights, paedophilia among those in power, or the poor treatment of migrants - and concluding that the only solution was to bomb Washington and assassinate American leaders.
Imagine a foreign missile strike killing the President, senators, cabinet members. Imagine them calling it “spreading democracy.”
Would you deliberate on it as you have here? Would that still sound like a sober geopolitical calculation? Or would it suddenly look like exactly what it is: violence justified by moral self-righteousness.
Debating whether to “spread democracy” through bombs isn’t thoughtful reflection. It’s the same imperial logic that has already left entire countries shattered.
The real lesson of Iraq isn’t that the messaging was muddled. It’s that the premise - that one country gets to remake another through force - was disgusting and wrong.
This should be titled: Dear President Trump, What’s the Game Plan for our Iranian brothers and sisters in peril and how does this impact the American people, especially those who voted for your team?
That said, it’s mystifying why the first order of business, prior to the initial strike on this cruel regime, wasn’t to secure the Straight of Hormuz.
This is interesting, but it's not an either/or proposition as to how gov't money is spent. Some people complain about building rockets to go to space when there are people without homes and going hungry. Are we supposed to fix every problem in the U.S. before we can help people in other parts of the world or explore space or the oceans? At that rate we would never do anything other than throw money at social problems and hope that things get better, which they probably won't. Look at Venezuela, rich with oil money the socialist gov't tried to spread the wealth around and solve "the poors" problems. Years later the whole economy was in shambles and massive corruption destroyed trust in gov't institutions. Yes, America has serious problems. We can and should address those problems but we don't have to disengage from the rest of the world to do it.