I asked you what you meant by "Western Values", and you couldn't come up with a cogent answer, suggesting it is not a term you really understand. You somehow thought I implied that Western Values meant sticking up for Nonces. Perverse linkage. I stated that the government is sticking up for nonces. You betrayed your thinking. The current US government is no conforming to the classically accepted definition of espousing Western Values, for the reasons I stated. It is hypocritical in its support for the freedom of speech or expression. It routinely breaks the law. It does not uphold human rights. It suppresses the individual. My country isn't (currently) bombing schools and hospitals. I've lived and worked in America, over maybe a 10-12 year period. I saw the way some citizens in the South were treated. My country might have some bad housing conditions, but I was unprepared by what I can only describe as shanty towns in Northern Mississippi. Then, you had decent men, Republican and Democrats, who served in government. Their politics might differ, but they were united by a record of public service. The current President is not a decent man. That's not a matter of conjecture. You appear blind to this, in your unwavering support of what the President calls a "military operation". It is a matter of public record. There are court cases. There is his own voice, describing his casual sexual abuse of women. There is his own description, in a radio interview, of receiving gratification at observing a room of undressed and naked 13-16 year old beauty contestants. There is his record of adultery and use of prostitutes. You complain that foreigners don't understand America, and will never understand America because they haven't lived 62 years there, and there are not entitled to an opinion. You have formed your view of Iran from basically all day doom scrolling of videos etc. You've formed a strong opinion of what you think Iranians want. You've imposed your own morality on what you think the Iranian people want. You think everyone wants the "freedom to speak without suppression". I'm all for suppressing the voices of hate, the voices who supported the Holocaust, the voices that supported the killing of British soldiers in Ireland. What you are expressing is the absolutist American view of Freedom of Speech, which is not a universal concept. So again, you've made a presumption based on a US centric view of the world. You state your views are based on experience, but you have lived 62 years in the United States. Where else have you lived substantially? How long did you live anywhere in Europe before forming opinions on European country rights and wrongs? You say your country isn't protecting paedophiles. Ghislaine Maxwell; convicted of really really heinous crimes (her active participation is shocking, it wasn't a technical participation. She held down girls during rapes, and raped girls herself). And now your country has moved her to a low security prison, with spas and day release. There is active discussion about giving her a pardon. We have this whole debacle of the so-called Epstein files, where there is specious excuses why the names of suspects are witheld from lawmakers. Its said there are 6 million pages to examine, and 500 top lawyers have been tasked to look at them. That's 12,000 pages each. That's really not that much to go through, considering Epstein has been dead for nearly 10 years. You're all for eliminating "terrorists". Who isn't. But your country labels anyone in uniform as a terrorist. Your SoW has stated there will be no "rules of engagement", essentially issuing a Give No Quarter order, which is actually defined as a War Crime in the Geneval Conventions, of which the US is a signatory to. The vast majority of the dead in this war are civilians and members of the Iranian military. Are you now suggesting anyone in uniform is a terrorist? All those Iranian sailors are terrorists? You've said you want peace, but peace comes at a price, which is a bizarre way of looking at things. A few weeks ago, we had peace. Gabbard had concluded that the evidence pointed to Iran being at least 10 years away from the "bomb", but she had left it to the President to decide that 10 years actually meant 2 weeks. Despite your considerable age, you are very naive if you think the end of this conflict will be followed by peace in the middle east. You say there is no other way, Duh, there is. You mention Iran killing Americans, and suggest there should be reprisals for that. List the incidents of Iran killing Americans for which there have been no reprisals. And list the Iranians killed by America. You say " They have not only been killing Americans, which is why we should retaliate, but thousands of their own people. Letting this go on is wrong". So where was the US in the Congo, in Myanmar, in Ukraine, in Chechenya, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in China? Complete hypocrisy. You are not bombing the <deleted> out of Iran to save them. You're not even bombing the <deleted> out of Iran over a supposed nuclear weapon. America has been manipulated by malign powers. Iran won't lose this. I say that not because I support the Islamic Republic; I find the government there to be odious, repugnant. This war will end with an Islamic Republic of Iran. All the bombing in the world won't change that. The price of oil will go up. Russia will profit. The Iranian leadership will profit. Israel will profit. America won't. Your standard of living, like in Europe, will significantly worsen. Your soft power, the power America had 40 years ago, would be finally gone. No one will trust the US in talks now. It used to be Perfidious Albion. Now those words have been replaced by Perfidious Ameriki. Those friendships, gone. Iran was lead by an octogenarian Supreme Leader who had cancer, only the second Supreme leader it had known. His son was known to US Intelligence to be an active homosexual, and would not have succeeded him in the line of succession under normal circumstances. There would have been a change anyhow very soon, so why this urgent action? Why now, when the US navy had just scrapped its proven minehunting capability. Why now, when the US is facing a potential conflict with Russia. Why now, where the US feels the threat is so serious from China, its prepared to invade the sovereign territory of an ally, and potentially killed NATO troops. Why now, when the threat to US national security due to drugs is so serious, that military action is waged in South America. There are a lot of things going on in the world. There is no convincing reason that it was America's choice to strike, and in fact, its become beholden to a foreign power. The Mullah's choice for President did not win the election. Your lot were too keen to bomb and kill, and you have supported that, from sitting in your proverbial American armchair of 62 years, evidenced from you numerous posts on the topic. That's no assumption, or presumption. That's your own words. Give it a rest? Isn't that suppressing my Freedom of Speech? Freedom of Expression means you don't have to read my posts.
