Comment by dbdr
12 hours ago
> “bomb them, they’re all regime supporters”
Even those regime supporters are civilians. This is literally advocating for a war crime.
12 hours ago
> “bomb them, they’re all regime supporters”
Even those regime supporters are civilians. This is literally advocating for a war crime.
Sad that my comment got flagged, this is a major problem with hacker news - censorship of comments that prevent people from hearing all perspectives.
The point of my comment was to give a first-hand conversation with an actual Iranian.
You can react to it any way you want, but the point of my comment was to show how some Iranians are actually thinking. And yes, many Iranians want regime change and they see the supporters of the regime as the enemy.
The regime hangs protestors by the way.
> censorship [...] that prevent people from hearing all perspectives
A casual conversation is not to be held to the rigour of legal or legislative opinion. But perspectives, like other sorts of opinions, are not all equal in value.
Some opinions are just noise and there is no value in "hearing all the perspectives" from sources that have no interest in even trying to think things through.
The worst opinions are calls to violence -- that lead to actual violence in some cases -- from people who incur zero risk from their extremism.
Idle statements about bombarding civilians, flattening countries, committing war crimes, "sending countries back into the Stone Age where they belong", are examples of arm-chair blather from people of whom the best we can say is that they have never lived under bombardment nor served in a time of conflict in any capacity whatsoever.
I hear your point.
I still think it’s valuable to hear Iranian voices during this conflict.
I’m definitely not saying you have to follow through on what they say!
But it’s valuable to see where people are emotionally. Because when I asked my wife and she essentially said “bomb the regime supporters” it says a lot about where anti-regime Iranians are emotionally.
It also helps people understand why anti-regime Iranians have been pro Trump during this conflict.
Keep in mind that my wife is from Tehran, and has a huge network of family in Tehran. This isn’t some abstract thing to her. And it’s consistent with the other expats I know who want continued pressure on the regime.
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Yes, many Iranians want regime change, but that's not going to happen by bombing everything in the country, and Trump isn't willing to send troops. I'm not sure what your point is actually.
I was responding to a comment about bombing bridges.
I quoted an actual conversation i had with an Iranian where they said essentially “go ahead and bomb the bridges”. That got flagged for some reason.
I’m simply trying to surface conversations I’ve had with Iranians. So often these Internet conversations occur in a bubble.
My point? I guess there’s this idea that Iranians are disgusted with Trump’s comment today. That hasn’t been my experience at all. My wife is Iranian. I’m connected to a large Iranian expat community. They are very pro Trump because of the war. The initial reaction I saw was disappointment with the ceasefire. They want continued pressure on the regime, and they feel that a cease-fire works against that.
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War crimes as a concept was invented by the current US hegemony to punish others, not to be bound by.
I think about it this way: would I have had any problem with the allies bombing Nazi rallies, even though they were mostly civilians? My answer is absolutely not. I feel the same way when I see pro-Islamic regime or pro-Hezbollah rallies. In fact, I think the limited repercussions for these extremist civilians - and their very tangible support for the regimes - is what keeps these movements alive and powerful. Cost to civilizations - military and civilian alike - is what ends wars.
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"Corruption" is all but meaningless. It happens in every society and the only people that get prosecuted for them seem to be people outside the elite. /s
I don't think holding such views is helpful.
Besides, a few people have been prosecuted for war crimes while being on the winning side (or by their own side), some examples:
William Calley (US), convicted for his role in the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which American troops killed hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians.
Donald Payne (UK), for abuse and death of an Iraqi detainee.
Charles Graner (US), sentenced to 10 years in prison for the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
However, we can agree those are very few and far between, compared to all crimes committed. But it's more useful to condemn them and advocate for more accountability than to claim it's useless anyways and normalize calls for more crimes.