Recent polls show former President Trump leading President Biden in key swing states that will likely decide the 2024 election, indicating Trump is not just the overwhelming favorite to secure the …
First, when we speak of genocide, generally it is with reference to the victim of the genocide. Using the Holocaust as an example, do you refer to this as the Nazi genocide or the Jewish genocide?
Second, we are not funding a genocide against the Palestinians. Israel is fighting Hamas, not the Palestinians. The Palestinians are unfortunate pawns being used by Hamas to shield themselves from Israel. This is an over simplification of the situation, but I don’t think it is fair to say we are funding a genocide against the Palestinians via the Israelis.
The thing is, Israel didn’t appear to be trying at all to spare civilians. Maybe there is lip service offered but nothing else. IDF is killing any motherfuckers they feel like and horrific acts are being perpetuated without any repercussions - allegedly murdering every woman and child they could in a school. Murdering their own people. Maybe out of indifference or maybe out of hate, it makes no difference to the dead.
Hamas started this latest round but Israel has been treating Palestinians like garbage for decades. It was inevitable they would act. I don’t see Hamas as appreciably worse than the Israeli government. I have empathy for both Jews and Palestinians. The governments aren’t the same as the people, and the governments are both evil.
The difference is Israel is the group with all the power and military might, so they have the obligation to use that power responsibly. They aren’t. They are guaranteeing hatred persists for another couple of generations.
I’m sure Biden is working behind the scenes, but the public face he presents isn’t how I want my country to be seen. I’m voting for him because Trump is worse yet, but Biden has been disappointing on this crisis.
Indifference to civilians is not genocide. It’s basically the history of war up to the end of the 20th century. When the US and UK bombed German factories in WW2, they didn’t care how many civilians were in or near those factories. Roughly 500,000 German civilians were killed by strategic bombing over two years.
The concept of “using power responsibly” and the obligation to minimize civilian deaths are brand new ideas that made their debut in America’s War on Terror as part of their “hearts and minds” strategy. You shouldn’t assume that everyone else in the world will follow that strategy.
I mean I have the expectation they’ll follow it if they want support. I don’t much care of you can justify it as a traditional stance on humanitarianism, it’s bullshit. Always was.
And I won’t argue your definition of genocide because it’s not actually essential to my point, but I do think it’s supported if you examine the totality of the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.
Maybe this is just an age difference here - I’m fifty - but bringing up Iraq and Afghanistan like you think that’s where I get my moral stance on war from is completely lost on me. I was in and out of the army before either. My perspective is post-Vietnam.
And look, I don’t think everything the allies did in WW2 was awesome either, but that was a case of total war. A kind of war that actually didn’t really exist before the twentieth century, rather than all of history as you seen to suggest. The goal was absolute capitulation ASAP including by cruel indifference and mass murder - civilians were seen as part of the war machine by providing labor, food, and an economy to support the German war machine. I won’t defend it, but I will observe that Palestinians are already under Israeli authority. They are already defeated. They are already essentially living in a prison camp. This isn’t total war, this is asymmetric warfare between a subjugated people and a greater technological, military, and economic power. Not comparable.
Ok so a couple of things.
First, when we speak of genocide, generally it is with reference to the victim of the genocide. Using the Holocaust as an example, do you refer to this as the Nazi genocide or the Jewish genocide?
Second, we are not funding a genocide against the Palestinians. Israel is fighting Hamas, not the Palestinians. The Palestinians are unfortunate pawns being used by Hamas to shield themselves from Israel. This is an over simplification of the situation, but I don’t think it is fair to say we are funding a genocide against the Palestinians via the Israelis.
The thing is, Israel didn’t appear to be trying at all to spare civilians. Maybe there is lip service offered but nothing else. IDF is killing any motherfuckers they feel like and horrific acts are being perpetuated without any repercussions - allegedly murdering every woman and child they could in a school. Murdering their own people. Maybe out of indifference or maybe out of hate, it makes no difference to the dead.
Hamas started this latest round but Israel has been treating Palestinians like garbage for decades. It was inevitable they would act. I don’t see Hamas as appreciably worse than the Israeli government. I have empathy for both Jews and Palestinians. The governments aren’t the same as the people, and the governments are both evil.
The difference is Israel is the group with all the power and military might, so they have the obligation to use that power responsibly. They aren’t. They are guaranteeing hatred persists for another couple of generations.
I’m sure Biden is working behind the scenes, but the public face he presents isn’t how I want my country to be seen. I’m voting for him because Trump is worse yet, but Biden has been disappointing on this crisis.
Indifference to civilians is not genocide. It’s basically the history of war up to the end of the 20th century. When the US and UK bombed German factories in WW2, they didn’t care how many civilians were in or near those factories. Roughly 500,000 German civilians were killed by strategic bombing over two years.
The concept of “using power responsibly” and the obligation to minimize civilian deaths are brand new ideas that made their debut in America’s War on Terror as part of their “hearts and minds” strategy. You shouldn’t assume that everyone else in the world will follow that strategy.
I mean I have the expectation they’ll follow it if they want support. I don’t much care of you can justify it as a traditional stance on humanitarianism, it’s bullshit. Always was.
And I won’t argue your definition of genocide because it’s not actually essential to my point, but I do think it’s supported if you examine the totality of the treatment of Palestinians by Israel.
Minimizing civilian casualties was not humanitarian, it was a necessary part of America’s ultimate goal: nation-building.
I don’t think that’s America’s goal here.
Maybe this is just an age difference here - I’m fifty - but bringing up Iraq and Afghanistan like you think that’s where I get my moral stance on war from is completely lost on me. I was in and out of the army before either. My perspective is post-Vietnam.
And look, I don’t think everything the allies did in WW2 was awesome either, but that was a case of total war. A kind of war that actually didn’t really exist before the twentieth century, rather than all of history as you seen to suggest. The goal was absolute capitulation ASAP including by cruel indifference and mass murder - civilians were seen as part of the war machine by providing labor, food, and an economy to support the German war machine. I won’t defend it, but I will observe that Palestinians are already under Israeli authority. They are already defeated. They are already essentially living in a prison camp. This isn’t total war, this is asymmetric warfare between a subjugated people and a greater technological, military, and economic power. Not comparable.