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hvb2today at 9:14 AM3 repliesview on HN

Not defending that peace price but: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Trump this time around didn't inherit a major us deployment in a conflict area. No Iraq, no Afghanistan. Also, he's doing military strikes by himself, no Congress involved.

Syrian and Libia were both essentially civil wars with an oppressive regime with Syria using allegedly chemical weapons.

Your source is a very weird site. Countries Obama bombed 2026??? What does that even mean. Is it just a typo in the main heading and the title?


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somenameformetoday at 9:43 AM

Large scale deployments shifted under Obama to widescale bombing campaigns. The site mentions its various sources such as this [1] which mentions that Obama also increased the number of drone strikes by an order of magnitude relative to his predecessor. To be clear I'm not picking on Obama, but saying solely that this isn't a partisan issue. "They" all love war.

And places being in a state of internal conflict, conflict which is itself often backed and fomented by US intelligence agencies and backed proxy forces, is hardly some reason to go bomb them. Even moreso when you look at results. See what Libya turned into, and what Syria is now turning into. It turns out that Al Qaeda in a suit is still Al Qaeda, to literally nobody's surprise if you're even vaguely familiar with our history of backing extremists and putting them in power, something which we have done repeatedly.

This war, if it escalates, is not going to be good for Iran, the people of Iran, or likely even the US. The only country that might come out a winner is Israel, but even that might not end up being the case, as Iran's retaliation will likely focus on them. To say nothing of longer term consequences.

[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-preside...

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NoLinkToMetoday at 10:29 AM

Not only that but it should be noted what the stated aim is of these strikes and earlier Trump strikes on Iran: take out the nuclear threat.

That nuclear threat was contained under a plan backed by US, EU, Russia, China and Iran, in which Iran would not pursue nuclear expansion and let a team of international experts in to verify this on a continuous basis, in exchange for some sanction relief. A solution Trump threw in the trash, reinstating the sanctions, pressuring Iran to pursue nuclear again as one of its few levers of power it can pull on.

In other words he created the necessity for violence by throwing away a unique solution that the entire world got behind including US allies & enemies, throwing away goodwill and trust in future deals (why would Iran negotiate now if it's clear how Trump views deals, as things to be broken even irrationally?)

Those who claim this is an anti-war president have no clue, even in the context of a 'just war' argument it simply falls flat.

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