How is it dumb? It would be very effective PR with the American people. Punishing Trump politically is an effective whip of a stick to say, hey, don’t put your hands on me. It’s exactly why they closed the Strait of Hormuz. And it’s been effective. Now, Trump’s current war objective is fixing the problem that didn’t exist before he started the war. But invoking the Epstein list doesn’t even cost American citizens anything, making it a cost-free way to do the same thing (the cost being the number of people who will blame Iran instead of Trump). This hurts Trump a lot when the “enemy” is more popular with the people than their own president. And this hurt may encourage distance between the US and Israel when Trump may blame Israel for pushing him into a bad move. He’s not going to blame himself.
Just calling something dumb and appealing to a consensus that doesn’t exist isn’t an argument.
This whole war BTW was really caused by Iran being the only country brave enough to punish genocide. And when we punish them for that we are putting our own force behind genocide. Iran has their flaws. But I rank every moral consideration behind genocide and the willingness to punish genocide. Everything else is a secondary morality. So they are the good guys here. They may be bad guys in some other layers of morality. But so is Israel and the US. The most current genocide to have occurred supercedes any other issue or false obligation to national loyalty.
If Trump wants to save political points, he should just admit he’s wrong. Seeing how he’s never done that ever, he would genuinely win points by doing that. At least a few American people would be impressed by that. No one is going to be impressed by him digging us deeper into a war that we all know will last 30 years if we keep going.
How is it dumb? It would be very effective PR with the American people. Punishing Trump politically is an effective whip of a stick to say, hey, don’t put your hands on me. It’s exactly why they closed the Strait of Hormuz. And it’s been effective. Now, Trump’s current war objective is fixing the problem that didn’t exist before he started the war. But invoking the Epstein list doesn’t even cost American citizens anything, making it a cost-free way to do the same thing (the cost being the number of people who will blame Iran instead of Trump). This hurts Trump a lot when the “enemy” is more popular with the people than their own president. And this hurt may encourage distance between the US and Israel when Trump may blame Israel for pushing him into a bad move. He’s not going to blame himself.
Just calling something dumb and appealing to a consensus that doesn’t exist isn’t an argument.
This whole war BTW was really caused by Iran being the only country brave enough to punish genocide. And when we punish them for that we are putting our own force behind genocide. Iran has their flaws. But I rank every moral consideration behind genocide and the willingness to punish genocide. Everything else is a secondary morality. So they are the good guys here. They may be bad guys in some other layers of morality. But so is Israel and the US. The most current genocide to have occurred supercedes any other issue or false obligation to national loyalty.
If Trump wants to save political points, he should just admit he’s wrong. Seeing how he’s never done that ever, he would genuinely win points by doing that. At least a few American people would be impressed by that. No one is going to be impressed by him digging us deeper into a war that we all know will last 30 years if we keep going.