The US goes to War

[rareboy]

Amnd now again with the threats:

 

[rareboy]

And when something gets bombed in the US don’t look at us for help this time.

Of course, under Article 5, we'd all turn up again.

 

[KaraBulut]

Today's new term is "Autocratic Backfire"

New York Times Op-Ed by Ruth Ben-Ghiat 1-Feb-2026

Opinion | History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

When a leader sits alone at the pinnacle of power, it is hard for him to escape blame.

www.nytimes.com

History Shows Trump’s Worst Impulses May Backfire on Him

“A dictator comes from below and then throws himself in an even deeper hole.” That sentiment was published by the French magazine Voilà in April 1939 in a preview of Charlie Chaplin’s satirical film “The Great Dictator.”

Today, President Trump appears to be testing the depths of the hole into which he can throw himself — and drag America with him. He faces falling approval ratings and growing unpopularity for his domestic and foreign policies, including his fixation on Greenland and repeated threats of using the U.S. military against Americans. Rather than recalibrating, Mr. Trump is barreling ahead (or down), whatever the costs to the nation and the world. Asked by reporters from The New York Times if he recognized any constraints on his actions, the president replied: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

I have seen this brand of strongman megalomania and the adverse effects it can ultimately have on leaders and their governments. I call it autocratic backfire. Authoritarian-minded leaders present themselves as bold innovators with unerring instincts about how to lead their countries to greatness. Their personality cults proclaim their infallibility while propaganda machines suppress news of their failures and exaggerate their influence and competency.

New York Times Op-Ed by Michelle Goldberg 20-Feb-2026

Opinion | This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War

All that matters to Trump is whether he thinks attacking Iran is in his interests.

www.nytimes.com

This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War

I never imagined I’d miss being lied to by George W. Bush and his henchmen.

When the Bush administration wanted to go to war with Iraq, it undertook a full-court press to propagandize the American people. Administration officials leaked false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a deceptive presentation at the United Nations. In Congress, many Democrats, succumbing either to relentless public pressure or their own hawkish instincts, joined with Republicans to authorize an invasion.

This mendacious campaign was shameful and despicable, and helped create today’s national atmosphere of corrosive cynicism and nihilistic paranoia. But it was, in retrospect, a tacit acknowledgment that public opinion mattered, that a president couldn’t start a war without convincing Americans it was necessary. It was a manipulation of democratic deliberation rather than a negation of it.

Compare that episode with Donald Trump’s threatened war with Iran. On Wednesday, Axios’s well-sourced reporter Barak Ravid warned, “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” America has undertaken the largest air power buildup in the region since the Iraq war. Outlets including The New York Times have reported that the military has given Trump the option to strike as soon as this weekend.

Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, but it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve. “There haven’t been any briefings about a military strategy,” said the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, who is working with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie to force a vote on an antiwar measure.

 

[80KGold]

View attachment 3594048

Damn, that guy drew Trump with huge ankles and really small hands.

 

[rareboy]

Hopefully the Catholics are listening at least....not that the RCC hasn't used the same justification in war.

 

[KaraBulut]

Hopefully the Catholics are listening at least....not that the RCC hasn't used the same justification in war.

So far, some of them haven't listened.

 

[rareboy]

We all knew that TrumpCo. would not be planning out the aftermath. But seriously, the demands that NATO broaden this conflict when it really has no mandate in the middle east shows panic.

Christ what a mess the US has made of all of this.

And now looking to blame the rest of the world for not fixing it. We were there for Afghanistan and some of the countries promised sp(oil)s and favoured relationships for US trade were there for Iraq.

As the Guardian notes...a lot of our resources are now tied up protecting the North Atlantic (NATO it is in the name) because of US threats of invasion.

So, our advice to US voters and your Congress. Fix this. Before your troops are thrown into a ground war you will surely win and lose at the same time.

Fix your demented relationship with Israel and your fixation with nonsensical bronze age biblical texts.

Trump’s threats to Nato reveal glaring absence of any strategy on Iran

White House seems to have failed to anticipate that Tehran would fight back by trying to impose costs on the west

www.theguardian.com

 

[KaraBulut]

Tomorrow is Eid, the last day of Ramadan.

Any of the proscriptions on war and revenge will end with the sunset tomorrow.

If this is what the war has been like during Ramadan, it does bid well for the future.

 

[rareboy]

It is beyond appalling what two old men, intent on clinging to power to avoid jail are doing.

Like Gaza, Israel sees no downside in more massacres of people in the middle East.

And the US are complicit in these war crimes as they are in the Gaza genocide.

 

[fallsguy]

 

[Norri]

Trump can complain about NATO or the Germans or the Japanese or even China all he wants but his real problem is geographic, he ignored the geography and is now paying the price. He can’t bully, threaten or place a tariff on it so he whines about it.

I think he’s far too frustrated at this point to declare victory and go home but that’s what he needs to do.

And another thing when most of us here were growing up our defense against nuclear bombs was M.A.D. it was effective but not all that comforting and the Israelis enjoy that kind of comfort in spades over the Iranians but it’s not enough for them. Trump took us to war so Israel can feel safer than we ever did.

 

[fallsguy]

 

[rareboy]

“We are a defensive alliance, which means that we don’t do military attacks.”
- Finland President, Alexander Stubbs

 

[rareboy]

In response to:

​

So if you never needed help, why were you demanding everyone send ships to the Hormuz?

Asking for a friend.

 

[Dargelos]

 

[Essex Boy]

"We do not need the help of anyone!". When Trump declares himself President For Life and California secedes from the Union I predict he'll adopt that as the nation's motto instead of the wussy sounding "E pluribus unum".

NVLLIVS AVXILIO EGEMVS !​

(Courtesy of Google Translate)

 

[KaraBulut]

CBS is beginning to look like the NY Post.

They're painting a lavender portrait of the new Supreme Leader in Iran. His daddy was "disappointed" in him, that he was "unqualified" and had "issues in his personal life". Hmmm... I wonder what those issues could be?

U.S. intelligence shows Iran's late supreme leader was wary of his son taking power, sources say

U.S. intelligence has circulated to President Trump's inner circle that Iran's late supreme leader had misgivings about his son replacing him, viewing Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as not very bright.

www.cbsnews.com

The information gathered also indicated that the father was aware that his son had issues in his personal life, according to sources within the administration, the intelligence community and people close to the president.

 

[rareboy]

So somehow being a homosexual whose wife and child were bombed by the US is an issue of capbability?

The US looks sillier and sillier every day now.

Having failed in the mission, the prpaganda machine is now trying to somehow equate cock-sucking with ineffective leadership?

Talk to Alexander the Great or Hadrain or Julius Caesar about that shit.

I am sure tht the rabid dog homosexualist Peter Thiel might also weigh in.

 

[80KGold]

CBS is beginning to look like the NY Post.

They're painting a lavender portrait of the new Supreme Leader in Iran. His daddy was "disappointed" in him, that he was "unqualified" and had "issues in his personal life". Hmmm... I wonder what those issues could be?

U.S. intelligence shows Iran's late supreme leader was wary of his son taking power, sources say

U.S. intelligence has circulated to President Trump's inner circle that Iran's late supreme leader had misgivings about his son replacing him, viewing Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as not very bright.

www.cbsnews.com

Yup, the other day, I read an article that when presented with intelligence that Mojtaba might be gay, Trump laughed uncontrollably for several minutes, and then the men around him, noticing his laughter, also started to laugh.

I know that I’m supposed to hate any and every ayatollah for all time, but I can’t imagine trying to live through all of this:
1) being gay while immersed in a social environment of religious condemnation;
2) facing a disapproving dad who wanted a different type of son;
3) trying to force yourself to be heterosexual by marrying a woman and having a child;
4) needing fertility treatments to conceive a child;
5) having the shit bombed out of your house, to the extent that your mom, dad, wife, and son! were killed instantly (and their bodies were dismembered);
6) trying to recuperate from an injury sustained during the bombing;
7) being pressured by the IRGC to be the titular leader of an organization that the surrounding populace hates;
8) having to live in hiding because the Israelis are hunting you; and
9) knowing that Israeli operatives have infiltrated your inner circle to such a degree that they will likely succeed in killing you.

I mean… gotdamn.

 

[80KGold]

...Of course, maybe I’m projecting too much and the guy is a shithead who either murdered or ordered the murders of several people, and he regularly fucked around on his wife, and he beat the shit out of his wife and his son, and he goaded the IRGC to pick him as the next Persian-murdering, Jew-hating, Yankee-cursing ayatollah with nuclear-bomb building ambitions. Who knows? The world is a fucked up place, I’ve concluded.