The 40k universe is clearly inspired by real-world politics. There are only bad guys, villains, and monsters. Nobody has the moral high ground in this mess.

Now that the United States is trying to do a Russian Ukraine upon Iran...

yyyyeah there is no moral highground anymore.

just an immoral crater filled with mud and viscera.

The USA is bad but it's nowhere near russian level of bad. You are, however, moving in that direction at a rapid pace. It does help that American president sees russia as a role model.

Oh I don't know. I think the Israelis are convinced they're the good guys.

Add Russia to that

I disagree with you only on one point; "and specifically the military".

Apologies for being blunt, but this is a coward's logic. I'm not seeing that to attack you personally, but because far, far too many of us are guilty of this specific act of moral cowardice, and it needs to be called out now often.

A military acts on the will of a government. A government rules by the consent of the people (yes, even authoritarian governments; democracy is just a system for assigning that consent peacefully, fairly, and with minimal bloodshed).

With vanishingly few exceptions throughout history, militaries are not rogue agents acting on their own devices. They are our will made manifest. A soldier is a bullet fired from a gun. We take aim and pull the trigger. A soldier can do their best to act ethically and responsibly, but ultimately war is a scenario where no good outcomes can ever occur. Only degrees of terrible.

A soldier chooses to accept the responsibility of living and enacting that terror on our behalf because ultimately someone has to. War is sometimes inevitable and necessary. We do not categorically refer to the soldiers fighting for Ukraine's defence as monsters even though most of them - especially those serving before the war, those whose bravery and skill ground the Russian invasion to a halt in those vital early hours - serve for the same panoply of reasons that any other soldier does. Many of those reasons are simple, or selfish, or thoughtless, but the reasons why they chose to shoulder that responsibility didn't change the outcome.

It's easy to blame the military, because it abrogates the collective shame of what war actually is; an extension of politics. I know plenty of soldiers who are some of the most anti-war people you'll ever meet, because they understand what war costs, in a way the average civilian never will.

When war kills people, when war results in atrocities, when war is a nightmare of death and carnage and suffering, that responsibility is collective. It belongs to a people, not just a military.

Trump's war in Iran is America's war in Iran. Just like Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam and Korea, and so many others.

As Hawkeye says, "There are no innocent bystanders in hell, but war is chock full of them... In fact, aside from a few of the brass, almost everyone involved is an innocent bystander."

I want to put this very recognizable meme on lawn signs (like the plastic political candidate ones) and hand them out and put them everywhere.

comment Africa comment in articles in the WSJ saying the US has only "fair weather allies" and it's good they show how useless they are now so the US can discard them.

exactly 0 self awareness.

I hope you were being sarcastic and not an ignorant monster.

It was on a training mission and was heading home. With no weapons on board. We are cowards.

I can tell you didn't read the article.

The IRIS Dena was taking part in an international fleet review in the Bay of Bengal. Comprised of seventy-five foreign delegations, including the United States, Germany, Japan, and Australia. The theme of the joint exercise: “United by Oceans.”

As a precondition of its participation in the fleet review and the Milan 2026 exercises in India, the IRIS Dena was unarmed. When it met what Secretary Hegseth boastfully called its “quiet death,” the IRIS Dena was essentially an off-duty vessel, traveling home from a ceremonial voyage on ocean waters that were declared, in 1971 by the UN General Assembly, a zone of peace.

The United States knew the IRIS Dena was unarmed, and it knew its approximate whereabouts, as it participated in the same exercise.

The same Los Angeles–class nuclear-powered attack submarine that sank the Dena, the USS Charlotte, had participated in the same Fleet review. They knew it was unarmed. They followed the unarmed ship from the international unity review, and then sank the vessel in open water, 2000 miles from the illegal war being waged by drumpf and his pedophile allies.

This is just another war crime in a multitude of them. Every single person in this administration should hang.

Even if it's not technically a war crime, it's still disgusting. An unarmed ship heading home from a diplomatic exercise, that they knew was unarmed, and they torpedoed it for PR. They could have simply forced it to surrender with no danger to the submarine, but they wanted an epic torpedo video for trump to watch and clap at.

In any case, I wish death on all the yankee devils

Wikipedia has a video of the blast. Imagine standing on deck when the torpedo exploded and you'll understand why there were broken legs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_IRIS_Dena