This whole Iranian adventure has been framed in terms of its being “regime change” for Iran, and I don’t care.
Frankly, I’m uneasy with the entire concept of “regime change” as a foreign policy goal, because if history has taught us anything — especially in the Middle East — it’s that most of these noble efforts are pretty much doomed to failure, because the entire premise is faulty. Changing a regime is no guarantee that the next regime will be any better than the previous one.
Here’s the unalterable fact: democratic capitalism, as a concept and guiding socio-political principle, doesn’t work outside the confines of Western civilization, and by “Western civilization” I mean pretty much the United States. This is because Western civilization cannot coexist within a nation along with lunatic and highly-flawed political systems like Marxism and/or lunatic medieval social systems like Islam.
One only has to see how the UK, to use but one example, has been undermined by the baleful effects of both the above — Marxism as a home-grown poison (hello, Labour Party) and Islam as an imported poison (hello, untrammeled Muslim immigration).
And that’s within a nation which pretty much gave birth to democratic capitalism. (They did, too; we just perfected it.) Now try to see how well democratic capitalism has worked in other countries which have never had that system as a bedrock principle — Iraq, Syria, Egypt, China, the whole of Africa etc. — and all you’ll find is a constant and comprehensive list of failures. You can change regimes, by all means: but the plain fact of the matter is that democratic capitalism is probably going to fail as the “new” regime will pretty much be just a (watered-down at best) copy of earlier regimes, none of which have espoused democratic capitalism. They’ll be kleptocracies like all the African shitholes, or neo-Communist like Vietnam, or military juntas like [insert South American country of choice here]. (Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean junta, by the way, was very much the exception.)
So I’m simply regarding the destruction of the current Iranian Islamic regime as a side-benefit of the whole exercise.
What we should be stating, in no uncertain terms, is that any regime which exports terrorism or socio-political poisons like Islam or Marxism are on notice that the United States may, at our own discretion, pound these regimes back into rubble rather than allow them to subvert peace and prosperity — the two are very much linked — in the names of their respective ideologies. “Regime change” is very much a subset of that goal, and not its primary purpose. (SecWar Pete Hegseth, at least, has the right of it.)
That the United States should be hesitant, indeed resistant to the idea of allowing said poisons into our own country should most definitely be a guiding principle and not government policy. The noble sentiment on the base of the Statue of Liberty should not only not be taken as government policy, but should also contain the codicil:
“And don’t try to change our country to be more like yours of origin because we’ll toss you out if you do.”
The essence of what I’m saying is that we should not be beguiled into changing our own regime from democratic capitalism into any flavor or subset of the above excrescences.
You may argue with me on any of the above, but you’d be wrong.
15 years ago I walked into my friend Steve’s music store and he was sitting at his desk in front of his computer with his head in his hands. He stood up and said, “THERE’S TOO MUCH INFORMATION OUT THERE!”
People were coming into Steve’s store and using their phone to cost-compare prices and leaving without buying anything.
Generally, in the morning, I scroll down the google news line up and by the time I’m done I’m in a downer mood. I recently found out that in Chrome I have the ability to block entire websites. And that’s what I’ve been doing to websites that are notoriously awful. CNN, WSJ, NPR, etc.
If a website pops up a flag about my adblocker, they get blocked.
If a website pops up a newsletter irritant, they get blocked.
Etc, etc.
This is probably the precursor to me just getting offline all together. I’m in the last 10% of my life and I want to enjoy it. Seems that most of the internet and technology in general, are intent with wasting my time and keeping me in a bad mood. 40 years online is enough already….
…well, everything has a price, and you’ve got weather radar, Freecell, and Kim….
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Japan and South Korea seem to be thriving Democratic Capitalist countries.
I agree with you about the Middle East and Africa. The best that these whack em actions can do is destroy enough of their infrastructure that they have to focus on rebuilding that instead of spreading terrorism and their backwards philosophies around the world
“Japan and South Korea seem to be thriving Democratic Capitalist countries.”
…only after having been nuked (in Japan’s case, literally) by a massive war and then occupied by the U.S., which included a complete rebuilding of their social structure that took decades to take root.
I seriously doubt whether we’d ever do that in Iran…
People ask me what kind of government we should organize in Iran now that we’ve destroyed the Mullah Regime? I just say it is not our place. What we have done is to end the State Of War that has existed between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the USofA since 4 Nov 1978. It is now up to the Persian People to find what form of Freedom they can exist with. If anything, our assistance should be limited to creating a reverse diaspora of moving the masses of Persians now within the USofA back to Persia and allowing them to get back to business – with the side-note that if they ever allow this situation vis-a-vis the USofA and themselves to redevelop, Persia will be a glowing hole in the ground for Millennia. I will gladly stand at the end of the jet-way holding a sign wishing them well, and a reminder that this is a one-time deal – we’re tired of their sh*t!
we maintained a huge presence in Germany, Italy and Japan for decades after WWII. I’m sure we had something in rebuilding their education system so that the Nazis, fascists and imperialists were contained in those countries. We should have stayed in Iraq and Afghanistan for a generation or three to keep jihadiism in check.
While this particular adventure may not result in a BETTER regime, it’s hard to think of anything worse that might take it’s place.
So best case senario is Persia ends up with a better goverment and worst case is it ends up with one just as bad as it has now….that has no effective military left and a very recent lesson to not meddle in the affairs of the US.
I would respectfully argue that the recent lesson was not to FO with Donald Trump. Affairs of the U.S. worked out pretty well for them under past administrations. Historically, they have been willing to bide their time for generations. As described in the article linked by Termite below, technology is changing the world. Human nature, less so. We shall see.
While “regime change” may or may not be a goal, destroying Iran’s nuclear production ability definitely is a goal. HOWEVER, that is not the only goal.
Until recently Venezuela was shipping the majority of their oil exports(80%) to China, of Venezuela’s total crude exports were sent to China, often heavily discounted and disguised as other origins to evade U.S. sanctions. This volume represented roughly 3% to 5% of China’s total crude imports. That is stopped.
As of early 2026, over 80% to 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports were purchased by China, often using a “ghost fleet” to bypass U.S. sanctions. That represented about 15% of China’s total oil imports.
That is stopped, or being stopped.
So China is now facing a 20% reduction of oil imports, at least.
This article may said some light on the “why now & about what” of the current dustup in Iran.
https://discernreport.com/the-real-reason-america-attacked-iran-and-took-down-nicolas-maduro/
Let’s see, FDR employed an oil embargo against Japan back in the early 40’s. We know what happened next. Now Trump is disrupting oil to China. Hmmm.
I guess at this point I don’t 100% know what to do/feel about any of this.
I don’t give 2 shits about the Iranians, the world won’t miss the Ayatollah’s. The world didn’t miss Qaddafi, or Saddam or Maduro either. Dead Palestinians don’t move the needle in my life either.
At some point its a bit refreshing that we don’t feel the need to whitewash this in “Democracy” but simply accept that we are punitively dealing with a threat. This has been overdue since I was a kid, and abetted by assholes like Jimmeh, Barak, & Slobberin’ Joe.
I’m worried about the ongoing fuckery that these things entail. As stated above we spent decades now in Germany, S Korea, Japan bringing them inline. Now that we’ve blown shit up in Iran/Persia and killed the leadership, I hope someone has a detailed plan around what’s next. Whoever takes over is going to need to be armed & organized, & I hope that is being strategized around.
But the last set of “wars” were used as an excuse to onshore too fucking many Somali’s, Afghans, Iraqi’s etc. with the lively results of Minnesoduh, Dearborn, Austin, et al. It also fucks with the monetary system as we print more $$$ to pay for these adventures. Not to mention now the increased surveillance/spying on the rest of us.
I’m as personally gleeful as anyone seeing these bastards get blown to hell, but so much of what I’ve seen come from this kind of thing, is negative to us at home. I also am a pretty unapologetic Zionist overall, but I’m starting to wonder if we’re getting a tail wagging the dog situation with Israel. I don’t think that’s the case here, because the Gulf States, & others are pretty nervous about Iran too.
I just hope someone is thinking this through. I don’t know if we are.
I think that your thoughts and position are shared by a huge number of people, myself included.
What Kim said.
I’d feel better about the current situation if some of the Minnesota type fraudsters, ICE obstructionists, and authors of the Russian Dossier and 2020 election fraud went to prison. As long as those America-hating criminals are on the loose and we have tens of millions of government school indoctrinated moronic voters, we are but one election away from the ongoing activities providing ammunition for the demolition of our Republic.
no doubt. we need to play the long game as well to reverse the decline of the American education system and prosecute those who tried to sabotage Trump’s first term. This includes the politicians who directed it and the bureaucrats who carried it out in the FBI, CIA etc.