I think the "and then" point is a very good one. To elaborate, the full question is probably something like "ceasefire, and then what are you going to do to stop this collapsing, exactly like the ceasefire that was in place up to 7th October"?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_crisis#Aftermath_and_post-ceasefire_tensions
This is worth keeping in mind - the 7th October attacks weren't part of a continuing war. There actually was a ceasefire in place already. And, from Israel's point of view, Hamas spent the last six months or so of that ceasefire preparing (unmolested) for slaughter.
I really think saiselgY said everything there is to say here:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1718704393376137440
And then Israel stops doing massive war crimes and killing thousands of innocent civilians. The genocidal statements coming from Israeli government and Likud party officials are particularly alarming as to what they intend.
Just to get realpolitik here for a moment, but exactly what US interests are being served here by giving Israel a green light to do whatever they want and the weapons to do it with?
Yeah. It's not difficult to come up with plans for a lasting peace that look as though they should be pretty much entirely acceptable to reasonable Israelis and reasonable Palestinians. ChatGPT can do it. Israelis get Israel, more or less, Palestine gets the West Bank and Gaza, minus a few bits, you fudge the right to return, get some sort of compromise on Jerusalem, slather it with foreign aid and security guarantees, job done.
Now, if you can go and find some reasonable Israelis and Palestinians and put them in charge of their respective countries, we'll have this wrapped up in a week or two.
4.1: SEE STEP 3!!
And then Israel stops doing massive war crimes and killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Well, they did, after the last ceasefire in 2021. And then, this happened. So (the Israeli side is going to ask) is going to make this ceasefire any different from the last one?
The problem with 5.last is even if you found the reasonable leaders, they would get a minimum voted out, and most likely assassinated. (See Rabin, Yitzhak, who didn't even agree to any of the hard parts.) This is why Step 3 emphasizes that the people also need to develop more reasonable views.
7 is just wrong, Israel has been ramping up war crimes in the West Bank for years.
8 is also true. Though it didn't seem to discourage Rabin's successors from keeping on trying - though the risk would probably have been greater had they succeeded.
Has there been much since then in the way of Israeli political violence? No other assassinations of PMs, of course, but anything of a similar nature?
If the choices are:
1. Ceasefire
2. ???
3. Peace in our time
vs.
1. War and massacres
2. ???
3. Peace in our time
--no matter how handwavy the ??? in either scenario, I prefer the former.
Me too, but even the latter seems unrealistically optimistic.
They won't accomplish anything by the invasion, but that's sort of beside the point. They've murdered thousands of people. Israel have no easy solutions to their problems because of the numerous horrible actions they've taken over the last 75 years. That shouldn't be anyone's concern, only stopping the killings, stopping the siege, stopping the risk of cholera or other horrors.
But "how do you stop the killings" is exactly the question. Neither side, at present, seems to want to. Israel thinks it'll gain from continued killing because eventually it'll have disabled Hamas and rescued its hostages. Hamas thinks it'll gain from continued killing because if it does enough killing then eventually all the Jews will be dead or fled. Both are, I think, deluded in this.
To have a ceasefire, and this does need to be spelled out, you need to have two sides who both think they'll gain from the ceasefire holding. At present, what do you offer as a more profitable alternative to the more or less indiscriminate bombardment of civilians that both sides are happily engaged in?
I would not include the vast majority of Palestinians, who are innocent in this, as one of those "both sides."
Surely the United States should maintain and even increase its involvement in the region in support of our political parties' ongoing tussle over whose college-aged children are the more annoying.
Sure am feeling good right now about my instinct to include a more frivolous post today, as a counterweight.
17 comity.
19 we should have had a new SBF thread so we could all gloat. I can't believe you posted this instead and right before I'm about to watch the greatest movie ever made (Zardoz).
16: I mean, most people on both sides are innocent. Hamas is a bunch of murderous terrorists, and the government of Israel commits war crimes and other human rights violations with abandon, but that doesn't mean either that Israelis should be murdered or Palestinians should be bombed. (This is intended to be the emptiest of platitudes. If it sounds like I'm taking a strong position on anything, I probably misspoke.)
20: I suppose he counts as a millennial, but not an elder one. I suppose the median millennial then is a Millennial millennial?
9 got at what I was thinking. Who's going to cease what? An end to settler violence in the West Bank may not be one of Hamas' principal aims here, but it would be a big deal.
I agree that neither active party wants a ceasefire right now, but that's beside the point of whether I, you, we, my government, yours, ought to be encouraging the active participants to enter into one.
Cosign 21, which is in fact taking a strong position on something, but which shouldn't have to be, if you see what I mean.
An end to settler violence in the West Bank may not be one of Hamas' principal aims here
We do actually know what Hamas' principal aims are here - it's not like we have to do much kremlinology. They're quite open about what they want.
14 is correct, and the big problem here is that the people in charge on both sides actively want continued violence. The only way to get them to stop will be enormous pressure from their outside backers. We're starting to see a slight shift in US rhetoric which is encouraging but so far hugely insufficient. It's not clear what Iran and Hamas's other backers are doing behind the scenes but that's an important factor too.
At this point I think something like UN trust administration for all of Israel would be morally justified given how they've shit the bed, both leadership and electorate - but even if it would be feasible to try, I doubt it would solve more problems than it creates either.
10: Barak was sincerely trying, but he also wasn't willing to actually challenge the violent settlers. Anything difficult about dismantling settlements was going to be put off (and either never happen or result in him getting voted out or killed). Olmert's proposal was good in theory, but it was never serious, he knew was about to be kicked out of office.
There hasn't been so much violent settler terrorism aimed at the Israeli state recently, but this is partly because they've successfully coopted the Israeli state (there are violent settler terrorists in the cabinet, and the long-time freeze-out of Kahanists from power was ended), and partly because they came up with the "price-tag" strategy, where if Israel does anything the settlers don't like they kill Palestinians in retribution. But they also do attack the IDF and Israeli police at times, and it's pretty clear that they'd escalate further if there was a government that actually started trying to dismantle major settlements.
20
I'm about to watch the greatest movie ever made (Zardoz).
How? I'm getting frustrated trying to watch movies I've heard about on various streaming services as they move or go to pay-per-view without warning. In the past two weeks I started The Dead Don't Die (new to me, looks interesting) and Beetlejuice (I've seen it before, the kid hasn't) on various platforms, stopped halfway through, and couldn't restart without paying for it. I didn't start They Live but was pretty sure I saw it on the list of available movies recently as well, but not today. Makes me long for the days of video rentals or piracy.
And even Rabin's response to the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre was to shut down the main commercial district in Palestinian Hebron (the largest city in the West Bank) and not to take any serious measures against Kiryat Arba. Maybe if Rabin had been willing to dismantle Kiryat Arba in response then peace would have been possible, but most likely it would have just made him more unpopular and gotten him killed quicker. There just hasn't ever been a popular will in Israel to take on the West Bank settlers.
29 On DVD from AUS/NZ. I have a multiregion DVD/Blu Ray/4K HD player but unfortunately it didn't even recognize that it had the DVD in it (and both are new). Furthermore it froze the player so I had to disconnect it each time just to eject the disc. I tried 4 or 5 times before giving up. I'll have to get another copy elsewhere.
On that topic I've been writing up a movie post for the blog. It'll have to wait till after next week after I'm back from a conference.
Back on topic, Hamas isn't going anywhere. There was/is no need for this rush. They are making a mockery of IHL/LOAC. The operational tempo of the air strikes alone has been insane. I don't believe for a second that even most of them were hitting anything to do with Hamas, at least recently. They're all down deep in their tunnels and there is no way Israel has good intel on Hamas, October 7th proved that.
Again how does backing this brutality (to put it lightly) serve US interests?
29: A lot of pay-per-view platforms have it for $3.79. I think that compares favorably with the old rental days (that's $1.89 in 1995 dollars); the problem is more stuff is out of circulation period.
32.1 Isn't it required by domestic Israeli politics?
32.2 Isn't it required by domestic US politics?
We can have all the opinions we want about what is or is not required for domestic politics, but I think one has to admit that Netanyahu and Biden have each been around the block a whole bunch, and claims that they are wrong about or don't understand the domestic politics of the thing are going to have a high bar.
Obviously domestic politics changes over time -- first slowly and then quickly? -- so encouraging a ceasefire isn't completely hopeless in the long run.
Yeah, the US shouldn't support Israel, but supporting Israel is very popular and we live in a democracy, so that's what the US is going to do.
The alternative is supporting Israel and also reporting Palestinians from the US, which si what Republicans want.
I think the only strong US interest is in imposing controls on Israeli arms exports (including software, services, personnel)* and the present is a good opportunity to do so.
*And opening those exports to Ukraine.
Foreign policy isn't any more or less based on what's popular in a democracy than in a dictatorship, really, ie not very. Find it very hard the median voter would punish Biden a year from now for pressuring Israel, but a worst case scenario, hundreds of thousands lives lost or a third nakba, that could very well cost him the nomination.
In any case, no one's forcing Biden to run for reelection in the first place. He's not popular, hardly indispensible.
I can't predict the future, but Biden was essential in 2020 and I think he still is. I also think that the Democratic candidate for Allegheny County Executive is going to get punished for not saying Biden should tell Israel it has a free hand. A year from now isn't all that matters. Next Tuesday matters in many states. Especially if you're worried about who is counting the votes in 2024 and what the Congressional districts are.
39 It's not about the median voter. As you know, we vote by state, and while most are not, a few states are pretty close. It's about people who are single issue voters -- who engage with each other across state lines, but are not uniformly distributed. Could Biden's pro-Israel tilt turn Michigan back to Trump? Would a pro-Hamas move hurt Biden in Pennsylvania? Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona -- the safer bet in all three is not being measurably anti-Israel. Which is why the Right is working so hard to make Biden seem like he's Hamas' principal source of funds.
No one can take the nomination away from Biden. No one but the Grim Reaper. A real challenger would already be building a support network and raising the tons of money it would take.
The last two challenges to the presumptive nominee* ran aground in the same way in the same place: couldn't make the sale to middle-aged and older Black voters in the South. If someone wanted to challenge Biden, in addition to all the fundraising and general network building, they'd have spent the summer at every damn Democratic picnic in the South, doing more listening than talking, but enough talking so people feel like the candidate understands what's important. And they also have to be convincing as a candidate.
I don't assume that I know and see all, but if someone is running a stealth campaign to beat Biden on Super Tuesday, it's pretty stealthy.
* This is a generous description of Biden in 2020, I know. But he represented to old establishment, and was the one who could say it was his turn.
What I tried to say in comment 13 was that if you're a senator, a celebrity, or a regular person on social media, what you should do is call for a ceasefire, an end to the permanent siege of Gaza, and That Hamas might send Qassam rockets two years from now is not a valid objection. Israel has put itself in this position.
It's not complicated. Pundits and politicians want you to say it's all very complicated to cloud decent people's moral judgements.
41 You are very intelligent, and you use that intelligence to befuddle yourself.
I would be very interested to see someone run against Biden on a pro-Palestinian platform. I might even vote for that person. But nobody will do that because everyone knows that doing so would be politically ridiculous.
I'd be happy to vote for Bernie again, for instance, but he's not taking up the Palestinian cause in the current circumstances because he is a serious-minded politician -- and because he's a moral person and Hamas is a moral nightmare.*
*Disclaimer: Anyone who comments on Israel/Palestine is at risk of seeming to be an asshole when they comment on the failings of one side, because this really is a two-sided horror.
I think someone in the last thread complained about twitter having become unusable as a news source. You could use my unreasonably many twitter lists as a starting point. I obviously like my own lists, but they're not carefully curated and contains lots of people I wouldn't follow or endorse. But they can be a starting point for creating your own list or changing your algorithm.
https://twitter.com/davidweman/lists
David, I can't tell if you're saying that Biden should drop out, because his hands are too dirty to win again, or that you won't vote for Biden, because his hands are too dirty for you to tolerate, or something else again. Regardless, there's obviously risk in having hugged Netanyahu at exactly the moment he was going to begin committing war crimes, including perpetrating what looks to me like a coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing (many people are saying "genocide," but I don't see it; I may be wrong). But as Charlie and Moby have said, Biden's a shrewd politician. My strong suspicion is he believes not backing Israel would be far more perilous for his electoral prospects. And given that Israel is ostensibly fighting a war against Hamas, an organization that, after October 7, manages to make the utterly venal Netanyahu administration seem relatively virtuous, Biden's probably right.
Calling for a ceasefire is an empty gesture. A ceasefire won't happen, and if it did it would simply assure more of the same in future. By all means condemn war crimes (and most of the air campaign and blockade are looking like war crimes to me), but don't pretend a ceasefire would solve anything. It would mean fewer war crimes right now, more in the future.
Longer:
Ceasfire. What then? Status quo antebellum: this sucked for everyone (especially Gazan civilians) and produced recurrent wars.*
No ceasefire: Israel continues its ground assault, eventually killing most Hamas personnel and destroying most of its infrastructure. What then? Probably, status quo antebellum. Maybe, vacuum in Gaza filled by something worse (IS Sinai Wilayet calling). Or, maybe, something that sucks less. I think the least unlikely is a reimposition of PA control.
*To emphasize: Gaza is ruled by a one party state constitutionally committed to genocide, whose policies guarantee periodic wars with Israel (regardless of who rules Israel). Simply calling for a ceasefire is calling for more of this.
Are there any US constituencies where Arab or Muslim votes could be decisive?
47: As you say, a ceasefire is going to lead to "more of this." But no ceasefire is also going to lead to "more of this." More of this is baked into the situation. So all things being equal, the right move is to stop rolling tanks and dropping bombs on people -- and for those who want less "more of this," the right move is to pay better attention to border security between Israel and Gaza.
48: Folks in Michigan are worried.
Ceasefire *guarantees* more of this, indefinitely. No ceasefire holds a *possibility* of less of this. And better border security still leaves the Gazans in prison, indefinitely.
As said upthread, you have in Gaza two parties who don't want peace. The coming bloodletting in Israeli politics will at least temporarily disempower the warmongers on that side; no ceasefire may do the same on the Gaza side. That's not much hope, but it's something, and more than there's been in a long time.
Like the 9/11 hijackings the October 7raid/pogrom was a one-off. They'll never be able to pull off something like that again. "More of this" then means the largely ineffectual rocket attacks which was every other Tuesday for years. This can be dealt with by means other than leveling Gaza and murdering thousands of innocent civilians.
Rocket attacks every other Tuesday, and dozens to thousands of Gaza civilians killed every few years. Or, rather, more, since the bare minimum lesson the Israelis can learn here is that they have to keep the lawn shorter.
43 You think someone is making a serious -- serious enough to win -- run at displacing Biden for the nomination?
MC: There's a couple million people for whom 'stop bombing now, maybe bomb again in a couple of years' would be a deal they'd take. It's obviously not an overall solution to I/P, but neither side's governing body is showing any interest in a solution that could work. And I think you can fairly saw that neither side has a mandate for the compromises that are necessary for an overall resolution to happen.
Rocket attacks every other Tuesday, and dozens to thousands of Gaza civilians killed every few years.
Israel also has the option to try to prevent this by working in good faith to make peace. Outlandish, crazy idea, I know.
"Like the 9/11 hijackings the October 7raid/pogrom was a one-off. They'll never be able to pull off something like that again."
Or maybe it was like the WTC bombings and they will be able to pull off something much worse next time.
55 I would think that Israeli intelligence has much of the last four weeks, and will spend much of the next year, trying to figure just how they were taken by such surprise. I would think, also, that the chances are lower of Israel bringing in a new government who has an ideological aversion to thinking Hamas could be a threat, and sideline the people saying that maybe something was up. Then again, it's all too possible.
(At the beginning of this thing, I seem to recall speculation that Trump had somehow inadvertently leaked Israeli sources and methods secrets to Russia, who helped Hamas craft communications methods that were invisible to Israeli intelligence. It's too convenient to be true.)
How about just an ideological aversion to supporting Hamas over and against the PA in order to forestall any momentum towards a two state solution.
46: Then I'll make myself clearer, since several people seem to bizarrely misread me. You should not react to a humanitarian crisis by talking about voters in Michigan. You should not make yourself into a savvy pundit, because you are a citizen and because what you are saying isn't savvy but motivated reasoning.
I am also saying that it's not savvy for a politician to worry about public opinion when dealing with a problem or crisis, because good politics is dealing with the problem in a satisfactory manner (unless you are less than two or three months away from an election). That's not to say the best option is the most advategeous every time, but voters won't reward you doing what they told you to do.
I am also saying that politicians do not in fact generally make decisions based on public opinion very often, they do what the think is best, and this is doubly true of foreign policy. Biden opposes legalising marijuana because he doesn't want to, and he chosen his likudnik whisperer strategy because he thinks it was a great success in 2021. The only reporting of any electoral considerations is that the administration is getting increasingly nervous about grassroots and lawmakers being upset and calling for a ceasefire.
Ok, got it. We disagree on whether Biden is motivated by domestic politics. You might be right.
I would behave differently than Biden is doing. I think our I/P policy went off the rails a couple of decades ago, which was for both foreign and domestic policy considerations. I don't see either the US or Israel making a serious effort at a comprehensive settlement in any kind of near future, and think this this is a failure of both societies. I think if US politicians felt like they had the space to oppose US complicity if IDF war crimes, more of them would be doing it. And it might help. They don't and they mostly aren't.
I think, as you can see, that your assertion that Biden could lose the nomination -- that anything other than his own death could cause him to lose the nomination -- to be completely ridiculous. No amount of Palestinian death at the hands of the IDF would have that effect. Because there's no one who can defeat him for it, even in the face of a third nabka. You're the one who brought this up. But there's more to domestic politics than getting nominated. Or winning a general.
By saying they're not basing decisions on public opinion, I think you're making the same mistake you made above talking about median voters. Politicians listen to particular people, not general opinion polls, and, because of the nature of our system, respond more to particular voters.
"I am also saying that politicians do not in fact generally make decisions based on public opinion very often, they do what the think is best"
I think that kind of statement is going to require a hell of a lot more evidence than Biden not being vocal about legalising cannabis. There is a lot of research which seems to show that politicians do care about public opinion a lot and that it shapes their decisions (and they also try to shape public opinion to support their policy preferences; it's a two way street).
Every politician is motivated by domestic politics, that's the environment they're in. There's no reason to think Biden was reluctant to choose the policy he did. This and all US administration are leaky. All reporting have been clear and unanimous that he was passionate about what he was doing.
If his polling completely collapses, there's surely some chance he'll bow out of the race.
If the conflict goes on long enough, Biden will eventually call for a ceasefire. If some theoretical group of hawkish swing voters see Israel-Palestine as a first order issue, they won't be happy with him anyway. What what be good for Biden is the conflict ending, and what would be bad for him is the conflict continuing and escalating.
63.3. I think he'll be looking at the domestic politics, among other factors, as part of the timing for his calling for a ceasefire. I don't think he's going to get very far ahead of nearly everyone. I don't think there's going to be much of a political hit for Biden over the war continuing and Biden continuing to support Israel, with gradually increasing (possibly ineffectual) encouragement to lessen the impact on civilians.
63.2 Biden isn't LBJ, and the timing in 1968 was pretty different. Polling against Trump is pretty unlikely to collapse because Israel continues to bomb Gaza. The US military has been doing more in the region than I like, and I guess there's an outside chance of something going way wrong. In 2020, Biden's polling and initial primary experience was abysmal, but he had confidence that Super Tuesday would turn it around. He doesn't see anyone as well placed to defeat Trump in 2024 as himself, and it's hard to see that changing.
63.1 Biden's defining political characteristic is that he finds himself in the middle of opinion in the set he cares about. That consensus will probably erode, and it'll erode for him at the same time it does for mainstream Democratic office-holders in general.
OK. Politicians are always constrained by the political environment, and always paying attention to polls. When it comes to resolving a crisis, or passing a law they care about, they will sometimes but not usually defer to public opinion. Things like coalition politics will also trump what the median voter wants very often.
It's not a claim that politicians are noble. Politicians that are perceived to be unprincipled and ideologically flexible are really almost as predictable and unchanging in their actions as the moe principled politician or the zealot. Biden will be Biden, Macron will be Macron, Meloni will be Meloni.
Biden not getting any polling bump or "rally round the flag" effect right now is surprising to me.
Rally round the flag effects really only happen to leaders who are fighting wars. Biden isn't (apart from Syria at a very low level).
Should Biden be worried about Pakistan forcing over a million Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan? Will this hurt him, politically? Should he be making more of an effort to pressure Pakistan on this one?
70 I may be selling my countrymen short, but I find it hard to imagine much attention being paid to this, or people particularly linking what Pakistan is doing to Biden. IMO our relationship with Pakistan has been pretty transactional: they've been useful players in our policies with Afghanistan and with India, but I don't have a sense of any kind of affinity. Your average American can barely name their senators -- an American who could put together 3 coherent sentences about Pakistan is a real rarity.
Strongly overrepresented on this blog, to be sure, but I'll be surprised if many US dwelling folks even here would put the expulsion of Afghans from Pakistan as a top 15 concern. It's bad, but man is there a lot of bad shit going on in the world.
(Our complicity in the Yemeni civil war is much greater, and the US interests justification for the awful conduct of our 'allies' is far less. Has any US politician paid any price at all for this? It's barely imaginable.)
Any Americans who know about the Yemeni civil war and that Pakistan expelled Afghani refugees are a rounding error.
Just the other day I was reading something about anti-apartheid protests in the 80s, and there was that quote from Reagan, claiming that South Africa had been on our side in every war we'd ever fought. At the time, I thought it was funny that he couldn't tell South Africa from France, and was a little chagrined that lots of people in his following would think that this was true.
What he meant was 'they're the white people! of course that's the side we're on!' but his speechwriters must have thought that untoward.
That's true though. Or, at least, America has never fought a war where South Africa has been on the other side; they didn't send troops to Vietnam or the Gulf.
You can't say the same for France; the first American soldiers to die in the ETO were killed not by Germans or Italians but by Frenchmen.
I was wondering why this was the first I've heard about it, but I just checked and the Washington Post has literally zero coverage of Pakistan expelling Afghani refugees.
We don't consider that France, I don't think.
Not enough to overome Lafayette nous sommes ici anyway.
We don't consider that France, I don't think.
Not enough to overome Lafayette nous sommes ici anyway.
Actually, Reagan said 'stood by us' in every war.
Question from pure ignorance: what are the top 3 countries in the world with any leverage over Pakistan at the moment? Could anyone realistically prevail upon them to change this expulsion plan? I am having a hard time imagining.
the top 3 countries in the world with any leverage over Pakistan at the moment
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China
79: well, there you are. In some of the wars they stood by you (or you stood by them) and in others they just, well, stood by.
"the Washington Post has literally zero coverage of Pakistan expelling Afghani refugees."
Really? I don't subscribe to the WP but the website has these which seem to be about it judging by headlines
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/afghans-heading-home-crackdown-illegal-migrants/eae4ddfc-77ca-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/05/afghanistan-pakistan-migration-torkham-border/5824ddc0-7bd3-11ee-b5cc-66c30a3bbb91_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/04/afghanistan-pakistan-migrant-crackdown/455d236c-7af4-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/02/afghanistan-pakistan-migrant-crackdown-aid-agencies/096548d6-7959-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
"the Washington Post has literally zero coverage of Pakistan expelling Afghani refugees."
Really? I don't subscribe to the WP but the website has these which seem to be about it judging by headlines
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/afghans-heading-home-crackdown-illegal-migrants/eae4ddfc-77ca-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/05/afghanistan-pakistan-migration-torkham-border/5824ddc0-7bd3-11ee-b5cc-66c30a3bbb91_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/04/afghanistan-pakistan-migrant-crackdown/455d236c-7af4-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/02/afghanistan-pakistan-migrant-crackdown-aid-agencies/096548d6-7959-11ee-97dd-7a173b1bd730_story.html
I heard on World Service the other day that Iran is planning on doing the same.
Weird, I went to the "World - Asia" section of the WaPo homepage and none of those were on it.
Possibly because those are all agency stories? The WP may not think those worth promoting. Obviously it doesn't think the story is worth covering with its own journalists.
If you want a depressing time, try looking for articles on the Ethiopian Civil War. It finished last year having killed 600,000 Ethiopians - thats ten times as many dead as *all* the Palestinian casualties in all the wars and intifadas and so on since *1948*, and it's probably about to start again soon. You might find, like, one article.
Note - ten times as many *dead* in Ethiopia as Palestinan *casualties* including wounded. Twenty times as many dead.
Yes, but in order to gauge whether something is worth writing about, they carefully study their own frequency of articles about it. If Ethiopians wanted their civil war to make the cut, maybe they should have considered their branding over the decades.
81: PRC, US, KSA. I'm curious why whoever wrote Iran.
89: Preach.
Right now actually I'd put the IMF above KSA. And generally it isn't clear to me that KSA ever gets anything for the money it spends.
Speaking of KSA, today I saw a guy riding a bike while wearing what I think of as Saudi male clothing (white thawb, red/white checked keffiyeh). I've never seen that before, except in pictures of people in Saudi Arabia. I wasn't sure if it was just a guy or if it was maybe someone to or from a protest in Palestinian clothing but I couldn't tell the difference.
Ok, finally WaPo has something on Pakistan. On the front page of the website, even.
I'm curious why whoever wrote Iran.
It wasn't me that wrote it, but Iran and Pakistan have been getting closer recently. Iran is also about to expel its Afghan refugees. Pakistani public sentiment is very pro-Iran right now, for what that's worth.
I still wouldn't put its leverage higher than the US, though. Pakistan buys most of its arms from China these days, but it still relies on the US for the good stuff.
What's happening in Ethiopia and elsewhere sucks but let me know when we're giving them several billion dollars per annum in military assistance.
Because 600,000 dead people don't exist if there isn't an American connection.
To spell it out for those who don't seem to get it, Americans are almost powerless to affect whatever happens in Ethiopia, this is not an all the case with Israel. Seriously man wtf
100 is bullshit. As I explained at length four years ago, when it could hmade a difference. But you don't care and you don't care to know. Because, by revealed preference, African lives mean less to you than any others. And if you don't care, fine. But stop posing.
What's happening in Ethiopia and elsewhere sucks but let me know when we're giving them several billion dollars per annum in military assistance.
OK, I'll do that.
So far the US has provided $152 million in unconditional military assistance to the post-secession Ethiopian military. Over the period 1950-1978 US military aid built and trained the Ethiopian army, with military aid alone totalling over $280 million (not adjusted for inflation). This army mounted a coup in the 1970s which put in place the Derg military regime, which deliberately starved populations seen as disloyal on ethnic grounds, and stole and sold Western famine aid for profit. Both these policies are also followed by the current government, albeit at a smaller scale.
The US has also recently provided colossal amounts of non-military aid - Ethiopia was the fifth largest US aid recipient in the 2010s. In the last three years alone, the US has provided over $3 billion.
https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-and-ethiopia-a-long-term-partnership/
https://globalaffairs.org/research/policy-brief/ethiopia-propping-one-strongman-after-another
https://securityassistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/final-poc-factsheet-ethiopia-1.pdf
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/many-culprits-stole-food-aid-north-ethiopia-investigation-finds-2023-06-15/
At present, though, US aid to the Abiy government - which, let's be clear, does indeed "suck", like, massively, it is totally gross over there girrrl - is guilty of human rights abuses, dispossession, mass killing, torture and so on, to a scale that makes Binyamin Netanyahu look like Paddington Bear - is only around one billion dollars per year, not several billion. I will keep an eye on the situation and inform you when it goes above that crucial threshold, so that you can take appropriate action.
"oh but wait that's not fair you're including humanitarian aid which is totally different from military aid" the US recently halted humanitarian aid to Ethiopia because it was being stolen and sold by the Ethiopian army. https://www.voanews.com/a/report-us-suspends-food-aid-to-ethiopia-amid-theft-accusations/7128361.html
Sending food to Ethiopia is providing funds to the Ethiopian army.
$152 million you say? Wow, that sounds like a lot.
The US gives $3 billion a year in military aid alone to Israel. Not to mention the $14 billion US package just voted on.
I have friends and acquaintances here who have lost family and friends there. This isn't at all abstract for me here.
Is the threshold purely value of aid over $2 billion, or is there, like, a multiplier for scale of atrocity? If the Ethiopians tried really hard and bumped the next civil war up into the megadeath range, would we start caring even though they only get $1 billion a year in US aid? If the US cut back aid to Israel to just $1.5 billion, or $900 million, would everyone be like "oh hey weapons free on the West Bank"?
I just want to be clear before I start boring everyone with news about unimportant mass murders by US-supported armies.
You're not telling anyone anything a lot of people here don't already know.
You've always been a stickler for the LOAC and adhering to the lawful ROE, which is admirable, but not a peep here, mockery in fact. What gives?
I think peep is to be commended for avoiding this thread except at the start.
the US recently halted humanitarian aid to Ethiopia because it was being stolen and sold by the Ethiopian army. ... Sending food to Ethiopia is providing funds to the Ethiopian army.
I'm a little puzzled by this. I got the sense previously that you were opposed to US policy in Ethiopia, and thought that democratic pressure ought be placed on the government to do ... something. What is it that is being neglected here by the US?
Hope your people are keeping well.
109 lol. Didn't realize that at the time
111 Well, it does seem like we're using the leverage of suspending aid to get better accountability and controls on food distribution. It's not evident that we'd have the same leverage to rein in other anti-human rights abuses. With humanitarian aid, you've always got the conundrum: when you withhold aid people die. Supporting elements of the Ethiopian military inadvertently or against our will may well not provide much actual leverage -- which is never simply about the arithmetic, but a number of factors.
We may have more leverage with Pakistan than we're using, I don't know. During our Afghan War we were at some odds with Pakistan: as a relatively poorly informed American, one of my three sentences about Pakistan would be that its ISI was thought to be following policies towards AQ and the Taliban that were contrary to what we wanted them to be doing. I don't imagine that post-9/11 decade(?) of having Bin Laden live there was a secret from the Pakistani government. There was a time (a decade ago) when Pakistan closed the Khyber Pass, forcing supplies to be airlifted into Kabul, as a response to US soldiers killing some Pakistani soldiers on the Pakistani side of the border. This took quite a while to resolve. (As an ignorant American, I only know about this because at the time I was representing a Kabul outfit that had a whole lot of material in shipping containers stuck in Peshawar.)
Expelling refugees is pretty fucked up, no matter who is doing it. The fact that Biden's principal opposition loves the idea of deporting people based on ethnicity probably helps on the domestic politics front, but I would think that this whole thing is way below the domestic US politics radar anyway.
Biden's political/polling problem isn't that he's not doing enough to stop Israel from killing Palestinians. It's that he's not doing enough to prevent Gen Z from saying their grandparents are racist. And being a Communist.
I don't follow 117, but if I had to guess at what's behind Biden's polling problems, and it would only be a guess, because polls are largely garbage at this point (and really every point) in a presidential election, I'd say gas prices are still relatively high; more broadly, inflation has been relatively high; more broadly still, the economy, though relatively good, still sucks for most Americans; no matter what's actually been going on with the economy, it's been covered as a disaster by a remarkably feckless press corps (in part because economists, who are also remarkably feckless, keep waiting for it to be a disaster); and most people, insofar as they care about foreign policy at all, and they don't very much beyond the ways the issue confirms their biases, think Biden's administration has been weak. After all, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was portrayed as a debacle (and I suppose in some ways it was), China appears to be more and more belligerent, the war in Ukraine is grinding on expensively and hideously, and Israel/Palestine has exploded horrifically on his watch. It's pretty rough.
But in the end, I think the root cause of Biden's low numbers is that he's always been unpopular. And so, even as he's proven to be the best president of my lifetime, most people don't like him. It doesn't help that he's a thousand years old and, but for an admirable ability to project empathy in times of sorrow, a pretty terrible communicator.
Von is correct - barring a sudden economic crisis, Biden's chances are good. Almost all presidents running for re-election increase their share of the vote.
A less comforting statistic - there have been five US presidential elections in which the two candidates have faced each other before. Jackson-Adams, Harrison-Van Buren, Harrison-Cleveland, McKinley-Bryan, Eisenhower-Stevenson. In three, the previous loser won. So it's by no means a good argument to say "he's beaten him before, he'll do it again."
113, 114: Thanks! Considering the circumstances, my mom is ok, and as far as I know, the rest of my family in Israel is ok as well.
117 wasn't nearly as serious as 118, most of which I agree with. I'm not sure Biden's unpopularity among Republicans is particularly relevant, just as Trump, if he wins, isn't going to do so with a whole lot of votes from Democrats. The key to Trump's success would be voter suppression, and, I guess, demoralization. These didn't lead to the much expected Red Wave in 2022, though, when prices were a bigger concern.
There was no easy/clean way out of Afghanistan. I will say that State should've been way ramped up to handle SIV applications months in advance of the fall of Kabul, and P1/P2s, whenever that started. My guess is they didn't want to alarm the Afghan government and accelerate the end, but that's just a guess. All the options were bad, but choosing to minimize the death of American military people isn't exactly the worst thing ever. And, again, no 2022 Red Wave on this account either.
The political press has to have drama, though, and 'Democrats are weak on national defense and the economy, and are in disarray,' is just like catnip for them. They're constantly looking for any hook, no matter how weak, to give an excuse for the story that their bosses and nearly half the electorate is dying to hear.
I don't think Biden is a bad communicator. A lot of what people are talking about when they say that is journalists, whether at CNN or the NYT or whatever. They're not speaking for him, but to a lot of people, what they hear from the 'liberal' media is equivalent to hearing from Biden himself. Obviously, tastes differ.
Related: I just got a text implying that the Republican candidate for PA Supreme Court was a Democrat.
I called them a liar and they texted back that I had successfully unsubscribed.
I don't think Biden is a bad communicator. ... Obviously, tastes differ.
Yeah, speaking for myself I like the guy, in the way that one likes a public figure. George W. Bush and Donald Trump come off as smug assholes, but I get the whole Reagan "Great Communicator" thing. And I think I understand the charisma problem of Kerry and Gore, even though I'd much rather have a beer with Gore than Bush.*
But I like Hillary, too, and don't viscerally understand why she was lumped in with Kerry and Gore. So I am willing to grant that I'm not really competent to judge these things.
*I will admit that Harold and Kumar's Bush character was a sympathetic portrayal that actually felt kind of realistic.
Yeah, I'm genuinely confused about Biden's unpopularity. He was popular not that long ago, he's done a good job, and he comes across as basically likable to me.
I thought Gore was very relatable in 2000, but I think he's an awkward type like me.
Bush doesn't drink. Or at least was pretty adamant about that in 2000.
I'd have a beer with Gore, Kerry, or Biden in a heartbeat. I've kind of had a glass of wine with Clinton: AIHMHB, when my son was in 1-3 grade, the annual PTA fundraiser was at his classmate Grace's grandfather's house in DC. Who wouldn't go to Sen. Kennedy's house, especially when he could get people like Michael Beschloss or HRC to come give a short talk? Anyway, the year she did it Clinton hung out after, and I ended up in a small group with her, EMK, and another dad, talking about Ukraine and baseball. HRC was, as usual, charming and engaged.
RFK Jr came one year, talking about St, Francis.
St. Francis never had a covid vaccination.
I'm not sure where RFKjr was on his journey to nutbarland, but I did end up getting a couple of copies of his book St Francis to give as presents.
I think that Biden is unpopular because the media got bored of him being modestly popular, and the pendulum swings in big bland ways when it doesn't matter. You could even make the case to me that this is not exactly intentional, but consistent with a comeback narrative as the actual campaigning ramps up next year.
In other words, I don't actually think he's unpopular. I think no one is selling him to the masses, and a lot of media are working hard on the idea that he's unpopular for the time being.
I think it's dumb, and frivolous, but not much more than that unless Trump ends up winning next year, in which case I'm blind with rage at the loosey-goosey cavalierness of it all.
Right, W didn't drink, because he's an alcoholic. That said, I bet he'd still be fun to go to a baseball game with. By all accounts the players all liked him when he was a minority owner. I can see why people found him personable. (He's still an awful president in just about every way you can be.)
My wife spent some time with GHWB after he was out of office, as part of her job, and was somewhat charmed by him.
I didn't vote for him either time, and am absolutely not sorry about that, but I do think he and Baker did a good job keeping a lid on the nutty right in connection with the end of the Soviet Union. If Dukakis had won, the whole internal US politics would have been much uglier. We can never know whether this would have spilled out into events, but the US right definitely doesn't think twice about destroying US interests as collateral damage to messing up Democrats' chances. At the least, Dukakis would have likely taken some harder lines to fend this off that GHWB took . . .
Turns out RFK, Jr. is a wind NIMBY (and so is his family). So much for "a crusader for clean air and water" (from his St. Francis dustjacket).
I now watch as a guilty pleasure some of those funny-clips compilations like Daily Dose of Internet (today's equivalent of AFHV, I think) and one of the scary things is that clips of Biden sounding slow or halting make regular appearances in a product otherwise relentlessly apolitical. I feel like the yoots might really see it as a lot more salient than Trump (yesterday's news). On the other hand, they don't vote nearly as much. And the Trump-Biden choice will become a lot more salient next year.
Apparently, there's so much antisemitism on the ground in America these days, that the antisemites are attacking the poorly labeled antisemites./a>
When's the thread about escape plans if Trump wins?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Q_WESQUVw
"(He's still an awful president in just about every way you can be."
Strictly on a utilitarian basis, PEPFAR probably makes him the greatest president since Roosevelt.
He was, to be clear, a terrible president.