18 thoughts on “If Trump advocates peace then war is the answer?”

  2. The Democrats want a war. It’s much better for them. It will tank the economy, it will prove Trump is unhinged, and it will cement another twenty years for them.

    We are being goaded into war by the Russians and the Chinese, one of which wants to destroy us and the other of which wants to own us. Those are facts. Ask Bob McNamara.

  3. What I don’t understand is why the “hard liners” in Iran have to gain? Billons of dollars more? Death on the high seas? A destruction of Western economies? Probably the latter is more important to them.

    Trump’s statements were oblique and probably too candid but the essential humanism of what he decided was unquestionable: we could have killed a lot of innocent people, and we could do that at any moment, but we didn’t do anything. He refrained, even in the face of unquestionable provocation. It was a good decision, and it was a moral decision. Please don’t expect anything like morality from the New York Times, you aren’t going to get it. They’re completely and unambiguously partisan, and of course anything Trump does is wrong.

  4. There is nothing in this universe that the Russians and the Chinese want more than to drive this country into a war that will destroy the economy of this country and everyone else’s. Russia has its Zumwalt class cruise missile ship just offshore. All of the recent activities we’ve seen are a deliberate provocation banking on the idea that Trump is an unhinged and essentially immoral man who is, to put it bluntly, flaky and completely erratic and given to fits of insanity.

    We are not bumbling into war and we should never do that. This country has too much at stake and so do our allies for us to sleepwalk into it. The Iranians and many, many others would love to see him pull the trigger and have the gun explode in our faces. This has been going on now for quite some time. The absolute worst thing he could do would be to overreact to losing a robot drone aircraft. They have already threatened – and carried forward threats into deliberate action – attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. They don’t want a proxy war, they want an open war, which will cause much more damage to us than it will to them.

    In one sense they’re gambling that Trump doesn’t have any trusted advisors left, people who are giving him careful and wise advice. Inadvertently or not, he’s created that perception. We should never go to war with Iran based on shooting a robot down. Period. If it escalates into Americans being killed, we’re going to have to be extremely cautious about our response. The Ayatollah wants nothing in the world more than to claim that his country is a victim of Western aggression led by the United States. We shouldn’t take the bait. Stay strong.

    We’re living in very dangerous times at this moment and there are lots of people who want to see us destroy ourselves. It must not happen.

  5. @Alex, you got it wrong. It is not the Russians and the Chinese that want us in a war with Iran, it is the Saudis. Saudi Arabia is the one to benefit the most from a war with Iran.

    • Nope. I disagree. I don’t think the Saudis want us to go to war with Iran, it would be terrible for everyone. Iran has plenty of problems of its own, without the Saudis doing anything at all. The Iranian people are oppressed. They have tremendous problems internally, they are desperados and want the United States to make them the victims of aggression.

      We should absolutely never succumb to any of that. The most important thing we have left is moral authority over the use of our weapons. To take the hook into war with Iran is a horrific outcome, and the one the Ayatollah wants the most. It will be a religious war. I can’t think of anyone sane in the Middle East who wants to see us go to war with Iran at this moment, which should tell people what is really happening.

  6. Why haven’t I heard any apologies to Iran for the US toppling of the democratically elected Iran President Mosadegh in 1953?

    • Oppressed nation? Seems to me you’ve never been there or met anyone from there.

      They have their problems, like every other country. But this situation is entirely on US. One would think you’d have learned to stay out of everyone’s business.

    • Not sure that in retrospect, protecting Iran from becoming a Soviet satellite state is something that needs an apology.

  7. You continually shout down the NYT as “fake news” and too liberally biased to ever be trustworthy, but for some reason you keep citing it as a legitimate point of view?

    • The NYT does express the views of a significant number of Americans. It is also a source of the opinions many Americans hold. They see it as the paper for “their side” of political debates.

      I respect the New York Times as an organization that gathers and prints factual information. I often disagree with the conclusions they draw from those facts. But I still pay attention to them. I want to hear perspectives different from my own. If that perspective is absurd, I think it is healthy to point that out. It is the best way to get people to think about important issues.

      Suppose you lived in a country where 45% of the population considered a news source to be the best news available. They regularly print things you think are absurdly biased. When they print something truly, obviously, and hilariously hypocritical, wouldn’t you point out to people in your social circle how silly they are?

    • Only 45% of the population? Easy: the Pravda had a larger readership..
      As Toucan Sam would say, if you like your newspaper you can keep your newspaper.
      Oh wait! I hear that subscribing for the Pravda was mandatory for the party members.

    • If you like your NY Times you can keep your NY Times! Thanks for the shout out M!

  8. Why would anyone bother to read an article with a headline saying “some see something ambiguous?”

  9. Launching an attack then stopping at the last minute doesn’t sound dangerous and ambiguous?

    And let’s not make out like he stood in front of a line of tanks with a shopping bag.

  10. One thing more after a couple of days: I did read all the editorials in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. WSJ made a persuasive argument, they said Iran called Trump’s bluff. It was fairly good but I don’t think it prevails. The onus is now on the Iranians. They have provoked, they’ve done some damage to material, they’ve cost us a few hundred million dollars, it’s no small change, but we can build another Global Hawk drone to replace the one we lost. I do agree with them that Trump’s Twitter cover story was hollow, it sounded very dumb, but that’s Twitter for you.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-calls-trumps-bluff-11561157239

    We haven’t lost any lives. If the Iranians choose to continue their provocations they will be doing so even though we didn’t retaliate in blood for anything they have done so far. I don’t know whether that matters to them, but it should matter to us. We’re working very hard to bring a different reality to the Middle East, and I don’t think we’ve encouraged or emboldened them as much as the WSJ makes it sound. When you have the Big Stick, you only swing it when you absolutely need to, because you’re going to own all the results. It seems to me that the Iranians have a much bigger conundrum now than they did a few days ago.

    • You don’t think the U.S. would shoot down Iranian recon drones flying inside U.S. airspace?

      The U.S. pulled out of a successful non-proliferation pact w/ Iran, has been enacting sanctions, and threatening war.

      Are those acts not provocation?

      “they’ve cost us a few hundred million dollars” – what do you think the cost of the fleet off the coast of Iran costs?

  11. @Baz: If they do encroach on our airspace, we absolutely should. The fleet off of Iran right now very well-placed and it’s in our interest to keep it right where it is.

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