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Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

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Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#551

Post by sega_sai »

booleandilemma wrote: post #538
sega_sai wrote: post #471

I have no sympathy for Khamenei, but, if that is allowed we should not be surprised if Denmark prime minister is next?

You realize what a bad guy he was, right? Read the list of human rights violations in Iran here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Islamic_Re... and tell us something the prime minister of Denmark has done to deserve assassination. I swear half the people on the internet are crazy. You all would be defending Hitler if he was killed today. "Just because he was bad doesn't give us the right to kill him".…

Do you think that he was killed because of human right violations? I do not think so. The current US administration does not seem very concerned with those.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#553

Post by tim333 »

ignoramous wrote: post #400
thomassmith65 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very moving! I can't say many international developments have filled me with optimism the past couple years. I want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians.

> want so badly for this to pan out for Iranians Badly? You seem a little obsessed. The few anti-regime Iranians (who live in Iran) I know do not want to get bombed into freedom & democracy. The Western hubris despite Iraq and Afghanistan is back in full force, I see.

No harm in wishing people well really.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#554

Post by Cipater »

UltraSane wrote: post #486
Cipater wrote: post #454

I work with and know a lot of Shia (non-Iranian) Muslims and listening to them talk about this assassination I'm convinced that the likelihood of attempted terror attacks against the US has increased significantly. The non-Iranian part is key. Millions of muslims around the world viewed the Iranian theocracy as the only power in the world fighting for Islam. They are devastated.

Sunni Muslims hate the Iranian regime and consider Shia to be heretics

Every single one of them?

There are many Sunnis who view their leadership as "traitors to the cause" and respected Iranian defiance especially against Israel.

It's far from black and white.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#555

Post by bonsai_spool »

beloch wrote: post #413
baxtr wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself. It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.

Iraq is a fantastic lesson to heed today. In the first gulf war, Bush Sr. refused to occupy the country. He viewed it as too difficult and too expensive. In the second gulf war, Bush Jr. declared victory from the deck of an aircraft carrier, occupied the country, hunted and executed its leader, and then opened the U.S. treasury to deal with the aftermath. Thousands of Americans died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's…

> There isn't even a falsified pretext like WMD's

I don’t think anyone believes it, but I’ve heard media reports that ‘unnamed officials’ thought the regime was weeks away from a nuclear weapon.

I think an Article 5 invocation would be a cynical way to destroy NATO with some deniability

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#556

Post by breppp »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #491
amarcheschi wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US supported Pinochet or the US supported military dictatorship in brasil would like to disagree

Agree. See also military dictatorships in South Korea and Taiwan. Many terrible years and brutal killings by the gov't. Both gov'ts were strongly supported by the US.

Two great examples of countries where US pressure had effectively transformed from dictatorships to democracies

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#557

Post by inglor_cz »

baxtr wrote: post #311
1a527dd5 wrote: post #86

I wonder how old the rest of the commentators are. I watched the Shock and Awe campaign. I watched Saddam fall. I remember thinking this is great. Years later, I understand it was a complete folly. Removing Saddam in itself was good but what it did the wider region was not good.

I am old enough. Iraq is not perfect today but so much better than it was. Go talk to Iraqis and see for yourself. It costs us some time, money and lives to get to this point. But Saddam (a tyrant who killed his own kind in masses with gas and started wars with neighbors) staying in power would have been way worse for the wider region.

Iraqi path to democracy isn't really that different from everyone else's.

People tend to forget that various extant democracies, including European ones, mostly didn't precipitate out of thin air by everyone deciding to just be nice to one another. Many now-democratic countries had to fight a war of independence or a civil war, often with involvement of third parties, to get there.

France took about 80 years of violent upheavals from 1789 to 1871 to actually become a democratic republic for good. Germany was even worse. Unification of Italy was a long bloody mess. Poland barely survived the 20th century. Even Swiss direct democracy is an aftermath of a civil war, though in their case, it was a small one.

Democracy isn't an application that people just install and it starts working. It usually takes decades for it to take roots, as people have to slowly abandon the idea that it is just easier to massacre their opponents.

Even the US came to be after a war of independence with a major external factor on their side (the French) and only ended slavery through a nasty civil war.

Iraq isn't really an outlier in that context and Iran wouldn't probably be either.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#558

Post by pavlov »

jacquesm wrote: post #397
TulliusCicero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a killing, but capturing Noriega did in fact work out well. Panama of today is generally stable and rich (by Latam standards anyway).

Panama's main asset can't be removed from Panama.

Also Panama's population and land area are an order of magnitude smaller than these Middle East states, and they were already an American client state in the past.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#559

Post by Alex_L_Wood »

It’s so funny reading most comments here, knowing that they’d be celebrating and saying this is good if it was Netanyahu. But when it’s a maniacal islamist declaring his goal to be the destruction of US and Israel, it’s suddenly very nuanced.

Re: Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

#560

Post by maest »

Digit-Al wrote: post #372
dismalaf wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact a leader can be assassinated at any moment by the US probably changes the succession plan slightly... I imagine any potential successor is thinking hard about whether it's a job they actually want.

The problem is that you are not dealing with rational people here, you are dealing with extreme religous fanatics. They are either not afraid of dying and becoming martyrs, or they are afraid but dare not show it.

This is "Our blessed homeland" type of mischaracterisation [1]. Their wanting to continue their state against and oversized enemy is irrational and religious fanaticism, our wanting to continue our state against an oversized for is noble and martyrsome.

I'm not saying either view is right, but reducing the Iranian government to irrational religious fanatics is intellectually uncurious and unempathetic.

[1] - https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/355/607/670

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