It is an iron fact of life that the people who do the work of making things right are the ones who get blamed when things go wrong. Trump understands this in his bones, and is correct when he refers to such people -- the blamers, not the doers -- as losers.
Joe Biden fell short, as decent people sometimes do, but he remains an honorable person who diligently pursued decency for his country. He was failed by others more than he failed himself.
He probably goes down in history like RBG: overplaying your career by a hairsbreadth has outsized consequences.
I hope Biden lives to piss on Trump's grave.
I am not as inclined as others to blame RBG, but Biden was in a tougher spot: The world was full of potential replacements for RBG. The belief that Biden was uniquely situated to beat Trump was wrong in the end, but not foolish, not crazy.
Honorable decent people do not enable genocide. That will be the sum total of his legacy. Biden can go fuck himself. He also gave us this mess by not bowing out long before he finally did.
I don't have a lot of interest in blaming him for stuff. Everything big he screwed up could have gone badly if he'd made the other decision.
If you see some of his recent incoherent ramblings it's really amazing and appalling...
The belief that Biden was uniquely situated to beat Trump was wrong in the end
Was it? Biden remains the only person ever to have beaten Trump in an election. It
If you see some of his recent incoherent ramblings it's really amazing and appalling...
I honestly don't recognise that descriptions of interviews like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEBmJ-aAmBo He's talking slowly and pausing, the words are a little indistinct - it's recognisably an old man talking - but it is not incoherent or rambling. There is actually structure there, he answers questions at length, and stays on topic.
Hunter S. Thompson on George McGovern:
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about "new politics" and "honesty in government," is one of the few men who've run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"
There's the recent one at a brewery I think, impossible to parse what he was trying to say
I still think that the media deliberately fucked over Biden on the "old" because Biden beat Trump once and that Biden would have won again with reasonable equal coverage of both candidates health (which he was not going to get, so Harris probably stood a better chance).
There's the recent one at a brewery I think
The one from January 2024? Yes, googling it, I see that got quite a lot of coverage on Fox News and the Daily Mail, and the 16-second clip they showed is not good. You're probably right to conclude, based on a year-old 16-second clip assiduously spread by Fox News and the Daily Mail, that Joe Biden is indeed dribblingly senile. I missed it at the time, which shows the folly of not relying for your coverage of the Democratic president of the US on Fox News and the Daily Mail. I shall certainly pay more attention to Fox News and the Daily Mail from now on.
I don't watch Fox News or read the Daily Mail; I got it from a much more reliable source, Twitter.
I hope that at least you verified your conclusion by checking it with ChatGPT.
Yeah, there's really no way to use Twitter and not be propagandized. I'm still holding out on Facebook, but maybe not for long.
13: Yeah, complaining about unfair coverage is pointless -- we have to deal with conditions as they exist. But you also have to recognize conditions as they exist, and the fact of the unfair coverage is undeniable.
It's wild how little coverage of Trump's senility there is.
More wishcasting than prediction: this might be the tipping point where new media starts to form and get a little traction. I think the grudging reliance on legacy media (newspapers, MSNBC/CNN), social media (with X in its last stages as a vaguely reliable source), and even platforms like Substack is falling apart more quickly than expected since the election. Who knows what will happen to PBS/NPR and so on? Didn't one of you mention that Trump put someone problematic in charge of VOA?
Yeah, complaining about unfair coverage is pointless -- we have to deal with conditions as they exist.
The gist of my comments here lean in the other direction: You don't get the right result until you deal with the underlying conditions that steered us toward catastrophe.
There is a specific complaint about Biden regarding age that I think, in the end, was both legitimate and understandably misunderstood by the Biden camp. I agree with ajay that Biden was satisfactorily functional as president, but if you can't beat Trump in a debate (as Harris did handily) then you've got a real problem. Trump has won one general election debate, and it was a wipeout.
But as people complain about Democratic messaging, what they're really complaining about is the "underlying conditions." Democrats, we are told, should have conveyed to the public that Trump is a crook; a servant of the oligarchy who lies constantly and is, in general, a vile human being.
The problem with that thinking is that this Trump himself communicated this in a powerful fashion every day. We live in a country -- with a media, a populace and institutions -- that rewards villainy.
I suppose I'm misinterpreting LB's point here -- or maybe just choosing a different emphasis. Certainly "we have to deal with conditions as they exist." But the conditions that exist are the root of the problem, not the behavior of Democratic leaders.
The problem with Biden, like the problem with Amy Quisling -Klobuchar and the rest of the Democratic nomenklatura, is that they are all afflicted with adults-in-the-roomitis. Donald Trump was at the lowest point of any former president since Nixon in 2021, but he picked himself up, dusted himself off and kept on fighting. What's Kamala going to do? Join some white shoe law firm and make a bunch of money and maybe get to be appointed to something if the Democrats ever get the presidency back. Just like Hillary, she will be a political non-entity because it is easier and more remunerative than the actual activism that would be required to ever have a hope of becoming president.
I don't think we can say that about Harris yet. We will know pretty soon if she runs for CA governor.
23: So the answer is to have Hillary or Harris cling to a spot among the "Democratic nomenklatura"?
In fact, the Republican Establishment had an iron grip on the party and candidates in a way that the Democratic Establishment does not -- and yet, Trump brought them to heel. Democrats -- and here I mean Democratic voters -- united behind Biden precisely because he was a known, establishment figure. If someone wants to overturn the nomenklatura, they just have to get a plurality among voters on the Left side of the aisle.
I kinda wish we could have seen Bernie run against Trump, but the Democratic voters weren't interested.
24: Jon King was saying she shouldn't necessarily give up on running for President. 4 is right about RBG.
I thought Biden's final address was good. I just wish the Democrats would give up on calling for bipartisanship and just work on figuring out how they can win as a Party - both the presidency and the Congress. Basically, they should act like a parliamentary opposition. I know the things I care about. I'm not sure what winning formula is, because I don't think that the DLC Third Way is the path forward, but I know I'm not representative.
Somebody, said that a lot of the swing working class voters basically want socialism for themselves. They just want it to come across as manly.
I had a funny moment on the "unfair coverage" front a few days ago listening to the Ezra Klein podcast. (I don't think much of his judgment, but he has a pleasantly soothing voice and the guests are often interesting-ish, so it's good for zoning out while I run.)
He was talking to Chris Hayes about attention: that what makes Trump successful is that he commands attention, doesn't matter if it's positive or negative. And that what Democratic politicians get wrong is that they'd rather get no coverage than negative coverage -- Democrats in government talk about "let's not make news", meaning "don't screw up." Which means that Democrats need to learn to grab the spotlight, positive, negative, doesn't matter, any attention is good.
And anyone with a memory that goes back eight and a half years should know that's stupid. Hillary owned the front pages of the newspapers all summer and fall in 2016: she probably got more attention than Trump did. Negative attention works great if your constituency is nihilists who want to watch the world burn, but if you're trying to appeal to people who aren't like that, it really doesn't do you any good.
It has to be taken into account at the level of candidate selection, though: someone who can thrive under that kind of attention, who visibly delights in pissing people off, and who has natural charisma. Obviously you can't just put a typical no-drama technocrat through the wringer and get positive results.
And as always, people overstate how effective it is for Trump, who lost the popular vote twice and squeaked by this time with a low but decisive margin. Tons of people hate him, and he embraces it, because a margin of two votes would be a landslide in his head. You can't have numbers like Trump's and constantly think "oh shit, our candidate is really unpopular."
biden is responsible for appointing garland, whose prosecutorial decision in the mcveigh trial should have disqualified him in the 2020 circumstances. i'll never forgive biden for this.
Hillary owned the front pages of the newspapers all summer and fall in 2016: she probably got more attention than Trump did. Negative attention works great if your constituency is nihilists who want to watch the world burn, but if you're trying to appeal to people who aren't like that, it really doesn't do you any good.
28 and 29 are correct but . . . Trump's electoral strength is clearly his ability to get low-propensity voters to turn out, and I think Hayes' theory of attention has to be part of the explanation for that. While there was a lot of coverage of Clinton, it didn't really make her seem larger-than-life (or even larger-than-politics; in the sense of being a pop-culture figure. Ironically; the texts from Hillary memes were probably a high-point of her pop culture status).
Somebody, said that a lot of the swing working class voters basically want socialism for themselves. They just want it to come across as manly.
I think this is exactly right. I mean, Fetterman is full of shit, but his vibe is what the democrats need to do.
Yeah, Trump won by a slim margin in an electoral environment where basically every incumbent party won in a landslide. He has real advantages as a candidate (around 2% of the electorate voted for Trump and would have sat out the election with any other candidate, and he's unusually popular for a Republican with a lot of minority voters, especially Latin voters), but he's still not that popular. He won because many people don't like the way 2021-2022 went (both covid policy and inflation), which damaged Democratic turnout and won swing voters to the non-incumbent party.
Lost not won.
30: Remind me what he did wrong there? I'm not recalling anything that would have foreshadowed the dilatoriness that messed up the Trump cases.
I didn't follow the Garland stuff closely so I don't know the answer but I do remember Sarah Kendzior being very opposed to Garland's selection at the time.
Kendzior seemed to know that Garland wasn't an ally at the outset but I don't remember her case against him. She was right.
While there was a lot of coverage of Clinton, it didn't really make her seem larger-than-life (or even larger-than-politics;
Tell that to the Trump voters I knew in 2016 who cheered Hillary's loss because they felt like they'd finally "slayed the wildebeest."
32: Right. Fetterman proposes an answer to the question that us pundit-adjacent commenters are reluctant to confront: What are Democrats to do? The typical answers come down to "do better," and hey, who can argue with that? But there's not any useful information in that exhortation.
"Candidate selection" at the presidential level is a thing that Democratic voters have a lot of influence on. In the last 60 years it's the voters more than the Establishment that picked McGovern, Carter, Bill Clinton and Obama. Mondale, Hillary Clinton and Biden were the quintessential Establishment candidates, and I guess Dukakis and Kerry, too.
So what does the successful Democratic candidate right now look like? One such candidate is the one ajay suggests: Biden, only four years younger.
But there are different paths to success, and I wish there were more Democratic political entrepreneurs -- people just trying shit out to see if it works. Like Fetterman or AOC.
It's just hard for good general election candidates to win primaries, but the obvious answer is to nominate people who have won in reddish areas or run well ahead of presidential candidates in swing states like Jared Golden, Andy Beshear, Ruben Gallego, or Josh Shapiro. Or maybe (either people who have won some and lost some, or only run a moderate amount ahead) Jon Tester, Mary Peltola, Gretchen Whitmer, etc. It probably only gets you a couple percentage points anyway. Mostly elections are won by the incumbents if people are happy and lost by the incumbents if people are sad.
Of course the simplest way to win would have been to have run Joe Manchin.
I didn't follow the Garland stuff closely so I don't know the answer but I do remember Sarah Kendzior being very opposed to Garland's selection at the time.
Kendzior has gone pretty crankish by now unfortunately. But I think that was a common belief then, that Garland seemed to be insisting on normalcy above all other priorities, even just from his statements.
The main reason I'm mad about the Garland pick, and was at the time, is really nothing to do with Garland. It's just that Doug Jones was the other option, and he's a real mensch.
Oh. Didn't know that she'd gone so far. Seems like maybe Bitecofer too? Are we going to have a whole new cast this go-round? I swear I am not going to follow in deep detail this time. Will not.
It is just today sinking in how long four years are going to be (although I also don't think Trump will finish out the term. Mostly for health reasons and also a push from Vance.).
Garland seemed to be insisting on normalcy above all other priorities
Yeah, and many of us predicted that this would end badly. Compare Garland with Pelosi, who also catches a lot of crap for being on the losing side, but who performed brilliantly in organizing the Jan. 6 hearings (which possibly forced Garland's hand and which, in the big picture, were completely ineffectual).
The whole idea of giving up on procedural liberalism -- on normalcy -- is a tough one for people, and for good reason. As the wise man might have said, Biden made "some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things [Donald Trump] does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for."
I just haven't got the heart for pointing fingers at the good guys. Garland misunderstood the moment he was in -- and yeah, that was pretty dumb -- but it's just not in me to get enraged about people who stand roughly in the middle of the Democratic Party.
35: he presented a lone wolf theory, when the facts did not support that mcveigh acted alone. the lone wolf theory allowed the congress & the executive (doj & fbi) to continue their focus on left & non-white extremists & not pursue the multiple threats from the right.
i continue to highly recommend kathleen belew's bring the war home. i"ll add leah sottile's work on ammon bundy & related people - skip ezra klein & listen to bundyville & two minutes past nine.
33
He won because many people don't like the way 2021-2022 went (both covid policy and inflation), which damaged Democratic turnout and won swing voters to the non-incumbent party.
There are a lot of reasons he won, of course, but I'd agree that this is in the top let's say 5, which is one of the most depressing things in this thread. The American public is broken.
Tell that to the Trump voters I knew in 2016 who cheered Hillary's loss because they felt like they'd finally "slayed the wildebeest."
That's a good point. On some level I don't understand that reaction, but it was real and is a good counter-example to the argument about attention (or the older version of that conventional wisdom that "name recognition" was crucial).
But I do keep seeing things like this and feel like it is describing something:
On the morning of the US presidential election, my twelve-year-old son told me that Trump was going to win: 'All the influencers back him, and he's all over social media' (this although my son has no social media accounts and is not supposed to go on YouTube). 'Harris is all over social media too,' I said. 'Not the same,' he said. He was right. I should have known better.
The American public is broken.
As always, the problem with America is Americans.
The key thing to remember is a that a generic Republican might have dropped WI or MI, but almost certainly would have held PA and won the election.
30: I didn't know Garland was a prosecutor then. What was his decision in the McVeigh trial?
And DQ already answered my question. I guess Garland would have been mediocre-good Supreme Court justice. Obviously he would have been wonderful in not being Gorsuch.
47: This gets back to whining about how the playing field isn't fair, and again, that's not an excuse for losing, but we have to recognize it to deal with it. The inflation upset was at least partially due to really slanted coverage of the economy. Inflation has been down in a basically normal range for over a year? Two years? And wages went up faster than inflation, and more at the bottom than at the top, so for the majority of people.
I don't know what do about it, but the media killed Biden on the economy.
40: I'm so tired of hearing people say good things about Shapiro. The others seem fine. The allegations that he covered up a murder (the Ellen Greenberg case) give me pause. He also settled a sexual harassment claim against a former aid. I know that Pennsylvania leans red, but he reminds me too much of the worst aspects of big city machine politics.
Media coverage is largely US-specific, but unhappiness about inflation is not just the US. Incumbent parties are losing everywhere, regardless of ideology. Look at the UK, the Tories didn't lose because the media coverage was slanted against them! Now inflation wasn't quite as bad in the US as elsewhere, but also our election was much closer than in most countries!
25: I'm not sure you are taking my point. Clinton and Harris will always be part of the nomenklatura, and to some degree, part of the actual political apparat in this country. That's the problem. Virtually nobody in the Democratic party above the level of city council or state representative has the stomach to actually fight for anything these days. Not without pulling their punches so much that the Republicans can dance rings around them. And the reason they pull their punches comes down to 'better dead than Red' -- they are loathe to jeopardize their power, prestige and profits by going against the grain in any but the most token ways. Meanwhile, back at the Turning Point conference, the Republicans can and do go all out, since there's no equivalent 'better dead than brownshirt' principle on the right. Capitalism will always side with fascism over socialism.
It's incredible to me that close elections are now talked about and treated like landslides, though I guess that's just when Republicans win. It does make me wish the first Obama administration had a media machine to drive the idea that that win was a landslide with a clear mandate, instead it marked the smooth transition into a new era where it's normal to require 60 votes for Democratic priorities.
55: Inflation wasn't as bad; wage growth was better; employment was higher. The economic recovery in the US was much stronger than in the rest of the world, but it didn't help.
56; Yeah, there's another asymmetry. Outsiders on the right support Republican candidates in a way outsiders on the left don't support Democrats. That's all their grassroots social media juice: demented frothing-at-the-mouth weirdos who, while they may criticize individual Republicans, are all in for them when it comes down to a choice between a Democrat or a Republican. Leftists don't owe Democrats support where they disagree with them, but it makes a big difference not having that kind of support.
57: And there's another asymmetry. Big Democratic wins call for bipartisanship; Republican squeakers are treated as landslides.
I don't know at all what to do about any of this except crawl in a hole. And keep doing my day job, I guess.
58.1: I mean it did help a lot, the election was unusually close!
For example, Scholz is going to get turfed out in February, and the German election is not going to be nearly as close as the US election was. Harris nearly pulled out the win! But it was a really strong tide to be swimming against.
45: "it's just not in me to get enraged about people who stand roughly in the middle of the Democratic Party"
Very much this. Because if we do get enraged at the middle of the Democratic party and let that blind us, it's a ticket to permanent Republican rule.
For the record, here is Isabel Kershner in the NYT on Israeli operations in the West Bank. (I won't swear by anyone's lack of bias, but I think she's a serious reporter.)
On Monday, President Trump rescinded sanctions imposed by the Biden administration last year on dozens of far-right Israeli individuals and settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians and the seizure or destruction of Palestinian property.
The move came shortly after Mr. Trump took office, even as Jewish extremists raided several Palestinian villages, setting fire to vehicles and properties, according to Palestinian officials and the Israeli military.
The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control over parts of the West Bank and is a rival of Hamas, has been carrying out its own operation against armed militants in Jenin in recent weeks after largely leaving security in the area to Israel. Deadly Israeli raids and drone strikes in the northern West Bank over the past year have chewed up streets and left many Palestinian civilians in fear.
Residents and witnesses in Jenin said on Tuesday that a local private hospital, Al-Amal, was surrounded by Israeli forces and had come under fire. "It's as if they came to us straight from Gaza with large vehicles, aggressive gunfire and drones," said Kamila Mahmoud, 22, a resident of Jenin, in a telephone interview.
Residents said that Palestinian Authority security officers and medics were among the injured. Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the spokesman for the Authority's security forces, said one Palestinian officer was killed.
There's more about the revocation of sanctions later in the article, but it's in this omnibus EO, most likely reversing "Executive Order 14115 of February 1, 2024 (Imposing Certain Sanctions on Persons Undermining Peace, Security, and Stability in the West Bank)."
I stand by my position that if you are *only* focused on Gaza, there was no meaningful difference between Biden and Trump and you might as well vote for Trump to send a message about how bad Biden's policies were. Broaden the scope at all, even to the West Bank, and Trump is obviously way worse.
Virtually nobody in the Democratic party above the level of city council or state representative has the stomach to actually fight for anything these days.
Pritzker is, as is AOC. But, yes, there's far too few and the Dem establishment really does look like it's surrendering which among other things is stupid politics.
I stand by my position that if you are *only* focused on Gaza, there was no meaningful difference between Biden and Trump
But there was, it was Trump who obtained the ceasefire (even though it happened in the waning days of the Biden admin, there's no way that would have happened that quickly under Harris and not at all under a hypothetical second Biden administration.)
I'm liking Pritzker in 2028, if we still have a republic.
Saw this on Bluesky -- "Trump's UN nominee Elise Stefanik just told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank." -- and went to check. Yep, it's all over the news. I didn't watch the YouTube excerpts of the hearing, but I expect the quote is accurate.
But anyway, let's talk a whole lot more about how Biden was bad for Palestinians.
Why didn't Biden think about this innovative solution?
A Trump transition official told US reporters that the administration was discussing relocating 2 million Palestinians during reconstruction, with Indonesia one possible destination.
70: because Biden supports genocide, and Trump is the foreign policy genius who single-handedly brought about the ceasefire.
I mean this seriously - I think there is a myth in the process of formation that Trump, despite not actually holding office or being involved personally, somehow magicked up peace where Biden, or Harris, or any given Democrat just wouldn't have out of inherent malice. There's no evidence of this at all that isn't Trump-guys claiming credit out of their arses. But a lot of people have opted into it, hard.
Careful Alex. Biden was actively involved in genocide. That's just a fact and if you disagree you're a genocide denier.
Agree with 72 and 75. Have seen various people state this with certainty (Adam Kotsko* on Bluesky yesterday for instance) and it is speculation. Post-US election is very different strategically than before for Israel no matter who had won. They were now facing the next 4 years, with whomever not the next few months. I do not know what would have happened, but you sure as shit do not either.
*"As near as we can know anything about a hypothetical like this, we know FOR A FACT that there would not be a ceasefire if Biden or Harris was about to be inaugurated today."
And, if you believe Biden was actively involved in genocide (which he was!) and that Harris would have continued with it (which she would!) then frankly the only moral option was to vote for Trump. Yes, Trump will impose economically damaging tariffs - but he will stop the genocide. Yes, he'll pardon a few violent thugs and sell a few secrets to foreign powers - but what sort of monster are you if that matters more than stopping a genocide? "Oh he might deport a few Latinos" - but he won't kill them, so that's a price worth paying.
73: I think there is some truth to that in that Netanyahu timed the ceasefire to politically benefit Trump -- essentially holding Gaza hostage, and committing to keep killing people unless Trump took power. And of course the motivation was that Trump would give him a free hand elsewhere. So, Trump not exactly "magicked up peace", but did actually bring the ceasefire about by essentially satisfying terrorist demands. I don't think this was a good deal for Palestinians, overall, but Trump did have a causal role.
Even if you weren't sure - even if you thought there was a 90% chance that Trump would continue with Biden's genocide - you still had a moral obligation to vote for Trump, because it's 90% with him vs 100% with Harris.
People taking the US's actions w/r/t Gaza as a necessary reason to vote against Biden seem to me to be largely confusing how strongly something should be morally condemned with how certain you are of what the actor is going to do next.
That is, Biden seems clearly to me to be cross-pressured. He's been a supporter of Israel all throughout his political career; he feels strongly about Israel's right to defend itself against attacks like October 7; he was trying to maintain US leverage to prevent broader regional war. All of that left him in a position where he was clearly doing things that amounted to supporting genocide, and any degree of moral condemnation you like is justified.
But none of that means that his desired best-case outcome is dead or ethnically cleansed Palestinians, or that he wouldn't have done anything in his power to stop the killing. (The thing I keep on coming back to with our arms sales, is that I really don't see how stopping them would have made it much harder for Israel to kill Palestinians. Israel is a rich country with its own arms industry and the ability to buy weapons from non-US sources. An embargo would have been a meaningful gesture that the US was disassociating itself, but I can't see it saving many lives.)
So if you're just condemning Biden for being an evil man, that's fine. But if you're making guesses about the future on the basis of an assumption that he actively wanted the genocide to continue and was working to keep it going, I think you're confused.
Virtually nobody in the Democratic party above the level of city council or state representative has the stomach to actually fight for anything these days.
My point of departure with the Left is the Leftist indifference to democracy. It's not even exactly opposition to democracy -- it's like the libertarian position on collective action problems. There's just a hole in the part of the brain that processes the concept.
Obviously, party elites matter. They can boost people as they did with Hillary in 2016 -- and 2008. But Obama and others (see 39) were, in varying degrees, the result of genuine Democratic and democratic groundswells. And if you don't like the results of that movement, well, I can sympathize. But you ought to be able to acknowledge its existence.
AOC asked for people's votes and got them. Whatever else you want to say about Trump, so did he. When they said "Fuck the party elites," the party elites were fucked. They got people to vote for them.
If you want to build an electoral majority nationwide -- and in many, many individual states and districts -- then you're going to be working with some pretty unsavory people. That's democracy. It leads to shitty outcomes pretty often, but the solution to that is to build a less shitty country. Or rejecting democracy altogether.
Me, I'd like more democracy, starting with abolishing the Senate.
62: There's a totalizing character to the word "genocide" that I think leads to a mental error. I don't dispute the applicability of the word to Gaza. But once you've hit genocide, we lack a word that embodies the concept "more extreme genocide."
A lot of things came together for the cease fire. And credit where due: Trump's direct and convincing insistence that he believes the genocide was proceeding too slowly may have helped bring both Hamas and Israel to the table. But there was always going to be a cease-fire at some point.
The Israeli project in Palestine has been decades in the making, and will take decades more to complete (even with Trump and Hamas working to accelerate it). The killings had already slowed substantially (at least, the military killings) and were inevitably going to subside before the Palestinian people became extinct in Gaza.
Biden lent a lot of support to the genocide, and that's a grotesque stain on his record, but I haven't seen anyone make a persuasive case that he had the option to stop it.
I wrote 82 before reading ajay in 78 and LB 80, and agree with both.
72 Because Biden failed to put any real effective pressure on Israel despite having had Hamas' agreement on a number of deals, Biden was burned at least once, I think it was more, when the WH announced Netanyahu had agreed to a deal only to see him scuttle it. Biden had no real interest in any ceasefire deal or he would have put effective pressure on Netanyahu and secured one much earlier, this deal is one agreed to in July (IIRthedateC). Trump demanded a ceasefire deal before his inauguration and sent Witkoff to make sure it would happen. This was all widely reported.
As for the genocide question, I mean, if you haven't been paying attention we have Amnesty INternational's recent report, HRW, a host of distinguished Holocaust and genocide scholars, many of whom are Jewish and/or Israeli answer that in the affirmative. And we'll have the ICJ ruling in the next year or two I believe.
Dimino is a damn good pick for DASD for the Middle East.
As for the West Bank, there were ongoing pogroms by settlers and war crimes committed by the IDF all along. It's definitely escalated sharply and is cause for concern but I'm not aware of any serious Palestinian activist or scholar of the conflict who is concerned about outright annexation, a fair number are almost eager for it as the mask will be fully off at that point with regard to the apartheid nature of the Israeli regime (we've already had an ICJ case answer that as well). I think they may well be right, this would be a major strategic error on Israel's part, a final nail in any fantasy of a 2SS and the beginning of the real possibility of a secular democratic state for all the peoples of the land.
As for the West Bank, there were ongoing pogroms by settlers and war crimes committed by the IDF all along. It's definitely escalated sharply and is cause for concern but I'm not aware of any serious Palestinian activist or scholar of the conflict who is concerned about outright annexation, a fair number are almost eager for it as the mask will be fully off at that point with regard to the apartheid nature of the Israeli regime (we've already had an ICJ case answer that as well). I think they may well be right, this would be a major strategic error on Israel's part, a final nail in any fantasy of a 2SS and the beginning of the real possibility of a secular democratic state for all the peoples of the land.
Biden had no real interest in any ceasefire deal or he would have put effective pressure on Netanyahu and secured one much earlier, this deal is one agreed to in July (IIRthedateC).
Boy this is not my worldview.
87 was me (88 too, he admitted sheepishly)
I do not believe Harris would have continued with Biden's support for the genocide, but I also don't think she would have acted so fast. I'll admit that I don't have much to justify that take, more of a gut feeling than anything else but I think it could be supported.
92: Even if Harris had acted as quickly and forcefully as Trump (reportedly) has it is likely that Netanyahu would not have acted the same in response. The effectiveness of pressure depends, in part, on how much it costs the person to comply, and it costs Netanyahu less to go along with Trump than it would have with Harris (for a variety of reasons).
the beginning of 76 belies the flippancy of 74
I categorically reject 78. There are many other considerations involved here that go beyond Palestine and under no circumstances whatsoever would I ever consider voting for that SOB for even a minute. But I don't blame Arab-Americans/Palestinian-Americans for withholding their vote or even voting for him.
93 I think that's true, but Harris had levers that Trump didn't have to use and that Biden failed to.
I wish we had stopped supplying weapons to Israel because it's gross to be complicit in mass murder, but I'm also pretty sure stopping the sales wouldn't have changed anything whatsoever. No idea what leverage Biden could have had beyond that, when Netanyahu clearly wants to hand Trump the ceasefire.
Netanyahu (and the various Arab dictators who have clearly decided to not do anything to counter him) have a huge incentive to shift the blame to Biden while blocking any solution that would have been acceptable to Biden. Anyway, I blame America Arab voters and Israeli political leaders.
he was trying to maintain US leverage to prevent broader regional war.
And how did that work out? And why is Israel occupying and bombing the hell out of Syria which had no involvement with this?
(The thing I keep on coming back to with our arms sales, is that I really don't see how stopping them would have made it much harder for Israel to kill Palestinians. Israel is a rich country with its own arms industry and the ability to buy weapons from non-US sources. An embargo would have been a meaningful gesture that the US was disassociating itself, but I can't see it saving many lives.)
Where are they going to source the number of 2,000 lbs bombs they were dropping on Gaza and that were totally inappropriate* for such a densely populated urban area. Each one dropped was itself a war crime. Their air force is all American, all of their heavy ordnance (like those bombs) is from the US, WP, etc., We have at least a couple of IDF generals say on record that Israel would not be able to continue like that without US materiel support.
*A weak word there but whatever
And yes, fuck the Arab dictators. If MENA was a region of democracies their governments would never have permitted any sort of normalization. This is also a complaint I hear fairly often from Arabs here.
I don't think blame is the right word. All of us have agency, and each of us some measure of responsibility for the foreseeable and foreseen consequences of how we exercise that agency. People are free to decide not to vote for Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, but what is utter bullshit is saying 'I'm not responsible for the damage Republicans do, because I didn't vote for them either.' It's a binary system. Wishing it wasn't doesn't make it not.
Hamas chose the timing, but I suppose there's a level at which you can tag that, at least in part, to Biden, inasmuch as the US was cheerleading normalization between the Arab world and Israel.
But after that, everything is on Israel, and I don't think the US had any meaningful leverage, as Israel amply demonstrated repeatedly.
Reagan got Begin to stop the siege of Beirut, GHWB also successfully applied pressure, it can be done and the US has the levers to do it.
Eisenhower too, come to think of it. Why is it only Republicans who have the will to do it?
99: "would never have permitted any sort of normalization"
What kind of relations do you think that MENA states should have with Israel? Just so that I get your meaning here.
Israel was a different place then.
[S]tarting with abolishing the Senate
This is one of the reasons we can't have nice things. Abolishing the Senate is a huge fucking deal, and if you have mustered the ability to do that, you've already got that means to do a whole lot of things that are a lot less difficult. (Including control of the Senate, which is necessary for it's abolition.) When we suggest 'starting' the the nearly impossible step, we're condemning ourselves to hopelessness and despair. Or demonstrating a no-longer-charming naivete.
Lots of analogies come to mind.
103 minimal, until there is a just resolution.
I don't think 104 can be overstated. Israel has actively worked for decades to make itself less vulnerable to pressure from the US, to very considerable success.
105 reminds me of seeing someone point out (on Bluesky maybe?) that despite the advantages of a parliamentary system the Tories abolished birthright citizenship under the Tories in 1983.
107 They've chiefly done that by influencing US Senators, Congresspeople, and Presidents via AIPAC, not by making their own arms* and ordnance, their Air Force is 100% American (other than a few trainer aircraft). They used to build their own. Yes I know they have their own arms industry but it's not the sort that can support the kind of wars they've been fighting.
*AFVs excepted.
103: well, normalisation means, in this context, normal diplomatic relations, and peace treaties where a state of war formerly existed. Something like the Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt, which led to a peace treaty. Or the 1983 agreement between Israel and Lebanon.
And fuck the Arab dictators, apparently, for agreeing to that.
The alternative - which is presumably preferable - is no diplomatic relations, no peace treaties, and a continued regional war.
I'm not quite sure how to square that with a regional war apparently being a bad thing (see comment 98). I think it's probably a distinction between a theoretical regional war, which would result in the defeat of Israel and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, and all actual regional wars from 1947 to date, which have gone rather differently.
110 written before seeing 103, which confirms it.
105: Yeah, absolutely. The only point I was making is that I like democracy and think the US would be improved by more of it.
I think the idea is that if the US didn't help Israel then they'd lose the war, and instead Israelis would be the ones getting genocided. I'm extremely skeptical that the former is true now (maybe it was true in '73, but at any rate Israel won in '48 without any US help at all). I also don't think the latter is a good outcome either. The best thing would have been normalization in 93-00 when there was still some hope of a workable outcome, at this point there's pretty much no hope of any good outcome.
110: I take your contention here to be that Hamas was not engaged in what I think of as a typical terrorist action. This, rather, was Lexington and Concord. (Do they teach about the "shot heard 'round the word" in UK schools?)
I'm not sure I buy that about Hamas. I mean, surely that's part of how they justify it to the people flying gliders and the people getting bombed as a result, but I feel compelled to believe that Hamas' leadership isn't so stupid as to believe they would be on the right end of the genocide here.
I think Barry's praise of the Republicans is misguided (see Moby's 104), but Trump isn't like prior Republicans, and really does have an ideological conviction that the US shouldn't help other countries. And the US certainly helps Israel.
But of course, Trump's actual underlying conviction is that he doesn't want to help anyone but himself. I think Trump understands that the survival of the Jewish state is a non-negotiable part of US politics -- particularly Republican and especially evangelical politics -- and that his US Nazi constituency isn't going to have any trouble reconciling themselves to an alliance with Israeli fascists.
We'll see, though. I understand what motivates Palestinian supporters of Trump -- and for that matter, I don't have any trouble understanding what motivates Hamas. Desperate people take desperate action.
So what pressure did not-yet-in-office Trump apply? Can anyone point to it?
US President-elect Donald Trump's Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff held a "tense" meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday during which the former leaned hard on the Israeli premier to accept compromises necessary to secure a hostage deal by the January 20 US presidential inauguration, two officials familiar with the matter tell The Times of Israel.
False or misleading evidence? Maybe. But certainly evidence.
At this point I would be surprised if Biden had used all his available leverage, although I'm a little more skeptical that it would've done anything except weakening his domestic political position. What I find grotesque is crediting Trump for a ceasefire he worked to delay. Barry, how much credit did you give Biden for the previous ceasefire?
Also, what do you think of his executive orders regarding arms to Israel and sanctions on Israeli fascists?
And fuck the Arab dictators, apparently, for agreeing to that.
So millions have to live under brutal dictatorships so that Israel can continue it's apartheid irredentist regime? Arabs in the region who would like to live in free democratic states know this and they do not like it. They should not have to live like that.
And no, regional war is not the alternative, that is a false dichotomy.
117.last I give him credit, but Netanyahu clearly wanted/needed the war to continue. Biden was unwilling to up the ante (and when he did a little he soon backed down).
118 That was good though not enough and was largely walked back.
NY Post citing Axios interview with departing Israeli ambassador to US: Israel expects Trump to reverse Biden's Hold on 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs: Report Wishful thinking?
The NYP also suggests that Trump will defund "infamous UN relief agency UNRWA."
Trump's just going to do what MbS wants him to do, no? That's the only party involved here who is cutting him big checks, right?
Bowing out for a while in order to watch the new Criterion Blu Ray of Paper Moon (I think I was a kid when I saw this)
122.1 That hold was lifted under Biden a month or two after it was enacted. (Going to watch the movie so I'm not looking for any news sources now, but I do remember that)
ALso, these arms sales were a clear violation of the Leahy Law, for those who support the rule of law and all that.
121: I actually meant Trump's EOs rescinding Biden's.
People should be less credulous even if believing the fascists lies helps them score points against liberals.
I feel compelled to believe that Hamas' leadership isn't so stupid as to believe they would be on the right end of the genocide here.
I don't see why the only leaders in the world who cannot conceivably make very stupid self-destructive decisions are the leaders of Hamas. What's their secret? What have they got that, say, Tojo Hideki, Luigi Cadorna and Sani Berchtold didn't have?
So millions have to live under brutal dictatorships so that Israel can continue its apartheid irredentist regime?
What? No. That is not what I said.
And no, regional war is not the alternative, that is a false dichotomy.
It's a true dichotomy. Normalisation means, among other things, peace treaties. (I mentioned Egypt and Lebanon for a reason.) The alternative to "a peace treaty" is "a continuing state of war" like the one that Egypt was in before it normalised. There is no way to stop being in a war without signing a peace.
A continuing state of war between Israel and several Arab states - say, Syria (which have still not normalised) plus Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan - would be, I would say, a regional war.
Any peace that requires Palestinians to remain under the boot of Israel isn't really peace, its accommodation.
129 is silly. Two countries can be at peace and not at war, and still those countries can do bad things. Peace can be, and often is, accommodation.
I would not characterize the relationship of Israel and Lebanon as "peace." (Egypt and Jordan, yes. And it's a great tragedy here that Jordan made peace with Israel after '67 and not before '67.)
129: Hamas and Likud likewise argue, with considerable justification, that "peaceful accommodation" is oxymoronic. Honestly, I've got no rebuttal for you or them. In this context, the logic of hatred and genocide seem irrefutable.
Maybe I missed it, but in case I didn't, this should be noted.
NMM Jules Feiffer.
And while we're at it Garth Hudson, previously the last surviving member of The Band.
Worth a read for those who enjoy such things. Judge Beryl Howell's dismissal of a J6 case:
The only reason provided for this instruction, as set out in the Proclamation's introduction, is the assertion that this action "ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation." Id. No "national injustice" occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. No "process of national reconciliation" can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a "national injustice" is the sole justification provided in the government's motion to dismiss the pending indictment.
...
Despite finding that the sole reason relied upon by the government to dismiss the charges in this case--i.e., an incorrect assertion in the presidential proclamation--is neither substantial nor factually correct, the government's view of the public interest does not clearly fall within the types of reasons found to provide legitimate grounds to deny the government Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss charges.
Here is one guy in Haaretz giving majority credit to Trump and his envoy for the deal, as does Barry, and then detailing how Netanyahu is also openly promising to derail it. Gift link; please don't give knee-jerk responses only to the part I quote below.
Netanyahu has two ways to sink the agreement and find an excuse to renew the war. One option is to simply stall the negotiations for phase two, due to begin in 15 days, and waste time in the talks until the time expires. He performed this same exercise several times to Biden's team, which was too weak or unwilling to admit the reality of his sabotage.
The second option is to provoke an outbreak of violence in the West Bank. The tinder is already flaring there: extremist settlers set fires to homes and cars in several Palestinian villages on Sunday night, at the same time as millions of Israelis were celebrating the three hostages' return.
Again, this is being spelled out by Netanyahu's cheerleaders, not his opponents. All one has to do to learn about this is watch the pro-Netanyahu media outlet Channel 14, which has been telling its viewers ever since last week that the cease-fire deal is temporary, phase two won't happen and Netanyahu will honor his commitments to Smotrich.
Now, my take: I don't think this is the whole story by any means. There's still a lot of opacity and some wild cards on all sides. Honestly, Trump could easily turn on a dime and blame Biden for the cease-fire (credibly!) if the optics of the Palestinian prisoner release start to sway opinions. Lots of shit could happen. My gut feeling is that neither Trump nor MBS (per 123) are deeply invested in continuing to push for the ceasefire, but I have a track record of over-pessimism. I also hope Ben Gvir does less harm from the outside.
Will all the commenters suggesting (bizarrely to me) that we might as well give/sell Israel all the weapons it wants for its genocidal wars because the could just obtain them elsewhere (again, really bizarre thing to say) suggest where else they might obtain them?
133 I did in some other thread, a genius cartoonist, playwright and satirist and I really wish I had Little Murders on disc so I could watch it again.
I mean apart from the stark cynical immorality of that take.
Detective: Did Joe say why he wanted the .45 when he came into your store or give any indication that he intended to use it in the commission of a crime?
Gun store owner: Well, he said he wanted to shoot his old lady down.
Detective: So why did you sell it to him then?
Gun store owner: He'd just buy one from the gun store across town and I'd be out of a sale.
Or maybe amorality, I've had some wine.
Mostly themselves, Israel exports enough weaponry for Azerbaijan to win a war with almost entirely Israeli arms. They also get a lot of weapons from Germany and some from Italy.
138: Any other country in the world that exports arms, for those things Israel doesn't produce internally? This isn't an are where I know much of anything specific, but I didn't think the US had a worldwide monopoly on munitions, or on any particular subcategory of them.
If you know more about this than I do, which is very plausible, I don't know much, what exactly are you talking about that is both a sine qua non for Israel's operations in Gaza and not available other than from the US?
I've dealt with Israel's own military production which is not nearly enough nor of the kinds of weapons it's been producing to conduct its genocide. And will do in further detail.
Italy sells some helicopters, they're a partner in F-35s, a US aircraft, that's mostly it. As for Germany: https://www.reuters.com/world/germany-has-stopped-approving-war-weapons-exports-israel-source-says-2024-09-18/
And all the EU exports come to a halt with an anticipated ICJ ruling that Israel has been conducting genocide.
There's only one place that produces white phosphorus, and that's in the US (a weapon that I've only ever seen used in a proscribed manner constituting a war crime and not once have I seen it used in a legitimate manner.
But again, this a a shockingly cynical and amoral position to take.
143.1 see my comment on white phosphorus. The US is the only supplier. Israel routinely uses it on civilian targets. Its effects are horrific. Also there are not a lot of countries (none friendly to Israel to my knowledge) producing 2,000 lb bombs.
Maybe Alex, Doug, ajay or Mossy can give a serious answer to my 138.
I see a lot of hand waving. And with that good night.
The point of the horrifyingly amoral argument is that there's a big difference between saying that it's wrong for the US to provide arms to Israel (true! I agree with this) and that the US could have stopped or meaningfully hindered the genocide through an arms embargo (this, I don't see). Would losing access to white phosphorus have stopped Israeli operations? Seems unlikely to me. The pause in sending 2000 lb bombs doesn't seem to have had that effect.
Would losing access to white phosphorus have stopped Israeli operations? Seems unlikely to me.
No, but it does take one specific war crime out of their arsenal.
I was curious as to where white phosophorous comes from, here's what I found:
The three companies that presently manufacture elemental phosphorus in the United States for sale or distribution are FMC Corp., Pocatello, Idaho; Monsanto Co., Soda Springs, Idaho; and Rhone-Poulenc Inc., Silver Bow, Montana (SRI 1995).
So, it sounds like Monsanto is up to no good.
137: So which genocidal fascist is lying, Smotrich or Netanyahu? My money is on both, and that neither knows yet how this will all sort out. Seems to me that if Smotrich were confident that Netanyahu's mind is made up, he'd be silent.
You know, it feels like the very worst people on earth have managed to grab the reins of power almost everywhere.
149.1: No one is disagreeing with that!
151: You have reached the Unfounded Generalizations Hotline. For a list of counterexamples to your claim, press one. To be accused of parochialism, press 2. To argue about 20th century dictators, press 3. For all discussions of ancient Rome, press 4. For a list of positive achievements in recent human history, press 5. To watch the Olympics on loop, press 6.
100%. I just feel like I can recite all the standard responses from memory at this point.
86.last: I didn't know anything about this guy; google search turned up this. Interesting.
Moby- have you heard anything about the claim that Trump has shut down all communication from HHS and cancelled NIH study sections?
Not except just that. I'm sort of assuming I'll be laid off at some point this year. Then I'll just ride the rails.
By which I mean Amtrak. I'm not coordinated enough to jump onto or off of a moving train.
Wait, I'm upgrading 157 from "interesting" to "spicy."
Elbridge Colby, whom Trump tapped as undersecretary of defense for policy, has opposed direct military action against Iran, while arguing that containing a nuclear Iran "is an eminently plausible and practical objective," among other claims.
The official who worked on the presidential transition said they believe Colby was primarily responsible for DiMino's hiring. DiMino's hiring comes in spite of Trump's directive [which is something else] that he didn't want staffers affiliated with the conservative donor Charles Koch in his administration.
Though some conservatives see Hegseth as more hawkish, the former official warned that people such as DiMino and Colby will be briefing Hegseth and will play a major role in setting policy.
"They have enormous leverage -- they're flying around the region, controlling resources and planning and options," the former Trump official said. "They have an enormous amount of power they wield in subtle ways. This foreign policy is the same as Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East." [. . .]
[DiMino] also argued on a webinar that the U.S. troop presence in various partner countries in the Middle East was motivating "reckless" behavior, including by Saudi Arabia. He said the U.S. should decrease its permanent bases in the region and instead focus on "surging forces back and forth from different areas of need."
He said definitively that the U.S. should not provide any security guarantees to Saudi Arabia as part of a normalization agreement between the kingdom and Israel, and, in the November 2023 policy paper, described a normalization deal as "only nice to have -- not necessary -- for U.S. policy objectives in the Middle East."
DiMino and his co-author dismissed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as "an erratic figure who has repeatedly demonstrated poor judgment that would be a U.S. liability in a treaty alliance," and said that any U.S. security guarantee would embolden his "worst instincts."
For his part, Trump has spoken admiringly of the Saudi crown prince, calling him a "visionary" and "a great guy" in an interview before the November election. He has also vowed that expanding the Abraham Accords will be "an absolute priority" in his second term, with an eye on normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia. [. . .]
Outside of the Middle East, DiMino has dismissed the utility of continued U.S. aid to Ukraine, arguing that Ukraine is incapable of repelling Russia and urging the U.S. instead to push for a negotiated settlement to the war. [pobody's nerfect]
He's also been a defender of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's controversial nomination for director of national intelligence and has criticized surveillance powers supported by top national security Republicans.
I'm not 100% reassured by this.
154 means "for a Spanish woman, press 2" and I for one am ready to turn everything over to Rosalía.
"There's only one place that produces white phosphorus, and that's in the US (a weapon that I've only ever seen used in a proscribed manner constituting a war crime and not once have I seen it used in a legitimate manner."
That is because you are shockingly ignorant of warfare, to be blunt.
164 Lol, I've seen many videos of it being dropped on dense civilian areas, villages, etc, and there are numerous reports by various human rights organizations document this but I've not seen a single example of it being used for screening troop movements but perhaps you've seen and can link an operation where they do? I've seen it used by AFU in that manner many times.
164 Lol, I've seen many videos of it being dropped on dense civilian areas, villages, etc, and there are numerous reports by various human rights organizations document this but I've not seen a single example of it being used for screening troop movements but perhaps you've seen and can link an operation where they do? I've seen it used by AFU in that manner many times.
Checking the CAT-UXO website I see that the only countries that manufacture 2,000 lb bombs are the US, China, Russia, Spain, and Egypt (though I wonder if Egypt still does). So the US is the sole source for those weapons as well and they wouldn't be able to find another source otherwise.
And yes, I know it can be used as an incendiary against materiel and as illumination though there are better and widely available options for illumination.
110 Further to that I'll note that the US and NATO are not in a state of war with Russia, despite the sanctions regime and supplying Ukraine with weapons and other support so you're point does not stand at all.
138/146: I've not said anything about weapons in this thread, and very little (if anything) about weapons and Israel elsewhere on Unfogged.
But as long as we're cutting to the chase, do you think Israel should exist?
Kept trying to think what the post title reminded me of, and it was the Boris Vian novel I Spit On Your Graves which came up here way back when.
I just bought and read that book (based on the serendipitous result of an Unfogged-inspired search). My short version is that if you took the seamy parts (both explicit and implied) of half-a-dozen Faulkner novels, and removed all the "flowery" language and any actual knowledge of what the South was really like you'd have I Spit on Your Graves. The story of the book's writing is more interesting than the book itself, as is the fact that the author, Boris Vian who was feuding with the filmmakers, apparently died during a screening of the film, A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: "These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!" He then collapsed into his seat and died from sudden cardiac death en route to the hospital.
Elbit Systems' advanced production infrastructure encompasses an area of over 20,000 square meters, and covers all aspects of manufacturing, assembly, packing, metallurgic, ballistics, full in-house live firing testing, and strict quality assurance and control systems. The ammunition plant and facilities feature highly skilled staff and a production capacity of more than 250,000 bombs of all calibers per year.
PS this refers to our old brand from before the merger but:
MPR500 is a 500 lb (230 kg) Multi-Purpose Rigid penetration and surface attack bomb manufactured by Israel Military Industries. It has the effectiveness and dimensions of a Mark 84 bomb and can penetrate 1 meter reinforced concrete. Was approved by Boeing for the JDAM guidance kit [which they also now make indigenously in case anyone actually cares what they hit]. During Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli Air Force realized that the MPR provides 95% hitting and target destruction effectiveness.
White phosphorus, 2000 lb bombs, yadda yadda yadda. Zionists will continue their 76-year genocide against the Palestinians if they have to resort to rocks and pointed sticks. Know how I know that? Because they say so themselves, over and over and over again. The events of the last 15 months prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the goal of Zionism is the complete and utter destruction of the Palestinian people. They're not going to stop because of some piece of paper signed by their vicious fascist leadership -- just look at the pogroms erupting in the West Bank as we speak. Every Zionist is fully complicit in the genocide and quibbling about the weapons they use is just rearranging the deck chairs they use to watch the bombs drop and the children burn to death while they giggle and cheer.
Remember, this is what the anti-Palestinian bigots want you to forget:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing
Remember, this is what the anti-Palestinian bigots want you to forget:
https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-database-with-500-instances-of-israeli-incitement-to-genocide-continuously-updated/
Remember, this is what the anti-Palestinian bigots want you to forget:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/7/is-israels-gaza-war-the-deadliest-conflict-for-children-in-modern-times
Remember, this is what the anti-Palestinian bigots want you to forget:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg300jek94zo.amp
172: I'll vouch for Barry: he's not one of those guys (last I checked). Unless you think wanting a secular, non-Jewish state in Palestine is disqualifying, in which case probably several people here fail the test.
174 completely irrelevant as I was singling out 2,000 lbs bombs for the reason that they are incredibly destructive, especially when used in dense urbane environments, they've been singled out by many HR orgs and news orgs as well and as you well know there are many sources for 500 lb bombs. Not so for the 2,000 pounders.
172 it's a ridiculous and nonsensical question asked about no other country on the planet. Do you think France should exist? How about do I think an irredentist apartheid regime controlled by a neo-fascist government should continue in it's current form and on an even darker trajectory should exist, or that the US should continue to support it? Fuck no. Now do I think the peoples residing in that land, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Druze, should continue to exist, and do so under a future secular democratic state? Unquestionably yes. All of them, together. In the long term the current course is unsustainable so I believe it is inevitable but also it's not likely I will live long enough to see it.
Honestly, "do you think Germany should exist as a unified state?" after WWII is the analogy that I banned myself from including above. It's a banworthy analogy, and yet it is an example of questioning whether a state should exist after committing genocide and wars of aggression. So idk.
States don't have rights, they have obligations and responsibilities. States' rights never ends well.
Now that you mention it, it is a weird phrase.
182: "asked about no other country on the planet"
Can't agree with that: Eritrea, Kosovo, East Timor, South Sudan are all now states about which that question was first answered positively in my adult lifetime. Only slightly more than half of UN member states answer that positively for Kosovo. The question is asked about Western Sahara and mostly answered with no. Should North and South Yemen exist as separate states was also answered with no. Should Nagorno-Karabakh exist is a question that the international community answered with one kind of not really, and Azerbaijan answered with a different kind of no.
More to the point, numerous (around 30) UN member states do not recognize Israel.
So when you argue against normal diplomatic relations with Israel, as you have in this thread, it leads me to wonder what kind of relations you think should be in place (minimally answered in 106 above), and also to wonder if you think there should be an Israel with which other states can have relations. To which 182 is more or less an answer.
184: After the Second World War, the Allies asked whether Prussia should exist, and the answer was no. People nowadays have forgotten that "Prussian militarism" was paired with "Nazism" in plenty of documents and rhetoric during the war and in the immediate postwar period.
The Allies abolished Prussia in 1947. It was an important state in Northern Europe from 1525 and grew to the largest component of the German Empire in 1870. Today its last vestiges are a cultural foundation and the names of some sports teams.
I've seen many videos of it being dropped on dense civilian areas, villages, etc, and there are numerous reports by various human rights organizations document this but I've not seen a single example of it being used for screening troop movements but perhaps you've seen and can link an operation where they do?
Videos you've seen on YouTube and Al Jazeera may not be a perfectly comprehensive representation of all military operations around the world.
But, OK, picking one, the British Army used the 81mm mortar in the Falklands and that has a white phos smoke round. 2 PARA used them to screen troop momvements during the battle of Goose Green. Here is a citation to then-Capt John Crosland saying so: https://www.paradata.org.uk/article/major-john-croslands-account-goose-green
Note that "smoke bomb" refers to a mortar round. US parlance is to talk about "mortar shells"; the British phrase is "mortar bomb".
If you are seriously asserting that militaries around the world issued white phos smoke grenades, mortar rounds and shells, and those were *never* used to create smoke screens in combat but *only ever used to commit atrocities*, you're a fool.
"All right lads, final kit checks before we jump. Chute? Reserve chute? Helmet strap? Fifty rounds rifle ammunition? Field dressing? Morphine syrette? Special Atrocity-Only Flame Horror Grenade?"
-- every airborne stick commander on the night before D-Day, apparently.
Reading comprehension issues, ajay. I'm speaking solely and exclusively of the IDF which should have been clear both from context and a follow up where I referred to its legitimate use by AFU.
188.last sanctions, as we've applied against Russia would be appropriate.
192: I should of course have realised that you are only ever concerned with exactly one conflict.
Here you go, account of IDF using smoke (which in 1969 would have been white phos) to screen movement https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-israeli-commando-assault-on-green-island-july-1969
194 more reading comprehension issues, I have commented on and been concerned by Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, just to name three
194 also, 19fucking69?! Lmao. Hang it up.
Just take a moment and think about what you're asserting.
Smoke is really useful in combat which is why every serious army since at least WW2, including the IDF, has issued smoke grenades, smoke mortar rounds, smoke artillery rounds and so on. Those have been (until recently) either white or red phos.
But you believe that, alone among its peers, in its many wars the IDF has *never* used smoke rounds for their intended purpose? Like, it never crossed their minds that a smoke screen might ever be useful to hide behind? They've carried the damn things around in their webbing pouches since 1948 and they only ever use them for atrocities?
That's actually what you believe?
also, 19fucking69?!
First one I could find on a quick search. But if you want to put those goalposts down for a moment I can try again, if I can be bothered.
I'm not the one moving the goalposts. It should be clear from the context I'm speaking of the current situation for which evidence abounds. I explicitly referred to its legitimate yse in warfare. And now you're moving it back to the Nakba? You're embarrassing yourself
Yse s/b use
Autocorrect is useless
It's funny because I've defended legitimate uses of WP when speaking with pro-Palestinian activists and academics here. You're way off target here.
It's funny because I've defended legitimate uses of WP when speaking with pro-Palestinian activists and academics here.
Ah, OK, perhaps you can link to an operation where it's been used legitimately, then.
Out with friends at the pub after a fast of golf with same so I'm not spending time looking for it but the AFU counteroffensive (unfortunately unsuccessful) in Zaporizhzhia where they were using it to screen the MICLICs springs to mind. There was plenty of video at the time,
a fast of golf
Is it Scottish Ramadan already?
201 why am I the one being asked this? Can you point to a legitimate IDF use that's not when you or I were in short pants or a gleam in our (grand)father's eye? Something in the last year would do nicely.
Zionists will continue their 76-year genocide against the Palestinians if they have to resort to rocks and pointed sticks.
This and the rest of 175 strike me as extreme and terrible language whose accuracy is ... hard to deny.
The problem with focusing on that information is that it doesn't lead to a useful result. Natilo has not said that he can see why Palestinians would fly gliders into Israel and engage in mass murder. But I can see it. I get it.
What does one say to the Palestinians who promote (but cannot enact) genocide against Israeli Jews? "Look at the United States! Black Americans were much less violent and 100 years after the Civil War, they were treated less badly. If you eschew violence for 100 years, you could achieve the second-class citizenship of today's Palestinian citizens of Israel. Maybe."
The logic of Palestinian terrorism -- or for that matter, support for Trump -- in the face of genocide is hard to assail, and the Israeli response is inevitable. What are the other choices for either side? So it becomes a question of who can bring more violence to bear. And I think we all know the answer to that question.
and the rest of 175 strike me as extreme and terrible language whose accuracy is ... hard to deny.
No it's not. It's easy to deny. If Israel only had rocks and pointed sticks to fight with, they would be desperate to make peace.
Yeah, while the position I've been taking (while US provision of arms to Israel is wrong, it's not making much of a difference) is related to the rocks and pointed sticks thing, it's hyperbole. I think Israel's actions toward Palestinians are, at this point, determined by a belief that Israel has total military dominance and that the authorities in Gaza and the West Bank have no hope of either successful military defense or effective symmetrical retaliation. If withholding US arms had the potential to change that, reducing Israel to sticks and stones, I think it could make a difference but not otherwise.
And again, if you look at Azerbaijan, it seems pretty clear to me that Israel can rather easily outgun Palestine (who is much less well armed than Armenia) indefinitely with no new arms from the US.
(Yes Azerbaijan also has some Turkish weapons, yes Israel would have to ramp up certain kinds of production that they don't do now, and maybe they'd get some arms from China instead, but none of these small caveats change the big picture which is that the gap between Israel and Palestine is huge and Israel is an arms exporting country.)
Of course, none of that contradicts the obvious fact that the US should stop giving arms to Israel, only that the practical impact would be minimal.
207: I read Natilo to be proposing that rocks and sticks would be effectual but inefficient weapons in that hypothetical. He was saying that the efficieny of the methods of killing isn't terribly relevant to Israeli goals -- but also, yes, engaging in a bit of hyperbole.
In any event, if the tables somehow turned and Israelis found themselves in the Palestinian position, I don't share your confidence that Israelis would sue for peace. Because it wouldn't matter. They wouldn't get peace and they'd know it. I don't think the Palestinians are uniquely barbaric.
Doug, I don't want to be uncharitable but every response to my comments indicates to me that you're ok with all of this. That seems so unlike your positions on everything else I've seen here.
207 is truth and why I've seen cogent criticism of support for Iron Dome. The impunity needs to end before we have any positive change
I mean, if Israeli's found themselves in the Palestinian position, I think the vast majority of them would move to the US or Germany. The remaining hardcores would fight and mostly die.
212: Huh. Depending on which "all of this" we're talking about, one might say the same thing about you. I'm guessing Doug opposes Palestinian terrorism for instance, and he has taken a clear stance against undisciplined, imprecise language.
All of this = apartheid, genocide, for starters
214: Assuming such a move were permitted. I recognize that I'm moving squarely into banned analogy territory here, but how many Palestinians would, given the opportunity, leave Gaza? I suspect quite a lot.
I know quite a few who left have years ago, including a good friend born and raised in Jabaliya who has a PhD from the University of Paris . And others from there who when I last spoke to them last fall had already lost over 100 relatives, when I asked about those remaining in the north of the Gaza Strip they told me they were staying put and refused to leave because they knew they'd never be allowed to return (I know, and fuck you); I wonder how many are still alive.
So yeah, continue to question why I care about this above and beyond that I'm fucking paying for it
Further to 217, I have a recollection that I am unable to confirm via Google: Omar Abdel-Rahman was once asked about his opposition to the Jewish State. He responded that he had no problem at all with a Jewish State, and that there is plenty of room in Montana.
pf, I have no real idea who your intended audience is for these comments (and a few rounds of similar past comments about I/P). It feels like you're writing in your own diary.
Aren't we all just posting our diary entries here?
I'm sedulously transcribing boring links! My diary is so much sexier.
221. Yeah, I think that probably captures something about the solipsistic nature of a lot of my participation here, not just on this topic. In large part, I'm trying to work this stuff out for myself. If other people aren't interested in that project, I understand.
217: Right, this is a major difference, Palestinians haven't really had allies (beyond Jordan to some extent). Christian Palestinians have essentially all emigrated at this point (starting in the Ottoman era, and then recently accelerating after the second intifada). In terms of the West Bank, as many people have moved to Jordan as have stayed in the West Bank. Gazans, as usual, are totally fucked because Egypt hates them just as much as Israel does.
I've been misread and been given the most uncharitable readings in this thread and I have shown time and time again how that is so and I consider it most cowardly to have had that demonstrated time and time again and not have my interlocutors admit to it and said my bad, I apologize, I got you wrong. I have often done that myself when I've been in the wrong.
I hope I haven't misread you or read you uncharitably, Barry. I went down the list with the DiMino article mostly because I was fascinated by the collision course with Trump's MBS love affair, not as some kind of gotcha. Foreign policy is usually internally contentious. I never have much idea what Ajay has at stake with these exercises and so I rarely know how to respond effectively, but... it's also hard to take it all seriously, amid the actually serious carnage and famine. I also agree with you (I think) that people are giving Biden a pass he doesn't deserve at all.
I'm relocating a relevant comment here. Hey, it's concise:
The hold -- which Biden used to protest Israel's invasion of Rafah -- became a political symbol much more than a military operational issue, and was used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to mobilize Republicans against Biden.
Netanyahu and his loyalists in Israel and the U.S. used Biden's decision to falsely claim there was a U.S. "arms embargo" on Israel.
Biden's decision also generated significant criticism from the Jewish community in the U.S., which is mostly Democratic leaning.
On the other hand, the hold did little to diminish progressives' criticism of Biden over his support for Israel.
So it was effectively meaningless at best -- is Trump's reversal of it also meaningless at best?
It's all meaningless. Israel will do whatever they want, and the US can't meaningfully constrain them, and they'll still normalize relations with Saudi Arabia because obviously the Saudis don't give a single damn about Palestine.
The things that mattered were:
1. Jordan decided to join the '67 war.
2. Israel decided to start building settlements after '67.
3. Arafat did a shitty job running the PLO and alienated most of his allies by trying to kill them.
4. The Soviet Union collapsed.
5. Kahanists successfully assassinated Rabin.
6. Netanyahu won the 1996 election (see 4).
7. Arafat didn't take the Clinton deal (partially understandable, but also see 3).
8. Sharon decided to do provocative things, and Palestinian leadership decided to respond with the second intifada.
9. Sharon fell into a coma before he could make a peace proposal.
Once all those things happened, everything is fucked and will continued to be awful for the foreseeable future. It's a tragedy, but there's not much anyone from the outside can do about it at this point. Any kind of realistic peace is opposed by clear majorities on both sides. There's just been no substantial hope of anything not awful since at least 2006, and probably since 2000.
There's just been no substantial hope of anything not awful since at least 2006, and probably since 2000.
I would put this back at the assassination of Rabin.
That is, I think we missed the chance to take a much harder line with Israel and settlements. The late 2000 early 2001 proposals weren't going to fly, and the US hadn't created to leverage to get better deals through.
As noted above, I think our leverage is completely different now, and into the foreseeable future.
Internal US politics on I/P are so complicated. There are various groups of people in both US coalitions whose support is genuine and heartfelt, and, if one is considering the generations of people who vote in US elections, far outweighs support for Palestine (whatever that even means). I'd not be shocked if the historical differences Barry identifies between Republican actions with Israel and Democratic wasn't in significant part due to internal US politics. The Republicans now have a faction that is much more committed to Israel than before, even to an unrestrained Israel. (Last year, my Republican congressman referred to humanitarian aid for Gaza as "arming my enemy" -- a generation ago, this would not have flown.)
231 may well be true, but I'm not so sure. Maybe Netanyahu loses in '96, maybe Clinton puts a little more pressure on Barak during negotiations, maybe Arafat dies in '98.
At my more pessimistic I think there was no hope after Kiryat Arba was built in '68, or at least after Israel didn't bulldoze Kiryat Arba to the ground after the Hebron massacre in '94. I don't think there's any world where there's peace and Kiryat Arba exists, and no Israeli PM has ever offered removing it.
Meanwhile Trump comes out in explicitly in favor of way more genocide: "You're talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing... I'd like Egypt to take people. And I'd like Jordan to take people."
234 a proposal Biden/Blinken tried to force on Egypt and Jordan back in October of 2023 until it was made clear that it was a nonstarter (it would lead to the collapse of the Sisi and al-Hussei regimes in a matter of years)
172, 188 Peter Beinart, as usual, is excellent on this very question https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/opinion/israel-state-jewish.html