their violent terrorists, our valiant freedom fighters etc and so forth :zizek:
i just got out of an uber with an iranian man telling me about how this is a very bad thing
To be fair, if "Cold War II" leads to proxy wars between the US and China, then Iran would be a perfect battle ground for it. China siding with Iran is very bad news if America decides to commit to attacking it.
Only problem is, unlike in the 80s, there is no one who wants to attack Iran on America's behalf (like Saddam did). Except maybe Saudi Arabia. But anyone who knows anything about that dynamic knows Iran would destroy Saudi Arabia in literally hours if the two went to War. MBS is not Saddam. Mountains are easier to defend than flat (highly flammable) desert plains.
So if America wanted to attack Iran they would have to use American troops, not proxy troops. And America would loose easily a million troops in that fight - Iran is one of the most difficult countries on Earth to invade, based on geography, military strength, ideological commitment, etc. I do wonder if China would try to stop the US directly if it attacked Iran, that is uncertain...
I just can't see it happening. Everyone is exhausted from Iraq and Afghanistan. People don't even want to think about foreign policy, let alone go to war with a country like Iran. Obama signed a peace treaty but now we're going to go to war?
Impossible sell.
I agree. But I agree in the short-term. Invading Iran is a long-term project for the US military industrial complex and if it takes 20, 30, or 50 years they'll eventually get around to it. Hell, they invaded Iraq twice before they were satisfied in its destruction. Rumsfeld and his buddies had those plans just lying around for over 20 years when 9/11 gave them an opening. Invading Iraq would have been an "impossible sell" until 9/11 made so many Americans anti-Islam war hawks for a few years. Don't underestimate the power of propaganda fugue-state Chauvinism.
Oh it's no doubt possible, just not within Biden's first term or the near future. Asking the US public to green light a huge war after fucking up wars for two decades is a hard sell. NATSEC burned through all it's political capital, and it'll take a while to restock it up.
A Cold War and a decade or two of gaslighting and agitation will restock the political capital cupboard. Defense profits are through the roof since 2000. Regulatory capture is in full effect and I'm sure there are plans to embroil the US in another Cold War with proxy fights against China.
First as tragedy, then as farce. Instead of jet fuel, the Iranians will fill the plane with silly string.
It'll have giant speakers on the outside blaring "THIS IS AN IRANIAN PLANE, THIS PLANE CAME FROM IRAN!", But said in a clearly fake accent that sounds like Apu.
And America would loose easily a million troops in that fight
perhaps the only good thing that could come of a US-Iran war
That prospect does make me sad. Yeah, there are plenty of rabid chuds who just want to kill brown people in the military, but the level of indoctrination going into American youth means plenty of brainwashed young people will have their lives stolen in such an event (that doesn't justify their actions, of course, and I'd definitely feel more sad for the millions more Iranians who would die in that scenario).
The silver-lining to all this being that there was a case of a certain country which suffered egregious military casualties in a pointless war leading up to a revolution :lenin-pogger:
Absolutely. As one of those kids who was at that crossroads in his life at 17ish and worried about loans/life/direction/etc, passing by a recruitment booth at high school stands out as a memory to me. So I sympathize to a degree with people who drank the imperialist koolaid or simply wanted a way out of financial stresses or both.
That said, I wouldn't begrudge someone in Yemen or Iraq if they consider the troops irredeemable scum.
It's not about sympathy as much as about strategy. Changing the United States is fundamentally impossible without allies in the United States military. And there are hundreds of thousands of potential comrades in the armed forces.
Yep. I don’t expect there to be something like the Russian Revolution in the US but having military allies is a massive boon to any movement.
Changing the US is fundamentally impossible because of the amount of brain dead colonists that live here. obligatory read Settlers.
I've read Settlers. The number of Hispanic people in the USA (AKA the descendants of indigenous Americans) is increasing year by year. If you write off the USA you are also writing off all of those indigenous descendants, which is racist.
Eh, just because Mestizo Latinos have indigenous blood doesn't mean they can't internalize settler mentality. Pretty much all of Latin American history since the initial conquests are a testament to that, and not all gusanos are white.
But yeah, you're right. I'm not sure how one reads Settlers and comes to the conclusion that, because the US is fundamentally an imperialist settler-colonial system, we shouldn't take advantage of its many contradictions (soldier discontent) and leave the growing number of POC and conscious whites to burn along with it.
TBH most of the ex-soldiers I've met are really cool nice people and they themselves are often dissatisfied and angry at what the leadership is doing. If we just dismiss every member of the American military whole-cloth, we're dismissing thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of potential comrades. A huge swath of the American military/veterans is 18-25-year-olds disillusioned, depressed, and alienated by capitalism and imperialism - AKA potential comrades.
(P.S. The O.G. Kurt Vonnegut was a veteran of WWII who later became an anti-war activist. Also, people are more likely listen to veterans about military stuff. Anti-war veterans are the best people to "sell" the anti-war message, IMO.)
Sounds about white.
So you falsely assume the person you disagree with is white, to try to win an argument. Brilliant.
I thought this website was for GOOD FAITH discussion???
I have friends and family who are Iranian. They seem to be under the same "debt-trap" impression as liberals here believe, thinking that China will simply annex them into their "sphere"; which is a kick to the gut for a people who've been under four decade siege for the crime of asserting their independence. I don't really blame them, seeing as how America has been doing to them what we accuse Russia of doing to us. Plus, Chinese foreign policy has had some "big-brained" moments bordering on imperialism, at times.
Plus, Chinese foreign policy has had some “big-brained” moments bordering on imperialism, at times.
Mostly due to sino-soviet split brainworms
i mean he literally came to america within the last couple years i think he still counts as iranian
So fucked up how Chynah bombed a million Iraqis to bloody shreds and justified it by lying about the presence of WMDs.
when you say insert state enemy does insert evil stuff it doesn't need a justification for why they could possibly be doing it. they can be evil for the sake of being evil.
Ah, for sure. Thinking about that Parenti bit about anticommunism as a near-religious orthodoxy through which all actions can be negatively interpreted.
AIPAC just mad they're only able to grift $3b a year off of America.
I've already seen libs screaming about this being "debt trap diplomacy"
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China is tricking Iran into a debt trap. This will be bad for Iran.
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Iran is getting money! This will be good for the terrorists!
I wonder if AIPAC will have to start insisting that China is now the Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism or if they'll just go back to blaming Syrians for everything.
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I didn't think anyone could make the star of david look fascist but ffs that logo.
Thye should add some more zeroes to that figure, it doesn't look scary or ridiculous enough
I believe imperialism doesn't just imply exporting capital, but exporting capital and trying to exert political control to dominate the foreign market. China claims to not want to do that and to respect sovereignty and from what I can understand that is largely true at least for now despite issues and complaints that do crop up.
They definitely dont do anything even nearly on the scale of western militaries or imf/world bank/structural adjustment so far.
So I would say it's debatable albeit minor. At least for now. Also important not to forget that China has class struggle too as well as being a national liberation project in addition to the communist project, so I'm sure there are internal debates in the extent of soft power, military power etc. to project vs. pursuit of world revolution or socialism in one country and so on.
I think it's easy to get to in our own western propoganda and forget that chinese aren't all slavering drones working for Xi, but have internal national struggles, class struggle, a bourgeoisie, liberals, Maoist, trade unions gay rights activists and inequality and, etc. Etc and all of the contradictions you would expect to arise from those contradictions.
Been seeing a lot of Chinese youth communist league Twitter accounts with rainbows and LGBT in the bio/name. They definitely have struggles even within the party, let alone the entire country.
