Lesley Carhart 

Feels different than Iraq. In 2001-03 everyone was in for whatever and it was blasphemy to say the war was unjust or ill advised. Everyone was ready to enlist.

People don’t want to die for Israel and they don’t want their kids to. Even the die hard MAGA aren’t into it. They can’t sell dead troops.

Mar 2 at 12:53amWeb
Show thread[HANDMAIDEN] xanMar 2
@hacks4pancakes the warmongers obsessed with doomsday prophecy should be the ones to get into the fucking robot if they want to start the Third Impact and bring about the Human Instrumentality Project
Show threadROTOPE~1 ⭐️Mar 2
@xan they can get in the blender and transcend into LCL the old fashioned way
Show thread🦩 Plastic Garden Fauna 🦩Mar 2

@xan @hacks4pancakes it's an odd justaposition of fear and zealocy. The farther down the MAGAt rabbit hole you get the more for Israel you get while simultaneously becoming antisemitic. Yet somehow, they manage the dissonance.

In my experience it's a lot of evangelical "enemy of my enemy" rationalization narritives mixed with generous servings of rapture Jeebus superiority.

Show threadBruce Heerssen Mar 2

@hacks4pancakes

More than that, Trump promised that he was a peace president, that he would keep America out of foreign wars. Now he's taken out two heads of state in two months. Some lies can't be contained.

Show threadKevin Karhan Mar 2

@bruce @hacks4pancakes that's because #Trump always has been a #UsefulIdiot.

#USpol #Trump #Fascism #Imperialism #Neoimperialism #USA #Iran #War #ASPA

American Service-Members' Protection Act - Wikipedia

Show threadnotanowlMar 2
@hacks4pancakes israel is already so good at murder and child killing and terroizing humanity at scale, we would they need us?
Show thread@pineywoozle ‘s #3WordNoteMar 2
@brotherpsyche Cover
Show threadnotanowlMar 2
@Pineywoozle immoral support
Show thread@pineywoozle ‘s #3WordNoteMar 2
@brotherpsyche Ha!
Show threadJoe BrockmeierMar 2

@hacks4pancakes it’s quite different, I agree. They spent quite a while putting up a facade that it was necessary and legitimate. Trump doesn’t give a shit, and they don’t believe they’ll ever face anything resembling a consequence.

It was wrong then and it’s wrong now, but Bush and co. at least pretended it was right and that they believed that it was. Trump is just a petty mob boss doing whatever the fuck he wants until someone stops him. And I’m not optimistic that’s going to happen.

This timeline sucks. 0/10, do not recommend.

Show threadDBMar 2
@hacks4pancakes Your conclusion - they can’t sell dead troops - is spot on IMO. You probably remember Dick Cheney and W and Condi Rice et al lying about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction people went along that idea. They’re done with that shit. With Iran now, everyone knows there is no threat to the US. Vietnam is the lesson that the MAGA GOP ignores. Family members killed or fleeing. Fighting a war without popular support is a fool’s errand
Show threadRichard K Mar 2
@hacks4pancakes the war on Iraq followed a very vivid attack on the US, even if the attack didn't come from Iraq. The war on Iran follows Trump's whims.
Show threadPPNMar 2
@RichSPK @hacks4pancakes no. The war in Iraq was justified by nothing but warmongering and lies to get the oil and the contracts to rebuild after destroying everything. The French saw through the stupidity and didn’t join for a very good reason. This war in Iran is no different.
Show threadRaven667Mar 2

@ppn @RichSPK @hacks4pancakes these are the trees, to take a step back and look at the forest, the occupation of Afghanistan was also unnecessary, the Bush administration intentionally passed up opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and let him run free so they could justify the full scale war, but the _reason_ they cared about Afghanistan is that it borders *Iran* and Cheney saw it as part of US anti-Iranian policy. The fact the US was in bed with Saddam Hussein in the first place was anti-Iranian policy, so much of our Middle East meddling and alliances is ultimately about our broken relationship with Iran.

The US has two countries that the government is irrationally hostile to, Cuba and Iran, for defying US colonial ambition.

Show threadPPNMar 2
@raven667 @hacks4pancakes @RichSPK I said nothing about Afghanistan and am well aware that it was just as unnecessary. You are teaching me nothing that I don’t already know. The US appears to be irrational to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq because you don’t understand the strained relationship between shiia/sunni that the US is trying to take advantage of.
Show threadPPNMar 3
@raven667 @hacks4pancakes @RichSPK someone blocked me and seems mad that they were schooled and proven to know nothing about the shiia/sunni conflicts at the core of US imperialism in the Middle East 😅
Show threadThe Janx DevilMar 2
@hacks4pancakes Honestly feels a lot more like Desert Storm than the Iraq invasion. Back then I would have thought that restoring the Kuwaiti monarchy to power would have been a hard sell politically, but the power of a constant drumbeat of war propaganda surprised me.
Show threadAJ SadauskasMar 2
@hacks4pancakes One note of caution, if you're comparing the public mood about Iraq from the US to the mood about Iran from Australia around Iran.

Across the political spectrum, the general public in Australia is usually a lot more sceptical of US foreign policy and military intervention than our political class.

Australia's political leaders, in both major parties, have never seen a US-led regime change they didn't immediately sign up for. Even when the public isn't fully on board (which is often).

I remember in the US there was a lot of jingoism in the lead up to the Iraq invasion about "supporting our troops" and hanging a flag in your window.

The public mood in Australia in the lead up to Iraq, meanwhile, was more cynical about Dubya and his claims of weapons of mass destruction.

So if you're comparing the general public mood and your colleagues reacted or the small talk in the local café in the US about war, to the general mood in Melbourne, there's likely to be a difference on that front.
Show threadLesley Carhart Mar 2
@aj to clarify I’m talking about America. Unfortunately the only sentiment I’ve seen in Melbourne in the last 24 hours is people loudly celebrating the attack at Central
Show threadAMSMar 2
@hacks4pancakes I wouldn't say everyone. Was protesting it back then. Wish I didn't have to make a new "no blood for oil" poster.
Show threadtuban_muzuruMar 2

@hacks4pancakes

Here's the TL;DR for the Iran War:

Remember Afghanistan's terrain, all those mountains? And remember Iraq's flypecked deserts?

That's Iran.

Show threadJeffy 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 ❤️🇱🇺Mar 2
@hacks4pancakes Arguably the go-along-to-get-along and the horrid Patriot Act resulting is a huge contributor to a US President being this outrageous.
Show threadSean ReynoldsMar 2
@hacks4pancakes @mikey I’d like to be formally included in the untyped asterisk after “everyone”. My friends and I said that day, here comes a big excuse to not live up to what they call “Christian values”
Show threadGeorge Liquor, AmericanMar 2

@hacks4pancakes You misremember 01-03. There were months of infinitely-funded propaganda efforts and still we had massive, widespread protests.

Don't rewrite those who were CORRECT out of our national history. It's counterproductive, and that's a generous word for it.

Show threadEldritch kcarruthersMar 2
@hacks4pancakes it is pretty clear that Israel is the boss of the US rn
Show thread🦩 Plastic Garden Fauna 🦩Mar 2

@kcarruthers @hacks4pancakes

Epstein brokered away America's executives and political operatives to Israel in the form of child rape kompromat videos. That eschelon of American society is rotten through with sociopathic attitudes.

To their credit, authortarian Israel undertook an intergenerational genocide social engineering project. Done in coperation with ruzzia's own social engineering project begun in the 90's. ruZZia's capital flight during the fall of the USSR was far more strategically organized than anyone's given credit to.

Buying out the right and splintering the (economic) liberal world order was as easy as removing the west's unifying existential enemy -the USSR- and forming financial alliances with domestic authoritarian movements with the sovrein wealth that had been accumulating interest in our banking system. The fix was in by the time Citizens United v. FEC opened the floodgates to foreign political contributions.

Show threadWeyoun 6Mar 2

@hacks4pancakes the largest protests ever to date in the US and across the world were in 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_Iraq_War_protests

The current situation is vastly different but that was by design. The architects of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had a plan to use 9/11 to get the populace to go along with their pre-existing plans for occupation.

15 February 2003 Iraq War protests - Wikipedia

Show threadFlaming CheetoMar 2
@hacks4pancakes this feels like a conflation of Afghanistan and Iraq. There was international consensus that the Taliban needed addressing. There was much resistance to Iraq action.
Show threadMacCruiskeenMar 2
@hacks4pancakes If everyone was in for Iraq in 2003, what were all the protests about?
Show threadWeird SocksMar 2
@hacks4pancakes
One of my wife's coworker just spent a year working two jobs and couch surfing while she sub-let her apartment - all to pay for her dad's cancer treatment and to pay her family's bills. He passed away two months ago.
She got word today her boyfriend was told to expect deployment.
Show threadCassandrichMar 2
@hacks4pancakes Apparently I was in with a bunch of blasphemers. 🙃
Show threadwyattMar 2
@dalias @hacks4pancakes yeah this wasn't my experience either
Show threadFahri Reza 🍉Mar 2
@hacks4pancakes imagine coming back after wiping out an elementary school in broad daylight under everyone's eyes
Show threadMar 2
@hacks4pancakes I realise your statement may deliberately be US centric, and in that context makes sense. My own memories of that time include never having seen so many people on the streets outside Love Parade... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_Iraq_War_protests
15 February 2003 Iraq War protests - Wikipedia

Show threadPeter H. FröhlichMar 2
@hacks4pancakes Sorry but "everyone was in" completely disregards the anti-war movement back then which was actually quite large. Nobody with an ounce of intellect believed the shit Colin Powell was spewing at the UN. Heck, go back and watch him if you can, he didn't believe it himself either. And he was tasked with selling it because before he made those statements he still had a few scraps of credibility unlike Rumsfeld and those folks.
Show threadEleanor SaittaMar 2

@hacks4pancakes
There was definitely a broad base of support then for military action and security — one which was viciously abused in ways that we are still now seeing the fallout from domestically, let alone internationally.

That's said, as others have, I cannot let that statement that everyone was all in go unchallenged — tens of millions of us were dead set against it and in the streets trying to stop what was in the end as predicted — another round of pointless warfare that left the country and the world a much worse place.

Show threadSometimesLovelyMar 2
@hacks4pancakes
I think the idea is either a quick victory to drown out the growing chorus of discontent before the mid-terms, or a "National Emergency" to control or suspend them
Military adventures often bring short term political gains. A small number of personal tragedies can garner sympathy and support, a large number will lead to outrage. If this is after the elections, it is likely too late.
Show threadLaurent BercotMar 2
@hacks4pancakes The warmongers didn't even bother with the propaganda this time. The neocons knew the playbook and applied it; the current US regime is equally as immoral, but also stupid and lazy, and thought they could skip on some milestones. Turns out they can't.
Show threadQuinn NortonMar 2

@hacks4pancakes marched against it in 2001, people literally spat at us. I don't think I felt unsafe, but I'm kind of on the far side of the bell curve when it comes to risk tolerance.

Marched again in 2003, while extremely pregnant. There were a lot of us, like a whole lot nation wide, but by then the USG had realized there were no consequences for lying.

Show threadSouprMattMar 2

@hacks4pancakes America was attacked with mass casualties on 9/11, so it makes sense that people would support striking back, even if the target didn’t make a lot of sense.

There is NO reason for anybody to support what is happening in Iran. They didn’t attack the USA. This is the far-right Israelis’ wet dream and they finally have mindless simpletons in the US government to help them realize it.