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Our Embassy is Under Attack

The Thriller

The Thriller

Well-Known Member
Pretty scary stuff. Hope things are de-escalated quickly. I’m not sure what provoked this, I haven’t been following things as much over the holidays.







This one is nerve racking:

 
JazzGal said:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/middleeast/iraq-protests-us-embassy-intl/index.html

In response to US airstrikes which were in response to an American contractor being killed.

Sent from my moto z3 using JazzFanz mobile app
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Oof. What a cluster.
  • So iraq is majority Shia, just like Iran.
  • Iran has been using Shia Iraqis as pawns in their proxy war against us for years.
  • Trump dumps the Iran deal, further fanning the flames.
  • Iran counters by helping Hezbollah terrorists attack us.
  • We respond by blowing up Hezbollah terrorists in Iraq and Syria. These terrorists are Shia.
  • Shia Iraqis (encouraged by Iran) storm our embassy. Iraq’s (Shia) prime minister agrees to support us and tells the protestors to stop and simultaneously proclaims that the Hezbollah terrorists we roasted in Iraq and Syria are martyrs.
Oof.

crappy situation that Trump didn’t create but certainly didn’t help when he cut the Iran deal. But ultimately, just a bad cluster of a situation.
 
How much did we spend in Iraq again? And how many lives lost or ruined? Then as now we had many foolish people supporting the president.
 
Is the salary for US Embassy personnel much higher in problematic countries than in Europe or some other safe and beautiful country? It seems, that for example, Maldives does not have an US Embassy (at least not as large as in Baghdad) but French Polynesia has in Tahiti.
 
Red said:
Pretty big escalation I should think...

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I mean you send your highest value military general to coordinate a strike on a US embassy in a foreign country, THEN let him stick around like you own the place, you REALLY had something like this coming to you. They basically killed or arrested the entire Iran infiltration crew. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
 
I’m just glad that Trump has built up a great relationship with our allies and hasn’t been discrediting our intelligence community or bashing the generals of our military for the past 3 years. The relationship between the pentagon and White House is important so I think we can have confidence that Trump will listen to the experts and not unwisely escalate things because of something stupid he sees on Twitter or Fox News...
 
framer said:
I mean you send your highest value military general to coordinate a strike on a US embassy in a foreign country, THEN let him stick around like you own the place, you REALLY had something like this coming to you. They basically killed or arrested the entire Iran infiltration crew. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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I’m sure most of the Shia Muslims living in Iran and Iraq will definitely be rational and see things the way you’re seeing them. I mean, after all, it’s not like we’ve done anything to ostracize ourselves in that region. They’ll definitely see this general as being a “foreign” general and not as a martyr against an imperial nation trying to bring western values to Iraq...

if I were a betting man...
 
Eminence said:
No bueno

I see no way out of this that's a good outcome
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I think it’s too early to tell. Ultimately, I think one has to question our strategy. What’s the objective here? Cool, so we blew up a portion of the Bagdad International Airport and took out this Iranian general. Does Iran have more generals? If so, what’s stopping them from quickly replacing this guy? Will Iran stop exerting influence over Iraq? If no, what did this accomplish? Are they more or less willing to negotiate on nuclear arms? If no, I fail to see how this helps anything. Will Iraqis view this as a rational response to our embassy being attacked? If not, what did we gain here?

What’s our strategy besides leveling sanctions and tweeting a lot of ****? Do we have goals? A free and independent Iraq? A new nuclear arms deal? Regime change?

The primary concern I have besides our pathetic excuse for foreign policy these days, is our president’s temperament. Those of you familiar with the book, “The Guns of August” and the role it played in Kennedy’s decision making with the Cuban Missile Crisis, know what I’m talking about.

So thank god we have a smart man in the White House who has a great temperament and won’t just fly off the handle if he sees something bad on Fox n Friends or is tweeted something by some Hollywood actor.

SIDENOTE: is it bad that one of my first thoughts was that he cut a deal with Bolton to stir the pot with Iran as long as Bolton remained silent on impeachment matters?
 
Zombie said:
It's truly amazing to see the same kind of rhetoric we heard about Saddam leading up to the Iraq War repeated all over again. Obviously they were terrible people, but history has shown that the world doesn't always become a better place after terrible people are killed.
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true. Often, the cure is worse than the disease.
 
I agree with Ambassador McFaul here. This tweet may excite the drooling zombies addicted to Fox News. But this tells me nothing. In fact, it tells me that the president doesn’t know what the **** he’s doing and he’s just overreacting to something he saw on Fox News. Is he trying to distract from impeachment?

 
Calling Soleimani 'a general' is a massive understatement by my understanding. People who'd I'd expect to be in the know about this sort of thing say there is no US equivalent and the most recent we had was a Kissinger/Marshall type.
 
The Thriller said:
I’m sure most of the Shia Muslims living in Iran and Iraq will definitely be rational and see things the way you’re seeing them. I mean, after all, it’s not like we’ve done anything to ostracize ourselves in that region. They’ll definitely see this general as being a “foreign” general and not as a martyr against an imperial nation trying to bring western values to Iraq...

if I were a betting man...
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I'm going to go ahead and bet you don't know much of anything about Iraq and the people there. Hell, at the same time there are people jubilant in Iran that this monster is gone.

I remember just yesterday you making this post trying to set up some type of equivalency for Benghazi. It turns out there is none. This was handled as forcefully and expertly as it should have been, in stark contrast to that debacle. Attacking an embassy is an act of war that was answered. Do you thing letting something like that slide "deescalates' anything? Iran has been ratcheting up conflict ever since you guys dropped off the pallet loads of cash. If anything Trump has been more passive than warranted up to this point.

Iran will act no differently now than they would have anyway. Their capacity to do so has been somewhat diminished though. I'm also a fan of punishing the terrorists individually than making the good people in Iran suffer more because of their actions.
 
Eminence said:
Calling Soleimani 'a general' is a massive understatement by my understanding. People who'd I'd expect to be in the know about this sort of thing say there is no US equivalent and the most recent we had was a Kissinger/Marshall type.
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An ambassador wouldn't be in a foreign country directing an attack on an embassy. Strategically it was very aggressive, arrogant, and ultimately stupid. The fact that it went down like this says more about Iran's intentions than ours. They have no intention of pursuing peace.
 
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