Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way? Without a war US would still have aircraft carriers, they would just be floating somewhere else.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
> Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way?
This is a fair way to account for the cost, because the assets were procured and personnel hired years ago for just this purpose.
Put another way: we would not need this fleet at all if we did not expect to use it in a manner like this. (For example, Spain did not choose to have this capability and so has not borne a cost of maintaining this option for the preceding decades.) Through that lens, the true cost of this war would involve counting back to before this round of hostilities began.
It's only fair to count _at least_ the "time on task" for all the assets.
Right, consider the personnel costs that are displayed here. They were already getting paid this past weekend either way (admittedly the military may have had to hire some last minute contractors to help with the operation).
There's someone quoted here who estimated UAE by itself cost in fighting off the Shahed drones at $23-28 per $1 spent on Shahed drone at $55000 (they know how many got through and the claimed success rate and the methods they are using to defend UAE)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/shahed-drones-iran-us...
I think that's true, but I like that this site includes a "ESTIMATED MUNITIONS & EQUIPMENT COSTS" section that shows the value of actual, expended munitions which are all one-time costs directly resulting from the war.
Seems like a massive understatement given how much of this war has been shooting down iranian missiles. According to wikipedia, a single patriot missile cost 4 million, and you often have to use multiple to get a succesful shoot down.
They still work, if they get shot down, you will have to pay to replace them. (also using them is expensive and causes wear, especially under the stress of real action, where the limits are pushed)
it's also doesn't take into consideration the revenue opportunities, like USA-branded apparel, FanDuel parlay wagers, and I assume that Epic Fury is a summer Marvel franchise, or Wrestling PPV?
I think when people are asking about the cost of a war, they are asking about excess costs. How much extra money would be saved if the war didn't happen.
This doesn't include generational damage in sentiment:
* Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas
* Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now
* Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine
* Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them in the future, they're scared even more (except UAE) that people might overthrow those kings if things continue this way
* Africa understood its better to work with China, than with US
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. People here seem to also have no perspective, since it is not in the wheelhouse of most tech people, on the fact that this is all a part of a 40 year strategy (as Netanyahu himself has openly stated) that some refer to as the “the Clean Break Strategy” or the “7 countries in 5 years memo”[1]. It clearly took longer than 5 years, but they definitely tried and even the likes of Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton was a party of that.
People always squabble over blue team vs red team, never realizing that the whole game is just a ruse to provide a sense of democratic control to placate the public, and also give the apparatchiks if the regime a sense of autonomy, when in fact they’re just all pulling at the same continuity of agenda like beasts of burden, being whipped and rode by a very small group that hold their reins.
> Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them
Where are you getting this information? The UAE, for instance, is relying heavily on missile defense - and it's working out for them:
I think citizens in those countries recognize that allowing a repressive regime to exist simply for cheap oil costs is not necessarily a good solution, either.
until your energy bills impact your pocket directly, while you were laid off from your manufacturing plant, because their cost structure is not competitive without cheap Russian oil/gas
Almost nobody thinks like that, what are we 5 year olds? Especially when most left leaning folks in western world has hard sympathies with hamas which are just left and right hand of the same regime (maybe not US left which is far from left elsewhere).
Did US population en masse lost sleep during past decades till now and some future due to sweatshops full of kids making their jeans or iphones or Christmas toys for their kids in highly undemocratic regimes?
No, we realize US americans elected gerontoidiot Trump, and we constnantly ask ourselves what the actual fuck after every third act of this senile imbecile. Do you not have young (like at least < 60) people who can still actually think critically, have strategy, hold ideas for more than 30 seconds. Are you impressed by senility? Why do you support someone who attacks european countries frequently just on the basis of whimsy shit like not wanting to go with you into wars of aggression agaisnt third countries, like you attacked Spain most recently? What the actual fuck?
That people think in terms of good/vs/evil and that US will somehow come out of this as a liked country that did good is beyond me. The constant attempts at painting some morals or grand strategy over the constant random unhinged acts of senile imbecile that gets bootlicked by everyone around him just comes out as insane.
That's what at least this european thinks of US, yeah. :)
Unhinged country with unhinged lunatic at the top, all this is. That's what americans should be thinking hard about, not about another new ways to rationalize his insanity and insane criminal acts.
The price of oil has skyrocketed because of the dumbfuck war. Doesn't matter where the oil comes when it costs too much and causes massive inflation once again.
The disruption in gas supply will be very short. Weeks, at most. The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone, they are living in its shadow for a long time now. Now, Ukraine and Israel need very different kinds of support, and things like US withholding intelligence from Ukraine have nothing to do with Israel.
Iran has been bombing production facilities across a bunch of US allies. It's unclear how quickly those will be rebuilt. Also, the US is probably bombing Iranian production, which means countries like China will be looking for additional sources.
> The disruption in gas supply will be very short.
Remember when W declared mission accomplished? That war was so short too.
> The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone
Would they be happy to see a devastating civil war that gives rise to a successor of ISIS or Taleban? Will they happily accept tens of millions of refugees?
Absolutely nothing good will come from this dumbfuck war. We all will pay the price of it one way or another.
I wonder why Israel should get any support, do you support killing children and bombing schools?
Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.
Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way
This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)
Possibly. There are a lot of things around that story that seem very off
Aside from the obvious bad AI images floating around the one credible looking video shows a shaheed flying into a radome. A Radome in the middle of a bunch of buildings. You don't put radars in between buildings. And if it's a phased array I don't think it would be in a round Radome either.
They seem to have hit something of value, but don't think it was a 1bn radar
Everything around this smells like the Iran hilariously oversized F35 misinformation
Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.
2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.
Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction.
The question is fundamentally poorly formed, and as a consequence, so is the rebuttal. A state can pay for anything, since it doesn't have to be in a budget surplus.
Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household.
If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy.
If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly.
What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.)
This is not exactly true on the scale of these interventions. The state can't run out of money but it does run out of the time and talent of its people, the resources of its land, and the patience of its partners. State capacity is a real limit, and where we direct the money is a pretty strong proxy for where we spend these, the true resources of the state. We don't pay for bombs with dollars, we pay for them with schools, roads, and hospitals.
For the prospects of the freedom and subsequent prosperity of the oppressed Iranian people, peace in the Middle East, and safety of the commercial shipping routes, I fully approve my tax dollars to the matter.
OK, I don't. I wonder if we could set up some sort of legislative system that could debate this on our behalf and make a reasonable plan that accounts for our differing viewpoints.
I've found that if two people sit together and are willing to talk long enough, they'll eventually be able to actually hear each other, and usually they are more in agreement than the media-installed reactions and assumptions we have. Only with a few would we vehemently disagree. I'm talking about reasonable people though, like your calm reply.
That news piece was officially dismissed after investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM. I would bring to your awareness that you're using an emotional argument with no substance, and it discounts the decades of complex history in the region.
Would you still approve if the cost is 20x, the Iranian people are worse off, and the shipping routes and Middle East are dramatically less safe due to drones?
In theory it could work. In practice you'd at most get a bloody civil war that would give rise to a new form of ISIS. But if you believe what Fox News tells you, it's probably too late to argue about it.
Likely the actual goal, as dictated by Israel and the Jewish Lobby in the US, is to destabilise Iran long term in a sort of Syria situation, so they cannot threaten Israeli hegemony in the region.
Remember even a non Islamic Iran is still a threat to Israeli power if it remains unified and intact.
Venezuela is undergoing tremendous freedom and hope. My fellow Venezuelans and I are super grateful for the well-planned, surgical mission of the US. They can have all the oil they want and help restore our industries in exchange for their financial benefit and partnership, which is the most recent track record.
Defense contractors, the oil companies who get to rebuild, private security, etc. You can do a web search for who profited from the Iraq war. It's mostly all the same. This war also has a religious component to it, as a US combat unit commander has said "the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth": https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir...
This is a valid criticism. Whenever there is a push to improve life for US citizens, we are told that we do not have the funds. Yet, here we see an essentially unlimited budget to fight Israel's war of aggression against Iran, with zero benefit to US citizens. In fact, the costs (financial, moral and human) that we will pay for this excursion will be astronomically high.
Reductive tropes?OP is pointing out a serious flaw in US federal spending. Namely our lack of spending on healthcare and our intensive spending on killing people from a distance
Is this missing interceptors? My understanding is those probably dominate total costs at the moment, especially if you include the costs of allied Gulf State and Israeli interceptors. Thousands have been expended already on ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Those range from hundred of thousands to multiple millions per shot.
What would have happened if the US dis not get involved in WWII. We would probably not be here...
Not everything is short sighted bean counters. Having major cities explode by nuclear devices in the US will surely cost more.
Iran has been weeks away from a nuke for decades. What evidence is there that they were any closer this time, or that this war was necessary to delay or block their progress?
I'm sorry but this is a braindead take. Trump is exactly a short-sighted .. well not a bean counter since I doubt his ability to count. But short sighted for sure.
Thinking an Iranian nuke is threatening a US city is probably a Fox news talking point, so dogshit by definition.
not providing universal healthcare is a choice, as seen directly here. Its distressing to have US politicians make false claims that Europe's universal healthcare being something they "indirectly pay for", because even if Europe spent all their money on defence the US (albeit mostly the GOP) would still resist providing universal healthcare both tooth and nail.
Universal healthcare is cheaper than our system of healthcare by a factor of 2 (comparing other OECD countries). If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year.
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
We can't. That would require a carefully conducted cost-benefit analysis of potential outcomes including the costs and benefits of not starting it, with estimates for short-term (3 years), ten years, and twenty year outcomes. Such a study doesn't exist publicly and there is no way you can convince me it exists at all other than showing it to me with evidence that it was written before the US attacked Iran. It's also not usual to make such analyses because the costs of a human life lost are calculated very differently in each domain and are hard to assess. For instance, 13.7M per life is assumed in airline safety but that's not a figure the military would use.
Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
Remember: The opinions of people that either didn't vote or voted for Trump are all that really matter this November (unless the Democrats somehow lose voters, but the polls suggest that is unlikely).
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.
We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
There's next to no chance that whatever comes out of the end of this will be a "liberal democratic Iran government". Obama started a route in that direction with the lowered sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from 2015. Iran having a democratic government doesn't really help the GOP war hawks so of course they trashed it. The same happened with North Korea in the 90s with the Agreed Framework that had some promise before GWB torpedoed it to please his oinking base.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
I doubt it. US intervention seems to have a habit of creating weakened nations for its rivals to benefit from. In Iraq's case: Iran and in Iran's case maybe the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The cost doesn't really matter. The US led financial system (which is a glorified Ponzi scheme) is on an unsustainable path. The war in Iran is about resources (force Iran to use US dollars to trade oil, give US more leverage in dealing with China...etc.) and to delay the collapse. You build "digital pyramids" like AI data centers and consolidate power/resources while you still can. Financial cost of the war is largely irrelevant. Whether the outcome will be to your advantage is a different issue but pattern is predictable with historical precedence (Romans...etc.). Unfortunately innocent people pay the price.
America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy. If we woke up tomorrow and there was just world peace, and America got rid of its military budget millions of people would probably instantly lose their jobs.
That's the ultimate reason. They could just as easily declare war against Venus and spend hundreds of billions of dollars sending rocks into space and it would have the same net effect. Actually it would be a bit more positive because to my knowledge nobody's really living on Venus right now.
> America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy.
People don't realize that the Pentagon has strategically, over decades, invested and distributed its supply and manufacturing needs to every single congressional district. Basically ensuring that any representative that votes against the DoD budget will run afoul of constituents employed in some fashion by the military industrial complex.
Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance
More accurately, Israel was going to attack Iran, and US intelligence stated that Iranian retaliation planning was to target US forces, along with most gulf nations and shipping lanes, so US preempted that retaliation.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
> In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
There could be one, but it would be a book-sized answer (and probably a Tolkien one, if not more).
Every conflict is multi-faceted and happened for a variety of reason, some mattering more than other. Any conflict involving the middle east and you have to go back almost 80-years of history to really provide a satisfying answer. Control of world oil supply, trades with China, opportunistic war to appease local voter pool, diversion from problematic affairs, diplomacy with Israel (which as it own thousand fold reasons for this war), Iran being left weak after losing most of their local allied militia, internal uprising due to a economical crisis caused in part to the removal of the agreement on nuclear and the trade ban that followed ... They all probably play a part.
because when you give someone the keys to the US military to some people, they lack the imagination to think beyond piracy and raiding.
The war in its current inception is Hamas levels of planning.
1. Do a big attack
2. ????
3. Profit!
Depends of if the Iranian state is weak enough to collapse on its own, because I imagine a land assault in Venezuela or Iran would be a horrific mistake due to the terrain.
This strike isn't even close to Hamas-levels of planning.
If anything Hamas got the US to make an unforced mistake in a game of checkers three moves out.
According to the IDF's analysis of captured Hamas documents, step 2 was:
"Get Israel to commit so many war crimes that we actually have the moral high ground. Then, regional partners will be forced to support us again, and our recruitment numbers go back up. Do everything we can to ensure the conflict expands across borders to secure future funding and alliances."
The crazy thing is the IDF knew this and published the report. Only after acknowledging that it was their only losing move did they start committing a bunch of war crimes!
Hamas' public support, funding and recruitment levels were rapidly approaching zero until the Palestinian genocide started. Now they're part of a regional conflict and arguably still hold the moral high ground, depending on how you tally things up. That was fantasy-land for them before the strikes.
It's almost like the IDF's funding is contingent on Hamas' continued existence, and, barring that, perpetual regional conflict.
It's too bad that civilians always lose in these conflicts, and right-wing criminals almost always win.
According to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, we are at war because we knew Israel was going to assassinate Iranian leaders and we would be expected to defend them (and our foreign bases) when they go to war, so we might as well go to war right away. 4D chess.
There are a bunch of videos showing how expensive it is to fire certain weapons eg [1]. Not only are there our direct costs but we're also supplying several allies with munitions and weapon systems and paying for them ourselves.
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
"Interests." I'd love to know what the price per barrel the U.S. has paid in the last few years when you factor in additional costs incurred due to involvement in Iraq and Syria.
Almost all of our representatives have been bought by the Israel lobby. We will spend many billions more, and questioning it will continue to cause people to be labeled as antisemitic.
Israel is seeking a new Memorandum of Understanding now which will guarantee them aid for twice as long as normal (20 years instead of the usual 10).
The Israel lobby is the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington. As a politician, getting on their bad side means almost certainly losing your next election. Just look at how much money they are putting into trying to replace Thomas Massie.
Their power and influence has a huge chilling effect on all criticism of Israel, even representatives who represent people who overwhelmingly are against Israel like AOC and Omar, largely remain silent on the genocide and our foreign policy toward them because of this chilling effect.
I highly recommend the book "The Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt. It was published in 2007 and detailed this entire thing almost 2 decades ago.
Certainly a lot less per day, but regardless, the two wars have very different aggressors. If the US has an argument that Iran was a real threat, it certainly hasn't tried to make it yet. Conversely, Ukraine had no choice about whether to be in a war.
It's easy to be cynical around "righteousness" but morality means something. I hope Americans with any kind of influence or vote are introspecting hard right now on what they feel confortable with.
It's hard for laypeople to comprehend such large numbers. Could you add a counter that measures it in miles of California high-speed rail? It's got to be over three miles by now at least.
Maybe it will be offset by selling LNG at 50% higher prices to the dumb Europeans. Blowing up Nordstream was the first step, Qatar stopping LNG production the second. Perhaps take Greenland while the EU is completely dependent.
Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way? Without a war US would still have aircraft carriers, they would just be floating somewhere else.
On the other side, it seems like this is not tracking interceptor costs (presumably due to it being classified), which have certainly been used extensively and are extremely expensive. For that matter i doubt we have a very clear picture of how much ordinance has been used in general.
[To be clear, im not doubting war is very expensive]
A carrier operating at sea on the other side of the world is a ton more expensive than a carrier in port at home. The Ford in particular would probably be in port now if not for these back-to-back expensive adventures, they’ve been deployed for a remarkably long time now.
(As for whether this reflects only those added costs, I don’t know)
Carriers aren't meant to hang out at port at home. The US has protected global sea lanes for 80 years.
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True.
Honestly i think my main opinion is that we have no idea what the number is, but its probably a large one.
Carriers routinely engage in war gaming and cruises. They dont port if they are not actively engaged in war.
> Wouldn't some of these costs be present either way?
This is a fair way to account for the cost, because the assets were procured and personnel hired years ago for just this purpose.
Put another way: we would not need this fleet at all if we did not expect to use it in a manner like this. (For example, Spain did not choose to have this capability and so has not borne a cost of maintaining this option for the preceding decades.) Through that lens, the true cost of this war would involve counting back to before this round of hostilities began.
It's only fair to count _at least_ the "time on task" for all the assets.
Yes, the actual accounting is quite poor and makes bad assumptions. Don't use this info for anything important or serious.
Right, consider the personnel costs that are displayed here. They were already getting paid this past weekend either way (admittedly the military may have had to hire some last minute contractors to help with the operation).
There's someone quoted here who estimated UAE by itself cost in fighting off the Shahed drones at $23-28 per $1 spent on Shahed drone at $55000 (they know how many got through and the claimed success rate and the methods they are using to defend UAE) https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/shahed-drones-iran-us...
I think that's true, but I like that this site includes a "ESTIMATED MUNITIONS & EQUIPMENT COSTS" section that shows the value of actual, expended munitions which are all one-time costs directly resulting from the war.
Seems like a massive understatement given how much of this war has been shooting down iranian missiles. According to wikipedia, a single patriot missile cost 4 million, and you often have to use multiple to get a succesful shoot down.
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Also, the taking the production/purchasing cost of some F15s that were 25 - 35 years old doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or does it?
They still work, if they get shot down, you will have to pay to replace them. (also using them is expensive and causes wear, especially under the stress of real action, where the limits are pushed)
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it's also doesn't take into consideration the revenue opportunities, like USA-branded apparel, FanDuel parlay wagers, and I assume that Epic Fury is a summer Marvel franchise, or Wrestling PPV?
Maybe, its opaque how its calculated.
But you are keeping people on high alert, refueling further away, etc...
Sure but having a bunch of resources for "defence" is very different from having a bunch of resources for "attack" in most people's mind I imagine.
Yes but right now it’s doing this war. It can’t be anywhere else, so the costs are for this deployment specifically.
I think when people are asking about the cost of a war, they are asking about excess costs. How much extra money would be saved if the war didn't happen.
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Iran probably wouldn't have blown up the $300m radar installation if we hadn't randomly attacked them.
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Is there good evidence for this?
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This doesn't include generational damage in sentiment:
* Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas
* Japan is in trouble because Middle East supplies its 75% of oil, which is blocked now
* Ukraine is in dilemma, because US giving every support to Israel, but not to Ukraine
* Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them in the future, they're scared even more (except UAE) that people might overthrow those kings if things continue this way
* Africa understood its better to work with China, than with US
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. People here seem to also have no perspective, since it is not in the wheelhouse of most tech people, on the fact that this is all a part of a 40 year strategy (as Netanyahu himself has openly stated) that some refer to as the “the Clean Break Strategy” or the “7 countries in 5 years memo”[1]. It clearly took longer than 5 years, but they definitely tried and even the likes of Hillary “we came, we saw, he died” Clinton was a party of that.
People always squabble over blue team vs red team, never realizing that the whole game is just a ruse to provide a sense of democratic control to placate the public, and also give the apparatchiks if the regime a sense of autonomy, when in fact they’re just all pulling at the same continuity of agenda like beasts of burden, being whipped and rode by a very small group that hold their reins.
[1] https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1819709215352438921?lang=en
> Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain is asking questions, if US can't defend us and is moving all defensive missiles to protect Israel, why should we even be ally with them
Where are you getting this information? The UAE, for instance, is relying heavily on missile defense - and it's working out for them:
https://gulfnews.com/uae/uae-intercepts-186-ballistic-missil...
It's all US technology, too:
https://www.wired.me/story/inside-the-system-that-intercepte...
I think citizens in those countries recognize that allowing a repressive regime to exist simply for cheap oil costs is not necessarily a good solution, either.
Because they all live themself in repressive regimes?
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until your energy bills impact your pocket directly, while you were laid off from your manufacturing plant, because their cost structure is not competitive without cheap Russian oil/gas
Look at the correlation here starting from 2022: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/recent-weakness-german-manufa...
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Almost nobody thinks like that, what are we 5 year olds? Especially when most left leaning folks in western world has hard sympathies with hamas which are just left and right hand of the same regime (maybe not US left which is far from left elsewhere).
Did US population en masse lost sleep during past decades till now and some future due to sweatshops full of kids making their jeans or iphones or Christmas toys for their kids in highly undemocratic regimes?
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No, we realize US americans elected gerontoidiot Trump, and we constnantly ask ourselves what the actual fuck after every third act of this senile imbecile. Do you not have young (like at least < 60) people who can still actually think critically, have strategy, hold ideas for more than 30 seconds. Are you impressed by senility? Why do you support someone who attacks european countries frequently just on the basis of whimsy shit like not wanting to go with you into wars of aggression agaisnt third countries, like you attacked Spain most recently? What the actual fuck?
That people think in terms of good/vs/evil and that US will somehow come out of this as a liked country that did good is beyond me. The constant attempts at painting some morals or grand strategy over the constant random unhinged acts of senile imbecile that gets bootlicked by everyone around him just comes out as insane.
That's what at least this european thinks of US, yeah. :)
Unhinged country with unhinged lunatic at the top, all this is. That's what americans should be thinking hard about, not about another new ways to rationalize his insanity and insane criminal acts.
"Allowing a repressive regime to exist" is precisely the social contract of every citizen of every country. Haven't you ever heard of taxes?
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> Europe is in trouble because they can't get gas from Russia, Qatar stopped supplying gas
60% of it comes from the US, a lot from northern Africa too, not much comes from the middle east
The price of oil has skyrocketed because of the dumbfuck war. Doesn't matter where the oil comes when it costs too much and causes massive inflation once again.
The disruption in gas supply will be very short. Weeks, at most. The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone, they are living in its shadow for a long time now. Now, Ukraine and Israel need very different kinds of support, and things like US withholding intelligence from Ukraine have nothing to do with Israel.
Iran has been bombing production facilities across a bunch of US allies. It's unclear how quickly those will be rebuilt. Also, the US is probably bombing Iranian production, which means countries like China will be looking for additional sources.
> The disruption in gas supply will be very short.
Remember when W declared mission accomplished? That war was so short too.
> The gulf states will be very happy to see the Islamic Republic gone
Would they be happy to see a devastating civil war that gives rise to a successor of ISIS or Taleban? Will they happily accept tens of millions of refugees?
Absolutely nothing good will come from this dumbfuck war. We all will pay the price of it one way or another.
I wonder why Israel should get any support, do you support killing children and bombing schools?
Ukraine, I understand, because it was attacked, but Israel, who was oppressing people for so many years with prisons full with Palestinian kids and teenagers long before Oct 7th, I really don't understand.
Except, for Epstein reasons (blackmail), other than that, there is no reason US should support Israel, in any way
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This seems really low considering one of the early warning radars taken out cost around $1bil on its own.... and it's possible a second one was at least damaged. (one in Qatar the other in Bahrain)
NSA (Naval support) Bahrain lost a ground station (maybe two), not a radar.
Possibly. There are a lot of things around that story that seem very off
Aside from the obvious bad AI images floating around the one credible looking video shows a shaheed flying into a radome. A Radome in the middle of a bunch of buildings. You don't put radars in between buildings. And if it's a phased array I don't think it would be in a round Radome either.
They seem to have hit something of value, but don't think it was a 1bn radar
Everything around this smells like the Iran hilariously oversized F35 misinformation
https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/1ldffvd/its_confi...
The only footage I've seen is damage to maybe a satellite receiver. Have you seen proof of the radar damage
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Next time someone asks how we're going to pay for, eg, free school lunches, keep this site in mind.
Given 50 million schoolkids in the US and a cost per meal per child of $4, the current number represents 10 meals. At 1 meal a day that would be 2 school weeks, at 2 meals a day that would be 1 school week.
We've been at this for 2.5 days, and the president is suggesting this could last a month or more.
I suspect the long term ROI on free school lunches is going to far exceed that of this war, as well.
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2 school weeks of lunches for less than a week of war costs is a pretty good argument for school lunches. Especially as costs of this start to balloon the longer it goes on.
2 weeks of meal for every school kid in the US!
Can you imagine the scale of this number?
3 days of war vs 2 week of meal for every school kid
Now do the math for Afghan war, probably US could have easily cancelled 70% of loan for every college grad, or could've been built large rail network
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How many subsidized meals would it represent if you only account for the kids that need one?
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Those meals would most likely help a lot of kids become healthy productive members of society. That money would be saved by the families of those kids and used in other parts of the economy. A lot of the cost would therefore be returned. The money spent of this war is producing only destruction.
When would it ever be 2 meals a day?
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The question is fundamentally poorly formed, and as a consequence, so is the rebuttal. A state can pay for anything, since it doesn't have to be in a budget surplus.
Household budget analogies emerge any time someone wants to limit spending, or criticize spending, but one of the biggest points of Wealth of Nations (which is the foundation for modern macroeconomics) is that the budget of a state is fundamentally different to that of a household.
If a household fails to maintain its budget, it's game over. People know this, which is why it's a punchy analogy. But it's also a bad analogy.
If a state fails to maintain its budget, it can either print more money or raise taxes. Neither is a great long term fiscal policy, but it's not the end of the world either, and budgetary deficit something most states utilize fairly regularly.
What's missing with the school lunches and present with the Iran War is political will. (I get that is what your point was all along.)
This is not exactly true on the scale of these interventions. The state can't run out of money but it does run out of the time and talent of its people, the resources of its land, and the patience of its partners. State capacity is a real limit, and where we direct the money is a pretty strong proxy for where we spend these, the true resources of the state. We don't pay for bombs with dollars, we pay for them with schools, roads, and hospitals.
Where do you see a question?
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he was saying the state should be paying the school free lunches, what are you on about
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For the prospects of the freedom and subsequent prosperity of the oppressed Iranian people, peace in the Middle East, and safety of the commercial shipping routes, I fully approve my tax dollars to the matter.
It's genuinely difficult to see this sort of claim as being an honest statement, given that everyone knows the outcome with Afghanistan and Iraq.
Do you believe that those goals will be achieved? Given the historical track record of these kinds of interventions, I do not.
OK, I don't. I wonder if we could set up some sort of legislative system that could debate this on our behalf and make a reasonable plan that accounts for our differing viewpoints.
I've found that if two people sit together and are willing to talk long enough, they'll eventually be able to actually hear each other, and usually they are more in agreement than the media-installed reactions and assumptions we have. Only with a few would we vehemently disagree. I'm talking about reasonable people though, like your calm reply.
Do you really believe killing 175 children[0] will bring peace and prosperity to the Iranian people?
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/girls-sc...
That news piece was officially dismissed after investigation by the IDF and CENTCOM. I would bring to your awareness that you're using an emotional argument with no substance, and it discounts the decades of complex history in the region.
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Would you still approve if the cost is 20x, the Iranian people are worse off, and the shipping routes and Middle East are dramatically less safe due to drones?
Because that is a realistic possibility.
No, I would not. But so far I don't see that outcome.
Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq, again. Syria. Libya. Iran. Iran, again. Yeah - this is totally gonna work this time.
In theory it could work. In practice you'd at most get a bloody civil war that would give rise to a new form of ISIS. But if you believe what Fox News tells you, it's probably too late to argue about it.
For Pakistanis as well ?
I'm honestly not informed about what's happening with Pakistan. I know there's a ton of tweets about this, but it's not in my scope at the moment.
That is an unrealistic goal.
Likely the actual goal, as dictated by Israel and the Jewish Lobby in the US, is to destabilise Iran long term in a sort of Syria situation, so they cannot threaten Israeli hegemony in the region.
Remember even a non Islamic Iran is still a threat to Israeli power if it remains unified and intact.
I don't agree with your perspective, but I do support Iran no longer being a threat to anyone else in the region, no matter what.
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Yeah that’s the likely outcome given our track record /s
Venezuela is undergoing tremendous freedom and hope. My fellow Venezuelans and I are super grateful for the well-planned, surgical mission of the US. They can have all the oil they want and help restore our industries in exchange for their financial benefit and partnership, which is the most recent track record.
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United States involvement in regime change: 1952–1953: Iran [BP], 2026: Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
2025 United States strikes on Iranian nuclear sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_strikes_on_...
2026 Iran massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
2026 Iran conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_conflict
Where does this money go? I see that some is lost value, like in the downed aircraft, but what groups are profiting off this crazy flow?
Defense contractors, the oil companies who get to rebuild, private security, etc. You can do a web search for who profited from the Iraq war. It's mostly all the same. This war also has a religious component to it, as a US combat unit commander has said "the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth": https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-ir...
I saw the cost of the three downed planes somewhere else and thought the price was huge. Now I see that it’s comparable to “First Tomahawk salvo”.
But universal healthcare is too expensive.
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This is a valid criticism. Whenever there is a push to improve life for US citizens, we are told that we do not have the funds. Yet, here we see an essentially unlimited budget to fight Israel's war of aggression against Iran, with zero benefit to US citizens. In fact, the costs (financial, moral and human) that we will pay for this excursion will be astronomically high.
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Reductive tropes?OP is pointing out a serious flaw in US federal spending. Namely our lack of spending on healthcare and our intensive spending on killing people from a distance
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> Low effort comments
Thank you for your very high effort, insightful and valuable comment on this matter.
Your reply is even worse, no facts, no reply just rant and diversion, a proper low effort too.
Agreed. Considering this attack is also biblically sanctioned, commenters should keep that in mind else they incur the wrath of God.
Is this missing interceptors? My understanding is those probably dominate total costs at the moment, especially if you include the costs of allied Gulf State and Israeli interceptors. Thousands have been expended already on ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Those range from hundred of thousands to multiple millions per shot.
What would have happened if the US dis not get involved in WWII. We would probably not be here... Not everything is short sighted bean counters. Having major cities explode by nuclear devices in the US will surely cost more.
Iran has been weeks away from a nuke for decades. What evidence is there that they were any closer this time, or that this war was necessary to delay or block their progress?
I vaguely remember a similar situation last year, where Trump said, Irans nuclear program is now destroyed for years to come.
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The war is for Israel, sorry I should say Greater Israel.
I'm sorry but this is a braindead take. Trump is exactly a short-sighted .. well not a bean counter since I doubt his ability to count. But short sighted for sure.
Thinking an Iranian nuke is threatening a US city is probably a Fox news talking point, so dogshit by definition.
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Exactly. The alternative was to let Iran (while under a suicidal theocratic regime) get nukes? Imagine if Dubai was struck by nukes instead of drones.
We had a nuclear deal with them, which was ripped up by the same man currently in charge of the US.
The alternative was not bombing them in the middle of negotiations.
Could add: Civilian casualty ratio by party
(Civilian casualty ratios in recent conflicts and declared wars)
not providing universal healthcare is a choice, as seen directly here. Its distressing to have US politicians make false claims that Europe's universal healthcare being something they "indirectly pay for", because even if Europe spent all their money on defence the US (albeit mostly the GOP) would still resist providing universal healthcare both tooth and nail.
Universal healthcare is cheaper than our system of healthcare by a factor of 2 (comparing other OECD countries). If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year.
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
I've looked into this for work and no way. You must unfactor the European models getting subsidized by the current US model.
Some very smart people have looked at fixing the system, and there's no golden goose (except ozempic maybe). We'll need pharmacological breakthroughs.
Also, regrettably - A LOT of medical care is unnecessary but we love grandma.
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> If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year
If it saves $1T, then why does it require raising taxes?
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the lives lost though. the children killed.
Oh boy - defense accounting I LOVE this game.
Quick quick, give me a quote on the coffee maker on the AWACS.
2 billions in 4 days. Have you said thank you once?
https://bsky.app/profile/rbreich.bsky.social/post/3mg4ige7o7...
What about reparations? :)
This is an illegal war of aggressions after all.
The justifications all remain fanciful. I mean at least Bush bothered to make it appear legitimate.
neat! I made (vibecoded) and deployed something very similar yesterday https://iranwarcost.com
Wouldn’t most of these costs have been going for a few weeks, given the build up?
Which contractor is selling the most munitions? LM, Raytheon, etc..
$2b is a rounding error in the USA budget
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Literally anything but healthcare.
Why are the fonts so small? I have a hard time reading anything.
Can we subtract the number of dollars that it would cost not to start a war?
We can't. That would require a carefully conducted cost-benefit analysis of potential outcomes including the costs and benefits of not starting it, with estimates for short-term (3 years), ten years, and twenty year outcomes. Such a study doesn't exist publicly and there is no way you can convince me it exists at all other than showing it to me with evidence that it was written before the US attacked Iran. It's also not usual to make such analyses because the costs of a human life lost are calculated very differently in each domain and are hard to assess. For instance, 13.7M per life is assumed in airline safety but that's not a figure the military would use.
Cost is not the first thing I care about in war, but I felt like this is a useful site for tracking the money we're lighting on fire in order to pursue this conflict
Civilian costs are real, unjustified, and incalculable.
That’s good. But it seems that the American anti-war discourse is slanted towards the cost of it. Maybe because the whole political spectrum can relate to “our tax dollars”, while (1) the cost for the military personell might not be a concern for all because it is all-volunteer, and (2) some Americans don’t care what happens to people in other countries.
Certainly: American progressives can use this to counter the “fiscally conservatives” (for domestic spending) who are also hawkish.
Remember: The opinions of people that either didn't vote or voted for Trump are all that really matter this November (unless the Democrats somehow lose voters, but the polls suggest that is unlikely).
Those are the votes that need to be won over to make any sort of difference during the second half of the Trump administration.
> $2.1B
so $7 per person?
We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
I suppose pick either, and it was successful.
My personal polymarket says we wont get either. Trump and Israel ruin their reputation. But reputation matters close to 0 in international relations, which is why they don't care.
There's next to no chance that whatever comes out of the end of this will be a "liberal democratic Iran government". Obama started a route in that direction with the lowered sanctions and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from 2015. Iran having a democratic government doesn't really help the GOP war hawks so of course they trashed it. The same happened with North Korea in the 90s with the Agreed Framework that had some promise before GWB torpedoed it to please his oinking base.
I also think that nuclear powers mean regional stability. Ukraine gave up its nukes in the 90s and we saw what happened there.
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
> We better remove and halt nuclear powers for the rest of my life.
Neither of those things is a guaranteed outcome of this. Depending on who you ask, it's not even a likely outcome.
The IRGC remains the most powerful group in Iran. Probably a military junta is a more likely outcome, plus or minus a civil war to establish it.
Unfortunately, I think "Theocratic Iran with the bomb" is on the "good" side of the distribution of potential outcomes here.
You're right. It is unfortunate that you think that.
> We better get a liberal democratic Iran government out of this.
I doubt it. US intervention seems to have a habit of creating weakened nations for its rivals to benefit from. In Iraq's case: Iran and in Iran's case maybe the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I'd be happy with the permanent removal of US bases from the Middle East.
The Middle East does not understand Democracy. It will just be another strong man in power. The diaspora is pushing for a new shah
The cost doesn't really matter. The US led financial system (which is a glorified Ponzi scheme) is on an unsustainable path. The war in Iran is about resources (force Iran to use US dollars to trade oil, give US more leverage in dealing with China...etc.) and to delay the collapse. You build "digital pyramids" like AI data centers and consolidate power/resources while you still can. Financial cost of the war is largely irrelevant. Whether the outcome will be to your advantage is a different issue but pattern is predictable with historical precedence (Romans...etc.). Unfortunately innocent people pay the price.
*for the US.
Why is the US at war?
America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy. If we woke up tomorrow and there was just world peace, and America got rid of its military budget millions of people would probably instantly lose their jobs.
That's the ultimate reason. They could just as easily declare war against Venus and spend hundreds of billions of dollars sending rocks into space and it would have the same net effect. Actually it would be a bit more positive because to my knowledge nobody's really living on Venus right now.
> America needs to have never-ending perpetual wars to sustain its own economy.
People don't realize that the Pentagon has strategically, over decades, invested and distributed its supply and manufacturing needs to every single congressional district. Basically ensuring that any representative that votes against the DoD budget will run afoul of constituents employed in some fashion by the military industrial complex.
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Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance
>which would allow China to attack Taiwan
anytime now. trust me bro.
Israel attacked Iran and dragged us into the war as per Rubio: https://x.com/Acyn/status/2028573242173366282
More accurately, Israel was going to attack Iran, and US intelligence stated that Iranian retaliation planning was to target US forces, along with most gulf nations and shipping lanes, so US preempted that retaliation.
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"Why?" is the hardest of the questions.
For any particular person, you can tell a story that satisfies "Why?". But for a large number of people, you have to answer "Why?" for one sub-group at a time.
In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
To answer a different question: It appears that the Israeli government and military wanted to bomb Iran again, and the United States executive branch and military decided to help out. This is an incomplete and unsatisfying answer. Sorry.
> In other words, there's not a single answer that will answer this in a satisfying way.
There could be one, but it would be a book-sized answer (and probably a Tolkien one, if not more).
Every conflict is multi-faceted and happened for a variety of reason, some mattering more than other. Any conflict involving the middle east and you have to go back almost 80-years of history to really provide a satisfying answer. Control of world oil supply, trades with China, opportunistic war to appease local voter pool, diversion from problematic affairs, diplomacy with Israel (which as it own thousand fold reasons for this war), Iran being left weak after losing most of their local allied militia, internal uprising due to a economical crisis caused in part to the removal of the agreement on nuclear and the trade ban that followed ... They all probably play a part.
To bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Greater Israel project
https://youtube.com/shorts/jFRTZGgmGo4?si=0gYc8JPCzVD_TD__
Oh wow, I never truly realized it before, but his speech really used to be a lot more coherent across long sentences than it is these days.
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because when you give someone the keys to the US military to some people, they lack the imagination to think beyond piracy and raiding.
The war in its current inception is Hamas levels of planning.
1. Do a big attack
2. ????
3. Profit!
Depends of if the Iranian state is weak enough to collapse on its own, because I imagine a land assault in Venezuela or Iran would be a horrific mistake due to the terrain.
This strike isn't even close to Hamas-levels of planning.
If anything Hamas got the US to make an unforced mistake in a game of checkers three moves out.
According to the IDF's analysis of captured Hamas documents, step 2 was:
"Get Israel to commit so many war crimes that we actually have the moral high ground. Then, regional partners will be forced to support us again, and our recruitment numbers go back up. Do everything we can to ensure the conflict expands across borders to secure future funding and alliances."
The crazy thing is the IDF knew this and published the report. Only after acknowledging that it was their only losing move did they start committing a bunch of war crimes!
Hamas' public support, funding and recruitment levels were rapidly approaching zero until the Palestinian genocide started. Now they're part of a regional conflict and arguably still hold the moral high ground, depending on how you tally things up. That was fantasy-land for them before the strikes.
It's almost like the IDF's funding is contingent on Hamas' continued existence, and, barring that, perpetual regional conflict.
It's too bad that civilians always lose in these conflicts, and right-wing criminals almost always win.
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Christian Evangelicals, war hawks, and a voter base that fell for the "peace ticket" talk.
Distraction
Midterm elections later this year
To occupy media cycles? To start the rapture?
I love that this was downvoted and greyed out. Don't think, don't ask questions. Since when was that part of the hacker ethos?
You're asking dangerous questions, comrade.
because of Epstein tapes and blackmail by Israel
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According to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, we are at war because we knew Israel was going to assassinate Iranian leaders and we would be expected to defend them (and our foreign bases) when they go to war, so we might as well go to war right away. 4D chess.
There are a bunch of videos showing how expensive it is to fire certain weapons eg [1]. Not only are there our direct costs but we're also supplying several allies with munitions and weapon systems and paying for them ourselves.
Also, yes carrier groups exist anyway, but operating them in a combat zone halfway around the world is way more expensive.
Operation Epstein Fury [sic] is a giant white elephant and I think more Americans should know how much this is costing as well as why we're doing it, which is simply to support American imperialism with a lie similar to the IRaq WMD lie and that is that Iran is "weeks away" from nuclear weapons, a lie that's been told and propagated since at least 1992 [2].
President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the expanding military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address [3]. Every bomber, every plane, every missile has an eye-watering cost when you put it int erms of schools, houses or healthcare. The recent ICE budget, for example, could've ended homelessness. Not for the year. Forever.
Israel begged every president since Reagan to invade Iran. They all declined. Until now. And many suspect we're going to run out of anti-missile munitions long before Iran runs out of ballistic missiles.
Just remember, every used munition eneds to be replaced. That's a new contract and new profit opportunity. It's why in so many post-WW2 conflicts you'll find American weapons on both sides.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6mWI8Q6IwA
[2]: https://www.tiktok.com/@therecount/video/7612744750713589023
[3]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...
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US has tons of interests in the region. This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.
"Interests." I'd love to know what the price per barrel the U.S. has paid in the last few years when you factor in additional costs incurred due to involvement in Iraq and Syria.
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This is not in the US's interest at all. What do we get out of destabilizing the region? This is entirely for Israel.
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> This is just as much for america's benefit as it is for Israel's.
Citation needed.
Almost all of our representatives have been bought by the Israel lobby. We will spend many billions more, and questioning it will continue to cause people to be labeled as antisemitic.
Israel is seeking a new Memorandum of Understanding now which will guarantee them aid for twice as long as normal (20 years instead of the usual 10).
https://www.stimson.org/2025/a-20-year-mou-with-israel-is-no...
The Israel lobby is the most powerful and feared lobby in Washington. As a politician, getting on their bad side means almost certainly losing your next election. Just look at how much money they are putting into trying to replace Thomas Massie.
Their power and influence has a huge chilling effect on all criticism of Israel, even representatives who represent people who overwhelmingly are against Israel like AOC and Omar, largely remain silent on the genocide and our foreign policy toward them because of this chilling effect.
I highly recommend the book "The Israel Lobby" by Mearsheimer and Walt. It was published in 2007 and detailed this entire thing almost 2 decades ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...
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At this point the media apparatus that shaped all these people's brains in the comments here must've cost more than the wars they simp for.
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How much money was set on fire for Ukraine?
Where does that fall in relation on the righteousness rubric?
Certainly a lot less per day, but regardless, the two wars have very different aggressors. If the US has an argument that Iran was a real threat, it certainly hasn't tried to make it yet. Conversely, Ukraine had no choice about whether to be in a war.
It's easy to be cynical around "righteousness" but morality means something. I hope Americans with any kind of influence or vote are introspecting hard right now on what they feel confortable with.
It was not set on fire, it was ”invested” in dead Russian soldiers.
Ukraine is fighting for democracy, something that US been preaching for centuries, bozo.
I'd rather have a tracker to show how close the Orange One is to his coveted Peace Prize.
He stole María Corina Machado‘s and has the much coveted one from FIFA too.
Wow. That escalated quickly.
It's hard for laypeople to comprehend such large numbers. Could you add a counter that measures it in miles of California high-speed rail? It's got to be over three miles by now at least.
Maybe it will be offset by selling LNG at 50% higher prices to the dumb Europeans. Blowing up Nordstream was the first step, Qatar stopping LNG production the second. Perhaps take Greenland while the EU is completely dependent.
Orange clown has a strange way of looking at things. He's now saying - He's not starting a war, but rather ending one.
It's not strange, it's perfectly intelligible doublespeak.
Doublespeak
Dear Americans, what are the costs of the 165 killed children of the Minab school airstrike[1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike
low, if the claims are true iran has 1000ish lbs of 60% uranium.
we shall see