Think about this truth.
The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 billion.
First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says
David Ho
Anyone who wants to defend our war with Iran needs to justify the expense. The NSF provides a material benefit, discovers new knowledge, and enhances the reputation of our country. It is a net advantage to support the NSF; you could reasonably argue for a different kind of positive investment, an argument that goes on in congress all the time while they hash out the yearly budget.
The Iran war, on the other hand, is an illegal action triggered by one lunatic executive without congressional approval, that is destructive of human life and property, and does not succeed in it’s stated goal of reducing threats to Americans and others. For my selfish fellow citizens, it’s also going to raise the cost of oil. It’s also a war we cannot win, and that’s just the beginning of an escalation that will make that $11.3 billion look like a bargain.
It is a no-brainer to choose between those two alternatives.
Also, it wasn’t long ago that the president raged at a few congresspeople who put out an ad stating that soldiers don’t need to follow illegal orders. That ad did not go far enough. We need to pull a few generals into a courts martial and explain to them that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally tell you to launch your missiles at civilian citizens of a country we are not at war with. You must first be informed by congress that you are at war, which is the minimal requirement before military action can be triggered. Learn to tell the president to shut the fuck up and get authorization first.
The officers that ordered the pushing of the buttons are war criminals, and that’s how history will regard them.
Also, I oppose capital punishment, but I’d reconsider my position for Trump and Hegseth and, hell, the entire presidential cabinet. See how open-minded I am?
I agree… but the same already went to nothing with George Bush and Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m not holding my breath, just hoping we are going to hold out here in Europe…
I often hear this kind of statement about what “we” should be doing, and I never understand what this “we” is supposed to represent.
“We” the nation?
“We” the citizens?
“We” those against the war?
I think behind that “we” hides the divide between those who actually have the authority to make it happen, and no interest and no incentive to make that happen, and those many whose voice can be ignored.
That “we” keeps up the pretense that you have a say in your own government.
It’s a heinous war crime from a criminal administration. Let’s be honest, though, given the chance to do so, Congress would absolutely rubber-stamp it. They are reliable whores for the military-industrial complex, and partisans will break ranks to make sure there’s no way a direct approval could fail. Or, as recently happened, two Republicans defected and voted in favor of a bill expressly forbidding war with Iran, so four Democrats defected in turn and voted against it, ensuring it did not pass.
Too many Democrats, when they bother to voice any opposition to the war with Iran at all, couch their reservations in a couple points of propagandistic cheerleading: “I’m glad the Ayatollah is dead.”, and, “We are bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iran.” Consent is manufactured this way, and it’s being done by both parties.
It is once again time to repost why science is the main driver of our civilization.
If you’ve read this before, good, and skip it.
Science has been the main driver of our civilization and explains the USAs preeminence in the world, up until a year ago.
This is a critical and well known fact, that is now being widely ignored.
US GDP per person has gone up 9-fold in a century.
85% of that increase is due to advances in science and technology!!!
About the only way to increase economic output per person, i.e productivity per worker, is through advances in science and technology.
Attacking science is like attacking your own feet and hands. It is national self harm.
Our lead in science Research and Development funding explains our lead in the world in terms of the world’s largest economy and…largest military. The military is well aware of the value of science and has a good incentive for spending money on research and development. Better weapons means fewer soldiers dying in battles.
The world’s leading nations all spend relatively high levels of their GDP on science, about 3%.
Spending on science is estimated to yield a ROI of 20-60%.
If we stopped spending public money on science, in the short term nothing would happen.
The payoffs from science can be short term but most are long term.
In the long term, we would just fall further and further behind the rest of the world.
Yeah, with you on the capital punishment thing PZ, and this is a real annoyance, because I am just about at the point where, I think, the only way to salvage things would be to arrest the President, and all the idiots in the military that went along with it, then tell the Iran, “Right, they broke our laws, but they murdered your people, so, while we disagree with a lot of your policies, we will let your courts take first crack at these idiots, and what ever is left will go to trial in the US after.” I doubt any of them would make it back to the US for trial. Maybe, and this is a huge maybe, they would go for another international trial, over war crimes, but it would depend a bloody lot on the outcome. What I fear, a lot, is that, if the US, again unilaterally, “held them accountable”, our “punishment” would end up being something so worthless, or include acquittals of some involved, as to just purely piss off the victims even more. I see no way out of this, at this point, that doesn’t require either a complete change with regard to our interaction with the Middle East, and fundamental changed in our own state, to prevent this kind of stupidity again (or at least greatly curtail it, because.. stupid is as stupid does), or spending the next 100 years trying to regain trust, while being in a constant state of, “When is the next terror attack going to happen to us for our past actions?”
The people who think otherwise are, not surprising, the same idiots who actually seem to think, somehow, that their insane religious rhetoric makes sense – aka, “We lie, cheat, steal, and even murder, but we are absolutely certain that its god we believe in, and he will forgive us our sins, never mind that every thing we do sounds more like the actions that would be taken by a follower of our equally fictional, ‘lord of lies’, who, by our own logic, would use false piety, false promises of salvation, and the spreading of war, instead of peace, to create chaos, and corrupt the very people who think they are following ‘god’.”
Mind, I have often stated, personally, that the evidence suggest that, where the devil real, instead of a later invention, the Bible, and every other work that promotes supposed peace via faith, but encourages injustice, inequality, and division, would have been written “by him”, as a means of deception and corruption, so…
Ask Obama and the Dem leaders why they let Dubya and his cronies get off scot-free.
And they also let criminal bankers get away with ruining the world economy.
Biden and his crowd sure showed no interest in going after Trump et al.
Even during the Vietnam war it was obvious the legal system was a farce, and it got worse under Reagan and every Republican since.
Nixon got in trouble because his actions were seen as a threat by the bipartisan elite of that time. They are long dead.
The number of things wrong with this war is…everything.
Poorly planned, no clear objectives, no clear reasons, no exit strategy.
The whole idea that we are going to defeat Iran and have a regime change by bombing is just wrong.
We dropped a huge number of bombs in Indochina. It was triple all the bombs we dropped in World War II. After 6 years of this, the result was that we lost.
It is easy to see why.
The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese lived there and had nowhere else to go.
Retreat was not an option so they had to keep on fighting.
We, on the other hand, could just get on a plane and fly to Hawaii or California.
The death toll on the Vietnamese was terrible with at least a million killed.
And, here we are again, having learned nothing from these losses.
@8 Well, to be fair, this is how conservatives always seem to do everything, Public: “Its not working!” GOP: “Try again, but more extreme and inflexible!!” For them the quote is not, “Doomed to repeat them.”, its, “We just didn’t repeat the same mistakes the right way.”
By coincidence I was just looking at the ‘Mr Neutron’ episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in which the US military destroy the entire planet to prevent Mr Neutron from destroying it.
Many liberals should put their opposition to the Death Penalty on hold until the current outbreak of fascism has been eliminated.
Just see what happened with the J6 traitors: they need to be put beyond a pardon.
Now, once things are back closer to normal, my suggestion (which is mine) is that the Death Penalty be reserved for ONLY Heads of State that cause the deaths of more then 10,000 civilians. And that those executions should be PUBLIC and GRUESOME. It’s the only way to teach that particular criminal element “don’t do that shit, EVER”.
If they don’t want to pay that price, then can always turn down the job.
The usual rot:
“Trump’s New DHS Boss Somehow Doubles His Stolen Valor”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7-us09mmLdY
Technically not a military matter, but these are the kind of people Trump appoints everywhere.
“Ask Obama and the Dem leaders why they let Dubya and his cronies get off scot-free.”
My speculation is that early in Obama’s term he was told that if he went after Dubya and his torture-bros he’d be “JFK’ed”.
For both possible meanings of that acronym.
It’s not a no-brainer to choose between the two.
Otherwise your president would have managed.
PZ I know the feeling . I thought Felon47 should have been jailed after he was Dolt45
beholder: “Trump has unilaterally declared not-war on a sovereign nation, this is why I blame the Dems.”
Your shtick is obvious, wanker.
@ 16 badland
You’re imagining things. Comment #4 literally starts
Then accurately points out support for the war within the Democratic party.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-unity-against-trump-faces-a-test-after-u-s-and-israeli-strikes-on-iran
“I blame the Dems” appears nowhere and is shit you just made up.
Wasn’t WW2 the last time the US actually declared war? It’s certainly unjust and corrupt and self-defeating, but it’s not out of line with the trajectory of military action by successive executives. I don’t remember, now, if Biden started anything, but Obama in Libya. Bush2 obvs. Clinton in Kosovo? That was unilateral right? I was a kid so my memory is vague. Bush1 in Iraq. Reagan in Iran? Did Carter bomb anyone?
The USA has been at war for most of my life and I was born in the 1950s.
Yeah, there is nothing new here.
The difference here with Trump and all the other wars going back to the Korean war in the early 1950s is that the presidents at least had initially has support and approval from the US congress. The actual trajectory is that most of these wars start out with approval from the congress and even the US public.
Then if they don’t go well or take too long, everyone decides they were a bad idea and turns against them.
The Vietnam war was that way. Support was initially high. As an early antiwar protester, I got a lot of abuse and insults from people for what was an unpopular view point.
We were ultimately right.
Same with the Iraq II war.
Bush started it and even 3 years on, he was still reelected by the American people who are obviously slow learners.
The public only turned against it late when it ended up lasting 9 years.
Trump has already started out with the majority of the US people opposed to the war.
He didn’t even pretend to ask the US congress what they thought about it.
The war isn’t going well, and he and the US military have no idea what they are doing.
@18 Yeah, not precisely wrong. It was more of a case of, “We are going to war.”, from the President, knowing that Congress was likely to shrug and go, “Sure, lets vote on it, to make it official.” What differs this time, is not even that some people are screaming that the President shouldn’t be allowed to do this at all, is that Congress isn’t rushing to vote on it being acceptable and sanctioned. The past instances are a bit… problematic in as much that while I might agree that immediate action might be valid, in very specific cases, where more lives are at stake, and arguing over whether to do something would cost lives, this is almost never the actual case, at all, in all those past “not really wars”.
There has, definitely been way too much of a, “Now that your kid has both gone on the tripe, and fed something lethal to the animals, after ignoring the, ‘Do not feed the animals.’, sign, we kind of need you to sign the permission slip that we failed to notice he didn’t turn in.”, energy the last.. I don’t know how many administrations.
timmyson @ # 18: Did Carter bomb anyone?
Jimmy Carter, under the malign influence of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, stirred up, financed, and armed the global pan-Islamic jihad in Afghanistan in a successful attempt to “give the Soviets their own Vietnam”. Then Reagan injected steroids into the same project, leading directly to 9/11 and the current catastrophe(s).
So, while the literal answer to your question is “No”, he did, in effect, launch the whole “War on Terror” – on terror’s side.
If you’re looking at the cost:benefit of a policy, and it turns out the benefit side is already negative, then you don’t really need to justify the expense.
@ Trump enabling troll “beholder” – 12th March 2026 at 9:34 am :
Yes. One that YOU “beholder” HELPED MAKE HAPPEN & HELPED PUT IN POWER!
This war and every one of the dead in it is on <i.your hands. This was the alternatiev toKamala Harris and the Democratic party winning. Under POTUS Kamala we would NOT have this war.
The what congress? The REPUVB:LICAN Congress. The Trump party rubber stamp which ahs ended Democracy and imposed Trumpist Christianist White Supremacist Fascism on the USA – with your help in getting that.
Oh and the aid of the Abandon Biden / Harris klowns who undermined her thus helping him. Good job you fuckwits.
@ ^
Stevo, as usual you are completely ignoring that Harris gleefully pledged to fund and aid genocide in Gaza, no questions asked whatsoever. So your claim this would not have escalated to war with Iran is plausible but speculative, and more to the point, indulging in “horror Oplympics”.
“Possibly the horrific Harris genocide may have been marginally less horrific than the alternative” is not the grand slam argument you think it is.
@24
Hey StevoR, it’s the war in Iran you always wanted.
At least a few of us on FTB haven’t forgotten when you were practically the biggest cheerleader for this freedom-democracy-burger adventure. That it is an unmitigated disaster (as many of us predicted) should shame you into silence, if you have any shame left.
What I genuinely don’t understand Stevo, is why you don’t hate Harris for not offering any real alternative. You realise all she had to do was say, “I oppose genocide and as long as Israel continues on this course I will stop all funding” and she could quite possibly have handily won the election. But she couldn’t. Because she’s not and never has been remotely “progressive”. She’s marginally less right than the hard right. Definitely no more than that.
@ ^ & 25. Silentbob :
Because your premise is false and she DID in fact offer a real alternative. A vastly better one than the Fascist Trump option that the disingenuous Trumpy troll beholder preferred and worked to see elected.
What I don’t get is why you don’t see this & support them and why YOU do NOT, understand reality here.
Becoz it ain’t that easy and she likely wouldn’t have.
Pretty sure I’ve already mentioned to you the political reality that the Israeli lobby is immensely powerful. Exhibit A : the fates of Jamal Bowman & Cori Bush and that opposing Israel means political death. Maybe hopefully that’s changing now but certinaly that’s was understanding back then based on history, results, evidnece -the important things. Especially following October 7th. After that NO POTUS or candidate for that job was going to do ANYTHING other than fully support Israel at least for a while becoz of what Hamas did that day.
As it was the Israel lobby backed guess who out of the TWO & ONLY 2 options -Trump of course and kamala (& even Biden) were slammed as being too Pro-Palestinian which may have cost her some votes as it was.
You do realise that to get elected you need more votes than just your base and need to sway people that don’t necessarily agree with your personal views & understanding right? You have to take into account the people – especially the funders & lobbies – who disagree with you to get elected.as well.
Thing is if IF she had done what you suggest she may very well have lost. Did that occur to you?
Absolute bullshit Silentbob.
In truth, Kamala has been described as :
Source : https://zenit.org/2024/08/01/kamala-harris-the-most-progressive-and-left-wing-candidate-for-the-us-presidency/
If you read reichwing sources and their comments you’d have seen a huge number of people who already thought she was uber-progressive and far too leftwing.
Kamala was the most progressive candidate you were going to get in 2024 and she will historically be the very last actually progressive candidate for POTUS becoz, surprise, non-surprise, you won’t get another chance in the states now. Not with the fascists in charge and with the Overton Window already pushed so far to the right the wall has been thrown into a dumpster fire. For which you can thank, among others, the evil trumpy troll here that you keep defending for some fucking reason.
NOTHING would satisfy the fucking Only-a-Unicorn-will-do mob who will NEVER get their ideal because it is impossible. Politics is famously the art of the possible & famously requires compromises.
THAT.
IS
A
FUCKING
LIE
&
YOU
KNOW
IT!
Kamala said nothing of the sort and did say she found Palestinian suffering “heart-breaking” she and Biden called for restraint, criticised Netanyahu, sanctioned Israeli extremists and even withheld some weapons. She couldn’t have done much more without alienating a lobby that would’ve cost her the election when she was already considered too progressive and too left wing by many.
If you had some actual reading comprehension skills you’d understand that that is Not the argument I’m making.
For starters the difference would NOT be marginal at all compared to what Trump is now doing and going to do along with Netanyahu – and not just in Gaza as we are fucking seeing happen right now.
Then, of course, there’s the future and alternative present that kamala’s loss has robbed us all of having.
Elections have consequences. Electing Trump instead of Kamala has had the very worst and most horrendous consequences – & that is why I’m so pissed off here.
@ 26. Trump assisting bad faith troll “beholder” : Fuck off liar. I don’t war this war. Are you so pretend or otherwise lacking in intellect that you do NOT know what the word “always” means?
As for “shame” given what you did in arguing for years and when it mattered most against the relatively progressive party and its candidates and in favour of the outright fascist evil party you have no business posting here and pretending you are something you clearly are not and claiming falsely based on your words and actions to care about this issue when its blatantly obvious you do NOT.
As I tried so much to warn you and our Trumpy trollhere about and predicted.
Being Kassandra sucks. Predctably
enough.too much.@ 27 Silentbob.
Citation please. I want to see the evidence you have that enough US voters in all the swing states that Biden won in 2020, stayed at home or actively voted for trump in the 2024 US presidential election specifically because of either candidate’s position on Gaza.