This weekend, the U.S. sent an “Immediate Response Force” of 3,500 soldiers to Kuwait as reinforcements in our abruptly escalated conflict with Iran. Some didn’t have time to say goodbye to their families. Yes, these are people for whom military service is a steady job or even lifelong career, but I don’t suppose many relished the call to the Middle East or the prospect of a long separation from their loved ones. Few who have been at war can be gleeful over another.
The same isn’t true of chuds at home, however — these guys pop a boner at the thought of bloodshed.
Fingers crossed https://t.co/raWWoy4SCX
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) January 3, 2020
To my Democratic colleagues: 40 years of Iranian aggression needs to be dealt with forcefully.
Iran is:
▶️ The largest state sponsor of terrorism.
▶️ Threatening the existence of Israel by arming Hezbollah to the teeth.
▶️ Providing arms to kill Americans in Iraq.— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 6, 2020
Have no fear, America. This summer, America's bravest warrior said he was ready to raise freedom's torch high. https://t.co/NiNP4hEXgm
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) January 3, 2020
There are many reasons these assholes won’t see action in a far-off theater. Lindsey Graham is a sitting senator and too old; age disqualifies columnist Eli Lake as well; Jacob Wohl has to deal with that felony charge before he’s eligible to serve. Their cheering for violence against the Iranian people has no connection to the real, only the symbolic — as when our rage-choked president vows to commit the war crime of annihilating 52 of the country’s most precious cultural sites, one for each American held hostage there in a crisis four decades ago.
Implicit in all such hostile braggadocio is the presumption that America has advanced far beyond the means of conventional warfare, while places like Iran are working with virtually prehistoric technology and unable to mount significant retaliation. Trump supporters believe we can “wipe them off the map” with the push of a button, and with everything he’s saying, Trump must believe it himself.
Allow me to make myself perfectly clear. If Iran touches a hair on New York City’s head the United States will bomb the fuck out of it.
— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) January 4, 2020
Iran had better heed President Trump's warnings. He is going to wipe them off the map..
You'd better get to negotiating, it's your only option.
— Matt Couch ? (@RealMattCouch) January 5, 2020
#FoxandFriends Geraldo is living under a rock. Trump’s not starting wars, he’s fighting back against terrorists who intend on killing Americans. Striking back sends a message. You mess w us we will eliminate you off the face of the Earth.
— Garrett Grimes (@GarrettJGrimes) January 3, 2020
Buddy we could turn Iran into a sheet of glass tomorrow and be absolutely justified in doing so and it doesn’t have shit to do with 9/11.
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 4, 2020
Iran has been warned. Trump will annihilate then if they are foolish enough to attack us. It would be the end of them.
— RD (@real_defender) January 5, 2020
Again, these aren’t the people we may one day task with the murder of enemy combatants, the people who will have to make unthinkable choices and sacrifices, risking their own lives or else grave injury and lasting mental trauma. At best, these shitposters are cretinous pundits with neoconservative politics (which means they’re always for the wholesale destruction of a non-white society sitting on oil reserves), while at the bottom of the ladder, you have the plain old #MAGA drones (a demographic that hardly needs a specific reason to endorse barbarity against brown people, wherever they happen to live).
This shared belligerence is nothing deeper than the yearning to swing around a big dick they don’t actually possess — to have a big dick swung around on their behalf, and pretend that dick is guided by their own hand. It’s just like a basketball fan who acts as if his team won a title because he watched every game, except the sport is military adventurism, and we haven’t notched a meaningful win since 1945.
“We can’t move the embassy to Jerusalem because bad people will get mad at us.” “We can’t kill Soleimani because bad peoples will get mad at us.” Maybe it’s time to stop having our foreign policy be run by eunuchs.
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) January 3, 2020
Here’s the difference Obama has No Balls and kissed Iran’s Ass! #BitchBoy
Trump has Balls and is kicking their Ass!! #BadAss
If you’re angry and offended we don’t care get over it! @realDonaldTrump Puts America First!! #SaraSaysSo #Trump2020Landslide pic.twitter.com/BEKY3LN1uo
— Sara (@skb_sara) January 4, 2020
I don’t want another pointless war in the Middle East but one thing has to be clear, you don’t F with the United States of America. That shit flies under Obama but not @realDonaldTrump ??
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 3, 2020
And should you be concerned that only men are capable of this reductive, chauvinist approach to dealing with sovereign nations, fear not: There are plenty of women ready to twist this catastrophe into a matter of testicular valor. By laying the subtext so hideously bare, they confirm that the lone possible defense of Trump’s action is visceral rather than cerebral — it might have been stupid, but at least he did something, dammit! Like a man! A man who has not been castrated! Good for him! Finally, a chief executive willing to conform to gender norms by recklessly lashing out in a way that makes us all less safe.
Because in the end, isn’t that what war is all about? Brute force without strategy? Shooting first and never asking the question later? Also, not sure if you heard: The general we killed was a super bad guy, and you’re supposed to kill bad guys, always, regardless of the circumstance or potential consequences.
MY GOD – Nancy Pelosi intends to declare President Trump's strike against terrorist and murderer Qassem Soleimani a war crime and illegal under international law.
Democrats are actually more upset we killed a terrorist than Russia is, Iran's biggest ally.
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) January 6, 2020
Eliminating a know terrorist like Soleimani is protecting American lives and interests. This man was responsible for the deaths of many Americans. He got what he deserved. https://t.co/aRRx3QaLBO
— David Fegan (@DCfegan) January 3, 2020
Trump's Soleimani airstrike is utterly righteous. Soleimani was one of the worst human beings on the planet. America had to re-establish deterrence after Obama's appeasement. This will not be the end of the story — Iran will continue to lash out. But they're certainly on notice.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 3, 2020
The refusal to separate the fate that Qassim Soleimani “deserved” from the manner in which it was delivered cuts to the backbone of Trump’s foreign policy, and the attitude that his bootlickers adopt in kind: total indifference. For if decisions of this sort put Americans and Iranians in terrible danger, they still don’t threaten the zealots carrying water for the White House on social media. The worst outcome, per the values of this set, would be the casualties among our armed services, yet even “respecting the troops” is an empty slogan for the commentators eager to send them into battle. The duty of a fanatically interventionist keyboard warrior isn’t to protect, but to antagonize, always in the naive faith that the U.S. government can act both quickly and surgically in chaotic zones, dictating every condition of hyper-complex geopolitical struggle to its own advantage.
It’s possible this misplaced trust is a mask, too, for raw insecurity — a type that’s appeased by the suffering of whoever you wish to seem inferior.
imagine tweeting with your chest that you want the president of the United States to “bomb the shit out of Iran” because you have a chode hard on for pointless wars that kill millions of innocent people.
— Armani (@historyofarmani) January 6, 2020