• ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    11 days ago

    Judging from our track record. Most Americans would get over it and/or forget about it in 3 months maybe less. There would absolutely be protests, but nothing meaninful would come of them. The consensus would be “whats done is done and we should move on” or something along those lines. Maybe I am too cynical though

  • machiabelly [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    11 days ago

    Maybe I’m idealistic but I think that people would be horrified. A lot of Americans would brush it off and forget about it but I think that it would cause permanent damage to America’s perception in the world and in foreign relations. I’ve heard people say that the WW2 nukes were or weren’t justified, but never that they don’t care. I’m sure those people are out there but the perception of those nukes comes across very differently because it was the first use of atomic weapons, and because that war is and was seen as justified. I don’t think that this war will be seen as being justified to the same extent.

    Human beings aren’t rational. The same way that 12 people dying from systemic, indirect, capitalist violence doesn’t pull the heartstrings like a shooting does, the dropping of an atomic bomb, seen fucking live and filmed from 10,000 different angles will hit people in places they didn’t know they had. Of course many will cheer it, and many won’t care. But I think, that this will damage the US’ reputation more than supporting the genocide did/does.

    I believe that if the US nukes Iran, it will be remembered as the day the US empire fell, or at least the beginning of the end. There are lines that can’t be crossed, points of no return, and while genociding brown people is not one of them, dropping a nuke is. Its an upsetting of the order, a permanent mistrust and wariness that will follow the US for a century.

    • Boynomoder [she/her, pup/pup's]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Yeah I think for most people the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is seen as an outlier. Something that happened before they were born or very young for the first time at the end of one of the biggest wars in history.
      It can be almost justified in that way, but I don’t think people will feel the same now.

    • it would absolutely start the clock on a nuke eventually going off in the US, because it would normalize the use of nuclear weapons in any perceived conflict with the US.

      anybody sober sees this Iran dust-up as instigated by war hawks and Israel, so the use of a nuke to “end” it would give every other geopolitical rival or uneasy ally the imperative to nuke the US first at the first sign of trouble, to avoid becoming the target of the US’ spontaneously generated aggression.

      and if we nuked Iran, the propaganda machine would go into overdrive to make it seem acceptable, conservative pundits would cry out in glory to heaven for delivering death and destruction to a nation of people, the rest of the planet would see our unhinged justifications and have to admit to their own security services that the US had gone completely insane and start revisiting their outside-the-box strategies to cripple the US by any means available.

      and eventually it would happen, because the military is a joke, and the fear over the US panic launching in blind retaliation at anybody would probably inspire a multilateral effort to overwhelm US forces everywhere.

  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    10 days ago

    There will be an insane propaganda push where basically every piece of media supports the nuke and then it’s memory holed

    Like 9/11 and Iraq

  • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 days ago

    In the US? I don’t think people would give a shit honestly. The libs might have a big protest, that’s it

    Edit: for like a tactical nuke on the buried facility or sth. Obviously if they nuked Tehran it would be something else entirely but I don’t see the need or the reason to do that.

    • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      10 days ago

      tactical nuke

      Total meme category. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “strategic” bombings using “tactical” yields according to post-war terminology.

      • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        10 days ago

        Sure but there’s a big difference from dropping a small yield (relatively obviously this is all demonic and awful) device on an isolated military target vs a high yield device on a population center which is what people envision as “nuking”

    • mrfugu [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      10 days ago

      I think this is the distinction. I really don’t think any amount of propaganda would get the general gen z/millennial American public to have majority support for dropping a bomb on a major city center filled with civilians.

      If they drop it somewhere else in Iran and it only destroys the homeland and ruins the lives of thousands instead of millions, the mental gymnastics would be much more common. That said tho a modern tactical nuke usage against a “purely military” target would certainly open up public sentiment towards future usage.

  • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    10 days ago

    I honestly don’t know. A majority of Americans don’t support a war with Iran, but that doesn’t matter. A supermajority might disapprove of the nuke, but that also wouldn’t matter. Obviously the public opinion will depend on the pretext, but the public opinion just never matters.