We all know if you want a country to have peaceful intentions, then you should repeatedly bomb them and invade them. Surely an Iranian citizen will love the countries that destroyed their homes, workplaces, economy and future, and they will never hold a grudge! That's why Middle Eastern conflicts are resolved quickly with no bad blood whatsoever!

Worked for Japan. Germany too. And Italy.

Agree. Agree. There is no good solution. You either go scorched earth and create the next generation of nut bag Islamists or you let them have a nuke and suffer the consequences of having a terrorist group with a nuclear weapon.

Neither are very good outcomes.

Then why is Trump begging to negotiate with these "terrorists"?

JCPOA wasn't perfect, but it didn't cost tax payers $2 billion per day, it didn't kill thousands of civilians, it didn't destroy a massive chunk of the world's petroleum infrastructure, it didn't hand the Iranians billions of dollars in tolls to control international waters, it didn't cost us about 2 dozen aircraft and the lives of 13 service members and injure hundreds more (probably thousands actually), and it didn't tank the stock market. But hey this is the price we pay for electing someone to be Israel's lapdog!

And I hate to break it to you, but there is no way to prevent a country from getting nukes. The tech is too easy and too widespread. Pakistan did it as an extremely impoverished country decades ago. Not to mention how easy it would be to just buy a few from North Korea. It will happen eventually, there needs to be a plan that ensures peace and stability in the Middle East, because letting Israel run the show and massacre civilians isn't sustainable.

The trouble is that it’s way easier and less war crimey to say that than it is to actually do that.

How about Korea? How about Vietnam? How about Afghanistan? How about Iraq? Got any examples from the last 80 years? Or are you just adding nothing to the discussion with irrelevant examples that have little bearing on the present situation?

Was that a bad thing? Do you think the vast majority of the Venezuelan people support Trumps actions because, it sounds like it couldn't have gotten much worse.

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela...m_medium=share

For those to lazy/prejudiced to read the article....“This increase, as we have indicated, will be a responsible increase,” Rodríguez said. “Likewise in the near future, as Venezuela enjoys more resources that allow for the sustainability of salary improvements and workers’ income, we will continue moving forward on this path.”

Many public sector workers survive on roughly $160 per month, while the average private sector employee earned about $237 last year. Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or $0.27, has not increased since 2022, putting it well below the United Nations’ measure of extreme poverty of $3 a day."

"The International Monetary Fund estimates Venezuela’s inflation rate is a staggering 682%, the highest of any country for which it has data. The country’s central bank last month released inflation figures for the first time since November 2024, showing the annual rate in 2025 soared to 475% from 48% the year before."

https://bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46999668

Ukraine isn't the main topic here, but since you brought up spending, it's worth noting the irony: the resources being poured into the current conflict with Iran could have been far better invested in supporting Ukraine against Russia. That would have actually served clear U.S. strategic interests, weakening the one rival that competed with the U.S. for global supremacy for 50 years, generating real soft power in Eastern Europe, and accelerating the degradation of Russian military and economic capacity... which, by the way, is already happening after their "3-day special military operation" stretched into years. And let's not forget, Russia and Iran aren't separate problems. They are allied, sharing intelligence and military technology. Weakening one weakens the other. Instead, this approach left both standing while opening a new front against an adversary that the administration's own intelligence assessments did not consider an imminent threat. Russia, on the other hand, is not a potential threat. It is actively invading a European country right now.

But here's the paradox: the argument seems to be that this sky-is-falling mentality, the idea that an imminent Iranian attack was so inevitable and catastrophic that it justified anything, excuses everything. Save it from what, exactly? The U.S. entered this era as the undisputed superpower, largest economy, strongest military, unmatched global influence, allies who showed up unconditionally. The only legitimate concern on the table was the national debt, which, by the way, is another broken promise, partly thanks to the very war being celebrated here. There was no burning house to rescue. The paradox is that the very decline being used to justify these decisions... is being caused by these decisions. And it gets worse: this wasn't even a genuine sky-is-falling moment. The administration's own assessments said Iran was not an imminent threat. So the house wasn't burning. They knew it wasn't burning. And they lit it anyway.

And even on its own terms the argument fails. If the threat was so existential that it justified all of this, where's the result? Iran's nuclear program wasn't obliterated. The threat remains. So you paid the full price in treasure, alliances and credibility, and the problem is still there.

And here's what makes it even more contradictory: acting recklessly without measuring consequences is what you'd expect from an actor with nothing to lose. The U.S. is the opposite, precisely because of everything it has built, it has more to lose than anyone. That's not a reason for timidity, but it is absolutely a reason for strategic thinking over impulsive action.

As you said yourself, anyone with a modicum of common sense can see it. "No more wars" was the pitch. The result so far has been a new war, trade wars, diplomatic chaos, weakened alliances, a brain drain accelerated by an open war against academic institutions and research centers, and zero clear strategic wins anyone has been able to articulate here. I'll leave the floor open, if there are concrete positive outcomes from this approach, I'd genuinely like to hear them laid out.

Maybe governing the most powerful country in history requires a bit more brain than balls.

Not really. You see talking heads say things about war crimes without really even understanding what constitutes a war crime under LOAC.


But it would cost so much and take forever.

That’s why I said it’s a dichotomy. You either obliterate any semblance of the current rule or you let them have nukes. Personally, I think the nukes part is worse. But that’s just like my opinion.