“Colonialism is insatiable. Enough is never enough.”
— Omar El Akkad just now on Al Jazeera

Iran cannot simultaneously be a paper tiger incapable of posing a threat to us (and therefore meaning there's no possibility of war if we bomb them) and a threat so imminent it justifies us bombing them.

It's one or the other.

In the coming weeks, if this explodes, there will be (even more) public discrimination against and malign treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans, especially Iranian Americans.

Let's make sure we stand with and protect them as much as we can.

right-wing politics requires perceived threats; thus they never analyze root causes & only deploy force. every new enemy created justifies their MO. we got ISIS bc Iraq bc (?) bin Laden bc destruction of M.E. + we created the Taliban to destroy communism ... to avoid addressing root causes.

i genuinely wonder if the right realizes that this basically means that a lot of US soft power will basically evaporate in the next 4 years

The standard assumption of a reactionary is that their current position is the natural, normal state of affairs that didn't require active effort to build up and which no-one sincerely opposes - anyone claiming to do so is assumed to be engaged in some kind of underhand trick.