In the early hours of March 4, 2026, in international waters off the coast of Galle, Sri Lanka, the USS Charlotte, a Los Angeles–class nuclear-powered attack submarine, closed in on the IRIS Dena, a new Iranian Moudge-class frigate.
Submerged, the Charlotte fired a heavyweight, acoustic-homing torpedo at the hull of the Dena. It missed. It fired another. It connected. The periscope footage of the attack was released by the United States Department of War. It shows the shockwave of the torpedo fracturing the Dena’s hull and sending its helicopter flight deck metres into the air.
Within seconds, what was left of the Dena was plummeting to the depths of the Indian Ocean, carrying at least sixty of its crew of 180 to their deaths.
Some moments later, an email was sent from US Indo-Pacific Command to Sri Lanka’s maritime rescue agency. Twenty miles from Galle’s coast, a ship is in distress. Sri Lanka immediately engaged a search and rescue effort that included its air force and navy. The surface of the sea contained clues that a vessel had been attacked and had likely been sunk. But it was not clear whether the attack had come from above or below. They were able to rescue thirty-two sailors, and recover the bodies of eighty-seven others, many of whom had mysteriously broken legs.
The Charlotte had long vanished like an apparition beneath the waves.
This was on the fifth day of the US–Israeli war on Iran, 2,000 nautical miles from the immediate conflict zone.
Hegseth and trump playing with lethal toys like a sociopath torturing animals.
A non-hostile ship being targeted because “Just do it and see what happens. “
Mark my words, by the end of Trump’s term the United States is going to have no allies left in the entire world.
Hell, we barely have any left as it is now.
comment Africa comment in articles in the WSJ saying the US has only “fair weather allies” and it’s good they show how useless they are now so the US can discard them.
exactly 0 self awareness.
I want to put this very recognizable meme on lawn signs (like the plastic political candidate ones) and hand them out and put them everywhere.
But it was wicked cool, and we did that, so it’s cool. - Hegseth
We are. Because we say so. Now the other guy, wooboy what a bad guy!
The only one thinking the US are the good guys it’s the US.
As of right now, you’re no better… scratch that, you are actually worse than Putin.
Oh I don’t know. I think the Israelis are convinced they’re the good guys.
Now that the United States is trying to do a Russian Ukraine upon Iran…
yyyyeah there is no moral highground anymore.
just an immoral crater filled with mud and viscera.
No state is moral. People are (or can be) moral.
honestly TRUUUUUUE!!
This is the case with pretty much all collective entities, they’re all cut from the same cloth:
businesses, sports teams, fandoms, private clubs, political parties - they’re all manifestations of tribal instinct and one of its “”“features”“” (which, in this very synthetic habitat we’ve created for ourselves can become quite maladaptive if not toxic) is the displacement of personal accountability.I’m saying, yes, groups are not moral but people can be moral - and I am hypothesizing THAT is why.
Parallel processing has enabled humans to do absolutely incredible things.
But it has also enabled humans to do truly heinous things too.
Bystander effect, “just following orders”, toeing the party line, passing the buck, riding the bandwagon… I think it’s not enough to teach people that only people themselves are capable of making moral judgments, but that we absolutely should also teach people that abstract gestalt entities that we become part of, that we allow to subsume us, are not.
Even the ones that aren’t outright evil are only so by the individual decisions of the people it comprises–through either luck or mindfulness–steering it away from brutal shortcuts that spend others’ lives for the sake of its own perpetuation.
It’s kind of ironic though that the people who decry “groupthink” the loudest are the ones that seem to be doing it the most. I’d sure like to think that we’ll learn to do a better job of identifying that blindspot (which such distributed collective entities exploit to enhance their own survival odds) and countering it, then teaching the next generations to look for it and counter it too.
… if we’ll even be around to see any generations that may exist after us.
The USA is bad but it’s nowhere near russian level of bad. You are, however, moving in that direction at a rapid pace. It does help that American president sees russia as a role model.
Trying to paint either nation as “less bad” is incredibly naive. Both have murdered millions.
And the US has, this year, kidnapped a head of state, started a war and is also trying to starve another country. Not to mention how they are treating its own citizens and how are they giving all they need to Israhell so they can keep going with their genocide.
The US has been the main villain ever since they inherited the role from the British. None of this is surprising if you’ve been paying attention.
Hey, we were happy dicking around in our own backyard for the first 150 years or so. We even attacked ourselves, we were so bored.
Then you people asked us to join WW1, and we got a taste of World Domination, and we loved it. So, y’know, you started it.
We’re Frankenstein’s Monster, and you let us loose.
/S, just kidding, America sucks, we know it. A lot of us want to do better, and we’re hoping for a different future. We’re at a crossroads, things are going to be very different in the future. I just hope it’s our difference that prevails, and not MAGAs.
The 40k universe is clearly inspired by real-world politics. There are only bad guys, villains, and monsters. Nobody has the moral high ground in this mess.
“There is no such thing as innocence; only degrees of guilt.”
Oh that’s a nice one. Where did you steal that from?
It’s from 40k. Specifically I think it’s the librarians from the Dawn of War games.
piefed.social/u/QuantumStorm@lemmy.world has it right, i believe - but i’m ashamed to admit that i only know that because i had to look it up after originally hearing it from … a fanfic, of all things.
So I have stolen what was already stolen! The writer of said fic was making a direct WH40k reference
(the fanfic in question is “Shinji and Warhammer 40K” and i cannot possibly describe the appeal of it more adequately than TV Tropes did.)
Centrist, politically relativist nerds unite; incidentally, relativism is a useful cope if you are one of the baddies.
We bombed only seven hospitals, whereas those guys bombed eight. They are clearly the worst, while we are the good guys, relatively speaking.
I hate this comment.
I don’t claim that know who the good guys are, but the US and specifically the military are definitely the baddies.
I disagree with you only on one point; “and specifically the military”.
Apologies for being blunt, but this is a coward’s logic. I’m not seeing that to attack you personally, but because far, far too many of us are guilty of this specific act of moral cowardice, and it needs to be called out now often.
A military acts on the will of a government. A government rules by the consent of the people (yes, even authoritarian governments; democracy is just a system for assigning that consent peacefully, fairly, and with minimal bloodshed).
With vanishingly few exceptions throughout history, militaries are not rogue agents acting on their own devices. They are our will made manifest. A soldier is a bullet fired from a gun. We take aim and pull the trigger. A soldier can do their best to act ethically and responsibly, but ultimately war is a scenario where no good outcomes can ever occur. Only degrees of terrible.
A soldier chooses to accept the responsibility of living and enacting that terror on our behalf because ultimately someone has to. War is sometimes inevitable and necessary. We do not categorically refer to the soldiers fighting for Ukraine’s defence as monsters even though most of them - especially those serving before the war, those whose bravery and skill ground the Russian invasion to a halt in those vital early hours - serve for the same panoply of reasons that any other soldier does. Many of those reasons are simple, or selfish, or thoughtless, but the reasons why they chose to shoulder that responsibility didn’t change the outcome.
It’s easy to blame the military, because it abrogates the collective shame of what war actually is; an extension of politics. I know plenty of soldiers who are some of the most anti-war people you’ll ever meet, because they understand what war costs, in a way the average civilian never will.
When war kills people, when war results in atrocities, when war is a nightmare of death and carnage and suffering, that responsibility is collective. It belongs to a people, not just a military.
Trump’s war in Iran is America’s war in Iran. Just like Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam and Korea, and so many others.
America is NOT acting on the will of the people. It has been totally stolen from the citizens, and neither side is doing what the people want. MAGA approval rates are abysmal, but so are Democratic approval rates. NOBODY is happy about it.
Understand that we are a nation under siege. MAGA stole the 2024 election with election fraud, and the Dems let them off the hook, and now we’re dealing with the consequences. The majority did not want this, and now even many of them are leaving.
There is a national seething happening, just under the surface, and barely in control. MAGA tries to deny the Midterm Bloodbath, it will break loose.
America is NOT acting on the will of the people.
I’m aware. But I didn’t actually say that, did I?
If you refer back to my previous comment, you’ll see that my exact statement was “A military acts on the will of a government. A government rules by the consent of the people.” There’s a subtle, but important distinction there. America’s actions in Iran do not necessarily reflect the will (read; desires, intentions) of the American people. But it is, none the less, being done by a government that is operating with the consent of those same people. And that will continue to be the case until the people choose - by one means or another - to withdraw that consent.
These sailors signed up to fight for the Iranian regime. Regardless of what you think of who did it and how: these were baddies.
I don’t get why the article keeps saying the military frigate was “unarmed”?
It was on a training mission and was heading home. With no weapons on board. We are cowards.
This entire war is illegal, but articles like this just grind my gears.
Attacking a war ship on a training run is like destroying airplanes on the ground, or bombing infantry barracks where soldiers are sleeping. It isn’t a war crime, or even out of the ordinary in a war.
And calling the sub crew cowards doesn’t even make sense.
The frigate would have been just as helpless against the sub if it had been carrying its usual armament.I guess I’m just allergic to dishonest propaganda, no matter from which side.
Also, fuck Trump, his administration, and every single US service member going along with this. I hope they get humiliated and are forced to pull out with their tails between their legs before they “accidentally” kill more school children, or deliberately destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure (an actual war crime).There’s plenty of that to be found on Lemmy tho
Yes, and the reactions to this post make me seriously consider leaving this place.
Yeah, lemmy is a bit of a cespool.
For me it’s the exact opposite. I wouldn’t know where else to observe these people, if not here?
And if it gets too frustrating I just close the app
Wow you’re soft.
You are in serious need of education. This was an international naval exercise, where participants show up unarmed to not endanger any other participants and as a show of good will. This is basically a diplomatic gesture. Attacking such a ship is among the most cowardly things any military can do. So exactly what you would expect from the cowards of Magastan.
Let’s put aside the stupidity of the idea that they should have allowed it to re-arm first and risk US lives for no reason.
The training mission had a live fire component, so the ship was definitely armed during a portion of the excersise. Unless they ran out of ammo or something weird happened, it was armed.
As a precondition of its participation in the fleet review and the Milan 2026 exercises in India, the IRIS Dena was unarmed.
From the actual article. Which you could have read. It’s not even paywalled, you just didn’t want to take the time.
Oh of course, the manly thing to do would be to wait for it get back to port get munitions and then shoot it
Anyone got a link to the video?
It was a war ship therefore a valid target
I hope you were being sarcastic and not an ignorant monster.
