Trump hasn't started a war, but he has tried to start a war with Iran. And he has worsened every single war Obama inherited and started. More bombings, more drone strikes, more troops on the ground.
And then he backed down despite the advice of his generals. Trump is not beholden to the American imperial apparatus in the way that Obama et al were and will be, and that's partially why they hate him so much.
Whatever you think of the Iran deal, it sure as shit wasn't assassinating Iranians and nearly starting a war.
Watching so many otherwise sensible leftists bend over backwards to defend Trump is fucking embarrassing. Shit like this absolutely hurts the left because any ordinary person can see that going from peace to military exchanges is bad.
Casually brushing off an escalation this enormous (and similarly minimizing the de-escalstion inherent in the previous nuclear deal) is a defense of Trump. Going back and saying "but don't vote for him" doesn't change the fact that the substance of the argument here and in other threads on the topic is "Trump would actually be better than Biden." Making that argument requires defending Trump, because on its face almost starting a war with Iran after inheriting a diplomatic agreement with the country shows that Trump has been worse on a major foreign policy issue.
I get that you don't want to defend Trump on the whole, but you are in fact defending him on this. It's a terrible take. If you want to make the (reasonable) case that they're both dogshit, leave it at that. Trying to sell people on "no Trump would actually be better" just ain't it.
You can't just lump all this together under one big "America doing imperialism" umbrella. Some actions (the invasion of Iraq) cause exponentially more death and destruction than others (bombing Libya).
We killed a tenth of Iraq's pre-war population over the course of our invasion and occupation. That same ratio would mean about 8 million dead Iranians had the situation not cooled off. We killed maybe 8 million people in Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea combined. Even risking that (and the thing about brinksmanship is you don't always manage to stop short of the cliff) ranks just shy of actually invading and occupying a country, especially when you tear up a treaty and invent a crisis out of whole cloth to get there. It definitely doesn't fall into the category of "relatively normal" U.S. imperialism. A real chance of killing that many people is not just another fuckup on the pile.
A thing I wrote earlier about US relations with Iran under the Trump and Obama adminstrations:
It wasn’t a “diplomatic agreement” it was fucking extortion to get Iran to stop their nuclear program cos if they succeeded it would get a lot harder to coup them.
The USA broke their side of the “agreement” the month the deal was signed when they never halted sanctions like they’d agreed to.
Iran is in a bettter position now than at the end of Obama’s second term. Obama’s deal left Iran under moderate sanctions (a blatant violation of the deal as it was written) and under the threat that if UN inspectors weren’t satisfied their nuclear program wasn’t happening those sanctions would increase to cripping levels. The Trump administratoin increased US Sanctions on Iran but the loss of US soft power under his regime led to the UN declining to extend UN sanctions following the assasination despite the US pushing for those sanctions to be extended. As it stands the UN sactions on Iran are set to expire in October 2020, the US’ unilateral sanctions are increasingly inneffective as the US’ economic hegemony deteriorates and the Iranian nuclear program has more enriched fissible material stockpiled and is presumably closer to producing a nuclear deterrent than it ever has been.
The Trump regime has been a fucking gift to Ali Khamenei and the people of Iran.
I think this relies on the demonstrably false idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That's imperial propaganda. The Obama Iran deal was definitely extortion, but I think there's a clear case that it gave Iran more room to operate than the previous relationship did; the intensive nuclear standards and inspections were restrictive and obviously unfair, but the deal as a whole was less restrictive than the previous status quo since Iran did not actually have any plans to make nukes.
Obviously, the collapse of US soft power has been a boon to the entire world, and I think you can partially attribute that to Trump. But I think the far, far more significant factors are the inevitable failure of every US institution due to late capitalist instability and, most importantly, the rise of China as the soon-to-be dominant economic power (military power is another story, unfortunately).
You do make some good points I'm definitely thinking about, though.
Trump hasn't started a war, but he has tried to start a war with Iran. And he has worsened every single war Obama inherited and started. More bombings, more drone strikes, more troops on the ground.
And then he backed down despite the advice of his generals. Trump is not beholden to the American imperial apparatus in the way that Obama et al were and will be, and that's partially why they hate him so much.
How the fuck is killing Soleimani backing down? Why is everyone in this thread ignoring that?
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They wouldn't have tanked the Iran nuclear deal and then started a regional crisis on Twitter.
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Whatever you think of the Iran deal, it sure as shit wasn't assassinating Iranians and nearly starting a war.
Watching so many otherwise sensible leftists bend over backwards to defend Trump is fucking embarrassing. Shit like this absolutely hurts the left because any ordinary person can see that going from peace to military exchanges is bad.
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Casually brushing off an escalation this enormous (and similarly minimizing the de-escalstion inherent in the previous nuclear deal) is a defense of Trump. Going back and saying "but don't vote for him" doesn't change the fact that the substance of the argument here and in other threads on the topic is "Trump would actually be better than Biden." Making that argument requires defending Trump, because on its face almost starting a war with Iran after inheriting a diplomatic agreement with the country shows that Trump has been worse on a major foreign policy issue.
I get that you don't want to defend Trump on the whole, but you are in fact defending him on this. It's a terrible take. If you want to make the (reasonable) case that they're both dogshit, leave it at that. Trying to sell people on "no Trump would actually be better" just ain't it.
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You can't just lump all this together under one big "America doing imperialism" umbrella. Some actions (the invasion of Iraq) cause exponentially more death and destruction than others (bombing Libya).
We killed a tenth of Iraq's pre-war population over the course of our invasion and occupation. That same ratio would mean about 8 million dead Iranians had the situation not cooled off. We killed maybe 8 million people in Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea combined. Even risking that (and the thing about brinksmanship is you don't always manage to stop short of the cliff) ranks just shy of actually invading and occupying a country, especially when you tear up a treaty and invent a crisis out of whole cloth to get there. It definitely doesn't fall into the category of "relatively normal" U.S. imperialism. A real chance of killing that many people is not just another fuckup on the pile.
He did not "puss out". He is currently actively antagonizing Iran, stealing their oil tankers and weapon shipments. He did that this week.
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All we have to go on here is history. Obama de-escalated with Iran. Trump escalated more than any president since the coup.
Edit: can somebody please fucking refute this claim instead of just downvoting it?
A thing I wrote earlier about US relations with Iran under the Trump and Obama adminstrations:
I think this relies on the demonstrably false idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That's imperial propaganda. The Obama Iran deal was definitely extortion, but I think there's a clear case that it gave Iran more room to operate than the previous relationship did; the intensive nuclear standards and inspections were restrictive and obviously unfair, but the deal as a whole was less restrictive than the previous status quo since Iran did not actually have any plans to make nukes.
Obviously, the collapse of US soft power has been a boon to the entire world, and I think you can partially attribute that to Trump. But I think the far, far more significant factors are the inevitable failure of every US institution due to late capitalist instability and, most importantly, the rise of China as the soon-to-be dominant economic power (military power is another story, unfortunately).
You do make some good points I'm definitely thinking about, though.
Did Iran say this? If so, why did they remain a party to the deal?