Comment by firefoxd
9 hours ago
I often see these angles, how we should have prepared better or attacked this instead of that, or the unexpected strategy from the adversary. What about not bombing? The best safety trick the US can use is not bombing others.
It's a lot more than "just" not bombing. We also need to stop meddling in other countries' affairs. 9/11 and the war on terror are a direct result of all of our "nation building" over the prior decades. If we'd left well enough alone, the twin towers would likely still be standing, and we might still be able to bring as many liquids as we want on planes, and see our loved ones off at the gate when they're taking a trip and we're staying behind.
Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor? Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked? https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embass... Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ?
I would love for nobody to bomb or kill anyone. Did Ukraine bomb Russia? Is Taiwan bombing China that declares it is going to take Taiwan by force?
There isn't a single conflict in the world today where I can see that someone can just say "we're going to stop" and they'll be safe. There is always something more to it. If Ukraine says we'll just stop attacking Russian soldiers is that war over? If Russia says we'll just stop attacking Ukraine and stay where we are is that war over? Is there any other conflict where the answer is simply stop and it'll be fine?
> Who did the US bomb before 9/11?
Iraq, during the Gulf War.
> Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor?
Japan, though the US didn't bomb them, it instituted an oil embargo and asset freeze.
> Who did the US bomb before its embassies in East Africa were attacked
Iraq, during the Gulf War.
> Who did the US bomb before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 ?
Tripoli and Benghazi, Iran Air Flight 655.
I don't understand the purpose of these questions. Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it?
The US are also the major enabler of Israel's colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was clearly expressed by Bin Laden himself as one of the motives behind the 9/11 attacks.
> Were you thinking the US was just minding its own business and some bad guys came and attacked it
As I remember, this was exactly the way the US explained 9/11: "they hate us for our freedom".
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> Who did the US bomb before 9/11?
Korea, Vietnam, Laos...
Bombing Korea led to bin Laden attacking on 9/11?
You did not read that GP was saying. He's saying that many conflicts are not started because US bombed a place.
> Who did the US bomb before 9/11? Who did the US bomb before Pearl Harbor?
Right, they just hate the US because of their freedoms.
/s
Well yes, and actually instead of wasting billions creating understandable cause of hate, this could be injected into domestic social spendings, and there would probably still be a lot staying on the table to throw in humanitarian endeavors around the globe creating love through so called soft power.
The US is a country of violence and war. Founded from a war, massive civil war, almost perpetually at war for the last many decades.
Military spending costs a trillion a year (Trump wants 1.5 trillion). It’s big business and makes some people very rich.
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> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.
Where's the proof that Iran has, or is even remotely close to having, nukes? I mean, actual proof, not the kind of "proof" that led us to invade Iraq in '03.
> I'm not at all mad at the US government for deciding to get rid of Iran's regime.
Ah, you're one of those people. You probably thought "Team America: World Police" was an instruction manual, and not satire, yeah?
Difficult to reconcile the justification of current efforts of "Iran can't have nukes" with the unequivocal claims made less than a year ago that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been "obliterated".
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/sunday-shows-pre...
It's possible for both of these to be true: The leaders of the US are incompetent, and bombing Iran was the right decision.
"Even a stopped clock..."
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Tell me about the problems outside of N. Korea that have resulted from N. Korea's ownership of nuclear weapons?
North Korea started out with a "nuclear weapon": Seoul is within artillery range of the border. Consequently the Kim regime has been able to starve and torture its own population, and yes - develop nuclear weapons - without anyone willing to stop them.
You think the problems inside North Korea are ok? Koreans are human too.
Why are we ignoring the problems inside of North Korea? I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.
That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate, with the government sponsoring everything from extorting hospitals with ransomware, to dealing drugs, to counterfeiting currency, to abducting film makers (from Hong Kong).
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> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.
There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.
Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.
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> Iran has been the driving force behind a lot of instability in Middle East
I'm loving the current stability that the USA has gifted the world and looking forward to many decades of peace and calm in the middle east. Thank you so much.
That choice is doubly false. On the one hand, there was a diplomatic option. It was working until Trump decided to kill it. On the other, it's insane to think that you can bomb a large, industrialized country of 90 million people out of the ability to make nuclear weapons short of wiping them out of existence.
> we only planned for the absolute best case scenario, why didn't that scenario happen?
IRGC sympathizers across the world that would rather have the current government than the more progressive predecessor.