I took a bit of a vacation from political blogging because every time I look at Trump and company, all I can feel is pure and simple disgust. I can barely scrape it together to rhetorically fluff the corruption and assholery into something mildly amusing, anymore. In the clip above, the president of South Africa has been subjected to an ambush of white genocide claptrap by a senile racist lunatic, and levels Trump with a quip about his obvious corruption--and Trump, unknowingly sells it: of course he would take a plane from anyone. He's a taker, a crook.
And everyone knows it.
Of course, this is about the "free plane" from Qatar, which has now been accepted by the Department of Defense. There is no such thing as a free plane. It will need to be hardened for use as a base f operations for the US C-i-C, and it should be inspected minutely for any surveillance devices. And the funny old thing is--Trump asked for it.
I am completely opposed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, I genuinely think the Rafah operation will be a bloodbath and should be reconsidered, and I am highly skeptical that the eradication of Hamas is fully possible without what already are proving to be unacceptable human casualties. I want to believe that in a different political situation, Gazans might want something more like Fatah (which Hamas exterminated in that region) leading them in an autonomous state. I support the free speech rights of the protesters at various colleges, even to the extent that I am dubious of the effect of the protests and don't truly believe they are as well-informed as they need to be.
I do not want a recap of National Guard breaking heads at Berkeley, or Kent State. Reactionaries are looking for the opportunity to have hardhat riots and so on, and some people are openly fantasizing about the Democratic National Convention being another 1968.
Given my feelings about all of the above, let me be that wet-blanket Gen X asshat who wants to tell the children, ever so delicately--the hell you are doing the same thing my parents' generation did. When pro-Palestinians all say "Genocide Joe", maybe they think they are just echoing their grandparents' asking LBJ how many kids he killed that day. But Joe isn't dropping the bombs, and Israel is getting incoming missiles all the time from Hamas, Hezbollah, and there is a threat of war from Iran.
Which leads me to point out that young man in the picture above with the Hezbollah flag--with a machine gun on it. Almost a gentle hippie, just repping something that is by no means a peace movement, but terrorism.
When 1968 begat Nixon, he prolonged the Vietnam War. No, really. My dad's generation was drafted. He (Nixon) on the advice of Kissinger, prolonged the war.
There is nothing, nothing, like a tragedy to awaken the urge in Republicans to blame Democrats for it. I don't need to go further back than Benghazi. But I don't want to dwell on that--I will. I don't want to.
The missile strikes on Israeli citizens by Hamas is an unpardonable and wretched provocation that does nothing to liberate a single soul in Gaza. You can empathize with the cause of everyday Palestinians, and still nothing should come more naturally to you than to condemn this appalling and coordinated, obviously long-planned attack on Israeli civilians. They have slaughtered and terrorized families and kidnapped children. Whatever good will I have for Palestinian people and their plight, this is no answer for that. And long history shows the response will only be more misery for the Palestinian people. Hamas is a bad actor, and backed by Hezbollah. The competence of the attack and its failure to be caught ahead of time is owing to materiel support from outside and systemic intelligence failure within Israel's borders.
What does that mean? It means this wasn't planned in a minute or on the fly, and yeah, I think Iran had something to do with it. I also think it's likely that strategic intelligence and military attention was directed elsewhere (the settlements) instead of expecting intifada. And while I deplore what is happening and the terror Israeli people are facing, that the retaliation will be on Palestinian people as a whole and will not just likely decimate Hamas is tragic.
The problems of the ME are tragic. I can support the human problem without wanting to see genocide as an answer. For many Americans, however, the troubles in Israel's borders are abstractions. And that is what uncanny valley-faced RNC chair Ronna McDaniel is talking about--abstracting the conflict to be somehow the fault of the Biden Administration.
You hear that? The deaths of hundreds of people in the nation of our ally was "a great opportunity". And all the little pischers jumped to lying about what happened and blamed the recent hostage deal for what happened just to smear Joe Biden.
Take J. D. Vance:
Vance already has horrific takes on Ukraine, so why not be fucked up about Israel? Actually, is he going to finish up by sucking Bashar al-Assad off, because that's the usual trajectory for people with this much Putin-enabled shit-opinions. Israel has every right to defend itself (does Ukraine?) But didn't Vance KNOW the unfreezing of $6B assets of Iran oil money located in Doha banks and being watched over by the US Treasury, can only be spent on food and medicine and not a penny has even been touched yet?
And are a whole mess of other Republicans also repeating the same lie Vance is?
I don't really have anything else to add. If Trump is contacting King Abdullah of Jordan because he inadvertently (we assume, charitably) burned a Jordanian source and means to apologize, I don't even know what I want to say. But...
I am sorry our democracy has produced someone so inadequate as to fail the relationship we should have with our nearest allies in the struggle against the ISIS threat. I recognize, even if our current President does not, that Muslims are so often the main target of ISIS' violence(and even still, the threat of al-Qaeda). And if the Islamic allies that the US still has are soured on the United States' comradeship because of this event, I consider it my challenge to work to place better, wiser, more understanding government officials in place, who understand the sensitive relationship between stable regional governments, and extremist groups that have no capacity to govern. I do not know that my current government has this understanding, but maybe they can listen if approached with a will to inform.
That is all I can do with them. Hope. And with my little platform, maybe inform--if not my government, then anyone who might listen.
At first, one might look at Senator Lindsey Graham's call for an authorization for military force against Daesh as just being an invitation to an open-ended total war with no exit strategy, and every grinding, bloody, anti-civilian tactic on offer.
But that phrase: "not limited by Time, Geography or Means".
Sounds sinister: We will fight them on the oceans and seas, on land, and on the astral plane? We will fight them in R'lyeh and Carcosa. We will go back in a time machine and mess with their grandpappies. Dark forces will be invoked. Zombies may be deployed.
And I never want another theocratic or theocrat-friendly politician in the White House ever again. Because that kind of logic is...not logic. It's signifying and in error. It doesn't work.
Yes, that'sTom Cotton, reminding us that there were politics in the 1980;s and the 1930's. What I find interesting, as a student of history and politics, is that Russia and the US were aligned in the conflict that Cotton is alluding to--the fight against Nazi Germany, and were cautiously allies.
What the simpleton from Arkansas doesn't understand is that we--the United States, have been dealing with Syria via diplomacy or direct warfare, for a couple years now. That would be under the leadership of our current president, Barack Obama. We have to be leading from behind in the sense that being the US (not being the leader of the US, Barack Obama, but a representative thereof) is regarded negatively in the world because of things like the Iraq invasion which made so very many things regionally worse for people in the Middle East. There have been Iraq and Syrian refugee crises.
But here is an interesting thing. Iran, Russia and some Iraq military are allied in going into Syria to allegedly whack ISIL. Ask yourself--what does Russia even want with the dirty candy that is being on Assad's side?
I'm not sure how many people will be closely following what's going on in Yemen right now, but it's exactly the sort of tangle that should remind us of why dealing with foreign states, even if the US tries to keep it under the umbrella of "the war on terror" (whether we call it that anymore or not) is fraught with the potential for blowback.
So, imagine we're just doing our war on terror thing, trying to knock out AQAP in Yemen because this a failed state where training is happening--and it's almost like regional powers have an interest in where this is going. We now have some kind of obvious proxy-war looking thing going on, with the Shia militias (Houthi) who have basically taken over the major cities including Sanaa are likely backed by Iran (and as a consequence, any connection we had with the vacated government in Yemen can be considered totally shared with Iran, now). And now the very concerned Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia are striking the area.
I don't think any of this has much to do with US interests. My gut says that this is exactly where the US should call "We're out!" and let them slug it out and snuff any little old extremist groups in the way while they are at it. My head thinks my gut has a point. And I think this general feeling is applicable elsewhere in the region.
If this is what ISIL wants to show about themselves; they aren't happy enough that they behead a handful of people here or there, but let it be known they also sometimes set a human being on fire. What can we do about that kind of mentality?
Is this supposed to be attractive? Is this supposed to be how they recruit? By gleefully, publically, being the worst sort of monsters that can exist?
The Jordanian government has swiftly responded by executing ISIL jihadist prisoners. Did ISIL think something else would happen?
I'm generally a jack-of-all-trades sort of blogger, who'll just as easily give forth regarding Afghan/Pakistan tribalism and Islamism or insert my $.02 regarding Iran, but I sure don't like to blog about the Middle East conflict all that much. For one thing, I'm hampered by my disdain for taking sides in a conflict where so much of it seems to be built up on tit for tat. People can try to talk about the deep history of Zionism going back to Herzl, or even talk about what is commemorated among Palestinians as the Nabka. But I don't care for that. The Palestinians are a young people, demographically. Wars have seen to that. And too many of the Gazan people only know occupation. They are taught to hate, and given real-time examples of why they should. And this sort of thing also contributes to the idea that Israel is a monster.
Is it? Objectively, I can appreciate the precarious sitution of a Democratic Jewish state situated amongst Islamic nations of varying political expressions that has not ever felt welcomed. But subjectively, I understand that the wars that made this brave nation created a refugee situation, and border disputes, and active causes for trouble. And I think these have to be acknowledged even by Israel's defenders. To state, as has sometimes been stated, that Israel was a country without a people for a people without a country, is simply wrong. There were Palestinians. And there still are. They have land records and histories. I don't think these should be ignored.
I'm not choosing sides. Hamas and the militant arm of pro-Palestinian advocates have too-often adopted terrorism as their modus operandi, to the detriment of the Palestinian people as a whole. This method has been not just ineffective, but disastrous, but has aparently been subsidized by Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia by way of paying the families of shaheed for their troubles. It's amazing to me that Palestinians haven't learned to hate the other Arab nations more than they hate the Israelis, for being so willing to see Palestinian youth snuff it as pawns for a political cause. But there, it apparently is. It's too easy to ask "Where are the Palestinian MLK's and Gandhi's?" But that, too, oversimplifies.
The reality is that Palestinian youth today don't know anything but occupation. And the method Israel has of dealing with the disaffected is war--militancy. But the world looks at this area of Gaza, "on a diet" and shudders. These are people who have been denied hope. Where people have no hope, they will live on revenge. Can't "never again" please extend to these stone-throwing Davids? Can't they be excused for not wanting a disapora to Jordan and Syria, for not wanting to lose their identities? I am not the one who wants to impose a false equivalncy, since all oppression is relative and unique, but....damn.
When the ship sent by Ireland and refused by Hamas is named the Rachel Corrie , Israel needs to accept they are the losers, even if they succeeded in representing their abilities to overwhelm a humanitarian flotilla, talk of Turkish terrorist sympathizers and "useful idiots" aside.
That shit is for propagandists. "Turkish Al Queda"."Nobel-prize-winning useful idiots". And the presence of bullet-proof jackets and gas masks among people who might have expected confrontation--not weapons, but defensive protections. Smart protestors on land in the US might make precautions against the possibility of riot-police descending with gas and rubber bullets. It's part of the deal.
Lamesauce, Israel. When a Turkish-American boy of 19 is shot four times in the head--the illusion that the violence of the response to the attempted breaking of the blockade, that threatened to continue to starve and stunt a generation of people, was self-defense, is broken.
I believe Israel has every right to exist. But the way it has is not sustainable. And the answer is not this kind of violence. There needs to be a humanitarien solution. But the Palestinians also need to wake up from the violent dream.
I hate blogging about this. Both sides need to bridge such a gap--altogether possible. Just hard to make happen.
