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.
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.