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Oscar Wilde Bunch posted:I feel like we're heading to the lowest turnout election ever. What's the other option besides Biden? The guy that's already saying he's going to do Muslim Ban 2 the first day he's in office, and backed by people who think Biden's a weakling because he's not going even harder with military support? In all seriousness: Do you know any Muslims/Arabs? I can't point you to a study or survey (and I doubt that one really exists), but anecdotally, the consensus opinion in my wife's family group chat (they're all first or second generation Pakistani immigrants, most of whom have lived in other ME countries before coming to the US) is that the US under Trump would still be the least repressive country most of them have lived in.* They have a completely different frame of reference for oppression than most US born white people at least. E.g. my wife's grandpa, who has been a US citizen for decades, STILL won't say anything negative about the Saudi royal family b/c he was a professor there for a while and one of his colleagues got disappeared for some mild criticism. Biden denying the casualties in Gaza was the breaking point. To them, it looks like he's explicitly valuing Muslim lives less than others. They view Trump as bad, but not as bad as other governments they've lived under, and certainly not bad enough to justify voting for a guy who (in their view) is openly supporting genocide against people like them. * Actually they love to joke that Pakistan is the freest country on Earth - if the government's too incompetent to enforce the laws, you're free to do anything you want :P
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Dec 11, 2023 23:11
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Google Jeb Bush posted:Eh. I think if the proposition is a simple "Biden should evaluate whether he'll lose more votes by being pro Israel or being anti Israel", the answer is going to be very unpleasant. I don't think anyone honestly expects Biden to be anti-Israel in any meaningful sense, but there's widespread support for a ceasefire and it's hard to imagine that he'd lose a significant amount of support if he would do things like: not bypass congressional approval or human-rights audits on weapons transfers. He has options which would not likely cost him many votes that he could use to signal some kind of token opposition to (what I take to be a) genocide, and he's choosing not to exercise any of them.
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Dec 12, 2023 12:08
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Autisanal Cheese posted:Can someone point me to a source or be willing to explain further on this point that the flotilla sent to Yemen is doomed to fail, from like a strategic/military capability perspective? I've been seeing this take a lot and I want to know what it's based on and if there is any precedent or anything A US/Saudi/UAE coalition bombed the poo poo out of Houthi territory for nearly a decade, killing ~400k people (85k children from starvation) and obviously failed to degrade their military capacity by that much. The missiles they're using don't really require a lot of infrastructure. Unless we want to bomb every barn / home / cave in Houthi territory (much of which is pretty rural), it's not clear how it's even possible to stop them militarily without invading. We're not going to invade them. The Houthis are significantly more popular among the gulf Arab populations than their own monarchs - MBS and MBZ are widely - and correctly - seen as sycophants in thrall to US interests. Starting a land war with the only group of Arabs doing anything material to support Palestinians runs the risk of rage boiling over. These Arab royal families are ginormous, there's always the risk that your hates-the-Americans-more-than-you cousin might see which way the winds are blowing and decide that he'd like to be the king now. Edit: I'll try to dig up the polls I'm basing this off of (was a reference in some Foreign Affairs article, don't have my login at work), but what's astounding about this is that the Houthis - who aren't just Shia but are Zaydi Muslims, a minority sect of Shias - are more popular in these Sunni states than their own Sunni leaders. I hate to keep repeating "if you don't know any Muslims..." but for those of you who don't: That's astonishing. There's an incredible amount of animosity between Sunnis and Shias. Gnumonic fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Dec 21, 2023 |
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Dec 21, 2023 17:12
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Your Brain on Hugs posted:So basically you're saying there is in fact a whole lot the US could do to end the genocide, but also it would be hard and they absolutely don't want to. Don't you see that we must accept as fait accompli the capture of our foreign policy by the Israel lobby? That the US must give unconditional support to Israel is a natural law that Biden is compelled to obey and has no power to change. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 8, 2024 22:01
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Irony Be My Shield posted:I think Biden has been applying the same kind of pressure that previous presidents have on Israel, it's just that Israel is a lot more hellbent on carrying out Swords of Iron than it has been on any previous campaign. There's been a lot of press conferences where Israel has contradicted US officials trying to say that the campaign is reducing in intensity or winding down imminently. Ultimately the idea that Biden will bomb or significantly sanction a nuclear power that 75% of his electorate loves is absurd (even if we assume that Biden is not himself an ardent zionist) so Israel can just call his bluff. Obviously it's unrealistic to expect Biden to bomb (seriously?) or formally sanction Israel. But there's a range of options between "bomb" and "give billions of dollars worth of weapons (which are being used to carry out a genocide) to Israel for free, while bypassing congressional review procedures, lying about Palestinian deaths, refusing to even acknowledge the war crimes (etc)". Only ~62% of his electorate (and only ~55% of the people who might conceivably vote for him) - at most - "loves" Israel. (I think it's quite likely that a large number of the "just the right amount of support" responses are tuned-out democrats who would give the same answer so long as Biden is president, but that's just a suspicion.) A ceasefire is extremely popular amongst his entire electorate, especially the portion that conceivably might vote for him. I don't think the assumption that the American electorate is rabidly pro-Israel, to the point where it would turn on Biden for exerting some modest leverage to Israel (e.g. ensuring that weapons go through the normal review process) is backed up by polling data. The data hints that, if he had the inclination, he could do more than he is doing and not expect to lose significant support. It is by no means absurd, nor is it an invitation to political suicide, to imagine a Democratic president doing significantly more than Biden has (i.e. nothing). That Biden chooses to do nothing demonstrates his utter indifference to Palestinian lives and enthusiastic support of a genocidal regime. The notion that Biden secretly cares/wants to do more/etc, which inexplicably recurs throughout this thread, is ridiculous. Israel's actions in Gaza are clearly obscenely barbaric even by the standards of US counter-insurgency tactics - the US delayed offensives, paused fighting, attempted to evacuate civilians, at least tried to avoid hospitals/Mosques/schools/etc. The death toll relative to the time frame is exponentially higher than the nearest analogues involving the US (at least in this century). Biden knows this because he helped plan and direct those US military actions. He is accepting a level of brutality from the Israelis the he would never accept from a US military operation. I do not know how any rational human being could fail to conclude that Joe Biden is deeply ideologically committed to facilitating and denying an ongoing genocide.
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Jan 9, 2024 10:06
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Don't Bomb the Houthisquote:International actors must respond to the Houthis’ attacks, both to preserve the Red Sea shipping route and to prevent further regional escalation. But the United States is confronted by an array of bad and worse options for how to do so. Some politicians and analysts have argued that the best way to counter Houthi aggression is with military escalation designed to “restore deterrence.” This perspective sees the United States’ eventual decision, in 2021, to push for peace negotiations in Yemen as a failed policy of appeasement. It seems as though people who seriously study the region think that bombing the Houthis won't achieve our goals, will only strengthen their position, and will only embolden more attacks.
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Jan 12, 2024 22:15
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fuctifino posted:PMs haven't solved anything, except waste the time of the people sending them to you and feeding yet more of your shallow ego. This stuff needs to be talked about now, because your bullshit has gone on for long enough. Too many good posters have been driven away by your pettiness. 100% agreed. The moderation here is absurd and leads to an I/P thread that consists primarily of nitpicking discussions about issues that only tangentially relate to the conflict. If that's the sort of discussion the rules are intended to foster, then the rules are poo poo and should be changed. I used to read this forum because it was a good source of information that doesn't appear in mainstream media, but at this point the lunatic tankies in CSPAM do a better job of that.
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Jan 24, 2024 21:05
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not a value-add posted:What happens if Israel doesn’t comply with any of the measures? It seems like the genocidal rhetoric part of that will be another slam dunk case since Ben-Gvir immediately started posting childish and violent tweets after the news broke. I wanna ask a maybe-more-precise version of this: Can/will Israel's failure to comply with the measures be used as evidence that they are committing genocide? Particularly: Would failure to comply with the order constitute evidence for genocidal intent? I read the order and all of the "declarations" (the judge's comments) and my overall sense is that the judges seem at least somewhat skeptical that the statements presented by South Africa suffice to definitively prove genocidal intent on the part of the Israelis. None of the declarations seem to call into question the claim that Israeli acts, if motivated by genocidal intent, are acts of genocide. The obvious implication is that if intent cannot be established, even horrific war crimes cannot be officially classified as genocidal acts. It seems as though only an unambiguous official order laying out explicit plans for extermination of a people would satisfy all of the judges. Not every judge issued a comment or declaration, so it's hard to know how many of them have reservations there, but at any rate the composition of the court will change before this is over so there's no point in trying to guess the number of judges who are shaky on this. I'm asking because it seems like Israel's most promising line of defense is: "Yes we did all these war crimes (which you ICJ judges don't have jurisdiction over) but social media posts and interviews are not sufficient to establish genocidal intent and we're going to give you a very selective list of official documents where we order our soldiers to bring love and peace to Palestine." I'm no expert in international law, but it seems as though that defense might actually work. I don't think the ICJ has any power to compel parties to hand over evidence, and they have no way to verify that evidence handed over is complete. It seems unlikely that Israel would ever turn over internal documents that do demonstrate genocidal intent (even though they certainly exist). Just to be clear, I'm as convinced as most everyone else here that Israel is doing a genocide, but the way they interpret the relevant treaties seems to indicate that the criteria for genocidal intent are extremely strict.
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Jan 26, 2024 22:17
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I guess the sanctions are better than nothing, but they're effectively meaningless in the short term. Maybe they'll have a long term effect, who knows. If it's intended to appease Muslim voters, I'd bet my life for a dollar that it's not going to work. Biden really does not have much time to pivot, if he intends on doing that (I doubt he does, though I'd be happy if he did). At this point, almost (if not all) of Gaza is subject to famine or near-famine conditions. If the situation on the ground doesn't change significantly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are going to be dead in 6-8 weeks. I don't think there's any coming back from that, either for Biden personally (w/r/t young/progressive/Muslim voters) but more significantly for America's reputation in general & the stability of the region. This isn't Yemen - every social media feed & every major news outlet is going to be filled with pictures of starving Palestinian children. It's difficult to imagine a scenario in which rage in the Arab street doesn't boil over and throw the region into total chaos.
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Feb 1, 2024 22:01
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Yawgmoft posted:I wonder what some of the people here would have said to someone [e: that had family die on both sides of the American Civil War] One of my grandpa's brothers went to fight for the Nazis in WWII (my grandpa and his other brother fought for the US, they were 2nd generation immigrants). Nazi brother died in from combat injuries in an allied POW camp. Neither of them would even mention his name, and to this day the only thing my grandpa (who is 97 and still kickin) will say about Nazi brother is: "I'm glad that Nazi traitor bastard died, wish I could have pulled the trigger." While I agree that there's not much point in attacking an individual for refusing to wish death upon their family, I don't think it's that outrageous to view "willingly associates with IDF soldiers" as a moral stain akin to "willingly associates with Nazis" or more generally "willingly associates with organizations that actively perpetrated a genocide". Maybe it's not the most important topic, but a decent number of the IDF genocide doers are citizens of the US/European countries to which they will presumably return at some point. A nontrivial number of people are going to have to reckon with the fact that their friend/brother/sister/etc is a genocide doer. Yawgmoft posted:the reaction to that sentiment was completely disproportionate and jarring, attacking generic people rather than the governments commanding them. To move the discussion in a more productive direction: Do you think that individual IDF soldiers doing the genocide bear no moral culpability for their actions? If so, do you believe the same thing with respect to Nazis (or Hutu militia members or members of Myanmar's military or Serbian police members who participated in their respective genocide campaigns)? You don't outright say it, but your response here seems to imply that you view a "just following orders" defense as sufficient to absolve a genocide do-er of moral culpability. If attacking "generic people" (I assume you mean "specific people"? Not super clear) doing a genocide isn't acceptable, and you do not believe that a "just following orders" defense absolves them of culpability, could you please explain why you believe that?
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Feb 3, 2024 00:31
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Could we maybe relegate discussions of the Houthis to the ME thread? Two million people are slowly starving to death in Gaza and this thread has become a never-ending back and forth about the Houthis. The primary item under contention in that back and forth is whether the Houthi attacks on shipping are even related to the I/P conflict, ergo it's not obviously related.* It's a perpetual derail that impedes discussion about the ongoing genocide. *I believe the Houthis stated motive, I'm just saying that because the relevance of that discussion is a major point of contention, the discussion would be better moved to the other thread that isn't specific to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict/genocide. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 6, 2024 18:45
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Google Jeb Bush posted:Oh I wasn't clear, that wasn't a rebuttal to the point, it was me reading up on the unrwa thing and posting as I found stuff. My rebuttal, such as it is, is that the US's diplomatic policy toward Israel isn't entirely coherent outside of trying to prevent all out regional war. Backing them (so far) on the dumb unrwa thing doesn't erase their "pretty please don't bomb quite so many civilians" entreaties, whatever is going on behind the scenes with hostage and ceasefire negotiations, and that one ominous mutter about maybe possibly recognizing Palestine, and those largely toothless (so far) appeals to our friendship and Israel's better nature certainly don't erase the material or public affairs contributions to Israel's genocidal project in Gaza. I think your recent cluster of posts is meant as a response to this quote:At most the 'pressure' is some American diplomat going "C'mon man we're getting killed domestically over this, can you ease up a little?" And you're probably right that career diplomats in the state department aren't pro-genocide. But this elides the fact that, since Kissinger at least, US presidents have consistently sidelined and ignored the advice of career diplomats in the state department, and have yielded to political pressure from the Zionist lobby. I don't mean to be all "read this book" as a rebuttal, but one of the most eye-opening things I learned from reading this boring-rear end collection of primary sources on the conflict was that our foreign policy experts more-or-less correctly predicted the disastrous consequences of yielding to zionist demands, but in every case were ignored or dismissed. Anyway, more to the point: I think the original poster you replied to was using "some American diplomat" as a proxy for "the official US position as enacted by people who actually make the decisions", not "the view of foreign policy experts at the state department". I imagine that the foreign policy experts know how disastrous US policy has been and continues to be, and are, to the minimal extent that they are able, attempting to minimize it. Everything that I've read seems to indicate that Biden is (like just about every previous US president) refusing to listen to the experts because he is a sincere 100% true believing zionist. You're likely right that there is some internal tension, but the tension is almost assuredly between Biden himself (a committed zionist who cannot display a shred of empathy for the Palestinians, even to save his rear end in the election) and experts who understand how badly he is loving up. But, frankly, the existence of some tension in the absence of concrete actions to avert the starvation of 2 million people doesn't count for poo poo. Moreover, I'm not sure what the point of defending the honor of the state department experts is, when the guy who actually makes the decisions is perfectly OK letting tens of thousands of children get murdered or mutilated / facilitating the starvation of, again, two million loving people. Yes, it would be better if people who know that it's not 1973 anymore were calling the shots, but they're not. Genocide Joe is, and there's no indication that he's going to change course. Ultimately, it does not matter what the administration wants if the guy in charge is totally unwilling to exert any leverage to ensure that it gets what it wants. I've said this in a few previous posts, but just to re-iterate: Time is running out for Gazans. Without a massive and immediate increase in the amount of aid that gets through, cholera and starvation are going to finish off almost everyone that Israeli bombs haven't. "We wrote a position paper praising UNRWA" isn't going to absolve the Biden admin (or the US collectively) from responsibility here. Honestly, I have a lot of trouble understanding what your point of view is. You seem to acknowledge that Israel is committing a genocide and that the Biden administration is aiding and abetting said genocide, but you consistently try to minimize Biden's responsibility by implying that he's working to end the genocide behind the scenes. As far as I can tell there's no evidence at all for that, and a decent body of evidence that points to Biden (& Blinken) categorically refusing the advice of career experts, other administration officials, and democratic interest groups (Black pastors, unions, etc) who are urging him to use some kind of leverage. It's as if you've assented to all of the premises that lead to the conclusion "Joe Biden is OK with the genocide of the Palestinian people", but can't bring yourself to follow through on the inference.
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Feb 8, 2024 00:32
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Esran posted:Thank you, Inferior Third Season, for much needed moderation of these dangerous ideas.
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Mar 20, 2024 20:12
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Esran posted:lmfao that probation. How are the moderators so poo poo at this?
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Mar 28, 2024 22:10
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Gucci Loafers posted:I don't know what else to really say, it is sad but I/P is a low, low priority on voters mind and incredibly unlikely to sway the outcome of the 2024 US Election. It's something that supercharges young educated voters but those are tiny in number and most young people don't vote in the first place. Maybe if Netanyahu actually invades Rafa you'll see some changes but it's already known Biden's relationship with him isn't great anyway. It's fascinating that the people repeating this seem to be entirely ignorant of the margins in swing states last time around. If youth turnout is 5-10% lower & Biden loses 80% of the Muslim vote, do you really think he's likely to pick up enough pro-genocide voters to make up the difference in MI/WI/PA/GA? It's true that most young people don't vote, but it's also true the increased youth turnout was necessary for Biden's 2020 victory. Unless Biden is picking up a bunch of votes somewhere else - and literally every single poll shows him doing worse than he was in 2020, so that's doubtful - he needs youth turnout at 2020 levels to have any hope of winning. Like, the reasoning here is fundamentally flawed: The fact that young voters turn out at lower rates than older voters does not entail that ignoring their concerns is a sound electoral strategy, especially if (as is the case) the margins are likely to be tight enough that a return to pre-2018 youth voting levels - which is just a reversion to the historical mean - suffices to lose Biden the election. If young voters are naturally apathetic and unreliable, then it stands to reason that ardent adherence to policies vehemently opposed by a significant portion (even if it's not a majority or plurality) of those voters is extremely likely to reduce voter turnout. (And it's not like Biden's particularly popular on a bunch of other issues that young voters rank higher than the genocide anyway.) So yeah, it's probably not going to be the single issue that sways the election. But that's a facile point: A single issue almost never decides the election. If you look at polls over the past year or two, young voters had significantly soured on Biden before he earned the Genocide Joe moniker. The problem is, his electoral strategy is predicated on those voters being sufficiently motivated by fear of Trump that they'll return to the fold. If that doesn't happen, he's screwed. As of right now, it sure looks like it's not happening. Or, to try this another way: Take a look at the actual ranking of most important issues. If I'm reading that correctly, foreign policy is roughly of the same importance as abortion/healthcare. If it were true that issues that aren't ranked highly can be ignored, then the democrats would be justified in completely ignoring abortion & healthcare, since they matter as much as foreign policy. You'd have to be a totally delusional moron to think that those issues don't contribute to people's voting patterns (both whether they vote & who they vote for if they do), even though they're both dwarfed in importance by the economy/inflation. For fun, observe that "Protecting Democracy", which seems to be the the issue Democrats are leading with, was also only ranked as the most important issue by 3% of the voters - exactly the same as foreign policy or abortion. By your reasoning, most people really don't care about protecting democracy either, so it surely won't influence anyone's vote. A less asinine take on this would be: "Which issue is the most important?" is a totally useless metric for predicting how people are going to vote.
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May 4, 2024 00:31
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