What you describe is likely the majority of folks on FR.
At the same time, just like the R-UK threads, there’s a 20-80 posting bias. I’ve seen LOTS of threads since the Iran bombing where heretofore “Keep us out of wars” people became defacto William Kristol fans/neocons. Also coming out of the swamp (perhaps pun intended) is the Joseph Sobran branch of Our Side.
I get the emotional neocon response…the govt of Iran is atrocious. 444 days. $100bn of banknotes. But the purpose of American finance and soldiers is the defense of America. Let’s not play the Kevin Bacon game, kids; otherwise an attack in ANY country can be justified as “well if THEY fall, then we get attacked.” Consistency demands balking at one penny of finance or blood and treasure going to Ukraine, Israel, Paupa New Guinea, or any other country.
The Sobran Branch..well, that’s just “safety in numbers.” It’s like any story where some black guy does something bad, and all of the sudden Boo-boo and other “soft bigotry” terms come out of the flotsam and jetsam.
There are awful blacks. There are awful Jewish people, and awful Muslims. There are also awful Christians, whites, and every other categorization under the sun. Yet, any story about a bad gun owner is met with the “he doesn’t represent all gun owners” defense - which is a true and legitimate defense.
That defense when applied in this context by the 80% becomes a flame war with the other 20%. The 80% are then called “swamp critters” etc.
I’d love to know how many of the 20% are paid provocateurs.
DoodleBob, I agree with much of the dynamic you described (so I my post is not a criticism of that, per se) but I don’t agree that using the strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is the best example of that.
Many people I know have been personally consistent over the years in my stance against allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weaponry even if I haven’t been advocating taking action against them at every point in the last 45 years.
That is because of the nature of those types of actions, which don’t lend themselves to snap-rendered plans, can too easily go sideways. If the US had to take 15 years to plan this and wait for the right time to take action, I would have been onboard with that.
If anything, I have expended a great deal of mental time and effort to shed my Cold War mentality and accept that the United States can no longer play the role of the “World’s Policeman” (and that is inclusive of the fact that there were times since WWII we played that role when we shouldn’t have, and there are times we played that role poorly.)
But I had to change my stance on that. As someone who grew up in a military family during the height of the Cold War and served myself as well during that same time frame, that was not an easy thing for me to do.
But the greatest threat to our country at this time is our looming financial insolvency. And all the issues of the day, Open Borders, Military Readiness, Inflation, Infrastructure degradation, Wokeness, Education, Industry, all of them hinge on our financial solvency. If we become financially insolvent, this country will disintegrate.
Obviously, spending money to address various things such as illegal immigration and military readiness will have financial benefits (not paying for services for illegals and deterring foreign aggression via enhanced readiness) so we can’t just ignore them on a back burner, but everything must be viewed through that prism of national debt.
So, in altering my own stance on, based on our debt crisis, we cannot get involved in things that we otherwise might have in the past since WWII, right or wrong. In this example, Ukraine falls into that category.
And in that light, while everything else must go on on the back burner (relatively speaking) even temporarily to address the issues that will, if unchecked, result in our insolvency, I have never regarded the issue of Iran with nuclear weapons as one of those we can put on the “back burner”.
Too many people use the term “existential threat” to describe various things, but the vast majority of them (MOST especially, Leftists) have no idea what that means. A country that possesses nuclear weaponry and says publicly and often (AS GOVERNMENT POLICY) that it will destroy you, that raises money to assassinate your President, and is and has been and continues to be directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of American citizens...THAT is an “existential threat”.
And I didn’t need rationale like “the govt of Iran is atrocious, 444 days, $100bn of banknotes”, etc. to define it as a threat that needed to be addressed, IOW, an “existential threat”.
The point that I make is that while you are correct that there are (in my opinion) provocateurs on this (and other websites) website, there are many people who are not simply reacting to influencing actions, but have long held and deeply felt opinions on various issues, and I don’t believe Iranian nuclear weaponry should be included in that.
In the end, I view being right as far more important than being consistent, most especially in cases like Iranian nuclear weaponry.