I’ve been reading this comment and its subsequent replies and with all due respect, I think you need to take a break from monitoring the war situation if you are reduced to arguing with people on the internet about how the country you side with should bomb schools and hospitals. Yes, I know the context is you saying “in retaliation”, it’s still not a good place to find yourself in mentally.

If you don’t live in Iran, one thing you can be doing for the situation is oppose the illegal and aggressive war perpetrated by the empire and organize in that manner, including using the opportunity to point out to people just how blatantly horrible the empire has been historically while they are more apt to be disgusted with it and listen. I feel pretty confident in assuming you are not a military general of a country of over 80 million people. Iran is not going to read lemmygrad for consultation on whether they should target civilians. All this will accomplish is making you look bloodthirsty for being reduced to supporting the direct targeting of civilians (maybe you don’t personally care about that right now, but you are part of lemmygrad for posting here and how we each post contributes to how all of us look - and contributes to how all of us think, which is why people argue over the correct line in the first place).

Jones Manoel’s essay is about multiple things, among which is the west being obsessed with purity and fetishizing defeat to the point that they lose sight of tactics and material constraints. It is not him arguing that AES states should do war crimes because the empire does. Here is an example of what he is driving at from the essay:

Another very well known case is that of Vietnam. Everyone supported Vietnam when it was under attack, being destroyed and bombed for over 30 years. Vietnam beat Japan in WW2, then had to fight France, and then had to fight the United States. From 1945 to 1975 it spent 30 straight years without being able to build a damn school or hospital because a bomb from France or the United States would drop and destroy it. When the country was finally able to beat all of the colonial and neocolonial powers and had the opportunity to start planning, to build highways, electrical systems, schools and universities without having bombs land on them the next day and destroy everything that was being done, the country was abandoned by the majority of the left. It lost its charm, it lost its enchantment.

In other words, when a people are weak and victimized, then western Marxists will support it. When they are managing a sovereign socialist project and making mistakes of their own accord, then some of these same Marxists will suddenly become shy and heavily critical, saying that the country has lost its way, is tyrannical, is doing a bad job, etc.

You claim this is about tactics, but people generally use limited weaponry on military targets for a reason; not just because they’re trying to be ethical, but because if you blow a limited stock on civilian infrastructure with the intent to maximize casualties and without dismantling military infrastructure, the enemy may still be readily able to attack you and you will probably harden their resolve to fight to the last one standing. Colonialist thinking is not “smart” militarily in this way, it is brutal and genocidal and often relies on having a military edge over its opponent, so that anything can be a target and it still won’t run out of munitions or suffer meaningful retaliation. It appears that it is right now stuck in the same mindset in spite of the fact that Iran is capable of damaging it militarily and has already done so.

Second, as we can see (an example is recently posted in this thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11042011/7910365), Iran is willing to retaliate in the form of attacking some industrial infrastructure that is not strictly military, but with evacuation warnings first. So far, Iran’s strategy appears fairly consistent with the idea of: 1) Primary: target “hard power” colonial/imperial military bases in the region, targeted strikes of military in a hotel or embassy, that sort of thing; 2) Secondary: some limited targeting of “soft power” under the right circumstances, e.g. industry, but with focus on destroying the tools rather than targeting people who happen to work there, and 3) Indirectly, via blocking the strait and making oil prices spike, hit the capitalist where it cares the most (the pocketbook). Don’t let a single headline induce despair and the belief that Iran needs to divert from a strategy they surely have been planning and trialing for a long time.

As a final point, you’re not wrong about history being written by the victors, to a point, but it’s also sometimes written by the marginalized too in response to the victors writing it deceptively (ex: post Civil War US tried to whitewash slavery in classrooms in some parts of the country, but I think it’s clear in retrospect that while its deception had some success, it was also highly limited in reach). You can’t Men in Black memory wipe on a conflict this publicized and Iran is not going to take over the world and all of its media and schooling so it can control all narrative. That’s the type of thing the western empire tries to do and we know it doesn’t work forever and effectively in every way because things have internal contradictions to them.

I believe you mean well or my response would be, well… different. This is my high effort attempt to go through it with a fine-tooth comb, fairly. Please take it in the spirit of that. And please understand that when I speak of taking a break, I’m not trying to imply that you are incapable of good judgment. You are clearly capable of analyzing. But sometimes (and I am speaking from my own experience) closeness of engagement with a thing can lead to such tunnel-visioning that it becomes hard to step back and look at the bigger picture of it.