The instinct to root for anyone raises a lot of thoughts

by Regular Joseph , Monday, May 11, 2026, 06:50 (14 days ago) @ NDinVA

I think we have sets of moral frameworks that aren't always reconcilable. I don't know which ones are the best or how we'd choose to define that.

Isn't whole game of war is evil?

Does it even make sense to say their guys are more evil than our guys?

Why do we want to root for them sometimes? I think it's an instinct toward fairness and justice. It's conceptually weird to consider ground rules for violent conflict, but I think we have a sense there should be some. We don't want to exterminate the Persian civilization nor to cause needless suffering, but stopping the fundamentalist Shi'a regime from spreading war to their neighbors seems like a worthwhile goal. Then again, what's most fair, what greivances are they entitled to? Who really started the fighting? Did we when we overthrew Mossaddegh for the Shah? Do we when when send arms and money to Israel to create and expand an invasion of the Middle East?

War seems like a shortcut to our idealist goals, but whatever it's for I don't think it's likely to achieve those. In that sense, the gut for anyone to make us stop (lose?) war is understandable on another level.