> the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz
Am I the only one who finds this disingenuous? It's like saying: "the police's arrival to the bank robbery took someone hostage." The police's arrival may have triggered the hostage taker's actions but it was still their actions. It's like the author let their dislike of Trump get in the way of accuracy.
It's easy enough to argue that the war is a disaster without being misleading about who did what.
I wasn't trying to talk about the morality of the US's actions (not that the police are inherently moral), only point how it seems purposefully misleading to remove the direct actor from the equation.
If you want, we can change the moral insinuations. "The bully hit himself in the face." No, the poor kid being teased hit the bully in the face.
And in fact, rhetorical tools like that make it easier for people who disagree with the authors stance to discard the author's argument on the whole. "This person either doesn't understand the situation well enough, or is willingly lying to me. Why would I listen to them."
You mentioned wanting to avoid moral insinuations and focus purely on the direct actors, but both of the analogies you used (police vs. robbers, bullied kid vs. bully) inherently rely on moral framing. They cast one side as a legitimate authority or innocent victim, and the other as the undisputed aggressor.
If the goal is truly to look at this without moral bias and just examine the causal chain of events, those analogies don't work. There is no geopolitical equivalent of your examples without bias. It's two competing states engaged in an escalating conflict. When you use analogies that bake in a "good guy/bad guy" dynamic, it introduces the exact moral framing you stated you were trying to avoid.
The first example was just the first that came to mind. The second was chosen in the opposite direction because that poster didn’t like the unintentional insinuation that the US was in the moral right; I chose something that has the opposite framing to show that it holds independently of who’s wrong.
arijun · · focus · HN ↗
Am I the only one who finds this disingenuous? It's like saying: "the police's arrival to the bank robbery took someone hostage." The police's arrival may have triggered the hostage taker's actions but it was still their actions. It's like the author let their dislike of Trump get in the way of accuracy.
It's easy enough to argue that the war is a disaster without being misleading about who did what.
Frieren · · focus · HN ↗
arijun · · focus · HN ↗
If you want, we can change the moral insinuations. "The bully hit himself in the face." No, the poor kid being teased hit the bully in the face.
And in fact, rhetorical tools like that make it easier for people who disagree with the authors stance to discard the author's argument on the whole. "This person either doesn't understand the situation well enough, or is willingly lying to me. Why would I listen to them."
jfyi · · focus · HN ↗
If the goal is truly to look at this without moral bias and just examine the causal chain of events, those analogies don't work. There is no geopolitical equivalent of your examples without bias. It's two competing states engaged in an escalating conflict. When you use analogies that bake in a "good guy/bad guy" dynamic, it introduces the exact moral framing you stated you were trying to avoid.
arijun · · focus · HN ↗
jfyi · · focus · HN ↗
You were responding to this:
> the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz
Instead of morally biased analogies, why not just explain what you believe is the actual case?