I'm not tooting my horn here, but I how did I know it would be a low impact response? It was more like hundred thousand side die.

Trump obviously has a long way to go before he ends up as bad as Bush when it comes to foreign policy. The reasons claimed and what we ended up will make the invasion of Iraq stand as one of the great foreign policy blunders in modern history. That is not a judgment on the soldiers or how they fought, but on the politics of the war.

I'm no fan of the Obama regime's policies in the middle-east either. They lost international cooperation when they got completely outplayed in Syria, they managed to use such cooperation to turn Libya into a train-wreck and very little of the previous administration's messes were cleared up.

But you play with the hand you're dealt. The Trump administration has a fantastic ability to conjure catastrophes out of very little.

Interesting. I'm no fan of Trump's foreign policy, but I suspect history will be more charitable to Trump on foreign policy than it will to almost every other aspect of his administration.

My biggest concern about Trump's foreign policy is that he is unprepared to handle a crisis. I also am bothered by his relationships with other world leaders. As best I can tell, most leaders in the developed world think Trump is an idiot and a buffoon (who can blame them). They neither respect him nor like him personally.

If there is an opportunity for world leaders to humiliate Trump without putting their own countries significantly at risk, I think they will seize it without hesitation.

Here is the thing, if you think a retaliatory strike for hitting an embassy was overly dangerous, what does that say about Iran, and the possibility of them escalating on a whim, irrespective of current events? You have much bigger problem than Trump.

Come on, man. I'm sure you have gambled before. You "knew" in the same way I "knew" the Bucks would beat the Warriors last night. That is, you characterized a highly probable outcome as an inevitable outcome, and now that the highly probably outcome has come to pass, you are offering the fact of the outcome as evidence of the inevitability of the outcome.

Well, you ended up with a president who basically declared that an Iranian missile attack on US troops is not a big deal.

Perhaps you should focus on that instead of repeatedly trying to stuff your own caricature of an argument down my throat.

I know I'm not going to win the lottery. Is there a chance, yeah, but you don't make decisions based on that probability, or lack thereof.

ROAR!

Do I need to show the pic of all the rocket attacks that no one here even bothered to comment on when they occurred?

Pointing out again that no one was killed in the embassy attack nor seriously injured (I don't even know if an american was touched).

Have to wait for the plane crash explanation too (potentially a direct consequence to the general kill).
Could be accidental obviously.

You misunderstood my sentiment. You seem to be carrying out a debate with an imaginary person in your head, not me.

What they think of Trump is largely irrelevant.

What they think of the US is not. A superpower's word must matter, or it will lose its influence. This isn't Pax Romana.

And the word of the US doesn't really matter anymore. Deals are broken at a whim, allies are abandoned both diplomatically and on the battlefield. It's not "just Trump", countries aren't that stupid. It is that a person like him can be elected, and it is the realization that it is unlikely that he is the last one of his ilk to be elected. Trump reflects the US. Not all of it, but enough to make it the correct reflection.

Perhaps he is just the culmination of a long period of political rot, but that doesn't really matter either.

Well, my response did require a bit of thought to connect the dots. The entire situation is somewhat insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. I'm not as confident the action Trump took will deter Iran all that much, but it does send a message the US can and will respond militarily, if certain boundaries are crossed, and that certainly impacts Iran's actions, even if means they take a little longer to think about any particular initiative. It may not improve it, but it doesn't make it worse. At worst, it changes nothing about the current situation. There is no response that would make it better, geopolitically.

The criticism of Trump on this matter is overwrought.

Bolded is partly, but not entirely, true.

Having Trump in office significantly exacerbates the problem you describe.

Stop droning Iraqi militias and provoking embassy trashing.

Pull out of Iraq.

Honor the nuclear agreement we made with Iran.

Stop punishing Iranian citizens with sanctions.

Stop trying to control the previous century's energy source.

Show some imagination.

Yeah and Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide.

So lets see

• Iran launches missiles at US bases
• Iran scared of retaliation
• less than two hours later Plane in Iranian air space crashes
• Video shows it in flames
• No communication from flight crew
• Iran refuses to allow Canada or Europe access to black box. (I get why they will not let the USA or FAA access )
• Experts now starting to question the crash

67 CDN's died in that crash 29 from my city alone. I can only imagine if there were Americans on this flight.

I think it was a missile strike and accidental but we will never know.

I don’t think we’re going to get any other explanation than “technical issues” or “engine fire”. Even if that’s the truth, Iran seems unwilling to let any other country see the black box- they’ve said specifically that it won’t be Boeing or the USA. Ukraine will be allowed to sit in on some of the investigation but we all know Iran can control what Ukraine is shown.

Maybe Canada will make things difficult for them but really what even can Canada do besides publicly complain about it?

Canada has no relations with Iran and no Embassy or Ambassador since rescuing all them US hostages way back. I do not see Canada being allowed in at all

We criticize him because he's an idiot. He gave no thought to anything in the ME (or anywhere else for that matter) except basically 'HULK SMASH'.

As with the Chinese, the Euros, and the North Koreans, the Iranians are now also proving that they're smarter than he is. Which isn't saying much, but there we are.

Pay attention to disinformation. I heard a report suggesting the plane was trying to turn around. The flight tracking websites counter this. Supposedly, Iran said this. If they are lying about it, the odds of them shooting it down are higher. However, at this point, I think the most likely cause was a catastrophic engine failure.

You have asked me about four times (or so, I lost count) why I didn't think the attack on Soleiman should be carried out.

Which is not reflective of my stated position. What I have said is that the attack should only have been carried out if war with Iran was acceptable. Not because Iran would suddenly declare war and invade the Florida Keys, but because it would be an awkward position to be in in case of strong retaliations.

If I had been unfair, I would have said that Iran has called the bluff with their missile attacks, but it's too early for that. Who knows the outcome of the incident. These things aren't A->B and they aren't resolved in days, rather in generations.

There’s a vote in the House today around 4pm:

And of course, the very stable genius tweeted about it this morning:

This is what pisses me off about you all. I think he is quite possibly the worst POTUS ever, but not everything he does is terrible. When you try to find things to be critical of you, you trivialize the real shity things he does. That's what's happening here.

Like, your criticism here is just nonsense. Trump could have did things orders of magnitude more damaging and destructive than what he did, and he never responded to the Iran-backed rocket attacks that's been on going in Iraq for months. There is nothing about this situation that makes it seem like it was just some spur-of-the-moment deal. Everything points to it being a calculated decision/response based on the embassy attack.


Some of you are like those people at work that complain about every single decision management makes.

The US has an interesting setup. The president can not legally declare war, but he can legally bring the US into one.

This is such an odd conversation because the consequences are far from having played out. War may still be more likely than before the assassination, or less likely, or about the same. Ditto with Iran going nuclear

That bogus. Iran did not fire rockets at the US knowing it could start a war with the US. (Reversing your logic). The attack Trump, and Iran made were precisely the type of actions you take when you want a military response, and not an armed conflict.