Another source commented: Is Israel's plan to draw the US into a war with Iran? -- Iranian leaders will feel heavy pressure to respond forcefully. The extent of that pressure can be appreciated by imagining if the roles were reversed. If Iran had bombed an embassy of Israel or the United States, a violent and lethal response would be not just expected but demanded by politicians and publics alike. .... Speaking a day after the attack, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vowed revenge and said “Israel will be punished.” The Iranian representative at the United Nations Security Council asserted Iran’s right to a “decisive response to such reprehensible acts.”Israel has grown increasingly impatient with the daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah, which have escalated in recent days, and warned of the possibility of a full-fledged war. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have also been launching long-range missiles toward Israel, including on Monday.
While Iran’s consular building was leveled in the attack, according to Syria’s state news agency, its main embassy building remained intact. Still, the Iranian ambassador’s residence was inside the consular building.
Iran’s ambassador, Hossein Akbari, vowed revenge for the strike “at the same magnitude and harshness.”
Hamas and Islamic Jihad — another Palestinian militant group backed by Iran — accused Israel of seeking to widen the conflict in Gaza.
Experts said there was no doubt that Iran would retaliate. The strike in Syria was a “major escalation,” Charles Lister, a Syria expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said on the social media platform X.
Maybe it is time to move the nuclear Armageddon clock ahead a few seconds. The nuclear Armageddon experts opine:
It is still 90 seconds to midnight -- 2024 Doomsday Clock Statement
The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation. .... And the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has the potential to escalate into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that could pose unpredictable threats, regionally and globally.
If the US had forced Israel and the Palestinians into a peace agreement decades ago, we very likely would not be in this mess today. But here we are, like it or not.
Fire the Democratic and Republican Parties!
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It is time to squarely face what has been clear for at least the last 7 years. Most of the GOP leadership is staunchly authoritarian, corrupt and completely morally rotted. (Most of the rank and file supports it all, so what does that make them? Patriots?) Nearly all of the pro-democracy, pro-facts Repub elites that were left in 2017 have either been RINO hunted out of power, radicalized into authoritarianism, or left the party.
A WaPo article (not paywalled off) about Russian influence on GOP elites exemplifies the hopelessness:
When a top Republican says Russian propaganda has infected the GOP
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul is the latest to point out such a problem in his party[In 2019] former Trump national security aide Fiona Hill made an extraordinary plea. Seated in front of congressional Republicans, she implored them not to spread Russian propaganda.
“In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” she told them. She was referring to comments they had made during her earlier deposition breathing life into a baseless, Trump-backed suggestion that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
“These fictions are harmful even if they’re deployed for purely domestic political purposes,” she added.Republicans on the [first Trump impeachment inquiry] committee blanched at the suggestion that they had served as conduits for Russian misinformation, but Hill refused to back down.
Five years later, Republicans are starting to grapple more publicly with the idea that this kind of thing is happening in their ranks.The most striking example came this week. In an interview with Puck News’s Julia Ioffe, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) — none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — flat-out said that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”
McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame.
“There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what they’re saying on Russian state television] — on our airwaves,” McCaul said.
He also cited “these people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”
Former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said there is now “a Putin wing of the Republican Party.”
In 2022, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called the pro-Putin sentiments in some corners of his party “almost treasonous,” while allowing that perhaps his fellow Republicans were just attention-seekers.
What may be the most famous example: when House GOP leaders in 2016 privately joked about Trump being compromised by Russia, as later reported by The Washington Post.
The day after The Post broke the news that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee, then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quipped that perhaps Russia had gotten Democrats’ opposition research about Trump.
“There’s two people, I think, Putin pays,” McCarthy added, “[Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” (Rohrabacher was an openly pro-Russian Republican from California.)
Then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly tried to steer the conversation in another direction and urged people to be discreet. [Yeah, God forbid House Republicans are honest with the American people, fools and dupes that they are -- Hey Speaker Ryan! Thank you for your service /s]
Mitt exemplifies infantile, crackpot reasoning: “Almost treasonous?” Really? One can only wonder what Mitt considers to be actually treasonous. Just attention-seeking by elected politicians knowingly spouting Russian anti-American propaganda is not treasonous? They have no moral responsibility to at least try to speak truth? That reasoning is roughly the same saying that idiots who shoot off lots of fireworks in a tinder-dry forest on a very windy day are almost arsonists. The level of reasoning that most GOP elites usually bring to the table is grade-school level drivel.**
The dreadful reality: After all this time and all the lies, bile and hate that has come from GOP elites, it is not likely that they will back away from Russian lies and made-up conspiracy theories. They just have too much invested in staying the course, like many or most stay the course with the stolen 2020 election lie. The odds of the Republican elites changing course and being honest with the public in the next year seems to be low, maybe a 0.1% chance (1 in 1,000).
** Grade-school level drivel arguably is the norm, not the exception. From the book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections do not Produce Responsive Governments:
“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”
GOP elites have that infantile analyzing and arguing thing down pat. Good job GOP elites, you cynical, lying, morally rotted pieces of authoritarian crap! You too Mitt.
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