Lord Ratner

How is it no matter how many times we have this conversation, you are only willing to argue with "his supporters" who aren't on this website? Do I take any of his tweets literally? How many times do I have to say that I don't like the way he talks, before you stop calling it hand waving? Or are your political ideologies so simple as to say: if what I want does not exist, then I choose nothing. It's pretty easy to say, but it was result in catastrophe. I don't care what he says. Not because I don't care what anybody says, but because that's just the politics that I have been delivered. For the millionth time, I don't have the option of choosing between an honest man who gets things done, and a liar who gets things done. The choice I have been given is between a lying politician who acts honest and dignified, and gets nothing done, and a lying politician who acts depraved and unhinged, and gets some things done. It's a shitty choice, which every Trump supporter on this board had said over and over and over and over, but you can't hear it because it's easier to argue with someone who isn't actually here to respond to you. The elusive 30% I suppose. Perhaps the biggest difference here is that you think Trump is causing all of this. I do not. I believe that the corrupting influence of comfort and security have created a society that is more content avoiding tough questions and tough realities. They do not consider the dangers of electing or unserious politicians, because they have never experienced those dangers. Overwhelmingly most people are just bad preparing for things they have not lived. Those people, we the people, elect clowns who promise what can not be delivered. I don't support Trump because I think he's going to save us from the ugly yet inevitable consequences of a society going soft. I support him because he appears to be moving pieces on the board in a way that will increase our odds of winning the epic conflict that always arises when societies break down. He will not be the leader that wins that conflict, nor will any of his acolytes. Because once Americans are reintroduced to fear and danger, they will elect men capable of leading them through it. But by all means, please continue explaining to me and the other supporters here what our views actually are.

From The Atlantic back in September of 2016: "It’s a familiar split. When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally." Almost 10 years later and you guys haven't figured it out. Would I prefer a president who says what they mean and speaks with poise and strength, instead of lobbing rhetorical bombs in every direction to keep the news cycle in a constant state of catastrophe and, more importantly, to keep him front and center of every single camera? Sure. But I react to the world I'm in, not the world I desire. His supporters ignore his insane rambling and unhinged posting because he delivers where others have not. Please don't waste our time with the many examples of Trump failing to deliver. That's every president ever, and humans don't care about every issue. Only one president treated illegal immigration as illegal. Only one president has scraped the trans insanity out of the government ranks. Only one president has given the 2A community a supreme court that actually believes in the 2A. Only one president has told our "allies" to put up or fuck off. On and on. You don't like those things. That's fine. If you don't like what he's doing, you'll definitely latch on to what he's saying as more evidence of his whatevertheaccusationoftheday is. But to the Americans who are finally getting their policy priorities met, his obvious lies and bluffs are just the cost of politics. That doesn't mean Iran is going to end well, but I'm not going to suddenly start caring about his rhetoric now. I want a non-nuclear Iran. I want the regime that routinely kills Americans and Israelis to die, or live in perpetual fear of dying. I want the Chinese to have as few allies as possible for when we end up in a war with them. I want Europe scared of their self-imposed weakness and South America stable and productive. I would *love* to get those things from a president that spoke like Obama and appreciated our history like Bush Sr. But I can't. I'm not going to pretend that his favorable policy results make him a good man. I think Trump is a piece of shit. But I'm also not going to pretend like he's the first piece of shit in Washington. Or the first liar. Or the first politician to take classified information home. Or cheat on his wife. Or enrich his family. I hate those things. But I also hate mosquitoes, yet neither one is going away anytime soon. And personally I kind of like having politicians look as ugly on the outside as they act behind closed doors.

Yeah telling the death cult that they are going to die probably isn't going to have the desired effect. Just kill them.

Incredible for an actor with his portfolio of work to branch out into playing a homosexual trying to survive in a Muslim-dominant country.

We're getting close to the "put up or shut up" phase of the operation. We've set back the Iranian war machine decades. We've killed the leaders who targeted our people. We can still take the oil island, I'm fine with that, but it's not realistic to actually extract resources from Iran, it would just be another form of crippling economic pressure. Pretty soon we need to leave and let the people of Iran earn their reputation. If they do, then they can welcome us in as partners to help rebuild. They have enough oil and gas to make it worth our efforts. If not, then we pull back and give Israel whatever they need to keep mowing the lawn while the regime withers away.

Hands down the most wild thing ever said by a president.

Well the bar was set pretty low with Noem. At a baseline anyone who gets addicted to plastic surgery probably shouldn't be running a federal organization.

It's also literally *the* difficult part of making a nuke. The rest is largely simple (for a country with advanced manufacturing capabilities like Iran) and extremely easy to hide. The massive array of centrifuges is the tricky bit. It's amazing to hear people argue that "Iran shouldn't have nukes, but we can at least let them get close." There's not a single use for Uranium enriched to 50% aside from weaponry. It can be perfectly logical for Iran to want nukes for deterrence. It's more likely they would use it to wipe out Israel, but who cares? Just because it's logical doesn't mean we should allow it.

Take a breath, kid. Suggesting that a fighter pilot wouldn't find a way to make a joke out of anything is a dead giveaway that you aren't anywhere close to the pointy end of the spear. What exactly do you think these lunatics were going to do with a nuke? They've done everything they can slaughter their great foes, Israel and America. Despite bringing on immeasurable pain and suffering to their people and themselves each time, nothing stops them from their great jihad. This is fundamentally a domestic problem. We've had it so good for so long that it seems a whole lot of Americans, even ones in the military, forgot how world peace is secured. I suspect it's gotten bad enough that there will be no off ramps to the great war, but at least someone is willing to move pieces around on the board to give us a better shot at winning. It's mind-blowing to me that "someone" is a borderline delusional reality TV star, but here we are.

You're not actually this... simple, are you? - It's already a 20 year boondoggle. This is the regime that made our misery in the middle east 10x worse. They have terrorized our allies and slaughtered our servicemen. This is the end of the boondoggle. - I said we could, not we would. It's merely an honest assessment of our economic and military capabilities. You know, define what's possible before you decide on what to do. - Preventing the most fanatical, violent regime on Earth from getting nuclear weapons is all the moral high ground I need. Jesus, as far as bad-faith arguments go, you're worse than my ex wife.

You mean like the missiles they've been lobbing all over the place for a few years now? Pointless hypothetical. We're obviously capable of holding the island. Casualties are part of the job. A shitty part, but not a surprising one. We've already found out that the Iranians have a much longer range missile capability than previously believed, what other secrets do we wait to find out until our cities getting hit? Marines die so the civilians don't have to. This is nothing new. Yup. And at the end, Iran has no nuclear program. We've already discussed how that's not worth it to you. It's absolutely worth it to me. Absolutely no part of this has to escalate into nation building. You just don't see any other way because that's been our reality for decades. But we are perfectly capable of murdering Iranian politicians, sanctioning their economy, and blowing up their factories, especially with the Israelis providing the Intel, for the next hundred years. And there's no way that they can have a nuclear program if we keep doing that. It's not just unlikely, it's impossible. We were not escalated into Iraq or Afghanistan. We proudly marched into that Quagmire, still furious from 9/11. This is not then.

They would. I would consider it materially the same as parking a bunch of warships around Iran. At a certain point you have to accept the semantic limitations, and get to the point. And for me, the point is we should not take over Iran and attempt to transform it in the way we did Afghanistan or Iraq. Taking Kharg Island is about taking resources with strategic geopolitical consequences and applying pressure. Kind of like taking Maduro. Outside of starving the regime of money, it does nothing to give the Iranian people a better future, something that I consider their obligation, not ours.

I committed war crimes or followed orders I know to be unlawful because my family could only be supported by a military salary. That's a hot take. To your broader point, I agree with officers being generally critical of the nature of their service, but it only takes a quick AI prompt to articulate the inherent conflicts between section 8 of article 1 of the Constitution, the War Powers Resolution, and the Chadha ruling. We've been struggling with it since Jefferson went after the Barbary Pirates. The Congress still had afterbirth on it and already it was coming up with ways to avoid its war-declaring responsibilities, inventing the AUMF. The most consistent interpretation of current law, which I think applies here, is that the president has 90 days to either get congressional approval to keep attacking Iran, or wrap it up. Past that, I personally would believe the operation is exceeding statutory authorization. However I don't think any officer below the rank of general has any moral or legal authority whatsoever to concern themselves with that. An unlawful order is not the same thing as an unlawful campaign. And an order given during an unlawful campaign is not an unlawful order.

For a guy who has a track record of being wrong and having to walk back comments here, you sure are confident in everybody else being wrong. I also explicitly said that we should take Kharg Island. Try not to get an erection while you struggle with ways to make those two statements mutually exclusive.

I don't think there's a simple objective answer to your question. The framers clearly understood that Congress could not be relied upon to act swiftly in times of military necessity. Thus the commander-in-chief. And more recently, the last few decades, Congress has happily offloaded unbelievable amounts of their authority to the executive. That includes many of the powers to wage war, despite retaining the now largely ceremonial function of declaring it. So I think the real answer in light of that, is that the president has the authority wage war until a veto-proof majority of Congress decides to take it away. The president is, after all, a direct representative of the people, and the only true representative of all Americans. The alternative to this construct is incredibly dangerous. Not to say that the current construct is danger-free, but I would rather we over-war, than under-war, if that makes sense. The former can be fixed with the existing structures of our government. The latter is existential. And my suspicion is that if we end up nation building, which I absolutely don't think is happening, you'll have more than enough Republicans vote against him to break a veto.