46 pointsby sheikhnbake6 hours ago12 comments
  • znnajdla5 hours ago
    One massive risk that I don’t hear anyone in the West talking about is the risk of giving Sunni populist rage over Gaza the spark it needs to overthrow US-aligned partners all over the Middle East. This could backfire really badly for Israel and the US if they suddenly lose all of their friends in high places in these countries. 98% of the non-elite Sunnis all over the world are enraged at Israel over Gaza. All of the surrounding countries (Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia) currently employ brutal authoritarian methods to suppress any pro-Palestinian sentiment beyond thoughts and prayers. If the regimes fall, all hell will break loose, and all of the hate will be directed towards Israel.
    • halJordan20 minutes ago
      You mean all those countries that have us troops and massive amounts of us support? That have systematically for decades dismantled any pan-arab or pan-islamic unity?

      Come on. Israel might be the most high profile US partner. But they are far from the only one.

    • zht5 hours ago
      Why would Iran, a Shia majority country being attacked, enrage the Sunni countries?
      • srean3 hours ago
        As long as divide and rule is employed it won't.
  • mothballed6 hours ago
    The US is not a democracy. The majority did not want this war.

    Though the majority will help bear the costs, and several family members will grieve dearly for the sacrifice of entertaining some brutal geopolitics that do not serve America first.

    • halJordan16 minutes ago
      The majority absolutely voted for this war. You're attacking the democracy when you insist that the elected politicians following through on campaign planks are not representing the country. That's exactly how this works.
    • repeekad6 hours ago
      America is a democratic republic, not a direct democracy. The only restriction is the president can’t declare war, only congress can do that.

      They are pretending these strikes are “preemptive” in response to a nuclear bomb being developed, just like the “emergency” that was declared to enact the tariffs.

      It’s all illegal

      • cr125rider6 hours ago
        When is the last war congress officially declared?
      • mothballed6 hours ago
        If it were a democratic republic, as you say, the representatives would have to vote on war. Representatives would also have to vote before 190,000 pages of CFRs are created by unelected bureaucrats and then enforced as if they were law (sometimes, by the exact same bureaucrats that write the rules they enforce as law [ATF for example]).

        Most of what people think they know about this country is a facade. They are living on lies, confirmed to them through the legitimization of a SCOTUS that lies to your very eyes about what the constitution says, so that people don't rebel when a politician tells them peace is war and love is hate.

    • SideburnsOfDoom6 hours ago
      > geopolitics that do not serve America first

      IDK, "America first" is practically speaking, the financial interests of the current president and his ruling clique, nothing more. This does serve them by, among other things, distracting from the Epstein files and asserting lucrative control over petroleum-producing nations. These brave servicemen died for that.

      • srean6 hours ago
        I have been quite impressed by UK politics.

        Entertain paedophiles ... land up in jail. Be rude and patronizing to women, there goes your prime-ministership. Keep it that way please.

        Accountability feels so rare in recent US politics.

        • nailer5 hours ago
          What UK Prime Minister lost their office because they were rude and patronising to women?

          Starmer is still in office, Sunak lost because the Tories were unpopular and because he didn’t win an election to get the Prime Ministership, Johnson lost because during Covid people stayed at the office a little bit longer and had a birthday party, teresa May lost because she couldn’t deliver Brexit, Cameron lost because he gave people a vote on Brexit, Brown lost for the same reasons as Sunak, Blair lost because of the Iraq war.

          • seanhunter5 hours ago
            You left out Liz Truss, which is understandable really.

            Liz Truss lost because she was barking mad, manifestly wildly out of her depth and her and her think tank buddies tanked the economy. She was rude and patronising to women (but only because she was rude and patronising to everyone).

          • srean5 hours ago
            Now that you ask, the name eludes me. Am I misremembering ? was he an MP who lost office? I certainly remember a flurry of news reports.
  • hypeatei6 hours ago
    This war is completely on Trump since he didn't get Congress' approval or even justify it to the American public. I wonder if the "no new wars" voters will condemn him?
    • gruez5 hours ago
      >I wonder if the "no new wars" voters will condemn him?

      They'll retcon it and fall in line behind Trump, just like with Venezuela. This is from both opinion polls and also interactions with actual MAGA people.

      https://files.catbox.moe/h2wqwz.png

      https://files.catbox.moe/64uhqw.png

      • techblueberry5 hours ago
        I understand the cynicism, but Trump is a lame duck president, and there are plenty of incentives for people outside and inside the government to continue to move against him, because even if he moves for a third term he's old and the leadership vacuum is inevitable. Also, anti-israel sentiment has been growing on the right, which is one reason people think Israel pushed so hard for this. People who have and continue to identify as Republican will for sure support him because most of those folks have always been neo-cons who liked Bush and preferred the old school Republican interventionism to what Trump offered. They held their nose for Trump thinking he wouldn't do things like this.

        But the MAGA / "America First" crowd led by such folks as Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes absolutely have the incentive to move against Trump.

        https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...

        Iran strikes are ‘disgusting and evil’ says longtime Trump ally and MAGA stalwart Tucker Carlson.

        • spwa45 hours ago
          Isn't half the MAGA movement funded by Russia? Pretty sure I think I know why they'd be defending Iran ...
    • nailer6 hours ago
      The Iranian regime funded Hamas that started the last major war and the regime was responsible for the mass slaughter 30 to 40,000 people a few weeks ago.
      • srean5 hours ago
        Well that would implicate the state of Israel as well. It's Israel that set up Hamas in the 1970s to split the support of the largely secular PLO.
        • spwa45 hours ago
          Israel did not set up Hamas, Israel prevented the PA, then the PLO, which was taken over and supported by the KGB from massacring Hamas in it's krib.

          That's one very underappreciated part of the conflict there. That the KGB and Israel fought one another, obviously long ago. As part of that fight, they both helped/financed/protected/... lunatic Palestinian movements. The KGB is long dead and Israel started regretting many of it's actions against Russia decades ago, but the lunatic movements each created are still massacring one another.

          Oh and the UN is still supporting and financing the PA, even against Hamas. Hmmm, I wonder if anyone at the top of the UN ever had any affiliation with Soviet Foreign policy ... (say, for example, the best-paid politician in the entire world, obviously a communist)

          • srean5 hours ago
            What I am claiming isn't even controversial. It's quite well known and accepted. So much so all the standard search engines will confirm it, and search engines typically reflect a consensus view of crawlable documents.

            This is what I get when I pose the question

            "Yes, Israeli officials have acknowledged providing covert financial support to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Islamist networks in Gaza during the late 1970s and 1980s. This was done to bolster religious groups as a counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was viewed as the primary adversary at the time"

            • dlubarov3 hours ago
              This is a common talking point, but if we look at the underlying facts of what Israel did to "support" or "set up" Hamas, they... allowed Qatar to provide aid to Gaza to fund some infrastructure and civil servants' salaries. Would you have preferred that they block the aid and Gaza's governance collapse?
              • srean3 hours ago
                I am talking about something that is from decades earlier. The Google search results I quoted summarises that quite well.
                • spwa4an hour ago
                  Doesn't change the other side of the equation either: it is also not controversial that the KGB and the Soviets are financially behind the PLO (now PA), that Yasser Arafat ("the wise Egyptian") was a Soviet agent.
                  • sreanan hour ago
                    First time hearing about it, so cannot comment without reading further.

                    KGB and CIA had their noses in the affairs of every country, more so in the mid east, so cannot be ruled out.

                    Historical interest aside, that was not the point I made on this thread.

                    The point was justifying war on Iran upon the reason that they funded Hamas. So did Israel, they pretty much helped birth it. KGB may or may not be funding PLA, but that doesn't change who set up Hamas in the first place.

                    If reminding Arafat's Egyptian origin is to caste a shade, many in the Israeli government have European (often Polish) origin and surnames that they changed to fit their political career. Netanyahu included. So that cuts bothway.

      • caconym_5 hours ago
        So what? It's an argument that maybe we should do something, for the American people's consideration, but it doesn't change the fact that this war has been started without Congressional approval by a president who IIRC explicitly campaigned on "no new wars" or something to that effect. As far as I can tell, he has stated no consistent or coherent justification for any of this.

        If we are going to engage in brute force regime change on the other side of the world, regardless of how bad the current regime is (yes, they are evil), this is not how it should happen. And everyone should take a moment to remind themselves why the term "regime change" carries the connotations it does.

      • hypeatei5 hours ago
        The campaign promises from Trump were "no new wars" and "America First" along with a bunch rhetoric saying that his political opponents were war mongers.

        What do Hamas or Iran protestors have to do with America? I agree that it's bad but you have to admit that it goes against literally all the "peace" talk that MAGAs were pushing.

        • nailer5 hours ago
          Hamas killed 46 American citizens and kidnapped 12 American citizens during the war Iran sponsored, and Iran constantly threatens to hit America (and about everyone else) with nuclear weapons.

          Do you think that everyone that proposal a republican government would identify as ‘MAGA’? I think you need to read more news sources.

          • hypeatei5 hours ago
            Since when do American deaths (in an attack that happened 2+ years ago mind you) mean you can unilaterally go to war with an entire country?

            > and Iran constantly threatens to hit America (and about everyone else) with nuclear weapons

            Okay, but he campaigned as the peace ticket so presumably he'd be able to figure that out without resorting to military action, no? Obama managed to work out a deal with them (that Trump then tore to pieces in 2018)

            • nailer5 hours ago
              [flagged]
              • hypeatei5 hours ago
                Your second question isn't coherent and I didn't see it as relevant regardless. I think Republicans are sycophantic MAGAs at this moment, does that answer it? You're not answering any of my questions, though and instead just word vomiting about a hostage release deal under Biden.
                • nailer2 hours ago
                  Due to the rate limit, I made an edit reply above answering your questions.
    • mothballed5 hours ago
      What does that mean in practical terms though? The absolute worst that can happen to trump is he is both impeached and successfully indicted. When the worst case is maybe by some extremely unlikely "luck" he loses his job and has to sulk back into his billions and golden towers, and on the other hand he can gamble with the lives of million of serviceman and the tax money Americans could otherwise spend on healthy food, healthcare, education and other things they need -- why not? He's not up for re-election anyways.

      Trumps an unhealthy older man, with no prospect for re-election, and a big golden parachute even in the worst case scenario. The fact the war is all on him is seen as a plus because he gets all the credit for the history books and the mothers of the dead servicemen are just forgotten trash used to achieve his objective.

      Trump is acting completely rationally. His MO is to push the envelope until he is stopped. It is mostly others who are irrationally acting in the service of Trump that are acting irrationally.

  • lukan6 hours ago
    Wow, browsing the comments with showdead=1 gives me the highest ratio of flagged vs normal comments ever. Surprised the whole thread is not flagged, yet. I mean, can we expect that more insights come out of this?
    • gruez5 hours ago
      >I mean, can we expect that more insights come out of this?

      No, because all the points for/against the attacks have already been argued to death in the first thread, and both sides' argument don't hinge on whether there are deaths or not, so this bit of news doesn't really make a difference.

      • appreciatorBus4 hours ago
        This. So tired of the idea that HN trying to stay relatively clear of politics is some great loss when every Israel Palestine submission that makes it through is just the same few dozen ppl shouting some variation of "US/West/Markets=BAD" and another dozen or so grappling with them. Nothing changes, no one learns anything. If ppl want that sort of interaction, it's available 24x7 on Bluesky. Every public web forum devolving into 24x7 culture war doesn't serve anyone's interests except the marxists.
        • AlecSchueler3 hours ago
          > So tired of the idea that HN trying to stay relatively clear of politics is some great loss when every Israel Palestine submission that makes it through is just...

          Honestly I don't mind not talking about those things here but it gets ridiculous when there's directly tech related stuff being flagged because it touches on politics, like the whole DOGE saga for example.

    • blululu5 hours ago
      It is pretty hard to have a calm discussion about the outbreak of war. War is awful. People will suffer, people will die. Being angry is an appropriate response. The article is just a list of the ap wire briefs, so it does not tell us very much.
      • spwa45 hours ago
        ... and all the AI bots immediately jump on anything slightly political.
    • arunabha3 hours ago
      > Surprised the whole thread is not flagged, yet.

      Looks like the flagging brigade got this story flagged as well. Of course, HN mods will do nothing about it as usual.

  • shablulman6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • 6 hours ago
    undefined
  • vcryan6 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • rayiner6 hours ago
      > CNN has geolocated video from the scene to the Shajaba Tayyiba School, which sits about 200 feet (61 meters) from an Iranian military base.

      Who the fuck builds a military base 200 feet from a school?

      • heavyset_go6 hours ago
        The US does. I live near a base and there's a votech high school on the same property that nukes are transported to/from.

        During the Cold War, the US government even had maps of potential Soviet ICBM targets and there's a nice dot here where hundreds of thousands live. The US knew the risk but put bases and nukes smack in the middle of that anyway.

      • pjc506 hours ago
        There's several buildings in Edinburgh that have designation "military base" (mostly Territorial Army) and are within a few hundred yards of a school or nursery. Probably the same in many cities.

        It's up to the people with bombs not to bomb schools.

      • Jtsummers5 hours ago
        The US puts elementary schools on military bases. Does that surprise you as well? It shouldn't, it's been the norm since before you were even born.
      • swarnie6 hours ago
        Sovereign countries that dont expect to be bombed?

        51.50682730317355, -1.964190908830932

        51.163248703261374, -1.7644273386532592

        50.79917462916731, -1.1036180056831038

      • mothballed6 hours ago
        I've lived in several midwest towns that have military (usually national guard) bases embedded in residential areas, maybe the school a bit further.
      • c0nducktr4 hours ago
        Bringing out the classics huh?
      • kgwxd6 hours ago
        It would be a deterrent for people with a soul. The current people are all over the Epstein files, and love genocide so, bonus!
        • rayiner5 hours ago
          > all over the Epstein files

          I’ve been too busy to read them, can you point me to what you think the smoking gun is?

  • 2OEH8eoCRo06 hours ago
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    • mcmcmc6 hours ago
      Is it heroic to join the military to pay for school/stay out of jail/escape poverty, and then die because the pedophile president of your country unilaterally decided to begin a bombing campaign against a sovereign nation? And then get unlucky enough to be in the path of retaliation?

      That’s not heroism. It’s waste. Their lives were wasted by the MAGA cult, just like the tens of thousands of Iranian civilians and children who are dying to our bombs.

  • frob4 hours ago
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  • frob6 hours ago
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  • herruty6 hours ago
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  • frob6 hours ago
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    • dangan hour ago
      You can't celebrate people's deaths like this on HN, and it's shocking to see. I feel ashamed of HN when I see things like this. I can't believe you did it, and my first response was to ban the account.

      After a minute, I reconsidered, especially after I saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930988 (an excellent post) and realized that your account has been around for over 10 years. I've unbanned it now.

      Please don't post like this to HN again. The same, of course, goes for any other account, regardless of political angle.

      Also, please don't use HN primarily for political/ideological battle—again, regardless of which politics you're for or against. A certain amount of political overlap is necessary and inevitable, but when an account crosses into primarily doing that, it's basically the line at which we ban it (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for past explanations).

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html