Our fundamentalists just use a Ryder rental truck filled with ammonium nitrate or walk around the Michigan Capitol with locked and loaded AR15’s over a blue mask. Some are still preparing for civil war over it.

That’s not Christian fundamentalism. You can whataboutism all you’d like, it doesn’t change the fact that globally most terrorists are Islamic extremists by a wide margin. And all of those are fundamentalists.

Sure. I'll generally agree with you on that.

But that doesn't change the reality on the ground in regards to this war. Clearly the White House believed that a few weeks of intense bombing would drive the Iranian regime to collapse. Equally clear is the undeniable fact that Iran 1) currently controls the SoH, and 2) still possesses the capability to do serious damage to the energy infrastructure of the Middle East.

The regime cares about one thing only: its survival. This is a regime that sacrificed countless child soldiers in a decade-long war with Iraq. A regime that happily murdered tens of thousands of protesters just a few months ago. They have nothing to lose. They have no reason to back down. We could indeed destroy their power grid and desalinization plants, and they'd still hunker down, while escalating their own attacks on the Gulf energy infrastructure.

Never in human history has an aerial war alone resulted in the destruction of a regime. The only ways to actually destroy the current Iranian government would be a full scale ground invasion (and a quagmire that would make Iraq look pleasant), or we launch a nuclear first strike, with the very real possibility of igniting World War 3.

Every American president since 1979 has understood this. Except, it would appear, for the current one.

Little problem there.

They have actually offered/threatened to deal with IR in the past. The US prefers that, as hot it as it is over there, that the temperature remains below Five Million Celsius.

I don't know what trumps motive to do this was, and my guesses would not be charitable, but it is at least possible that IL felt existentially froggy and was threatening to take matters into their own hands. If that turns out to be the case, then trump did the right thing. Better some prime-time CSAR drama and an oil price spike, than nukes popping off.

The nuclear genie isn't sealed in his bottle, but he's kind of hiding in the neck. Once he gets out again, we'll probably be in a new era for geopolitics and security. There many different ways that could go down, but I suspect most of them are bad (compared to the current status quo).

My comments have nothing to do with the war, per se.

But I also think that it is naive to think that this wasn’t going to happen eventually. About all you can do is make them Gaza every few decades to slow their progress. The regime has too iron of a grip on their country for a popular uprising and the mullahs would never give up their nuclear ambitions.

Which is why TLV drags us into the Middle East to do their dirty work. They have the entire US population of 300+ million people to fight for their goals in the middle east. When their enemies are weakened, the US will be much weaker, out of cash, in serious debt, no more global political clout -- nobody will be able to stand in the way of TLV taking what they want. They may not be crazy, but they certainly don't have any reservations about using the US as an expendable weapon against their enemies.

Besides the protestor deaths that were likely caused by Mossad/CIA, what gaslighting is there?

You basically just admitted that the US is getting blackmailed into fighting this war against Iran. Seems like the right thing to do would be to disarm the country that is doing the blackmailing.

It's because we didn't drink margaritas and take kickboxing classes like Jen Psaki told us to. If all of us had followed her advice the cost of living wouldn't be so painful.

Zip. We’re not getting played. Commercial traffic on the high seas, in the sky, over land routes must flow. Israel’s bond to the US is non-negotiable and any dope from head of state to donkey cart driver knows it.

Wow, take off the tin foil hat dude.

Brother, he took the time to write out a thoughtful and eloquent analysis with lots of good examples and you called it a wall of text and then him a name. Now straw man stuff. There will be disagreements, but we can debate better than that.

How can I "admit" to something I have nothing to do with?

It's not "blackmail" (unless they have really compromising pics of somebody). It would simply be IL stating that they have reached the point where they need to do XYZ. While offering an alternative to XYZ, if the US helps out. That's communication and negotiation, not blackmail.