- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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In an alternative timeline, Biden finally grows a pair, cancels this and other weapon shipments and the election ends with a landslide.
It’s right there Joe, it would be a bigger power move than him stepping down.
He needed 2 or 3 years to explore student loans. Maybe this is more complicated, so it will take infinitely longer.
So hold on, no troops in Ukraine, because they’re not NATO, but troops in Israel no problem?
Or is it because US is scared shitless of Putin? Or is it because a lot of prople sympathise eith Putin?
Maybe there’s no profit in aiding Ukraine?
We want Israel to win and we want Ukraine to be an expensive quagmire for Russia.
It’ll be the reverse.
Extending Russia, Rand Corporation 2019
The United States could also become more vocal in its support for NATO membership for Ukraine… While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.
Expanding U.S. assistance to Ukraine, including lethal military assistance, would likely increase the costs to Russia, in both blood and treasure, of holding the Donbass region. More Russian aid to the separatists and an additional Russian troop presence would likely be required, leading to larger expenditures, equipment losses, and Russian casualties. The latter could become quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf
If Putin didn’t have the nuclear card in his pocket US boots would have been on the ground in Ukraine 2 years ago.
Doesn’t Iran have nuclear weapons as well?
Not currently
They literally tested one like a week ago.
You absorb disinfo like a sponge? Citations needed.
“the Israelis are clearly planning something for Iran that is going to cause a retaliation they know their own systems are unable to take.”
This has me very worried. What the heck are they planning that the US would send its troops to operate a THAAD? What are they going to do that would cause that severe of a response from Iranian forces?
“Nothing in current law authorizes the United States to conduct offensive military action against Iran.”
Alas, that’s technically wrong, because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001#Efforts_for_repeal
The 2001 AUMF has been widely perceived as a bill that grants the President powers to unilaterally wage perpetual “worldwide wars”
Vance is right about one thing - the 2001 AUMF has got to be repealed.
If you only had scrolled down just a little bit:
That’s funny (but sadly very true). I see it now, it just federated late to my instance.
BTW, why’d you downvote me? I’d have thought from that comment we’re actually agreed, but your downvote confused me on your viewpoint…
There is a lot about this that is nuts, but one thing that really jumps out at me.
It seems like Netanyahu is planning an October surprise to shank Harris. And it seems like he is doing it in broad daylight. It certainly seems like a massive offensive strike on Iran one or two weeks before the election is a straightforward way to throw a close election to Trump.
But with this I have to ask: are Biden and Harris assisting with a plan that is clearly intended to cost Harris the election?
I want to say that they surely must’ve told Israel not to launch anything before election day. But based in their actions so far, it doesn’t seem like they’re imposing a “no election interference against us personally” requirement as a condition of their assistance.
I guess we’ll see.
Their messaging so far to Israel has been “do whatever the fuck you want, 💰💰”
It feels like they are totally beholden to Israel.
If they push back hard, they alienate swing voters who like Israel from the old days, aka apocalypse.
This is actually a persistent myth: there is no evidence that they are beholden to a constituency that would punish them for any actions that curtail Israel.
Israel’s actions are wildly unpopular across the electorate. They are unpopular with nearly all Democrats as well as most independents and a very large plurally of Republicans. I have seen numerous polls that show that there is a very significant number of voters that Harris is losing over this, and I have seen absolutely nothing to indicate that there is any measurable cost to her speaking out against Israel at all. Which is really sad. Because it means that this is absolutely a moral choice on her part. This is not an electoral choice at all.
I am not religious so I don’t know the details but I have a friend who is very religious and refuses to vote for Trump again. He hates Harris but won’t give me a reason. When I have brought up the Israel stuff he immediately jumps to a very, holy land, must support and defend at any cost mentality. He would never vote Democrat but it makes me wonder how pervasive this weird fairy tale attachment exists throughout the voting base.
That’s a good question. Is your friend an evangelical Christian? A lot of people don’t know this, but the actual biggest plurality of political Zionists in the US are not Jews, but Evangelical Christians who support Israel because they believe it is a chess piece in bringing about the end of the world (which is a good thing in their dogma).
They also happen to often like the idea of ethnofascism, which is a very sad state of affairs.
He is evangelical Christian yes. I don’t have much exposure to religion. I have gone to his church a couple times when he has asked me to in the decade or so we’ve been friends. I’m in my forties. I’ve never felt pressured but I also keep my religion or lack of to myself. I just never really understood the position on Israel and it really stuck out to me. Even though he will freely admit how crazy and hateful things are out of the MAGA crowd, I get the feeling anytime the topic gets close to coming up with me he fends it off by essentially communicating to me that he has unwavering and unquestioned support of Israel and I haven’t been willing to push it since he is otherwise a great person in my life that has helped me through a number of difficulties.
That’s a shame. For what it’s worth, his position isn’t a mystery to me. I believe that he’s been convinced by his church that unquestioningly supporting Israel’s expansionary goals, regardless of any other moral question is an absolute necessity for anyone who truly loves Jesus and believes strongly in his rebirth and in the promise of everlasting life in heaven.
It is – with all due respect – as crazy as anything you’d hear in a Texas cult bunker. But I’m guessing that it’s real as a wildfire to your friend. It makes me sad to think about.
I appreciate the insight and time you have taken to respond. Also your understanding. I have a really difficult time processing the situation. It does feel very cult like and matter of fact. I don’t understand how someone that seems so good can know something so bad is going on, who is so obviously able to recognize the bad in other related areas, and blindly vehemently support them unquestionably. He’s intelligent and successful…yet so lost, the most caring and compassionate person I know; it can’t be ok.
The insanity is not that it is Republicans or Democrats
The insane part is that America is just sleep walking straight into a war that will probably escalate into something much bigger and no one wants to do anything about it.
God help us all
“Never underestimate Joe Bidens ability to fuck everything up”. --Barrack Obama
I know this is a dumb question, but is that based on anything? Like a paraphrase of something? Or just headcanon?
I think it was during this series of events: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/biden-debt-ceiling-harry-reid-mitch-mcconnell/
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
As every other time the billions the government spend in propaganda are paying off.
I would much rather see a Harris administration handle this than chaos Trump.
This is a weird thing to say, but I actually don’t think that there’s any indication that Harris or Trump would do anything substantially different with regard to Israel, but the biggest change is that if Trump wins, I suspect that coverage of this will disappear behind all the coverage of his domestic chaos. At least if Harris is president I think there is a chance we see the press maintain a modicrum of interest in covering this.
Either way, words can’t describe my anger that Harris appears to be prepared to throw the election over her support for genocide. It is an unreal situation to watch.
Fuckface 45 literally said that Israel should “finish the job”:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240628-trump-let-israel-finish-the-job-in-gaza/
I’m not voting for that Fuckface. Neither should any intelligent person.
No intelligent person should vote for a party supporting a genocide either. Israel government is finishing the job already.
Ok. But either Harris or Trump WILL be our next president with how fucked up our election system is.
Who would you rather fight on this? A run of the mill democrat, or a literal nazi? We’re choosing our opponent, it’s the only choice we get.
Don’t support any of them and use your energies somewhere else, you said yourself that the system is fucked up
Sure. And then trump wins and i completely lose my reproductive rights and my trans wife loses her healthcare.
There’s more at stake here.
Okay black pill bro. When you grow up and understand how things actually work, let us know.
Maybe those of us who are actively trying (while also understanding how our choices work) will acquire Ranked Choice voting before you become mature enough to join in on this non-black-or-white conversation.
This is one of those times we should remind ourselves that if we as Redditors can plainly see something so out in the open and obvious, then almost certainly the executive branch can see it too. The odds of them knowing something we don’t know are overwhelmingly greater than the reverse.
I see this often, and it’s frequently, consistently not the case.
I understand the sense in this belief, but if you review history over just the last five years you can consistently see this not being true over and over. Going all the way back to the Iraq War: it was obvious at the time that the Bush administration was lying about their claimed evidence that there was an active program creating weapons of mass destruction. And at the time, there was a deafening movement of regular voters who loudly protested that we were absolutely convinced that it was complete and obvious bullshit.
And people like JOE BIDEN loudly expressed exactly what you’re saying: they know things we don’t know. They know what they’re doing.
And they didn’t! They did not have any meaningful information we didn’t have!
Sadly, it’s debatable whether they knew what they were doing. Did they expect it would be such a historic clusterfuck? That it would create decades of worsening outcomes for us? Probably not. But did they know they were making up a fake case for war because they wanted to let off some anger over 9/11 by killing hundreds and hundreds of THOUSANDS uninvolved Muslims, and build some new military bases near oil in the process? Yes. Obviously yes.
And after the fact, the people who claimed that they knew things that we didn’t became president and Secretary of State.
They do not know something we don’t know. They are doing exactly what this looks like. Biden would absolutely go to war with Iran just to serve the cause of Zionism even though he knows that Benjamin Netanyahu is a fascist. That is exactly what this is. There’s not chess logic behind this, you can absolutely know everything you need to if you read newspapers regularly.
The WMD were always a false pretext.
And anyway, you can’t cherry pick any one episode or even several from history where the heads of state were wrong or stupid and say that they don’t know more than we do. They literally have everything we have in the public media and enormous intelligence operations working for them. This doesn’t make them honest or infallible, but anyone who sits in their armchair tut tutting about how “gee I hope this president can see it’s an obvious trap” is, in a word, a fool.
I think you’re arguing a strawman version of my point. I’m not claiming that it’s impossible for them to know something we don’t. I’m just saying that the assumption that there is secret information that makes his actions sensible is not well founded.
There are numerous examples of leaders claiming expertise that wasn’t borne out. And if this were the case, I think it would be reasonable to expect them to at least claim this to be the case.
As it stands, this behavior can be fully explained with the information available to us and Biden’s foreign policy stance. So there is no reason when you see him doing something that can be easily explained by the observation that he has poor judgement and priorities that are wildly different than most Americans to believe that there is a reason outside of the public facts and our existing knowledge of his poor judgement and unpopular priorities.
If you want to narrow your point that’s fine but I never said that there must be some reason their actions make sense. I said they can be wrong or duplicitous but they necessarily have more access to information than we do and that’s a plain fact you can’t talk your way past with all the hindsight in the world.
It seems like Netanyahu is planning an October surprise to shank Harris. And it seems like he is doing it in broad daylight. It certainly seems like a massive offensive strike on Iran one or two weeks before the election is a straightforward way to throw a close election to Trump.
Do you realize that israel government is waging war only because they are backed by USA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war
Biden is trying really hard to lose the election for the democrats.
What blackmail does Netanyahu have on the guy? This is such a bad move.
It’s a numbers game. There are WAY more Jewish people in the US than there are Arabs (~7.5 vs 3.5 million, according to a quick Google search).
Strategically, those Jewish voters are also more likely to switch to a Republican vote than the Arabs, regardless. It would take 2 Arabs (or any other Democratic voter) sitting out to counter a single Democratic voter switching to a Republican vote.
Granted, none of this accounts for voter locations (because only the 7 swing states matter), voter enthusiasm, claims of national security, or (most importantly of all) ethics.
Except a lot of Jewish voters are anti Netanyahu and want a ceasefire too
AIPAC disagrees with you.
Wait until after the election to see who really stands where.
AIPAC ≠ Jews
AIPAC = Zionists
Its an important distinction.
I agree. That was an additional detail that I did not cover, as I wanted to keep it relatively simple. I expect that the anti-Netanyahu Jewish voters are unlikely to switch to voting Trump, given that the latter is firmly and openly pro-genocide.
That’s a good point, but I don’t think it’s about Jewish voters at all. It’s about AIPAC.
The only strategy here is AIPAC campaign donations.
All the rest of what you said is BS
What, specifically, did I say that you disagree with?
No one is supporting Israel because they are calculating Jewish population for votes, that’s ridiculous.
They support Israel because of aipac campaign donations. The only calculation is how much money is in their pocket. Nothing else matters, including the ongoing genocide.
Oh shit. Either he’s trolling Harris’s campaign or they really are a cult. Very popular decision joe, sure people will forget till november.
I got to believe Bibi has him by the balls somehow. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Can we article 25 this fool? Harris might have a better chance if she’s already been president for a bit anyway.
Governments and rulers had every peasant below them by the balls for centuries. What are you going to do about troops being deployed to aid israel?
Clickbait bullshit. The Department of Defense statement clarifies the US “troops” are just the crew required to operate the air defense battery equipment the US has been supplying to Israel for a while now.
This is not the first time the United States has deployed a THAAD battery to the region. The President directed the military to deploy a THAAD battery to the Middle East last year following the October 7th attacks to defend American troops and interests in the region.
Again, nothing new or different about this. The US is not putting boots on the ground to shoot people up. At least not yet.
No, you’re very mistaken. Let me explain.
In the past, the US has stationed supporting troops off of Israel, in battleships far away. It’s meant to provide support while keeping things calm.
The reason that putting any soldiers IN Israel is significant is that it means that if Iran tries to kill any Israeli soldiers, they can’t do it without risking killing Americans. And if they kill an American, it is understood that we will retaliate and they will be at war with the United States of America.
That’s the point of sending 100 troops to offer “tech support”. It’s to deliberately create conditions that could start a war. If you ask a general, they’ll claim that it’s just shrewd tactics, because letting Iran know all this means that good judgment will prevent them from attacking Israel. But every war in history is preceded by people making those claims (even when they don’t believe them) before going to war.
This is foreplay. This is how you flirt when you’re a NatSec pervert thinking of going to war against someone.
Spot on
We’ve had thousands of troops stationed in the tel-aviv base for decades… This isn’t anything new. That’s why it’s a click bait headline
Do you have more info?
This ain’t the war thunder forums, pal
100 troops is not enough to invade Iran, you silly armchair-general fucks commenting here.
No, but 100 dead troops is enough to grandstand about to get enough outrage to justify an all-out war in the region.
Unless the US military is stupid to keep all 100 of them in a single easily bombable location, there’s no fucking way on this green earth a single one of them will die in any combat, especially if they are simply manning air defense outposts spread across the country like what the article that no one here reads actually said.
Oh come on, the header is a clickbait. There is a US military base in Israel already, it’s been there for years. The article is about an announcement that they are sending another missile defense battery with personnel alongside
There are 100 more US soldiers deployed, aren’t there? I’m not a US citizen, but I still wonder why more troops are needed to help Israel in an war of aggression that violates international law.
Lol,maybe because Hezbollah rockets are getting launched and we’d like to shoot them down before US personnel are killed potentially escalating this even further?
we’d like to shoot them down before US personnel are killed potentially escalating this even further?
So we’re sending more personal instead of getting them out of the situation? Gymnastics.
Maybe we should get the US personnel out instead of sending more, then.
You’re both right. We want to protect our servicemen there from Hezzbollah rockets and they shouldn’t be there in the first place.
I’d like to refer you to my reply to a similar comment: https://slrpnk.net/post/14228501/11555288
Yeah, I see someone already told you that American soldiers have been there already, long ago this new deployment. But they didn’t bother to prove it to you, and you didn’t believe them.
Well, let me Google it for you. Very quick search reveals this article from 2017:
https://apnews.com/general-news-2ccf317f293d4be59b92cec5554c3db4
Back then it was “dozens of soldiers”, nothing close to thousands another person claimed, though. But I think it’s safe to assume the numbers grew since then.
I’m not disputing this, I’m just asking for clarity so I can understand key facts. Are there soldiers actively serving in Israel? How many? Since when?
That article didn’t actually provide much clarity. I tried searching for more, and found a bit in this article:
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/
The main thing this says is that US military presence in Israel is deliberately ambiguous. For instance, the day after the commemoration in the article you shared, US European Command actually denied that this was a us military base, insisting that it was actually a “living facility”.
I don’t doubt that we have troops there. But historically the army doesn’t seem to acknowledge them. So announcing sending people does seem significant.
As an aside, “THAAD battery” sounds like someone harnessed exasperation towards a rich kid and converted it into electricity 😁
