"As the U.S.-Israel war on Iran enters its fourth week and President Donald Trump orders the deployment of thousands of additional sailors and Marines to the Middle East, the troops he is counting on appear increasingly wary of the conflict."
~ Akbar Shahid Ahmed
#Trump #Iran #war #Israel #Marines #troops
/1
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-troops-iran-war-israel_n_69bf18a1e4b01c6ce885ce6d
"Interviews with active duty soldiers, reservists, and advocacy groups focused on service members found some U.S. troops who are caught up in the war are reporting vulnerability, overwhelming stress, frustration and disillusionment to the degree they may leave the military. …
A ground operation would be 'an absolute disaster… we don’t have a plan for that,' [an unnamed military] official said earlier this week" …
"A veteran and reservist who mentors younger officers told HuffPost her contacts are expressing a loss of faith to a new degree.
'I’m hearing out of service members’ mouths the words, "We do not want to die for Israel — we don’t want to be political pawns,"' she said."
"Pope Leo on Sunday said death and suffering caused by the war in the Middle East are a 'scandal to the whole human family,' renewing his plea for an immediate ceasefire.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its fourth week, the first U.S. pope said that he continues to follow with 'dismay' the situation in the Middle East and in other regions torn apart by war and violence."
~ Reuters
#Trump #Iran #war #PopeLeo #morality #violence #death #destruction
/4
"What makes this moment particularly disturbing is not only the violence itself, but also the way it is staged and celebrated. As the conflict with Iran intensified, the White House circulated promotional videos that fused real footage of bombing raids with visuals drawn from video games and action films, transforming acts of destruction into a spectacle of national triumph."
~ Henry Giroux
"These spectacles are more than crude propaganda. They reveal a deeper shift in political culture in which violence is aestheticized, cruelty normalized, and militarism staged as entertainment, training the public to experience domination not as a catastrophe but as an exhilarating display of power.
We live in an age of monsters."
"Meanwhile, within parts of the Trump coalition, the war has been framed not merely as strategic necessity but as a sacred mission. Political figures including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sen. Lindsey Graham, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and current ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have invoked biblical language suggesting that the conflict with Iran carries the meaning of a holy war."
#Trump #Iran #war #death #destruction #morality #WhiteChristianNationalism #HolyWar
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William Lindsey 
BlueDot