Open thread 3/2/2025
The strange world of coincidence (yes, I know there are a lot of expletives in the clip):
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
The strange world of coincidence (yes, I know there are a lot of expletives in the clip):
After Saturday morning (Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead), the left are forced to pivot to an entirely new crisis that The Lightbringer fomented (Iran) while the evil Great Orange Whale relentlessly persecutes the innocent undocumented (ICE), undocumented voters (Jim Crow), enhanced federal benefits (fraud), and the poor polar bears (global ? warming). And for sure, genocide of the trans! …….
Events shape what the media can manipulate and distort.
I did think it was really funny for Jack Hughes, the hockey star, to find out he was suddenly getting married to a billionaire’s daughter in India the following weekend. (A different Jack Hughes.)
I didn’t know about the Jack Hughes who was cut from the 1980 team. A quick look at Wikipedia shows no obvious relation to the 1980 Jack Hughes.
I was going to comment on Tim Kaine’s editorial in the WSJ. Just amazingly stupid and disingenuous, but Instapundit is all over it. Highly recommend checking it out over there.
Ah, Tim Kaine, another ill-informed Democrat who almost became VP.
I heard top Dem in the House, Rep. Jefferies, predict failure for the Iran operation.
Wow!
New level of TDS.
Now that Iran has been defeated, America’s biggest remaining enemy is the Democratic party.
Re: More mush from Peter Zeihan
So PZ dropped an early YouTube on the current Iran attack. But as usual he is biased and unreliable when Trump is involved.
–Peter Zeihan, “Attack on Iran Underway”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFwYJP8eExk
PZ is very concerned about the constitutionality of the attack, the collateral damage to Iranian citizens, and the terrible counter-attacks Iran might still be capable of unleashing. Trump is an impulsive, dangerous leader.
No mention of the tens of thousands of Iranian protesters already murdered by the regime, the 1200 people, mostly Israelis, mostly peaceful concertgoers, barbarically massacred in the Oct 7 attack, the further horror and often death suffered by those kidnapped on that day.
Or the apocalyptic possibilities of an evil theocratic regime with The Bomb, which believes God is on their side, while chanting “Death to America, Death to Israel” constantly for close to fifty years.
In the YouTube comments PZ is well and justly ratioed.
Open Thread 3/2/2026
Wish it was 2025. Can’t believe it is March already.
It’s the apocalyptic beliefs of the Twelver Shi’ite mullahs which make this war to dislodge them necessary. They are quite capable, once having an operable nuclear weapon, of deploying it in New York or Washington, and they might even do that with a “dirty bomb.” Expecting rational behavior from violent religious fanatics is a mistake.
Does the average Ukrainian Flag flying Democrat realize that Iran had previously supplied Russia with drones used against Ukraine? Yes Russia has gone to making them in house, but Iran and Putin have bern military trading partners.
DisGuested:
Whoops! Thanks, will fix.
I’m surprised I haven’t made that mistake even more often. Although, come to think of it, since it’s already March, I should have made the adjustment already.
I wonder who is running things now in Iran? I can almost hear the conversations:
“Ali, we have checked the order of succession, and you are next in line to be Supreme Leader. Congratulations! You can start immediately.”
“What? No! I don’t want it, you take it.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not taking it, maybe we can talk Amir into doing it…”
“No, Amir is already dead. Maybe Hossein…”
So all this time we have been hearing about how irrational the mullahs are and that they don’t care about getting killed provided enough of their enemies die, but their behavior over 47 years belies that. Their leadership has not been seeking martyrdom–clerics don’t live into their eighties by seeking martyrdom–and they’ve kept their bad actions at a level below which would usually provoke a war.
They’ve funded terrorism and Hezbollah and the Houthis and whatnot, but they haven’t tried to conquer other countries themselves, like Saddam Hussein did. That’s why they’ve been so difficult to deal with, is that they tried so hard to get away with as much as they could without provoking their own destruction, and that is not the actions of people who are really seeking their own destruction. They could have had that long ago if they had wanted it.
The martyrdom stuff is for the little people, the people actually running the country want to enjoy the fruits of their power as much as Communists did.
What’s different today is having a President who will let them play the game as they’ve been playing it for 47 years. They are now in a position to actually collect on martyrdom and don’t seem to be enjoying it that much.
Consequently, we shouldn’t be surprised if the remaining elements of the regime choose to make a deal and actually stick with it. If we want to be mad at Trump then for not bombing Iran into a secular democracy, I guess we can, but I think he’s doing Realpolitik. As Sun Tzu said, “Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.” Threatening the regime with extinction is the opposite of that, giving them an out that lets them keep power if they start doing what we want is in the spirit of that.
I don’t say that’s the morally right thing to do, I just say don’t be surprised if that’s what happens. We just saw something like it in Venezuela.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/iran-endgame-donald-trump
Tony Badran there argues for a maximalist destruction of the IRGC approach, though he recognizes such may not prove the ultimate outcome.
I still wonder why Ali Larijani is — as he appears to me now — alive and holding forth on Iran’s future.
Niketas:
For some time now I’ve thought that the current head of Venezuela was informing on Maduro to the US and helped bring about his capture, and signaled ahead of time to the US that she was willing to play ball if left in place. Perhaps there’s a similar figure in Iran; perhaps not.
By the way, the fat lady hasn’t yet sung in Venezuela. See this:
I just listened to Sec. Rubio on Fox News. He says the two objectives of the Iran action are to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile program and to secure safe shipping through the Straits of Hormuz by means of destroying the Iranian navy. Both of these are good reasons in the interest of the entire region and of international commerce.
@neo:By the way, the fat lady hasn’t yet sung in Venezuela.
She hasn’t even appeared on stage in Iran yet, for that matter.
The US tolerated “our sons of bitches” for a long time. How long were South Korea, Indonesia, Spain, Portugal, and Chile under strongmen? What did we do to stop the colonels taking over Greece?
A whole lot of projection about what the Shiites think or want from a western non-Muslim.
As to whether or not they are enjoying their martyrdom, that’s above my pay grade. They certainly were corrupt while alive.
IIRC the communists in Greece were a thing. Cold war and all that. How soon some forget.
Now our communists are in Congress and in NYC.
Niketas:
The axis of evil doesn’t include every strongman, of course. Just the ones that hurt the US the most, or seem to have the potential to do so.
@neo:The axis of evil doesn’t include every strongman, of course. Just the ones that hurt the US the most, or seem to have the potential to do so.
We don’t disagree on the principle, it seems. We have some religiously fanatic authoritarian governments on our side already, and can probably accommodate another one.
Niketas:
I don’t know what principle you’re referring to. There’s never been a principle to take out every strongman, or every authoritarian government, or every religious fanatic. It depends what they’re saying and doing vis a vis the US and our other allies, plus how vulnerable they are, and whether their people are supportive of them or not. Iran has been led by religious fanatic strongmen who are out to get us and our allies and who seem quite vulnerable at present and whose population seems mainly to hate them.
@neo:I don’t know what principle you’re referring to.
The principle that Iran should end up mullah-free, or any kind of free at all. That they are no longer ruled by someone who threatens the United States, that’s the thing that matters.
It depends what they’re saying and doing vis a vis the US and our other allies, plus how vulnerable they are, and whether their people are supportive of them or not.
Right, we’re not disagreeing except maybe on that last one. If the people of Iran whole-heartedly supported the mullahs the way the Gazans seem to support Hamas, for example, I doubt it would make any difference except in our narratives for why we’re doing what we’re doing, but we’d still do it.
Niketas:
We might indeed still do it if we considered the danger great enough. But the “it” that we would do might be more like what we did last summer rather than what we’re doing now. We wouldn’t aim to decapitate the regime, just to defang it.
Perhaps.
Niketas– Your earlier solution (3/3, 3:32pm) — end game — had some level of mullah with hands on the wheel. What is your confidence level of finding a dedicated Muslim holy man who will actually keep his word. His religion says lying/dishonesty in dealing with infidels is allowed to further the progress of “the profit’s” program. I say this with the negotiations recently abandoned freshly in mind.
Anyone who was an adult when last there was some level of self-actualization in Iran is now somewhere near 70 years of age. There is no one, or very few, who lived in Iran in more recent times who has any idea, let alone experience, with self-governance. Would returning ex-pat be welcomed?
@Another Mike:What is your confidence level of finding a dedicated Muslim holy man who will actually keep his word.
At no point did I say that the US should seek such a solution. I was describing something I thought is likely to happen, not advocating for it. If I had to deal with such people I would do so with the maxim “pour encourager les autres.”
That said, the US has quite a few Muslim allies. Some of them are helping fight Iran right now. They are in harm’s way, and we are not, and we do well to remember that we here are free to advocate anything we like, and innocents in our country are very unlikely to die of the consequences, which is not so for those Muslim nations who have joined us against Iran.
If innocent’s in our country are not killed by a Muslim of some sort seeking to avenge the mullahs we will be very lucky.
It is what they do, or haven’t you noticed?
No, not all “strongmen” are created equal. (Looks like it’s time to reread(?) Jeanne Kirkpatrick….)
Freakin’ INSANE, eh?
Freakin’ BACK TO THE FUTURE, eh?
Well in that case…
Freakin’ J’accuse…
Eh?
Maclin Horton’s been publishing on Substak
==
https://notliterature.substack.com/p/beethoven-string-quartet-13-opus
glenn beck called in the CRINK, China Russian Iran and North Korea, I don’t know if this a new coinage, seems to work off the BRIC alliance, it was his term for the the anti Western alliance, that operates in coordination if not collusion,
ah Jeffries, related to Leonard the Afro centric fmr?? CCNY professor,
discover the networks has the receipts,
much of the West has been paying jizda to the Iranian regime for two generations,
Before the Watergate tapes, “expletives” were called “swearing,” “dirty words,” “four letter words,” “foul language,” “profanity,” “poor language,” etc. Those were better days.