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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:Sure, but maybe the United States and UK could also not help Israel complete the ongoing extermination of thousands of people and displacement of millions by bombing a country where we also aided a genocide, and maybe your energy as a westerner should be focused on the people who are actually dying by the hand of your government and their allies who are all actively bombing and killing people in Yemen and Gaza rather than criticize that someone is fighting back in the wrong way because they might kill innocent civilians. No, I think we can criticize about all the people doing bad things, not just the ones we don't like. I, in fact, have plenty of energy for that. Doing wrong is doing wrong. Even if it is supposedly for a good cause, they are not actually advancing the Gazan cause and hurting lots of unrelated people. So they should absolutely be criticized for their methods.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:12
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Deteriorata posted:That's classic whataboutism. What the Houthis are doing is wrong and should be stopped. It has no relation to anything anyone else is doing. If you support stopping people who are doing a genocide also bombing people attempting to stop a genocide because the group fighting back against the extermination are using questionable methods, it looks like to me you’re still just supporting a genocide. The fact that the Houthi strikes are being referred to as a “bad thing” overall and pretending the wider context of the past Saudi lead genocide in Yemen or the ongoing genocide in Gaza isn’t relevant betrays you. Frankly it’s not any of your places to claim that they are hurting the cause of Palestine. I have yet to see a single Palestinian say so. It is all about justifying the moral abomination that is American policy.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:21
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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:If you support stopping people who are doing a genocide also bombing people attempting to stop a genocide because the group fighting back against the extermination are using questionable methods, it looks like to me you’re still just supporting a genocide. Attacking unarmed civilians is always wrong and that you think it is ever justified says a whole lot about you.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:22
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Deteriorata posted:Attacking unarmed civilians is always wrong and that you think it is ever justified says a whole lot about you. Are we talking about Gaza again, where people are actually dying, or are they not civilians?
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Feb 20, 2024 22:25
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Deteriorata posted:Maybe the Houthis shouldn't be targeting unarmed civilians and should try to find some other way to apply pressure to Israel. Maybe they can table a resolution at the UN.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:28
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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:Are we talking about Gaza again, where people are actually dying, or are they not civilians? Has anyone here said that attacking Gazans is good in any way? Also, it's not like the only way to die is from bombs or bullets. Making it harder for poor people to get food or drugs can be just as lethal. hadji murad posted:Maybe they can table a resolution at the UN. Attacking civilians isn't the only other option besides the UN.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:28
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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:If you support stopping people who are doing a genocide also bombing people attempting to stop a genocide because the group fighting back against the extermination are using questionable methods, it looks like to me you’re still just supporting a genocide. What a loving leap to take. One can be critical of the efficacy and potential side effects of a form of direct action and not support the thing the direct action is targeting. For a relevant example, I think the strikes on the ground in Yemen but the US and UK are a huge mistake. They're unlikely to provide any utility beyond what the escorts already do and will likely only serve to solidify opposition to the West in the region. Yet at the same time I don't support the Houthi blockade of the red sea due to its likely low efficacy and probable follow on effects on food security.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:31
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Kchama posted:Has anyone here said that attacking Gazans is good in any way? No but many people here have explicitly supported or refused to condemn American and UK actions that involve killing people in Yemen in order to support the genocide in Gaza, while being extremely focused only on hypothetical deaths and actual damage to property by the Houthis. Please don’t do the Sudan concern trolling, that one is really gross given what the US and Saudis did to Yemen recently,
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Feb 20, 2024 22:31
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Kagrenak posted:What a loving leap to take. One can be critical of the efficacy and potential side effects of a form of direct action and not support the thing the direct action is targeting. I would say killing people in Yemen to prevent pressure on Israel is more than a mistake. A mistake might be how I would describe some of the Houthis actions. Butter Activities fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 22:32
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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:No but many people here have explicitly supported or refused to condemn American and UK actions that involve killing people in Yemen in order to support the genocide in Gaza, while being extremely focused only on hypothetical deaths and actual damage to property by the Houthis. So "No, but what if I said an entirely different argument instead", I see. Also I see that caring about people being hurt is concern trolling if it isn't caused by the West. People can disapprove of all of those things, you do know that, right?
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Feb 20, 2024 22:36
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Does anyone have an explanation or possible explanation for why the US/Allies haven't offered to pay the Houthis off? It must be costing hundreds of millions of bucks a week to fire all those interceptors, keep the planes in the air, fuels the ships, feed the sailors, etc - not to mention the cost of shipping insurance going through the roof. I'm sure that offering to establish / rebuild a Yemeni port, feeding the Yemeni people, and / or helping develop their maritime assets would galvanize the Houthi gov't to deal. Hell, even direct cash would start to provide Yemen resources that will help them become independent from Iranian aid / build a stable political foundation to work with.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:49
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Tangy Zizzle posted:Does anyone have an explanation or possible explanation for why the US/Allies haven't offered to pay the Houthis off? It must be costing hundreds of millions of bucks a week to fire all those interceptors, keep the planes in the air, fuels the ships, feed the sailors, etc - not to mention the cost of shipping insurance going through the roof. China set up a deal between the Houthis and Iran and the SA doing basically that, last April. Considering that China is mad about Houthis breaking the deal with all of this, I don't think they're trusted anymore to be bribed off.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:59
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Tangy Zizzle posted:Does anyone have an explanation or possible explanation for why the US/Allies haven't offered to pay the Houthis off? It must be costing hundreds of millions of bucks a week to fire all those interceptors, keep the planes in the air, fuels the ships, feed the sailors, etc - not to mention the cost of shipping insurance going through the roof. The Houthi probably wouldn't be terribly amenable. Our recent history with them is very bad, and tribal confederations tend to be hard to bribe in any case. On top of that, lots of the relevant US shot-callers would be very opposed to the idea on principle. "Iran-backed terrorist" groups are fairly radioactive among the military, intelligence, and state departments. Also the gulf states would flip their poo poo. Other regional powers wouldn't be terribly happy with us either.
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Feb 20, 2024 23:03
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Deteriorata posted:That's classic whataboutism. What the Houthis are doing is wrong and should be stopped. It has no relation to anything anyone else is doing. I mean, yes it does. Even if it's only rhetorical cover, it clearly has a direct relation to something else that is happening.
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Feb 20, 2024 23:48
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Deteriorata posted:That's classic whataboutism. What the Houthis are doing is wrong and should be stopped. It has no relation to anything anyone else is doing. i don't think this is what "whataboutism" is generally taken to mean. that's more of a "you cannot criticise x because you are doing y, which is also bad" thing. in the case of the houthis they are saying "we are doing x, which is admittedly bad, to put pressure on people to stop y, which we consider to be much worse pursuant to a generally accepted standard". the reason that there's a continual argument about whether those statements are accurate or reasonable is because that's basically the precise formula for a just war, i.e. not whataboutism. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 23:50
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to put it this way: if a person is beating the snot out of another person, someone might consider it justified to restrain that person before anyone's seriously hurt. restraining said person might result in moderate injury, and they might have a good reason to dislike their victim (say there was some horrible scam or something), but generally we consider extreme violence a greater ill than moderate violence and the temporary removal of liberty and dignity of even someone with a pretty righteous anger. the calculus if one is charitable to the houthis is: by increasing the cost of doing business for maritime business associated with israel, they can put pressure on the international community to prevent the israelis from committing a genocide. military force to prevent them from doing this means that they expand their list of allowed targets to ships affiliated with countries actively trying to prevent them from preventing said genocide. if one accepts that it's reasonable to call what's going on in gaza at the moment a genocide, and if one accepts that the international community can indeed prevent the genocide (i think both of those are reasonable given the ICJ and israel's dependence on the US specifically for military equipment), it gets complicated to argue that the houthis are altogether in the wrong here - not impossible, as one can show that the measure is incommensurate with the goal or the possible effect that such a measure can have (among other strategies, i'm sure), but complicated. it also opens one up to some very damaging moral criticisms if one can be plausibly argued to support a military action meant to keep a genocide going, which is also quite uncomfortable. however, again, if one can establish that the houthis' actions don't actually have anything to do with gaza at all, one doesn't have to deal with all of that unpleasantness. the problem with attempts at doing this is that it's arguing in the face of several uncontroversial points of fact (the houthis' public communications are insisting that their actions are, in fact, connected to gaza, something has precipitated an increase in their activity warranting a fairly serious military intervention and at least some ships have decided that it's worth it to specify that they have nothing to do with israel). in my opinion, the case to make in the face of this evidence is pretty weak, and tends to rely on some variant of "the houthis are evil and therefore their actions should never be interpreted charitably", which i think is fallacious V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 00:07
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Well we can't possibly condemn the attacks on Gaza until we condemn the attacks from October 8, can we? And we can't go into the specifics of that horrific engagement without examining all the historical interactions between Israel and Palestine. Those conflicts need to be contextualized with world events that were ongoing in the middle of the 20th century, and so on and so on and so on and so on. This poo poo is so tedious and imbecilic. If you want to justify attacks on uninvolved civilian vessels by horrific religious fundamentalists, go nuts. That stink don't wash off. So say it loud and proud. The idea that you have some kind of moral superiority to just about anybody afterwards is a misconception on your part.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:08
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Grip it and rip it posted:Well we can't possibly condemn the attacks on Gaza until we condemn the attacks from October 8, can we? And we can't go into the specifics of that horrific engagement without examining all the historical interactions between Israel and Palestine. Those conflicts need to be contextualized with world events that were ongoing in the middle of the 20th century, and so on and so on and so on and so on. i admittedly have a deficit in my empathy with even quite innocent container ships compared to human beings of flesh and blood, even bad ones, and this might be colouring my analysis here
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Feb 21, 2024 00:18
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It's not really complicated at all. Even if all of their attacks were purely because of righteous fury about the Gazan genocide, then you can still say that they're doing it in such a way that they just make things worse and do not help the situation in Gaza at all. Righteousness of cause does not make up for evil of actions.V. Illych L. posted:i admittedly have a deficit in my empathy with even quite innocent container ships compared to human beings of flesh and blood, even bad ones, and this might be colouring my analysis here This is more due to luck than anything, though. If Israel lobbed missiles at a ship and failed to kill anyone, nobody would give them a pass on that, nor should they. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 21, 2024 00:21
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Kchama posted:It's not really complicated at all. Even if all of their attacks were purely because of righteous fury about the Gazan genocide, then you can still say that they're doing it in such a way that they just make things worse and do not help the situation in Gaza at all. Righteousness of cause does not make up for evil of actions. i agree that this is a case which can be made (and it's the one i find most compelling for that side of the argument), but it's not a straightforward one. one reason among others that it's not straightforward is that the actions being taken to make them stop doing the thing that they're doing facially seems to validate their stated logic, namely that using violence to impose a cost to non-compliance with a reasonable demand is a valid way to enforce certain important principles. the US also operates on this logic more broadly, as when it imposes economic sanctions using its key position in the global financial system. i don't think one has to condemn such sanctions in all cases to condemn the houthis' actions here (or even to support the military action intended to quell them), but one might find oneself having to execute some difficult maneuvers to avoid committing to a principle which one cannot actually defend. i should clarify that i'm personally ambivalent on this issue - i do think that if it were reasonable to expect that this blockade could directly force the israelis to stop, it would be justified. if it can meaningfully contribute to making the israelis stop, it's a very difficult calculation to make. if it cannot be reasonably imagined to make any difference, it is clearly unjustified. i don't think the former nor the latter are accurate interpretations, so i find myself in the big moral grey zone here. all that said, the moral issue is imo clearly secondary. my position remains that stopping israel's actions in gaza would remove the prestige which makes it so difficult to actually stop the houthis and remains the most straightforward solution to this problem. the military intervention doesn't seem to be accomplishing much at all. e. to respond to this: Kchama posted:This is more due to luck than anything, though. If Israel lobbed missiles at a ship and failed to kill anyone, nobody would give them a pass on that, nor should they. as a matter of actual fact, the israelis have gotten a pass on quite a lot of illicit missile-lobbing, whether it killed anyone or not, as well as firing at ships and enforcing an illegal blockade with a higher body count than the houthis' blockade has to this date (i don't know off the top of my head whether they've specifically fired missiles at any ships without killing anyone, but that doesn't seem to be the spirit of this post). happily the israelis are not the issue here, i take it as a given that they should be condemned. V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 00:35
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V. Illych L. posted:i agree that this is a case which can be made (and it's the one i find most compelling for that side of the argument), but it's not a straightforward one. one reason among others that it's not straightforward is that the actions being taken to make them stop doing the thing that they're doing facially seems to validate their stated logic, namely that using violence to impose a cost to non-compliance with a reasonable demand is a valid way to enforce certain foundational principles. the US also operates on this logic more broadly, as when it imposes economic sanctions using its key position in the global financial system. i don't think one has to condemn such sanctions in all cases to condemn the houthis' actions here (or even to support the military action intended to quell them), but one might find oneself having to execute some difficult maneuvers to avoid committing to a principle which one cannot actually defend. I don't imagine Israel stopping would do much to stop the Houthis from doing their attack. They've been doing them for the past 8-ish years, to the point that them stopping was part of a deal that the China brokered between the Saudis and Iran last April. It was a huge feather in China's cap because the Saudis capitulated on pretty much everything, and the Houthis did not hold to their side at all on that aspect. So this is just more of a return to form for the Houthis instead of just a crusade for Gaza's sake. So actions that do not advance the Gazan cause (and in fact may be harming it) combined with lying about the purposes of the attacks make me think very ill of the Houthis just in regards to this. V. Illych L. posted:as a matter of actual fact, the israelis have gotten a pass on quite a lot of illicit missile-lobbing, whether it killed anyone or not, as well as firing at ships and enforcing an illegal blockade with a higher body count than the houthis' blockade has to this date (i don't know off the top of my head whether they've specifically fired missiles at any ships without killing anyone, but that doesn't seem to be the spirit of this post). happily the israelis are not the issue here, i take it as a given that they should be condemned. Sorry. Just to be clear, I meant in this thread.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:42
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Kchama posted:I don't imagine Israel stopping would do much to stop the Houthis from doing their attack. They've been doing them for the past 8-ish years, to the point that them stopping was part of a deal that the China brokered between the Saudis and Iran last April. It was a huge feather in China's cap because the Saudis capitulated on pretty much everything, and the Houthis did not hold to their side at all on that aspect. i've been over this previously at some length, but i don't think that this is a credible position. there seems to me to be a clear causal connection between what's going on in gaza and the present blockade, if by no other means than preventing a broader arab coalition from intevening against the houthis at this point. if you're interested in more depth on this point, i have several posts about this specific issue itt so you can just check the last page or so of my post history here.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:46
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V. Illych L. posted:i've been over this previously at some length, but i don't think that this is a credible position. there seems to me to be a clear causal connection between what's going on in gaza and the present blockade, if by no other means than preventing a broader arab coalition from intevening against the houthis at this point. if you're interested in more depth on this point, i have several posts about this specific issue itt so you can just check the last page or so of my post history here. I have about as much belief in it being for the good of Gazans as in the American government when they say they bomb countries for Our Freedom. Taking advantage of people's sympathies and saying pretty things to try and sway people to not hate you when you do something evil is a pretty time-honored tradition.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:51
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The Houthis have declared a blockade and every ship that doesn't go the long way around or surrender have decided to ignore that warning and put themselves at risk for no particular gain, other than profits for the companies and continued political support for Israel for the governments. Don't have to like the Houthis to be happy at least someone is doing what they can to protect Palestinians. We don't condemn Ukraine every time they cause civilian casualties
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Feb 21, 2024 00:53
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Party In My Diapee posted:The Houthis have declared a blockade and every ship that doesn't go the long way around or surrender have decided to ignore that warning and put themselves at risk for no particular gain, other than profits for the companies and continued political support for Israel for the governments. Don't have to like the Houthis to be happy at least someone is doing what they can to protect Palestinians. We don't condemn Ukraine every time they cause civilian casualties How is it protecting the Palestinians? It's not going to make Israel stop and their missiles are being fired at innocent people. Also how would this line of reasoning not be used to excuse every evil blockade or sanctions? Also, Ukraine absolutely should be condemned if they intentionally fired at civilian location intending to cause damage to civilians.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:57
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Kchama posted:I have about as much belief in it being for the good of Gazans as in the American government when they say they bomb countries for Our Freedom. Taking advantage of people's sympathies and saying pretty things to try and sway people to not hate you when you do something evil is a pretty time-honored tradition. i don't think that speculating about the inner life and conviction of the houthi politburo is a fruitful exercise. i don't know them, and i'm sure that they're perfectly awful people in the way that hard-bitten insurgents often are. all i need to avoid such speculation is a causal link - a quite amoral concept - between the ongoing action in palestine and the blockade. again, i've argued the specifics here at length in previous posts itt, but in summary this link can be established through the clear popular prestige that the palestinian cause holds among the population of arab nations and the loud rhetorical framing by the houthi leadership of the blockade as a response to israel's actions (the continued relative silence of the egyptian government on the subject of the houthis is particularly loud here imo - this is a big problem for them). it can also be established through the apparent uptick in houthi maritime activity following oct. 7th, and the ensuing US-led military action to contain them, as well as the decrease in traffick through the suez canal following houthi escalations, and probably in several other ways as well. i have argued some of them in more detail in previous posts, as mentioned. if we accept that such a link exists (i.e. that we can reasonably expect the problem to at least significantly decrease if the stated demands are met), then it follows that the most straightforward course of action is to meet those stated demands if they're reasonable. i conveniently happen to hold the opinion that those demands should be met independently of the houthis making them (i.e. i think that a "permanent" ceasefire and allowing emergency aid into gaza are good things per se), so i don't have to think very hard on the precise calibration of how much violence is justified to exert what level of pressure except as a rather unpleasant academic exercise. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 01:03
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Party In My Diapee posted:The Houthis have declared a blockade and every ship that doesn't go the long way around or surrender have decided to ignore that warning and put themselves at risk for no particular gain, other than profits for the companies and continued political support for Israel for the governments. Don't have to like the Houthis to be happy at least someone is doing what they can to protect Palestinians. We don't condemn Ukraine every time they cause civilian casualties This is 100% false. The Houthis themselves have stated over and over again that they're targeting specific ships and aren't going to expand that scope to all ships in the Red Sea. And, just to be clear to show that the Houthis aren't trying to do an entire blockade, there are lots of ships still passing through the Red Sea unhindered: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/RED-SEA/ship-traffic-tracker Kalit fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 01:56
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V. Illych L. posted:i admittedly have a deficit in my empathy with even quite innocent container ships compared to human beings of flesh and blood, even bad ones, and this might be colouring my analysis here Fun Fact: It's not a either / Or situation. You can do both. It's actually possible to not celebrate any unprovoked attack on anybody, ever! What a world. You also don't have to hold your nose and praise the kind of people that have committed human rights violations on the scale that the Houthi have committed, ever! It's really that simple. Doing otherwise makes you seem like a morally dubious cretin who is willing to ignore horrific behavior as long as it suits their purposes. Rather than giving you some kind of moral superiority, this actually makes you similar to Ronald Regan or the Neoconservatives. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 21, 2024 02:13
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It would be quite strange and morally shall we say not that courageous in a discussion of world war 2 for someone to obsess only the actions the British in Dresden or India, or the Soviets in Poland, and emphasizing the only those victims, while describing the actions of say Italy and Japan as more regrettable but necessary, and resisted any narravtice that connects them with responsibility for the holocaust or the brunt of axis war crimes, especially if they were employed or directly benefited from an Axis regime.
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Feb 21, 2024 02:31
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Grip it and rip it posted:Fun Fact: It's not a either / Or situation. You can do both. It's actually possible to not celebrate any unprovoked attack on anybody, ever! What a world. You also don't have to hold your nose and praise the kind of people that have committed human rights violations on the scale that the Houthi have committed, ever! Nobody has celebrated it, but we understand as an attempt to do something to force change in regards to a going genocide against a vastly superior power. I do not care that they were no angels. Given that both of us were or are in the US military I think it’s frankly quite embarrassing to be claiming a sort of moral high ground in regards to Yemen. You and others have steadfastly refused to acknowledge or denied the context of the recently attempted genocide we supported upon Yemen and the connection to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Could you also explain that cryptic comment you made earlier? 2nd e: an even better analogy would be obsessing over war crimes or innocents killed by Soviet and Jewish Partisans and then declaring that well it’s not like you support Hitler, even though you don’t really have a problem with the German army, after all they need to defend themselves Butter Activities fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 02:39
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Party In My Diapee posted:The Houthis have declared a blockade and every ship that doesn't go the long way around or surrender have decided to ignore that warning and put themselves at risk for no particular gain, other than profits for the companies and continued political support for Israel for the governments. Don't have to like the Houthis to be happy at least someone is doing what they can to protect Palestinians. We don't condemn Ukraine every time they cause civilian casualties Too bad about the effect it is having on aid to Sudan, then? They're having a much bigger effect on delaying or preventing food and medicine getting to Sudanese civilians than any trivial impact on the Israeli economy. Rust Martialis fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 06:48
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I have risen from my dungeon to give a revolutionary new argument for the houthi. I declare that the houthi is capable of changing behaviour vis-a-vis a changing environment. Thank you. I feel a bit miffed that the consistent argument is that Houthis must be amoral pirates while they are picking a fight with the american empire. Like what is the cost-benefit calculation in which it would make sense to fight the empire just to do some light piracy. What kind of a rational actor theory or realistic international relations theory would support that? In addition, the arguments also seem to indicate that the Houthis do not and can not change their behaviour. Insofar as they did some light piracy and then started targetting Israeli and american ships. Meadowhill fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 07:02
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Kchama posted:This is more due to luck than anything, though. If Israel lobbed missiles at a ship and failed to kill anyone, nobody would give them a pass on that, nor should they. I point my esteemed colleagues at the USS Liberty incident.
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Feb 21, 2024 17:44
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Grip it and rip it posted:Fun Fact: It's not a either / Or situation. You can do both. It's actually possible to not celebrate any unprovoked attack on anybody, ever! What a world. You also don't have to hold your nose and praise the kind of people that have committed human rights violations on the scale that the Houthi have committed, ever! i can't see how you're engaging at all with any of my arguments. this just looks like insults and misrepresentations of things posted. i even addressed this specific thing you're doing here (the houthis are evil, so their actions and statements must never be viewed charitably) as a fallacy. if you disagree with this point i'm happy to discuss it. if you disagree with any of the premises or the arguments, feel free to make your case. otherwise i'm afraid that this is just nonsense.
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Feb 21, 2024 22:34
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Rust Martialis posted:Too bad about the effect it is having on aid to Sudan, then? They're having a much bigger effect on delaying or preventing food and medicine getting to Sudanese civilians than any trivial impact on the Israeli economy. the problem with this argument is that it only addresses the position that the houthis' blockade has no significant negative externalities. this is not a position i've seen literally anyone - including the houthis themselves - take. also: from what i can tell the only practical reason the moral character of the houthis is a matter of interest is whether it's ok to kill them (and probably quite a lot of other people trying to get at them). as i recall i've tried to get you specifically to give me another (non-academic - as a case for meditation on just use of force it's potentially interesting and i've admittedly indulged in this myself in this latest round of posting) reason to care about this before and you have failed to respond. to this, i would say that trying to kill the houthis is the present programme, and it has been a very bad strategy in terms of solving the apparent problem, namely that ships are being attacked in the red sea by the houthis. the obvious other strategy, which happens to coincide with what We In The West should be doing anyway, is to meet their stated demands and accept the unpleasant reality that a group which We In The West very much dislike has gotten a big propaganda win. the only way i can see which one can counter this would be that the houthis gaining prestige would be worse than allowing what may very well be an ongoing genocide in gaza come to fruition.
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Feb 21, 2024 22:44
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V. Illych L. posted:the problem with this argument is that it only addresses the position that the houthis' blockade has no significant negative externalities. this is not a position i've seen literally anyone - including the houthis themselves - take. A reasonable person of good moral character could simply think they should voluntarily stop deliberately causing more suffering and death to innocent people in Sudan by their campaign of attacks against random civilian vessels. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 22, 2024 06:37
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Deteriorata posted:That's classic whataboutism. What the Houthis are doing is wrong and should be stopped. It has no relation to anything anyone else is doing. "Whataboutism" as a defense against anti-imperialist critiques has its roots in white supremacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
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Feb 22, 2024 10:01
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420 Gank Mid posted:"Whataboutism" as a defense against anti-imperialist critiques has its roots in white supremacy To be fair, they were using the phrase as a defense long after the US had stopped routinely "lynching negros" but in this instance, Israel is looking like shaping up to launch their most destructive phase (with an expected scale in the 10's of thousands of civilian casualties) of their operations yet and here we are devoting pages to what must be one of the only kinetic operations in the Middle East by a state level actor that isn't killing people most times a weapon is launched. Weaponised whataboutism for me is the evoking of an injustice that is historical or of a vastly smaller scale with the intent to distract or otherwise prevent discussion and/or action on an injustice in the future of the much larger scale injustice. Basically a parallel of recognizing the imbalance of power.
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Feb 22, 2024 10:53
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Rust Martialis posted:A reasonable person of good moral character could simply think they should voluntarily stop deliberately causing more suffering and death to innocent people in Sudan by their campaign of attacks against random civilian vessels. This doesn't appear to address ilyich's point that military action against Ansarallah has proven to be supremely ineffective. At the present moment, the diplomatic solution is the only one that offers a clear path towards ending the blockade of the red sea. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 22, 2024 12:45
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420 Gank Mid posted:"Whataboutism" as a defense against anti-imperialist critiques has its roots in white supremacy Whataboutism en.m.wikipedia.org posted:According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer,[13] the term originated in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Zimmer cites a 1974 letter by history teacher Sean O'Conaill which was published in The Irish Times where he complained about "the Whatabouts", people who defended the IRA by pointing out supposed wrongdoings of their enemy: 
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Feb 22, 2024 16:09
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