I noted here a long time ago that my steady opposition to any war with Iran has regularly landed me in bed with some strange people. Like, the driver of a truck covered with signs about the Illuminati conspiracy and other arcane matters, but also NO WAR WITH IRAN. Now I find that the strongest opposition to the war seems to be coming from, on the one hand, cranky leftists who think Israel's campaign in Gaza is funded by global capitalism as part of their long-term plan to keep the former colonial states oppressed, and on the other, Tucker Carlson, who shredded Ted Cruz over Cruz's complete ignorance of the country he wants to attack. The top opponent within the Trump administration seems to be Tulsi Gabbard, who is in most matters (so far as I can tell) a complete lunatic.
Sigh.
2 comments:
I also strongly oppose a war with Iran, and also have found myself in the strange position in recent months of sometimes agreeing with people like Carlson, Rand Paul, and Josh Hawley. I hate to admit it, but that video of Carlson laying into Cruz is quite wonderful. Cruz is displaying the same ignorance and incuriosity we've see from hawks in previous wars.
Trump obviously doesn't know either. He urged residents of Tehran to evacuate. That's a ridiculous idea. There's like 16 million people living in the metropolitan area.
I was watching 2-way with Mark Halperin, Sean Spicer, and Dan Turrentine this morning. They showed the clip of Carlson eviscerating Cruz, and then Halperin made it clear he thought Cruz having to know the population of Iran or its ethnic makeup before making a decision was silly. I was stunned. He compared it to someone from Boston being criticized for not knowing how old Fenway Park was. For some reason Halperin thinks it will all work out fine -- bomb the hell out of the place, push for regime change, and everything will fall into place, and if it doesn't, well, just leave. And the 600,000 -- 700,000 soldiers Iran has. Well, the Israeli air force will kill them all if they attack.
It's all as easy as that. So what could go wrong? Iraq and Syria are possible models. Millions displaced, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, dead and wounded. And then there will be the refugee problem, and the burden the problem places on the refugees themselves and the host countries.
My fantasy is Trump changes his mind, removes U.S. assets from the area, and wishes Bibi good luck. That's my fantasy. What I think will happen is he has placed himself in a corner he cannot get himself out of without a great deal of damage to his reputation and to his base, no matter what he does, so he'll go for it.
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