Brett Wilkins Jun 16, 2025

Flight-tracking websites showed dozens of Air Force aerial refueling planes departing from military bases in the United States and heading to Europe on Sunday, fueling speculation of direct U.S. involvement in the widening Israeli-Iranian war.

Military-focused news sites reported that around 30 U.S. Air Force KC-135R and KC-46A tankers were identified by flight-tracking software in what The Times of Israelcalled an “unprecedented mass deployment” to Europe.

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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      44 hours ago

      But was it in the beginning? I’m not old enough to remember what it was like when it started but clearly there was a lot of propaganda. The unpopularity seemed to manifest over time, as there was no goal and people dying over something most americans didn’t care about.

      Or at least that’s my impression.

      • @pahlimur@lemmy.world
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        325 minutes ago

        It’s not even hard to look this up, or maybe I already have the context having loved the 90s history channel. Vietnam had majority support for the first few years. But it was one of the first conflicts that was widely televised. Americans had never so quickly seen how fucked up war was, so support dropped off quickly. Weapons were also becoming a lot more fucked up during this time as well, adding to the visual horror.

      • @jj4211@lemmy.world
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        21 hour ago

        I don’t personally know, but as far as I could tell, people in the USA were largely ok with the Vietnam war, until they started to draft people to send to Vietnam who never wanted to be in a military.

      • 🧟‍♂️ Cadaver
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        22 hours ago

        I don’t know, I’m neither american nor old enough. However, since it was a different time and, as you so brilliantly told, the propaganda machine was at its summum. So there is no way to know how really unpopular things were. However, looking at the civil rights movement and the hippie era that was happening et the same time, we could conclude that it could have been more unpopular.

        Don’t forget that the majority of trump voters are in favor of a war, particularly against a country they have seen as an enemy for a very long time - not forgetting the fact that it is also a muslim country, of which they are very biaised against.

        You could say that there are no fundamental differences between the iranian government and the one they are willing to implement on US soil, except the fact that they are both centered around two different religions, however similar might their doctrines be.

        To Trump voters, however, those words don’t have any weight as, again, iranians are seen as an enemy of the so-called freedom. That makes this war quite popular by essence.