No matter how much Biden gives Israel, they'll always treat him like a little bitch, and Biden will always do what they tell him to.
Because they know they can get away with it.
I can't understand why people act like it's no big deal, if the president of America has more loyalty to another country, it should be disqualifying. I don't care what letter is next to their last name.
No matter who gets elected in a couple months, America won't be their priority.
Look, the two frontrunners for president were born in the 50s. For them the 1967 war on Israel is living memory, with Israel only having been formed as a state in 1948. For most of their lives, Israel has been a priority in US foreign politics.
For most of what I imagine is much of your own life, Israel has been aggressively expanding at the expense of the Palestinians. Mine too.
Without condoning it, our elder statesmen and stateswomen understand the middle east differently, and are looking for distinctly different outcomes. That ship doesn't turn on a dime, but it's fucking turning.
People are dying and its maddening. I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there. That conflict is baked into the very earth itself. Does that justify the arms deals? No. Do I have a point? Probably also no. But that's how it is and it sucks.
. I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there. That conflict is baked into the very earth itself. Does that justify the arms deals? No. Do I have a point? Probably also no. But that's how it is and it sucks.
If the US turned off the spending taps, stopped blocking Security Council Resolutions, and stopped acting as Israels lawyer, arms dealer, propagandist, and bully things would change pretty damn quickly.
Israel is effectively an American colony. It would turn into a pariah state very quickly without US backing.
Israel's vanity is that it's part of the Western family of civilised democracies. Its also a lot more economically integrated than North Korea. Shunning and boycotting it would be more analogous to South Africa.
For most of their lives, Israel has been a priority in US foreign politics.
Biden has gone record multiple times saying his unwavering support for Israel is from when he was a very small child his dad said they were the good guys...
I believe him when he says that, and I believe someone like that should not be anywhere near a political office. He's clearly mental unstable if that's the truth, and a liar if it isn't.
An entire lifetime has passed by since then. It's just absolutely fucking insane, but that's what he says.
. I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there.
...
You don't think if Israel got billions of dollars a year less for defense spending and didn't have the biggest kid on the block defending them nothing would change?
If they acted like this without the US behind them, they'd be wiped off the map.
If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they'd be forced to actually pursue peace.
If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they'd be forced to actually pursue peace.
No. It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees. Nothing would change for the Israelis or the Palestinians.
Also, we probably stationed some Really Massive Ordinance over there that we can't just evacuate on a Hercules or a Galaxy or 10. Its not like the US will just walk away from that. (Yes, like we did Afghanistan. Twice.)
Yeah, I suppose that's one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I've ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime ("cohesive plan" quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.
Look, I'm not saying we're clean here, and aren't complicit. We're walking a line of "being supportive" and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening "really fast" on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we're complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.
It's slow. Its maddening. It's also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I'm not OK with that and I'm struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it's probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.
People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I'm trying to trust that.
People are looking at it from a moral perspective, which is admirable and good but does nothing to explain why it's happening or how to stop it. Geopolitics is about power, not morals. I wish it weren't so but that's the world we live in. When you look at it through the eyes of power, it will still be complicated but it will be honest and constructive.
Yup. Think of a country like a large freighter. It takes a lot of time between turning the wheel and the ship actually turning. Especially when there's something wrong, like we've seen in Baltimore...
It just leaves a geopolitical power vacuum into which another opportunistic state would step in and supply them with some equally deadly munitions and financial guarantees.
Who? Russia who is buying weapons from North Korea? China who's trying to win over the Middle East? This is a needlessly pessimistic assumption.
If the US left them, even for a brief period like a year, they’d be forced to actually pursue peace.
I significantly doubt this. Netanyahu isn't suddenly going to grow a heart or morals. I fear he'd do just as bad, if not worse, and prompt the question of if we should get involved against them.
Remember, AIPAC funds US politicians. Not the other way around. They want the US to support Israel's goals. Those goals won't change if the US declines.
I also assure you that nothing the US does either way will appreciably change anything over there.
Could not disagree with you more on this.
Stop sending them billions of our taxpayer dollars, and stop sending them any more bombs being used to slaughter civilians. At the very least, this would force them to spend their own capital to produce their own bombs. That alone would make a massive difference.
I 100% believe that. But might it have done some good anyway? Just because "they'll just do it anyway" is a terrible excuse not to try to better the situation.
Let's lay out the facts to debunk your wildly inaccurate and out-of-context accusations.
I disagree personally with centralized money interests in politics, but it is currently legal and ubiquitous in the US.
In your list, Biden is one of about three hundred politicians to receive political donations from "pro-israel" groups.
Israel has been an active military ally of the US for 75 years, receives billions in aid annually from the US, and groups may legally support political candidates that vote to provide that aid.
Biden is one of the longest serving senators and has received political contributions according to years served, like the other 278 senators in the list.
As for your lie that Biden is "enthusiastically aiding in a genocide", it should be obvious by.
1)the most recent abstention of the US vote and veto from the UN regarding the immediate cease-fire,
2)netanyahu being upset with Biden and.
3)the overall perpetual breakdown of us-israel diplomatic relations
that Biden is in no way "enthusiastically aiding in a genocide".
He literally structured the deals in a way to avoid federal oversight. That's enthusiastic support if I've ever seen it. You're not living in reality if you fail to see these facts.
I see that Bidens enthusiastic support of a genocide "doesn't look like anything at all" to you, so I guess there's no more point in continuing the discussion. Hopefully he sees justice before he dies of old age.