Aged Like Milk

I think you have misinterpreted my comment. I care because I think this would be orders of magnitude worse than the US invasion of Iraq.

It should be noted that this is occurring in the context of a genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, where people are being forced to queue for "aid", and then get shelled by israeli tanks. Forty-eight people were killed yesterday in such a manner, I believe the death toll for today was around fifty. This is being done with the tacit blessing of the "West" to the point some of our more psychotic politicians have openly called for harms to be brought to people who as a matter of conscience are attempting to deliver aid on their own, or who are protesting against it on humanitarian grounds. I can't wait to see the next round of protests - No Kings folks marching beside the MTG MAGA Anti-War crowd, who will shortly be further radicalized after their first true encounters with systematic police brutality.

In Iran's case, they were hit with an unprovoked first strike, on civilian targets no less- including striking a nuclear facility that violates both the UN charter and IAEA regulations, as well as their academics who are by definition illegal targets regardless of any association with a nuclear program or not. This also violates basic decency and common sense. If radioactive material is released from these enrichment plants, it's possible the land there could be poisoned for generations to come. No credible sources back a claim that Iran was even attempting to build a nuclear weapon, and their enrichment program was possibly the most closely monitored such example in the world. What we are going to see is endless and shameless lying, paranoia and conspiracy peddling to build public support for more military adventurism, just like the build up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Historically, the west has shown itself to be untrustworthy but in this case, a new low was well and truly reached. What use is the contraption of law if nobody abides by them? Civilization is primarily built on trust, and the deepest sin the West is committing is that we are in the process of well and truly shredding that trust, within and without.

Historically, they've been treated poorly by successive Western meddling throughout the 20th century. An engineered coup after their Socialist elected PM (Mohammad Mosaddegh) attempted to nationalize oil production in the context of the Cold War put an US vassal in charge. This "Shah" generated enough unrest to force a popular uprising in 1979 after committing the sin of modernizing too quickly. It seems this was a common issue as world+dog were attempting to suddenly match Western industrial outputs at any human cost. which has been in power ever since. Iran is a more complex and diverse society than most people realize, it's over 90 million people and is not a poor or inconsequential nation. Even if the current government is overthrown, Iran itself isn't going to go anywhere and they would be back within a few decades in some shape or form.

Furthermore, internal israeli politics play a part - the current government launched this attack on the day there was consideration to dissolve that government. Starting a war is a great way to shut down internal dissent.

It's going to be interesting, and exceedingly revolting, to watch how the symphony of utter fools gear up to build support for yet another psychopathic war in the Middle East, after we've watched our supposed "moral" ally shamelessly slaughter civilians for over a year.

Just so I'm clear - the psychopaths are people like chuck schumer, lindsay graham, randy fine, meghan mccain, merz, starmer (who literally just said "israel is doing our dirty work for us" ????).

As for folks who watch too much cable news and just wind up parroting calls to war... we need to get better at opposing this sophisticated brainwashing.

As for my personal feelings? My heart's broken. Despite the fact I probably have very little in common and wouldn't do very well under an authoritarian religious government such as in the case of Iran, I don't think they deserve what's currently happening to them, and they definitely don't deserve what our frothing-at-the-mouth psychotic insane war hawks want to happen next. None of us deserve this. Even those that don't know any better, and I'm utterly sick of being dragged around and impoverished by this brand of stupidity.