Is it just me, or are we taking the beginning of Iraq War v 2 very calmly?
Sure wish that was still in force...
This was true of past conflicts as well. Doe v. Bush tried to challenge the Iraq Resolution because Congress had not declared war, but the US Court of Appeals dismissed the case because Congress had not opposed funding the war. The sad reality is that this is what the people had voted for, and the government is still working as intended.
No. Your congress can't stop it because it takes two to tango and Iran is clearly not willing to end the war just like that.
You people should have stopped that criminal long ago.
The US would then need to comply with whatever sanctions the UN might apply due to them having started an illegal war.
I highly doubt it. Here are the facts from the viewpoint of Iran:
- The US and the UK overthrew the democratic iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh
- The US terminated the working nuclear deal.
- The US ambushed Iran twice in the midst of ongoing negotiations.
- Israel is on a conquest to annex new land and to rule over the middle east. At least that is likely there goal.
Iran clearly stated their demands. The US should pay up for the damage they caused and the US should give up its military bases in the Arab countries.
While the money will probably not be that big of a problem to negotiate, the military bases will be. At least Iran will insist on something substantive that guarantees that they are not ambushed a third time.
I mean, the US could unilaterally decide "no, we're not going to defend the Middle East anymore, good luck everybody" and leave. But it's not like the US is oppressing, say, Qatar by having a base there. They willingly let the US stay there.
As far as I know: Israel and Saudi Arabia want these bases. I do not know the current opinion of the other Arab countries.
> Qatar by having a base there. They willingly let the US stay there.
At least they are now noticing that there are risks in hosting the US military too.
> “One of the most significant outcomes of this war is the shattering of the concept of a regional security system in the Gulf region,” Mr. al-Ansari said. “The regional security framework in the Gulf was based on certain axioms. Many of these axioms have been bypassed in the current war.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/world/middleeast/qatar-us...
Exactly. It's like having a douchebag "friend" over that then goes ahead to sleep with some neighbor's wife. Suddenly, your car is scratched, everyone in your neighborhood hates you, and he just up and leaves you to pick up the pieces.
Although in this case the US — the douchebag "friend" — it would be more apt to say that they actually murdered some of the neighbors' daughters and jointly attacked with some racist buddy another neighborhood and went on a rampage burning random houses down while gunning down the parents trying to take them to court.
The US can take their ball and go home to a different hemisphere, but ME violence will continue.
IMO the real question is how long the Arabs will let Israel dictate their foreign policy via the US
Iraq war is not a suitable comparison. That event was a decisive US victory that resulted from thorough planning, extensive international support and collaboration, and total commitment from all parties.
Trump's wars are none of the above. Mobilizing a couple thousand troops here and there for a war that can be orders of magnitude more intensive than Iraq War V2 and without any semblance of support is a clear sign of starting a war while signaling their own impending defeat.
Let's not fool ourselves: the only parties benefiting from this nonsense is Russia and China.
I think you mean the Gulf War in the early 1990s. The Iraq War, 2003 - ~2011, had relatively little international support, was poorly planned (they promised no more than 6 weeks, had no plans for occupation, etc.), and was spent fighting Iranian-backed militias and ISIS.
The subsequent years were a complete clusterfuck. Largely because of a missing theory of victory, the inept neocons the administration selected to run the civilian side, and the lack of strategic military-civilian coordination.
Wars end with political solutions (otherwise, people keep fighting), and the US didn't achieve a political solution the first month, and never achieved a particularly desirable one. One step they took was dissolving the Iraqi army or military, and those people reformed into militias that continued fighting the US. Was the war really over?
The US won initial battles, as expected. The war lasted much longer.
The US is great at winning the latter, but sucks at winning the former (largely because of a lack of coherent political-diplomatic-military fusion on the US side).
Also, enemies aren't suicidal. Why would they take on US tanks, fighter planes, missiles, satellites, etc. for more than five minutes? They know they can't win that way so they quickly abandon it for what does have some success, irregular warfare / insurgency.