stevenkesslar

I was going to post in the thread about Why Biden Might Lose. But my prediction potpourri (or verbal diarrhea) fits bit better here. Since everything I'll say involves one form of prognostication or another. And this post is mostly about Why Biden Might Win. It was a good night for Biden 2024, I think. Several pundits have noted that the Kentucky Governors race has been a perfect bellwether in this century. Whoever is elected Kentucky Guv the year before the POTUS race, their party wins the White House next year. Of course, that could mostly be about having the name Beshear on the ballot. But the total impact of all the races tonight, including abortion in Ohio and the legislative races in Virginia, is that the Democratic brand is doing pretty well. Reeves won in Mississippi again, but by no more than he did in 2019. A Democratic win in Mississippi would have been a real shock. Meanwhile, Beshear barely won in 2019, but seems to be winning by like 5 % tonight. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira are just out with their update on The Emerging Democratic Majority. They scold the woke progressive types for going way too far in the culture war, thus alienating too many moderate working class voters. Their Plan A for winning more, especially in red states so Democrats can have a Senate majority, is to call a culture war truce. At least in most of the places, some of the time. Andy Beshear just proved how well that works. I agree that horse race polls a year out mean nothing. In 1983 Mondale was set to beat Reagan by double digits, one poll said. The polls that most political hacks say do tend to be sticky are the approval ratings. And on that score, time is running out for Biden. How unpopular is Joe Biden? Obama, Clinton, and Reagan all had lower approval ratings at some point in their first terms than Biden has right now. But by this point, a year out, all three of them were starting to recover. As you can see from those comparison charts. The only three that were down this low one year out - Trump, Carter, Ford - all lost. I was hoping by now Biden would be recovering, too: more GDP growth, less inflation, people are now actually making more in wage hikes than inflation in 2023. But that's not how people are feeling, yet. The helpful way Team Biden talks about "Bidenomics" is that they're focused on where the puck will be in Nov. 2024, not Nov. 2023. The only problem is it takes time to get from one place to another in politics. The point of all those approval polls is that it took a year for Reagan, Obama, and Clinton to slowly change public opinion. Right now, Biden is going in the wrong direction still. Of course, some people might say the other problem is Joe Biden can barely walk, let alone skate fast. 😵 That is how a lot of young people feel. That doesn't help, either. Biden Lacks the Best Weapon Other Incumbents Have Had As another form of prognostication, I'll throw that piece from Jeff Greenfield in. He makes an interesting argument, which I think is wrong. He thinks the idea that a Presidential race is a referendum on the incumbent is often "wildly off the mark." I agree with Alan Lichtman that Presidential races are exactly that: an up or down referendum on the incumbent party. Greenfield continues his argument that Biden doesn't have what Obama had: the ability to turn his still somewhat unknown opponent into a jerk. Because everybody knows Trump is a jerk (specifically, an indicted jerk) already. And yet he's still slightly ahead in the polls. But I actually think that is one of Biden's real assets. Trump is well defined. And people do think he is a jerk. The only good thing about 55 % of Americans disapproving of Biden is that 55 % also disapprove of Trump. And that number probably ain't gonna get better. Then there is the bed wetting from David Axelrod and Jim Carville, who I don't normally think of as bed wetting types. Although Axelrod actually denied in his tweet that he was wetting the bed. Regardless, I doubt he'll be invited to sleep at The White House ever again. I decided a while back I'm going to go all in for Alan Lichtman. He has a system that makes sense. It suggests Americans vote based on Important Stuff, like the economy, stupid, rather than on dumb commercials or polls. More important, Lichtman's predictions have been right, every time, since 1984. (He predicted Gore would win in 2000, which he did if you count popular votes. After that he just focused on who would win, period. He called 2016 for Trump.) The nice thing about looking at it Alan's way, right or wrong, is that Biden is not only the best choice. He is the only choice. Right now Biden is for sure down three keys: lost the 2022 midterms, has no foreign policy win and is unlikely to get one, is not charismatic. You have to be down six to lose, history says. Lichtman would argue that most of what Greenfield says is pundit babble. The only thing Lichtman says matters about the challenger is that he is not unifying and charismatic. Trump is not unifying and charismatic. So he isn't going to help Joe Biden lose a referendum on Joe Biden. To be fair, Lichtman would argue Biden didn't really help Trump lose the referendum on Trump in 2020. Trump managed to do that all by himself, Lichtman says. Mostly because of the economy, stupid. So the way it's shaping up so far is almost exactly the same as 2016. The election is Biden's to lose. And the economy is the path to winning or losing it. It is not good news that, like in 1992, most people feel like we are in a recession. (Spoiler alert: we're not.) So if Biden loses the two economy keys, he's going to be hanging over the edge of the cliff. But what the economy keys basically say is that incumbents do well when there is no recession, and the economy is growing more quickly than it did under the last two Presidential terms. So 5 % GDP growth is the thing that will get the puck exactly where Team Biden wants it to be. Whether Joe Biden is a fast skater or not. Lichtman argues, with much common sense, that people care more about the economy than about how fast Joe Biden walks. The argument for Biden being the "only" candidate that makes sense is that being an incumbent is always a positive. And when you don't have an incumbent, but you have a divisive internal party fight, it usually ends badly. 2016 is a great example of that. Biden gives Democrats an incumbent, and it avoids a party fight. Lichtman says that he and his pattern recognition buddy, who was a global expert at earthquake prediction, developed variations of their system with fewer than 13 variables. But it took 13 to be right 100 % of the time, at least so far, he says. Of the 13, the single best predicter is whether a party has a knock down drag out internal fight. It usually predicts they will lose. Which is certainly true in my lifetime: Johnson in 1968, Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, Clinton in 2016, and arguably some others. Again, all of this makes common sense if you start with the idea that American voters care about serious things, and have reasonably good judgment. What now seems almost certain is that a fourth key is going to turn against Biden: a third party candidate who gets over 5 % of the vote next November. Again, it makes lots of common sense to me to argue that in a year where George Wallace or John Anderson or Ross Perot do well running as a third party, it is a sign of serious discontent with the ways things are. And a political earthquake may be on the way. So do the math. I can name almost any sitting Democratic Governor and tell you they excite me more than Biden does. But if you assume that Lichtman predicted the last 12 Presidential elections correctly in advance because of something other than dumb luck, his theory tells us that Whitmer or Newsom or Shapiro or whoever are going to lose. Including a significant third party run, Democratic have four strikes against them. Not being an incumbent and being the survivor of a bitter party brawl would be the necessary and sufficient fifth and sixth nails in their coffin. It's not personal. It's just what history says is likely to happen. Of course, probably if Biden dropped out, we wouldn't even need a primary. Everyone would immediately agree that obviously Kamala Harris should be POTUS. 🙄 Or Hillary Clinton. 😵 Or Bernie Sanders. ☹️ Or Gavin Newsom. 🤔 LOL. You get my point. If Biden had dropped out a year ago, I'd bet that the 2024 Democratic primary would have been a bloodbath. We're getting a taste of that with the bloodbath in Gaza, and the divided Democratic reaction to it. All of this makes sense to me in theory. What was sweet about tonight is that it seemed to actually work out that way, in fact. Whatever bad things there are to say about Biden and Harris, it did not drag Democrats, or Democratic issues, down in Kentucky, or Virginia, or Ohio.

Well, at least some Israeli Jews still think this way. Blessed are the peacemakers. Former Israeli Prime Minister: Israel’s Endgame in Gaza Should be a Palestinian State I vastly prefer Barak's concept of "security" to the one being throw around by the conservatives who want to turn Gaza, and countless innocent Gazans, into a parking lot. The interesting thing is that as one of Israel's most decorated warriors and long serving Defense Ministers, Barak would probably make a way more effective warmonger than Bibi, the great Hamas builder. Instead, perhaps because he is such a good warrior, Barak has always been a sober realist. He's right that Israel won't have security, or even democracy, in the long run if it stays on the path that it is on. It's also noteworthy that Barak says about as bluntly as any Israeli leader has that Bibi intentionally elevated Hamas. So he could have a bad guy to play off Fatah in orderto discredit the idea of negotiation and a two state solution. So for @EmmetK and others who want to make it about only one thing - how Hamas cuts open the bellies of pregnant women and burns their babies alive - I have a question. What is the price Bibi should pay for being the father and framer of these evil men who slit open the bellies of pregnant women? Why did Bibi empower them and facilitate their growth? Is there some special part of hell he gets to burn in for misleading Israel for a generation? Or is it okay that he is the spiritual and political father of the baby killers? Barak is sober that Israeli Jews, right after Oct. 7th, are hardly going to rush toward peace. But he is also right that Israel absolutely needs partners in the region and the world. He just said in a Politico article that maybe the IDF has a few weeks before the pressure from Europeans and Americans forces Israel to change course. I hope he is right. Israel has only weeks to defeat Hamas as global opinion sours, former PM Ehud Barak says There's something else Barak said in that interview that I'll quote. It's a very important principle that I think most of the world. including most people like me who want a ceasefire, also agree with: Arguably, Israel has already been tough enough. But the reason I think that is so well stated is that the goal of making sure it never happens again is way more realistic, and probably way more effective, than the idea that Israel will somehow "eradicate Hamas." Eradication, regardless of how many innocent people to have die, is simply vengeful. More important, it is simply an impossible right wing fantasy. The entire history of this conflict is that Israel won security first and foremost through politics, diplomacy, negotiation, and creating as stable an order around itself as it could. And then they fought wars, too. Barak, who was Defense Minister for many years, seems to understand the bigger moral, political, and diplomatic picture of what really being able to say "never again" means. It is not only, or even primarily, a military problem. If there actually were a realistic plan to "eradicate" Hamas, Barak would be one of the most capable people to design it. He talks in that interview about how he has thought about it before. He also talks about how such a military operation in Gaza would take "many months, or a few years." Way longer than Israelis expect, he thinks. And that how long it might take would be impossible to guess before they got deeply into it. So many tunnels, so much time. The casualties would be tremendous, he says. But the other thing Barak says that will stop the IDF is he knows as well as anyone that [name an Arab country, or another Palestinian leader] could say, "Sorry, Israel. You broke Gaza, so you bought it." Which Mubarak did basically tell Barak before, when he tried to get Egypt to take over the mess. One of the cruelest things about this situation to me is that Israel is obviously the warden of this hellish open air prison. Even though it wants to pretend it isn't. So if Israel wants Arab countries, or Abbas, to help scoop up the rotting flesh of innocent women and children once the bombing stops, they are going to have to negotiate and compromise. Barak knows all this. And Bibi probably does, too. Which is why Bibi needed to be the spiritual and political father of the guys who slit pregnant women open and burn their babies alive. What a guy! Americans have seen this movie before, of course. And we know that it often ends tragically. We were the ones with the bright idea of arming and elevating the Taliban, when it served our interests. To our credit, at least we knew they didn't live five feet away from us. What's Bibi's excuse?

Hamas has said about 50 hostages so far have been killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza. Whatever the actual number is, or ends up being, this was clearly intentional. You try to wipe us out, and you will kill innocent Jewish hostages instead. It's just as clear that Hamas uses innocent Palestinians as human shields. In fact, all of Gaza is both a massive open air prison, and a massive human shield. But so what? That's been the nature of the situation for about 15 years. There's all kinds of evidence that Netanyahu mostly saw it as a positive. Because it discredited the idea that we can ever have peace with Palestinians. Polls now say only 32 % of Israeli Jews favor a two state solution. And that was right BEFORE Oct. 7th. Which is an exact reversal from pre-Netanyahu days, when a majority of Israeli Jews favored a two state solution. In a sick, dark sort of way you could argue Bibi the monster won the debate. I emphatically agree with the brutality part. I strongly disagree with the stupidity part. I'll add a third important word: hypocrisy. I argued above that you can view Israel as a winner. They have secured land, and settled more of it. You can argue Palestinians are the losers, in that they live more and more in an apartheid state with no hope of a nation of their own. But, by the same logic, Hamas has won, too. As an objective fact, compare Hamas to 20 or 30 years ago and they are much stronger. They nominally run a nation. Even though of course Israel can and did cut off electricity and water and invade as they wish. Hamas clearly had a plan on Oct. 7th. It clearly seems to be working. I don't think Hamas played right into Bibi's ambition. I think Bibi took their bait. He's the one the polls say is now discredited, even among many of his own followers. Hamas organized Oct. 7th in a way that Bibi of course had no choice but to retaliate. Their taking of hostages, and putting them in tunnels and other hideouts, precisely anticipated the IDF response. That was the whole idea. You can call it evil. You can call it brutal. But I don't think you can call it stupid. There is this idea that I keep reading that somehow, someway, the IDF will "eradicate" Hamas. Being a verbose guy, I read lots of verbose essays by right of center IDF guys or conservative Jewish commentators. And no one has a clue how to eradicate Hamas. I'd argue "eradicate Hamas" is about as helpful as "from the river to the sea" as a Palestinian bumper sticker. If it makes you feel good, great. But as a political or military strategy, it makes 0 % sense. And on a practical level the bumper stickers basically are just inflaming and polarizing people on both sides who are already very hurt and very pissed. So you might say it is kind of stupid to say our plan is to eradicate Hamas when no one knows how to actually do it. And the history for 20 or 30 years says that Hamas prospers and grows in an environment of war. You could call Hamas "War Incorporated." Or I'd be okay with calling Hamas "Genocide Incorporated". They'd love the label. In that they intentionally deny Israel's right to exist, and use it to motivate pissed off Palestinian youth. It seems 1000 % clear that is an intentional strategy. And it is working. If you want more Hamas, you absolutely want to have more war. The more blood, the better. Hamas knows that. They're brutal. But not stupid. The hypocrisy part is that even if Netanyahu is gone in a month or a year, the growing force behind him - ultra-Orthodox Jews - will find someone else who is probably worse. As a part of a diverse democratic nation, they are the voters that are most helping to polarize the situation and block any hope of peace. And they are the ones that least want to fight the resulting war, which is a mandatory requirement. In several decades ultra-Orthodox Jews, now 13 %, will be 30 % or so of the voting population. It's a good guess they will press for things that lead to more war. And more political pressure to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from war. Which will further destabilize Israeli democracy. The two parts of Israel growing the fastest are Palestinians, and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Hamas seems to understand this very well. The plan to eradicate Hamas does not include a plan to actually eradicate Hamas. Meanwhile, Hamas sees how to spend decades building a path to power paved in blood and rotting flesh. Which is what they have done, successfully, for decades. That's brutal. But not stupid. I'll revisit the comparison I made between America's 9/11 and Israel's 9/11. Because I do think America mostly won. And I fear Israel will mostly lose. America won in the sense that there has not been another 9/11. And any political force like the Taliban knows that if you fuck with us like that again, you either end up living in a cave or being fish food at the bottom of an ocean. Even if you assume we Americans wrecked many lives and some real estate in Afghanistan, we were not fighting a war in the US, or Manhattan. Even if you assume the US did horrible shit, it was horrible shit we did far away that we could walk away from. Bin Laden's specific goal was to use a reaction against the US to catalyze revolution in the Arab world. What he won was a bullet in the head, and an opportunity to feed fish. Arguably, the US should have walked away from Afghanistan much earlier and said we'll leave your mess to you. And you can abuse women and treat them like slaves as much as you want. But just leave us the fuck alone, or we will come back and kill you. We have never had anything like another 9/11 since 9/11. Thanks in large part to the effective counterterrorism efforts of the US military and our global allies. I think the Netanyahu Doctrine was built on similar principles and ideas. Except it is not working. And it can't work, for lots of reasons. But the biggest one I will state is that it would be as if we did plan to fight the war on US soil, and blow the shit out of Manhattan. Or at least Brooklyn. And the cowboys in Texas would be saying, "We need to turn Brooklyn into a parking lot, and go house to house and tunnel to tunnel and wipe those evil fuckers out. But we don't want to help do it." That's just not going to work. No one in the IDF, and no right wing Jew who wants Israel to be secure, can explain how they will do it. Because they can't. Hamas understands all this. And has weaponized it in an incredibly brutal way. That is not stupid. If I wanted to argue the US lost in Afghanistan, I would argue it the same way. We lost in the sense that the Taliban could, and did, outwait us for a few decades. And they used US soldiers, who they killed as often as possible, as the bad guys to organize and regroup. Hamas will do the same. The black and white difference is the US was not in it mostly to make Afghanistan a democracy and a nice place for girls. The US was in it mostly to secure the US homeland. And a peaceful international order free of extremist whack jobs blowing up skyscrapers or wiping out large numbers of innocent civilians all over the world. Which is why we had so many good allies. On balance, I think the US did that. Israel is in a very different situation. The only thing that will ultimately secure a peaceful national order there is a two state solution. The world believes that. Israelis Jews used to believe that. Now they don't. So, instead, they will have war. Basically on their own soil, or five feet away.

You are correct. I know this is a tangent. But you and I both care about facts. I got what I said from what Hodge herself said in the interview I hyperlinked. But I checked Wikipedia and you are correct. This personal stuff is relevant to the big picture politics, I think. I have two impulses in me that are slightly at war. First, we have to have Israel's back. Second, it's not okay for Israel to do whatever it takes. And it definitely goes in that order. I suspect if I were younger, in my 20's, I might feel the same way, but the other way around. John Della Volpe just wrote a piece in the NYT that should scare the living shit out of everyone who does not want Trump, The Sequel. When it comes to polling on the youth vote, he is the go to go guy. Period. He predicted that Biden would ride a youth wave in 2020. Biden did. Now the headline says it all: "Biden is in trouble." Part of his point is that how young people feel about a ceasefire, and how Biden is rejecting an idea a majority of even Republicans seem to support, has just made a bad situation worse for Biden. Della Volpe is Mr. Polling. So I think he is factually correct when he argues this: Back to Hodge, in that interview she reflects on being a young woman spending months on a kibbutz where they toiled the soil all day and then talked about Rosseau and Marx in the evenings. I'm not a Jew, and I have never been to Israel. But that is the Israel I have in my heart. Which I suspect Joe Biden does, too. She jokes in that article that every attempt to turn her into a proper practicing Jew failed, until Corbyn came along. She also says she grew up surrounded by Jewish refugees. Her point is that while she may not have been a practicing Jew, she is very much culturally a Jew. Charlotte Nichols sounds like the opposite. A cultural Catholic who grew up Catholic, like me, but has a deep respect for Judaism. On a personal note, part of my bias is that as an organizer/activist my life has been full of liberal Jewish political activists. The one who for sure played the most important role was my friend, college professor, and former US Senator Paul Wellstone. He steered me into the career I had in my 20's and 30's and got me my first internship. He was a lot like what Hodge sounds like. Always looking out for the disempowered. Always passionate about social justice. He also thought Israel treated the Palestinians like shit. And that was in the 80's and 90's, before the rise of horrible leaders like Netanyahu, who Bill Clinton argues killed peace. I'll keep insisting that back in the 80's and 90's, Arafat was the primary suspect who killed peace. Kudos to Hodge and Nichols for being voices of conscience.

I just used it, repeatedly. And I have admitted to smoking, but not inhaling. I agree. The more inflamed the situation gets, the less useful the word "genocide" seems to be in this context. John Mearsheimer called the Nazis "Murder Incorporated." But "Genocide Incorporated" would have been an equally good label. I don't think Hamas killing 1500 Jews in a savage terrorist attack or the IDF killing, so far, 9000 Palestinians in their invasion is "genocide." I get that Hamas promotes a hateful ideology that denies Israel's right to exist. I get that many, maybe most Palestinians, feel Israeli Jews want to deny their right to exist as a nation, and force them to instead live in an apartheid state. All of this is awful. To me, "genocide" is not the right word. The reason I'm been using it is that if hawks want to throw around the word "genocide" to rationalize "whatever it takes" I think the consistent actions of leaders like Netanyahu, which have resulted in far more deaths of innocents, deserve the same label. It's a mess. Even on a personal psychological level, I think it's just a big fucking mess. My sense on a level of empathy is that this terrorism has triggered the worst fears of the even the kindest, most peace loving Jews. So on an emotional level I think I get where at least some of the primal fear about "genocide" is coming from. Which is why I am glad Biden went to Israel and hugged Bibi, symbolically. Even though I think Bibi is .......... wait for it ............ a genocidal monster. 🙄 It's barely related. But just because I admire her I will throw in this great interview I just read of Dame Margaret Hodge, who is the only female Jewish Labour MP in the UK. If we are talking about language, I think she is a class act who has a very nice and humane way of talking and thinking about things. She was like a moral compass when all the drama with Jeremy Corbyn, who she despises, was happening. Now she is talking about the stuff happening with her Jewish grand daughters in school. I wish more people thought and felt like her.

I did. Great point. The even bigger kudos Bush 41 gets is what is known as the "Powell Doctrine," aka how we won the first Gulf War. Have clear and winnable objectives. Get in and get out. Have the backs of your own soldiers. During the debate on the second Iraq War, I kept a newspaper clipping of Bush 41's reasons for not going into Baghdad in my wallet. I pulled it out when my Republican friends went off about WMD. Bush 41 stated his reasons (it would create a quagmire, divide the US and the world, etc.) because he was attacked by right-wingers who thought he should have pushed further. Every single point Bush 41 made about what would have gone wrong on his watch did go wrong on his son's watch. I hope something like the Powell Doctrine is what the IDF does in Gaza. So far, unfortunately, it looks more like Bush 43 on steroids, in Iraq. It looks like the Netanyahu Doctrine. This is a really tangential point. I just watched a one hour interview with Bush 43 at some conference, giving his still very hardline views on what's going on now. He talked, movingly, about how much it meant to him to have his Dad on the phone when the son was POTUS telling him something like, "I support you." I was thinking about the fact that Bush 41 never would have done, and specifically did not do, what Bush 43 did in Iraq. And yet, whatever reservations Bush 41 may have had, he told his son what his son needed to hear: "I support you." George H.W. Bush was a good man, and a good Dad.

I agree with your point. And you completely missed my point. Which is no surprise. It's exactly why the tragedy will continue, and get worse. The good news right now is most Americans don't see it that way. They favor a ceasefire. Your point is that there is no moral equivalence between "Hamas" and "Israel." I completely agree. And I am being very precise here. Israel is a sovereign democratic nation that has every right to exist and thrive. Israel is not a terrorist nation. So I didn't equate "Hamas" and "Israel" in any way. What I think is particularly important right now is that there can be no moral equivalence about the fact that Israel has the right to exist. Jews have the right to exist, peacefully and securely, wherever they choose to live. And neither Jews nor Israel are terrorist thugs or organizations. Which is what Hamas is. If I believed any of that, I would simply say Israel is a terrorist state. I don't. My point is the word "genocide" - as in genocide against Jews - is being used to rationalize massive violence in Gaza by IDF that is already causing a strong and growing reaction around the world. This violence can also appropriately be called "genocide" - as in genocide against Palestinians. The more neutral word being used a lot to rationalize this violence is "security", which was used again and again and again in that IDF military analyst's article I posted above. The less neutral way to say it, which I have read again and again and again recently in articles written by right-of-center Jews, is "Holocaust" or "Never Again." Whether you use less provocative words like "security" or more provocative words like "Holocaust," the basic idea is the same. And you have expressed your support for it, @EmmetK, continuously. Do whatever it takes. If it takes killing 9,000 Palestinians, that's just what it takes. In fact, that has already been done. And the IDF is clearly just getting started. If it takes killing 90,000 Palestinians, that's just what it takes. If it takes killing 900,000 Palestinians, well, that's what it takes. Shit, they had every right to go to Puerto Vallarta or Michigan or somewhere, right? They were warned. Why is it is genocide to kill 1,500 innocent Jews, but not genocide to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? Because Hamas is made up of genocidal monsters, of course. So pretty much anything the IDF has to do to have security from Hamas, which is what really matters, is okay. It's not that they actually want to kill 9,000 or 90,000 or 900,000 Palestinians, most of whom are innocent, women, and children. It's just what they have to do for security. We can't have another Holocaust, can we? That's the Idea. It is stated clear as day by IDF leaders or analysts like I cited above. And by lots of center-right Jews writing in lots of Western publications. The polls suggest this kind of black and white one-sided thinking is not really going down well. Including with the majority of Americans. The world, and the US, and Biden, have Israel's back. But not to do whatever it takes. Bibi Netanyahu is a genocidal monster. I have said that many times, and I just said it again. Netanyahu, who is a genocidal monster, is not Israel. He is not Jews. He is a very bad leader who is supported by a growing right-wing base. Which is partly why the violence and the deaths on both sides will likely get worse. What has clearly been happening for most of this century is that the more genocidal Hamas gets, the more genocidal Bibi gets. They are like two genocidal monsters playing in a bloodbath together. And as they get more and more genocidal, there is more blood. And more innocent victims on both sides. The pattern, and the blood, is incredibly clear. You just don't want to see it. Or, more appropriately, you only want to see some of it. I am glad the majority of Americans want a ceasefire. And I am glad Biden is getting more and more shit from mainstream members of his own party. Who I am pretty sure are hearing from lots of their constituents who don't like what they see. ‘A curse to be a parent in Gaza’: More than 3,600 Palestinian children killed in just 3 weeks of war I know in your black and white world where it is all about one thing - "security" for Israel - it is just unfortunate that an entire innocent family had their brains, eyes, hearts, lungs, penises, vaginas, and pretty much everything else that made them a living human blown up into scraps of rotting flesh under rubble. And, no, the IDF is not like Hamas. It's not like they specifically wanted to blow up a whole family. I mean, what are ya gonna do? I'm sure they sent out leaflets or something, before they shut off the power and internet. If Hamas puts a bullet in your brain, it's genocide. If the IDF blows up the brains of every member of your family, it's just a mistake. That's clear, right? Israeli Army Admits to Killing Eight Gaza Family Members: We Thought the House Was Empty Most of the world does not seem to see it as that black and white. Sorry. I'm especially sorry for all the dead Jews and Palestinians, thanks to genocidal monsters like Hamas and Netanyahu.

Actually, you did answer my question. Good job. My question was of course a sarcastic one. @vinapu made the same point. I like the nuance @vinapu added. Even nations that disappeared for a long time tend to come back. Israel knows that is true, for sure. That is the power of nationalism, or religion, or both. You also make a good point, @unicorn. A very quick Google check confirmed what I would have guessed. Most separatist or secessionist movements fail. It's a bit weird. India could kick out the English. But the Tamils can't separate from India. The Confederacy as an institution and as a military was way more powerful than Blacks in the US were in the 19th century. Or even than Blacks in America are today, even though we have a Black Secretary of Defense. Yet the Confederacy lost, and Blacks have gradually but continuously gained power. Even though it did not happen through Black separatism. So how did that happen? I think there's a difference between part of a nation wanting to secede, on the one hand, and a people wanting to be a nation, or have equal political and human rights. Palestinians in Israel are the latter. History suggests that even when you are in the far weaker position, your national or racial or religious identity is not going away. Nor will your desire for independence, nationhood, security, and/or political and human rights. Again, Jews know this as well or better than most people.

That's a fair point. It is very easy to say the US is anything but a neutral mediator. ESPECIALLY when it comes to Israel. That said, I think Fareed Zakaria is objectively correct in the long interview I posted with him above. The Palestinians are losing. And the longer losers wait to cut a deal, the worse the deal gets. On a bumper sticker, it works like this. You want $10 for something, and I offer you $5. You say no. A decade later, I offer you $4 for the same thing. You say no again. A decade later, I offer you $3 for the same thing. You say no again. A decade later I say, fuck it, it's mine. And if you don't give it me, I'll kill you. To be clear, that is not the specific example Fareed himself used. He argued Israel is basically winning. Since 1948, Jews have gained increasingly certain control of the state they live in. And any peace deal with Palestinians keeps getting worse. He said Palestinians should be thinking that when you are on the losing side, you are better off cutting a deal sooner rather than later. To divert for one paragraph, that may end up being true with Ukraine. There was an argument made in 2022 that the best chance for the best deal for Ukraine was last year. Right after they had kicked Putin's ass and taken back a lot of the land he seized. Now it looks much more like a war of attrition that Russia will never win, but also never lose. But part of my point is that, as the poll I posted above shows, 90 % of Ukrainians have no interest in giving any part of Ukraine away to Russia. Ukrainians, like Palestinians, may ultimately regret that kind of hard line in the future. 2000 Camp David Summit It's completely fair to argue that as soon as you use the words "Bill Clinton" or "US President," you have a good argument that a deal can't be fair. Especially if you are a Palestinian. As Fareed pointed out, the deal they could have gotten in 2000 was worse than the original deal they could have had in 1947. That Wikipedia article on the 2000 deal cites polls showing that Palestinians tended to agree with Arafat, that the deal wasn't good enough. Meanwhile, Israeli Jews felt Barak went way too far. He, and Labor leadership, were history. So it is simply a fact, whether it is viewed as good or bad, that in 2000 Palestinians lost a deal that is almost certainly way better than any deal they will ever get under any realistic scenario. Hindsight is, of course, 20/20. But the immediate consequence was that israeli Jews took a hard right turn. And have mostly not looked back. One exception, as Fareed again notes, is Olmert. Who offered a watered down version of the 2000 deal. I think Fareed did nail the key point. When you are on the losing side, it is not in your interest to delay making a deal. If you follow my logic, it leads to one other interesting conclusion that is extremely relevant. If Palestinians lost, it must mean Israel won. Fareed stated, correctly, that Israel keeps gaining effective control over more territory, and not the other way around. To be coldly objective, even right now when the worst fears of Jews all over the world have been very understandably triggered by a savage terrorist attack, the security of Jews in the world can't be compared to the 1940's. 6 million Jews are not being slaughtered. History since 1948 has not worked out badly for israel, in general. Fareed is being objective in stating Israel "won." And I think that obviously undergirds a lot of the Israeli military's thinking. "Security" basically means we keep winning. And we just have to keep the Palestinians - aka half the population - under our control. That is the core of the Netanyahu Doctrine. It makes perfect sense to me that Israel should feel like winners, with one caveat. Which I am guessing right now Israeli Jews are very aware of. Just be mindful, Israeli Jews, that the losers are of course going to behead your children every single chance they get. So what you won is land, and a dead baby. That's the logic of this. Every Jewish Mom has to worry whether her child is safe. And every Palestinian Mom has to worry about whether her kid will grow up to be Hamas, or whatever takes its place. That is the small price Israel has to pay for their victory. For now, my strong hunch is that Israel is gong to have to learn the hard way that the kind of victory they want against Hamas isn't really a victory. Sadly, it is almost certain to get much worse. So to me it is a massive human tragedy that peace was not achieved in 2000. There is plenty of blame to go around for that, as the Wikipedia article notes.

Guilty as charged. But at least I don't inhale. Or swallow. 😉 That said, he is the only US President in my lifetime who almost brokered a true peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. So smoking does have its virtues.

John Mearsheimer, the Great Powers academic I quote a lot, said that at the time. There was certainly a logic to thinking that all the nukes in all the former Soviet republics should be put someplace safer. Mearsheimer says at the time that was being done, he was a voice in the wilderness. He argued that in the long run those nukes might help Ukraine keep its independence. You are making an excellent point.

I think you are smart. And we are both clear about what each other is saying. I already called Netanyahu a "genocidal monster." Although I watered it down by saying that is what many young US voters think. For the record, I agree with them. I'll quote Bill Clinton. He didn't call Bibi a genocidal monster. He did say Netanyahu killed peace. He is correct. On Ukraine, I called out your ridiculous statement about Ukrainian children. I view Murderous Vlad as an even worse genocidal monster. The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed thanks to Vlad's unprovoked attack on Ukraine is at least in the hundreds of thousands. Not to mention millions of refugees. The death count, all thanks to Murderous Vlad, is some massive factor larger than the number of dead Israelis and Palestinians - in this war, or even in all wars. You obviously don't agree, and want to gaslight about how swell Murderous Vlad is to Ukrainian children. I'll make two other relevant points as a compare and contrast: Nearly 90% of Ukrainians oppose territorial concessions to Russia - poll I've mentioned repeatedly that about 90 % of Americans supported the invasion of Afghanistan. It didn't mean it worked. And part of the reason it didn't work is we never had 90 % of the Afghans behind the plan. By the time we left I'm pretty sure the majority of Afghans just wanted the US to get the fuck out. Russia can certainly relate to that. Over 90 % of Ukrainians want Murderous Vlad to get the fuck out. That's a whole lot of unity. It doesn't mean it will work. But the polls of Ukrainians are even more polarized and anti-Russia today then when Vlad attacked almost two years ago. And in this case massive majorities of Ukrainians want US and EU and NATO partnership. This is the part you and I would be more likely to find common ground on: Poll shows 41% of Ukrainians agree with Putin’s ‘one nation’ claim, but question was tweaked That finding should not come as a surprise. Since I think that is somewhere in the ballpark of the percentage of Ukrainians who speak Russian as their primary language. If we wanted to put John Mearsheimer in a room, who I have quoted extensively in arguing that the US fucked up for many years by encouraging Ukraine to join NATO, you and I would probably agree with most of his points. Like Kissinger, who is pals with Vlad, he thinks Ukraine should have been a neutral bridge between Russia and the West. Not a place to blow the shit out of. That said, Murderous Vlad gets 100 % of the credit for being the guy who decided to actually blow the shit out of it. Just like Bibi gets the credit, and shame, for the innocent women and kids his bombs are killing. Putin and Netanyahu are both trying the same thing. And history suggests it will not work. Palestinians want a state, and self determination. Ukrainians want a state, and self determination. It is very hard to stop a people who want those things, as Israel and Russia should know. Both Netanyahu and Putin can claim some wins - like territory, in the form of oblasts or settlements. But history suggests that while they may win some battles, they will lose the war. Probably not in the next year. Or even the next decade. But name some countries, other than the US or India or [someplace in Africa] that ultimately failed when they fought for independence? 😉

Thank you for being so precise about the tragic nature of the problem. When Hamas kills 1500 or so Israelis, mostly women and kids, it is genocide. When the IDF kills 9000 or so Palestinians, mostly women and kids, of course it is only and exactly what Israel needs to do to survive. That's all. If the IDF kills 90,000 Palestinians by the time it is done, that's just survival, too. Duh! If the IDF kills 900,000 Palestinians by the time it is done eradicating Hamas, that's just survival, too. Is there a problem? Besides, it's very good manners for the IDF to drop leaflets on innocent Palestinians who are trapped in an open air prison before they blow they shit out of them. The main problem with this approach is that "Hamas has been eradicated" is very much like the idea "Jews have been eradicated." Except I think it sounds better in the original German. The following point is one of logic, not anti-Semitism. Hitler actually had a plan to eradicate an entire people - Jews. It never made sense as a plan, since he couldn't get his hands on most Jews in most parts of the world. But, viewed as a plan, gas chambers at least eradicated a lot of Jews. Without much collateral damage on people the Nazis did not want to kill. Except, of course, the whole idea was so repulsive that it led to the massive killing of innocent Germans in things like fire bombings. It really doesn't seem to me that most Israelis have thought through how one thing tends to lead to another. Although they may be gaining an awareness that empowering warmongers like Netanyahu for decades has lead to ....................... wait for it ............................. more and worse wars with Hamas. Some of the smartest analysts around are saying October 7 is nothing compared to how bad the next war down the line will be. I believe them. Geez. Who could possibly have seen that coming? Certainly not the IDF. We agree about one thing. While I'm reading all stuff from all sides, including from the UN, what I find most useful is the stuff from the proponents of eradicating Hamas. Mostly because it seems like if they are proponents of the idea, they ought to have some sort of clue about how it can actually be done. And what the long-term consequences may be. In that regard, here is a very long-winded essay that I would call a must read, written by a former IDF leader who is clearly on Israel's side. With all due respect, the conclusion I reach is that the best military analysts around do not really have a clue. Although at least Orion has a clue that it will be awful for Israel. Not to mention Palestinians. Even though it won't come close to the goal that "Hamas has been eradicated." The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions This War Is Unlike Any Other—and Must Begin at Home I think the thing I find most tragic and even sick about it is the idea the sub-header suggests, probably correctly. A generation ago most Israelis and most Palestinians wanted to find a path to peace. Now what the Israeli war planners are saying is that the entire nation has to commit first and foremost to "security." And what "security" means first and foremost is war with Palestinians - wherever it goes, whatever it takes, and however long it takes. That is in fact a formula for more and endless war. Not peace. The point is that Israelis are being told to put security, and war, above all else. I don't agree, to say the least. But apart from my moral objection, it does not even begin to make sense as a plan. I won't comment on the military part, since I am anything but an experienced military analyst. Other than I believe it when IDF leaders say this will be harder than any war we have ever fought. With more blood and treasure extracted from Israel than ever before. Here are the main parts of the political, diplomatic, and humanitarian consequences that seem illogical, and sick. Sick in the sense that one definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing that never works, and somehow expect it work. I would say this plan for "the eradication of Hamas" makes about as much sense as gas chambers made sense for eradicating global Judaism. As a bumper sticker, the basic idea is this: Let's just put aside the first sentence I quoted. Other than to stipulate that even if the IDF can achieve its military objectives against Hamas, when that objective is defined as "eradication," it really means "a big setback". And the almost certain death of at least tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. Hamas will survive and regroup, and Palestinians will have more and deeper grievances. To his credit, the author is honest about how the cultivation of "moderate" Palestinian leadership, while precisely the right goal, is anathema to Bibi the Butcher. And always has been. As the author states, correctly, Team Bibi has always seen the PA as being as bad as Hamas. Even though the two organizations actually represent a little more than half of the population of Greater Israel. How do you have peace when you define all the leaders of half the population as terrorists? Answer: you don't. You have endless and worse war. Did I mention that as Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox Jews who support Team War (even though they don't fight in them) have more kids, the demographic polarization only gets worse? How does it work that the one thing that is required by the PA, regional Arab partners, and global US and European partners - a two state solution - is defined in IDF logic as "even more far-fetched" than ever? It's a bit like saying that the right way to settle whether Biden or Trump wins in 2024 is to cancel elections. It just makes no fucking sense. Again, I think the author is being honest. In this case implicitly, not explicitly. Being a seasoned IDF guy, he of course knows that a military strategy to eradicate Hamas will of course kill lots of innocent people. And piss pretty much the whole word off. Which we are seeing already. But, hey, so what? As an American who is proud of America, including our military, perhaps I can't be objective. Maybe it is true that a plan to invade Afghanistan to deter more terror and make it a better place, which 92 % of Americans supported, was always just a fucked up idea that was going to fail. But at least 92 % of Americans did support it. And we gave it what I view as an honest shot - with the explicit goals being democracy, peace, and economic development. The fact that even that didn't work when the world's global hegemon tried it is a very dark warning to Israel. This plan does not even have majority support. Not in Israel. And certainly not in the rest of the world. It is a recipe for endless war, and endless bloodbath. The plans sucks.

In other words, you agree with international agencies, like the UN, when they call out other war criminals for genocide. When international agencies instead call out Murderous Vlad for being a genocidal war criminal, they are "stupid" or "manipulators." Help me out, @forky123. What's the word for that? hypocrite noun hyp·o·crite ˈhi-pə-ˌkrit 2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

This is one of the things I give Biden and Harris, and her hubby, unambiguous kudos for. Emhoff: There is an ‘antisemitism crisis’ on our nation’s campuses The second gentleman reflected in an interview on the current state of protests around Israel. What I think is most interesting is that this is the first time a First Gentleman or Second Gentleman has played any public role on any issue. And with all due respect to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, this one is harder than encouraging kids to eat apples, and study hard. Beyond that, Emhoff is a Jew, Harris was born to a Hindu mother, and as a child her father served as an acolyte in the Anglican Church. Team Kamala and Doug are walking poster children for putting differences aside and focusing on understanding. It makes sense that Emhoff, being a Jew, speaks out for Jews. While Kamala is doing more of the talking about people taking pot shots at Islam.

Just in case you missed it, @Moses. "I need ammunition, not a ride." What Israel and Ukraine do have in common is they were viciously attacked. And in both cases you can say that the people doing the attacking - Hamas and Murderous Vlad - are war criminals committing acts of genocide. The difference is that Ukraine provoked Russia by wanting their own state, democracy, and to be part of the West. Israel did not provoke Hamas by wanting democracy and a state for Palestinians. Biden's worst warmonger moment, to me, was his slippery advocacy of invading Iraq - which he later claims he didn't support. On Ukraine, he is defending a country that wants US help, almost unanimously. They want Murderous Vlad out, almost unanimously. The situation in Israel is anything but unanimous. I'm glad that Rep. Tlaib is pushing back on the attack on her by telling Biden that he is on the wrong side of where most Americans are actually at on a ceasefire. It's a political mess for Biden, either way. His approval ratings, which were bad, are now worse. But in this case it is a mess Hamas and Bibi created, not Biden or the US. Biden has been outspoken for a long time that Bibi is wrong, and his approach would not work. Now we see the fruits of the Netanyahu Doctrine. I almost feel sorry for Biden in this case, since on Israel he has been one of the sane people backing Israel but also pushing for compromise and a more humane approach.

I know this thread is about Israel and Hamas. But if we are talking about children, and international agencies who stand for basic human rights, we have to mention that Murderous Vlad is a war criminal with an arrest warrant, in the eyes of International Criminal Court. More Than 700,000 Ukrainian Children Taken To Russia Since Full-Scale War Started, Official Says It's not clear there is anything worse than genocide. But if there is, this is it.

Thanks for posting that @Moses. At the very least, you have demonstrated how bad I suck at being verbose. My posts are like bumper stickers compared to that. I did read the whole thing. It's obviously a very one-sided take on an intractable struggle and human rights nightmare. But I agree with most of the principles Mokhiber articulates. And I also agree with @reader. Please send a copy to Murderous Vlad, as well, @Moses. He might get some pointers on his genocide in Ukraine. Fair is fair. As compelling as the UN and Angelina Jolie are, I'll add an article by Mark Penn I read yesterday. I think it really captured why this is a sad and probably unfixable tragedy, in a way Penn didn't intend. Before I get to Mark Penn's defense of Israel, and Hillary Clinton's hawkishness, let me focus on a fact that is a clear "Fuck you Biden, fuck you Israel, fuck you apartheid lovers" statement. Anyone who does not want Trump, The Sequel in 2024 should be scared shitless by clear facts that are emerging. Young and old Americans are now completely split on Israel. The latest YouGov poll asks people who they sympathize with more, Israelis or Palestinians. In both cases, 23 % say both equally. But older voters (over 65) who are the core of Trump's support break 65/5 on supporting Israel over Palestinians. Younger voters under 30, the voters who will make or break Biden's re-election, break for Palestinians 30/17. The vast majority of older voters (82 %) say it is important or very important to help Israel. Only 38 % of younger voters agree. A plurality of younger voters (43 %) say it is not too important, or not important at all, to help Israel. ' Fuck you apartheid Israel. Fuck you Biden, for supporting Israel. The young voters who see it this way are the people that Biden desperately needs to win. Let me repeat. Fuck you, apartheid Israel. Fuck you Biden, for supporting Israel. How is this going to work out in 2024? Many young Americans feel that Netayahu is a sadistic genocidal monster who is perfectly happy to kill countless innocent Palestinian women and children. And subject all of them to cruelty and apartheid, in order to make sure there is never a Palestinian state. They're not going to be persuaded that somehow opposing apartheid makes them anti-Semitic. But let's forget about the extreme and the outspoken. As predicted, now that the great promoter of Hamas, Bibi Netanyahu, has busted loose with his bombs and inhumane cruelty, more and more people are willing to see Israel the way young Americans do. Last month, Oct 14-17, when YouGov asked the question for the first time, a plurality of 32 % of Americans said Israel's response to Hamas was just about right. 23 % said not harsh enough, and 19 % said too harsh. That's right after a mass slaughter of innocent Jewish women and kids. Now, a month later, right after a mass slaughter of innocent Muslim women and kids, 27 % say Israel's response is just about right. 23 % say too harsh and 19 % say not harsh enough. Last month, only 9 % of young voters said Israel wasn't being harsh enough. That has now dropped to 3 %, with a plurality of 36 % of young voters saying Israel is being too harsh. I've been saying Israel has lost a pro-Israel US majority. That's not true among the oldest Americans. Among the youngest Americans, though, it's actually worse. Israel is now viewed less favorably than Palestinians. And Biden is telling these voters "fuck you" on a ceasefire. Which most Americans, but especially most younger Americans, want him to press Israel on. It's 1000 % clear that Biden can't tell Israel what to do. That said, this sounds like 1968 to me. We even have Robert Kennedy running again, who is getting double digits in every poll and will probably help elect Trump. Fuck you, Biden. Fuck you, Biden. Fuck you, Biden. Go be LBJ. You back Israel, and we won't bother to vote for you. That is the message I hear emerging in poll after poll from young US voters. The good news for the great Hamas builder, Bibi Netanyahu, is that he'd rather have Trump, anyway. 🙄 He'll gin up his slaughter machine and Trump won't give a shit, knowing his older supporters mostly agree with Israel being as harsh as possible. A Ceasefire for Hamas? Penn's article is thoughtful and worth reading the whole way through. Had that been written 20 years ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with him. In fact, it was written 20 years ago. Not literally. But all the key data he cites is about that old. With the single most important point being that Arafat rejected peace when it was offered by Israel, with a heavy lift by Bill Clinton. Arafat said he'd be killed by the Hamas brand of radicals if he agreed to peace. In fact, few leaders in my lifetime have been killed for seeking peace. The main one that comes to mind is Rabin. And that just makes Arafat looks like the worthless and weak piece of shit he was. So when I was a young US voter, I fully agreed with Penn and the Clintons. But all of the things I am talking about happened 25 to 30 years ago. If Penn wants to talk about Hillary Clinton's righteous hawkishness, we might mention that her big idea to liberate Libya happened over a decade ago. It still hasn't worked out very well. So how does this support the idea that we just need to stay on a course that has led to decades of endless bloodbaths? Young voters were not even born when much of this happened. And what they seem to mostly see is the bloodbaths. So Penn is living in a past that no longer exists. Except in the minds of older Americans like me. His view of Israel doesn't fit with what young voters see on TikTok today. It's fair to say many of them see a genocidal monster killing lots of innocent people. I'm talking about you, Bibi. The fact that Penn's argument is so tired and stale and useless was especially clear in the paragraph where he basically compares Bibi Netanyahu to .........................wait for it........................ Abraham Lincoln!!!??? It's actually the point. Penn argues that demanding a ceasefire during the US Civil War would be like asking for slavery to stand. The word "slavery" is pushing it too far. But replace it with the word "apartheid," and that is the point. Many young voters do see Biden's rejection of a ceasefire as backing Bibi's policies of apartheid and cruelty. The clear logic of a ceasefire, which most Americans support, is that more violence and bloodbath is a formula for more Hamas and more Bibi, not less. Why don't we instead try something else? I'm with young voters on that. What Penn made even clearer to me is that we have a massive and probably fatal leadership problem. Fareed Zakaria said it most succinctly in the long interview of him I posted above. He said he sympathizes very much with the Palestinian people. He does not sympathize with Palestinian leaders at all. I agree. But for a long time I've felt exactly the same about Israel. They have a sadistic, worthless, Hamas building leader who has rejected peace, too. If you need someone to blame for that, Israel, blame Bibi. It is telling and truthful that polls right now say many if not most Israeli Jews actually do blame Bibi. I would like to think that Biden is the kind of leader that could create peace, like Bill Clinton came close to. But, if I'm being honest with myself in a way Penn is not, it ain't gonna work. You can't have peace when you have Hamas on the one side and Netanyahu on the other. It's not at all clear that Israelis actually even want peace anymore. The growing force of ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews who back Bibi clearly don't. So, more likely, Biden will be the transitional Democratic leader who once again failed to deliver peace. Whether Biden will also fail to get re-elected next year, in part because young voters reject or simply don't care about his leadership, like he rejected a ceasefire, is a very good question right now. The next US President who is a Democrat will be much younger. And much less tied at the hip with Israel. There is no clear prospect for how Israel or the Palestinians get leadership - from Israel, Palestinians, the US, or anywhere - that can even come close to delivering peace. Perhaps @Moses could ask Vlad to lend a hand? Then again, that probably won't work out so well, either. So, for now, it will just be bloodbath. Tragic. It won't help Biden in 2024. And it may help end his Presidency.

Well, when I was in my 20's I was going to leftie protests all the time and spending lots of time on Capitol Hill getting anti-redlining legislation passed and beating up on redlining banks all over the US. I didn't talk about politics with barbers or taxi drivers, though. To each his own, I guess. 😉 The issue I care about now is whether young people who get their politics off Tik Tok will vote for Biden, or indirectly help elect Trump. Biden was a US Senator back then, when I was young once. Despite being called a fool, a gaffe machine, and now senile, he has managed to have pretty good political instincts and ride waves. We'll see how he rides this very fierce wave. If a whole bunch of polls are right, there are slightly more Americans that think Israel is not being tough enough on Hamas, as opposed to they are being too tough. Although that is a moving target, literally. 64 UN relief workers have died simply trying to help people in Gaza survive. That's completely unprecedented. One relief worker was killed alongside his wife and 8 children. So much for being cautious. Biden is being decisive. Which is a good look for someone often called senile. And the reality is that even if he got down on his knees and begged for a ceasefire, which is what a majority of Americans of all leanings want, there is zero evidence Netanyahu would agree. Biden is in a very fraught position. Caution won't work. But it's not clear what will.

Thanks, as always, @lookin, for setting a thoughtful and compassionate tone. The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian liberal factions now divided as ugly accusations fly in both directions That article explores the potential problems for Biden 2024 more deeply. An interesting, and I think true, quote: In context, he is talking about the horrific murder of Jewish women and kids by terrorists. But obviously people opposed to the IDF bombing free for all feel the same way about Palestinians women and kids. I think the intensity is manifesting itself here. I was really surprised to be challenged so hard for something that up to 92 % of Americans agreed on after 9/11. That was for sure the moment of greatest US national unity in my lifetime. Now we have the opposite. Deep division, even within the same political parties. This can't help Biden politically. The only positive thing I can think is it ups the stakes for peace, at least among Democrats. in the long term, the only way to win a war that neither side can win, politically or militarily, is to not fight a war. And instead fight for peace. What's interesting is that neither Republicans nor Independents are the oasis where people turned off by Democratic peaceniks can go. Strong majorities of them favor a ceasefire, too. Killing a lot more innocent women and kids, on either side, probably isn't going to change that.

I'll slip this in, succinctly. It surprised me. Israeli Poll Finds 49% Support Holding Off on Gaza Ground Offensive Nearly half of all respondents believe Israel should wait with its ground operation in Gaza, while just over a quarter believe the IDF should embark on the offensive immediately. If you read the whole article, the context is 65 % of Israelis supported an immediate ground offensive when asked by the same pollster on Oct. 19. I don't think Israelis read my post and decided to give peace a chance. 😉 The big shift is short-term thinking about hostages. The article states that 50 hostages have been killed "in Israeli strikes on Gaza." Presumably bombing of Hamas tunnels where the hostages were being kept. I'm guessing Hamas thought that one through in advance. Biden can't run on age. So he has to run on wisdom. We'll see. If Sanders were POTUS and he forcefully demanded Israel agree to a ceasefire, I doubt Netanyahu or most leaders would listen to him. I'm hoping Biden is being slippery, knowing that he can't tell Americans, let alone Israelis, what to do. And they may listen to him more if they feel he is on their side. Every account I've read states the Biden White House is not telling Israel what it can or can not do. We'll see. But Biden has been clear for a long time he is not a fan of Bibi's policies.

The Biden coalition risks a damaging break over the US role in Israel’s response in Gaza Here's a good reason for liberals and progressives to try to avoid sniping based on standards of moral purity. It may get Trump elected in 2024. (Anybody remember how Nixon won in 1968?) Talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good. 😵 Biden's approval rating among Democrats dropped 11 points in one month. I was hoping that an economy that we just learned is growing at an annual rate of 6 % actually might put some luster on Bidenomics. But I suspect Axios is right that this is about Biden and Israel and Arab Americans. Not to mention liberal Jews. And young people who empathize with an occupied and oppressed people. The good news is that most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, seem to favor a ceasefire. The bad news is Biden doesn't get it. As a Democrat, who is neither Arab American nor young, this is just painful. I voted for Sanders in the 2020 California primary. I did that knowing Sanders would lose the primary, hoping that Biden would beat Trump, and wanting to signal a desire to go left to Joe. Biden mostly got that message, I think. And I'm still a Democrat who approves of him. But this reminds me of all the reasons I voted for Sanders. Like, in particular, how Biden backed the Iraq War, even though he wanted to have it both ways. If I believe the common themes in countless articles I've read, Biden has: 1) slowed the invasion of Gaza right wing Israelis want down, 2) elevated humanitarian measures and aid for Palestinians, and 3) focused on measures to deter escalation into a regional war. So the verdict is out. But Trump's 40 % + will vote for him passionately, no questions asked and no facts necessary. So if Biden is discouraging a lot of his 40 % from even wanting to vote for him, this is bad news for Democrats. This is also bad news for Israeli and Jewish American hawks. Every poll shows that the vast majority of Americans empathize with Israel. And view Hamas as a terrorist organization that needs to be deterred. But this poll further reinforces that Israel has lost a pro-Israel US majority, even among Republicans, when it comes to right wing horror stories about doing "whatever it takes" to destroy Hamas.

Point taken about succinct writing. Another advantage of succinct writing is, in theory, it makes it more challenging for people to put words in my mouth. Or misquote me. Because you've done it repeatedly. The main misquote that was just weird was suggesting that I had a "revenge" agenda about 9/11 - your word, not mine. You implied that almost all Americans, presumably including Obama and Biden, shared this naive revenge agenda, which is lacking in an awareness of history. So you completely misread what I said about that. I think because you wanted to go after what something like 90 % of Americans believed at the time, and for years after. Including Obama and Biden. Although I think you tried to lay the naive thinking at the foot of Bush and Cheney, inaccurately. Obama was elected in 2008 promising to "win" the war. And he okayed the surge that exploded the count of dead soldiers and innocent Afghans. @Latbear4blk holds a similar opinion, which is that the US should have sucked it up and been a "good loser." Good for you guys for expressing yourselves, succinctly. You've now misquoted me again by laughing at words you put in my mouth. Namely, that I'm equating myself with professional nonfiction writers. I have written essays that have been published. And I've been quoted in papers and books and interviewed on TV a lot. So I know how to speak on camera and edit myself. You're correct that I don't put the time into editing myself in online posts like I do when I have an editor publishing something I write. Excellent Article by Steven Kesslar on Rentboy Shutdown My point here was completely different. And you didn't get it. Because for whatever reason it seems like you'd rather "laugh" at me, to use your word. The day I wrote that post I did spend most of the day reading long wall of text essays on the US invasion of Afghanistan. And especially the surge. I was curious what analysts years later are saying now about what worked, and what failed. My post was shorter and no more stream of consciousness than much of what I read. Some of which I quoted from. The long essays I read were all dry, somewhat boring, and very informative. Your point is that you'd like to debate, but not read essays. Which is fine. But I stand by what I said. I liked researching it, and writing it. That doesn't make me a professional writer. At least in this instance. It does make me someone interested in learning things I don't know. But I'll repeat that I'm glad you challenged me. In my mind, that's a big part of the point. Especially right now, people really need to have their minds and hearts challenged. Speaking of which, I thought about your point about "revenge" when I read this awful thought, in an awful essay with the awful headline, "Why Israel must destroy Hamas." He's referring to Friedman's excellent essay against an invasion, which I posted above. Friedman made a whole bunch of thoughtful points about how an invasion will make things worse. Including for Israel. This right winger only has one argument: the only thing that matters is destroying Hamas. Period. I think that quote is a perfect example of the kind of mindless "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" revenge I think you may have been referring to in your post above. We agree way more than we disagree. And I certainly agree with you on that. I didn't feel driven by a need for revenge after 9/11. I think most Americans felt driven by a need to deter more horrific terrorist attacks on US soil. And that motivation has actually worked out well. I think Israelis appropriately feel the same way. But I hope Israel isn't driven by revenge now. We all know one important fact. Which is that the body count of dead Palestinians is always way more than the body count of dead Israelis. That's always been true. And it is already true, yet again, in Gaza - even before an IDF invasion started. If you take out the word "Jewish" and replace it with "Palestinian" or "Arab" in that quote, exactly the same logic of revenge could be and just was used to rationalize the very sick idea Hamas has that we must destroy Israel. So I commend you for making the point that "revenge" should not be the motivation. Because it will simply feed the terrorists, and continue the violence.

Excellent point. While we're on the subject, I'd recommend staying away from magazines, too. Too many essays. And, at all costs, never buy a book. If you do, you are in deep trouble. 😉 I actually do take this as a compliment. The rise of Twitter and the rise of Trump coincided. I don't think that was an accident. The nicer way to say it is that social media is filled with misinformation, many lies, little fact checking, and a bounty of simplistic ideas that never hold up. Example: Trump won in 2020, and the Deep State is covering it up. Nice bumper sticker that 1 in 3 Americans actually believe. Which is why America is in deep trouble. The nastier way to say it is that social media is all about hate, venom, and vitriol. Thought? Nope. That's an afterthought on most social media. Why would anyone read a book when they can simply know Trump won in 2020, for Christ's sake? But, back to the deep trouble you are in, my love. And since you won't read this, I won't worry about your feelings. You lost me, and most of America, right out of the gate. And since you perhaps don't care about reading polls and essays, I can take my time to go through the reality you don't want to admit. Let alone debate. I was wrong when I said 88 % of Americans supported a military invasion of Afghanistan right after 9/11. Another poll said 92 %. Tell me something else really important that 92 % of Americans have ever agreed on? Including who won the 2020 election? The question "what else?" was not asked. But my guess is most of the other 8 %, and much of the rest of the world, supported legal mechanisms to seek justice, rather than military ones. Perhaps you supported them as well, since you do state "target the terrorist leaders." In truth, "suck it up" because the US bombs and murders people was not an option offered in any poll. I'm guessing maybe 1 % of Americans would have chosen "suck it up and lose." Bad news is you are at an extreme margin of the debate. Good news is you don't seem to care. The main value in debating the US 9/11 now is that Israel wants to insist it just had its own 9/11, and the world should be on its side. Meanwhile, Biden wants Israel to avoid the mistakes the US made after 9/11. So it is quite relevant. The same polls show that I am in the mainstream of Americans. Most Americans, including me, view the invasion as a failure. Most Americans thought at the outset it would be a hard fight, that would take a long time. They were right. 2 in 3 Democrats, and a majority of Republicans, now say "the war was not worth fighting." Now I may slippery, like Oily Obama and Both Ways Biden have been for decades on this issue. But I am in that 2 in 3 Democrats. I don't think the war was worth fighting, as it was actually fought. That said, I stand by what I said earlier. I think invading Afghanistan to seek justice and prevent more terrorism was the right thing to do. With 20/20 hindsight, we should have gotten out quicker, based on more limited and defined objectives. I haven't seen any poll or focus group that really explores "what the fuck else were we supposed to do?" I appreciate the fact that instead of misquoting me or attacking me, @Latbear4blk, you actually stated what else you think we should have done. You think we should have "sucked it up" and been "good losers". It's a fine opinion, which put you at a very marginal extreme. There is a 0.00000000000000000000001 % chance that Israel will now "suck it up" and be a "good loser." So this is a bit like the food fight between Cornel West and the Green Party. Interesting. But mostly it generates fodder for long articles (ugh! I hate essays!) about how The Left will never have power. Because they sound like academics who would rather have purist debates among themselves. My bumper sticker for the lesson to draw from Afghanistan is very simple and very Gay. I know it is shitty to want to expand on a vague bumper sticker and explain why I think "there's no place like home" is actually good policy. But now I will be a real shit. I think the lesson is we fucked up by thinking we could make Afghanistan a home to US-style democracy. And what many liberals like me view as basic decency. Like don't be sexist pigs to women and girls. What we learned is that many or even most Afghans liked their home the way it was. The longer we stayed, the more they wanted us to get the fuck out. This especially happened under Oily Obama, who was POTUS when most US and allied soldiers (and innocent Afghans) got killed in a hellish cornucopia of terror attacks, US counterterrorism operations, and warlord revenge bloodbaths. Since we owned the warlords, arguably the US also owned what they did to their own people. It's an important point. Because if they did it before we came, or after we left, we didn't own it. You being a well read guy, I am sure you would have connected the dots by now. If you actually read shit. The obvious lesson is we should give the Palestinians a home. Period. That is what they most want. That is how to defuse the violence and terror over the long run. The lesson of Afghanistan, and Israel, is don't feed the terrorists. Because that is what they want. That is why bin Laden killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, and Hamas went out of their way to behead Jewish babies. But here's the tricky part. While we can't feed them, we do have to kill them. More on that later. For this (ugh!) paragraph, I think the single most important long-run priority is figuring out how to get Palestinians the home they want. Not figuring out what to do in Gaza. Or how to kill Hamas terrorists. Israel has it exactly wrong, unfortunately. They think bombing the shit out of Gaza and Hamas is the priority. And figuring out a political solution is an afterthought. Or, for Bibi, a Palestinian home is just a bad idea not worth thinking about at all. The other important lesson is that once the Palestinians have a home, they can behead as many Arab babies and kill as many of each other as they want. And the US and Israel won't own it. Realistically, I'm not too worried about Palestinians wanting to behead their own babies. More realistically, though, a Palestinian government can also be as corrupt as they want. Just like Kharzai and the various other Afghan leaders backed by the US were. The US can instead spend money backing Ukrainians. Who seem to want their own home, too. And even a democracy. We can try to force Ukrainians not to be corrupt. Because it pisses US and European taxpayers off, who are sending them a fortune. Did I mention polls show Ukrainians overwhelming love Americans, because we want to help them have a home that is democratic and mostly free of corruption? But if Abbas And Friends want to behead Palestinian babies, be assholes, treat women and girls like shit, or just involve themselves in garden variety political corruption, who gives a shit? Let them run their home as they wish. That is the lesson of Afghanistan and the West Bank. Now, I've written many stupid paragraphs no one has read. But a well read person might still have this nagging thought. "But what the fuck do we actually do when they kill thousands of our people? Is terror okay? Should we just be good losers? And then won't they just do it again?" Sadly, a real debate about motivation and responding to terror would involve putting aside the idea that this can all be blamed on Bush and Cheney. Not that I don't love blaming Bush and Cheney myself. Especially for lying to the world about WMD and invading Iraq. And we'd also have to set aside the quaint notion that 88 % of Americans are seemingly naive, stupid, and hellbent on revenge. And that they (or "we") should have known better. We would have to go into detail about Oily Obama and Both Ways Biden. Both supported the invasion. Which apparently makes them part of a horrible country brimming with naive and stupid people who are hellbent on revenge. Yet, for some strange reason, most of the rest of the world likes them. At least more than Trump. Obama even started the Afghanistan surge. Which is when most US and allied soldiers and innocent Afghans died. VP Biden advised Obama against it, and lost the debate. Biden wanted to gradually withdraw and focus on counterterrorism. Which seems like what most naive and stupid Americans currently want. But people still dislike POTUS Biden for being a "good loser", because of the way he carried out Trump's withdrawal deal with the Taliban. Which suggests that there is no way to actually be a "good loser." Because it just makes you very unpopular. Which is of course why I don't read essays, books, or polls. It's just way too fucking complicated! Obama did actually define some objectives that hold very clear lessons for Israel today. (Spoiler alert: "revenge" was never a stated objective of Bush, Obama, or Biden.) Obama ran for President based on the bumper sticker, "This is a war we have to win." Americans being naive and stupid, they elected this guy in a landslide in 2008. And lest we naively think his agenda was "revenge," he did clearly lay out objectives for the surge: Take out the words "al Qaeda" and "Taliban" and replace them with "Hamas" or "Palestinian," and the lessons for Israel are right there in black and white. Of course, who in their right mind would read an essay, and think about such things? Israel wants to deny Hamas a safe haven. But they can't, and won't. What they do to try to eradicate Hamas will almost certainly add to the momentum of Palestinians who think Israel sucks. This is what Hamas wants. Just like Obama's surge added momentum to the Taliban and opponents of the corrupt government the US backed. And added momentum to the idea that we should kill US and allied soldiers who are occupying our home. There's another idea that was never even tried, that is worth a mention: permanent occupation. McCain argued we should just occupy these places like Afghanistan or Iraq for 100 years. Or however long it takes. I feel like a shit for comparing McCain to Netanyahu. I admired McCain, mostly. And I mostly despise Bibi. But the US happily didn't even want to try to occupy Afghanistan or Iraq for 100 years. So maybe Americans have actually figured out something all the Israelis who back Bibi need to eventually learn. Both Ways Biden has been all over the map, both on Afghanistan and Iraq. That said, I think he has been consistently less wrong than Bush 43, Cheney, and also Oily Obama on this issue. I think if you had put Bush 41, Colin Powell, and Both Ways Biden in a room, they would probably have quickly agreed that the Powell Doctrine makes a lot of sense. And tended to work well, like in the first Gulf War under Bush 41. "We" (the US and many global allies) had defined objectives that were winnable. Like, "don't eat other countries." And we won. Arguably, we could have done the same in Afghanistan. Or at least tried. Here is a long and well written (ugh!) defense of Biden's doctrine of counterterrorism. The evidence suggests that counterterrorism is a pretty good strategy. It's been over 20 years since 9/11. And we haven't had another 9/11, or anything even close. (School shootings don't count.) The Taliban doesn't seem to be itching to blow up more US cities, kill more Americans, or go through 20 more years of running from US soldiers and targeted assassinations. Which mostly left the assholes dead or in prison. Or feeding fish at the bottom of an ocean. You don't want to debate complicated ideas, rather than anti-Cheney slogans. Which is fine. But the question a statement like this begs is: "What the fuck should we do, then?" I agree with Fareed that since terrorists kill lots of innocent people in horrific ways because they want us to react, the first thing we should do is think hard about how to react. But anyone who thinks most Americans or Israelis like to be "good losers" to terrorists is being both extreme, and naive. The evidence suggests that for the US, and our military, counterterrorism has worked pretty well. Outside of the tortured history of Afghanistan and Iraq, US soldiers tend to kill assholes, rather than be killed by them. It has stopped anything like our 9/11 or Israel's 9/11. Palestinian Americans are not plotting on how to behead Christian babies. There is no evidence the Taliban, which is back in the saddle, has either the capacity or will to blow up US cities or kill lots of Americans. They would rather have their own home, so they can fuck it up just the way they want. If we are going for a political center, rather than an extreme, I think Biden was right. Obama won in a landslide in 2008. That would have been the best moment I can think of to flip flop, which they both have done a lot anyway, and get the fuck out. There is no political way Bush 43 could withdraw from Afghanstan after being the POTUS that got us in. Had Obama listened to Biden, it would have prevented most of the deaths of US soldiers, allies, and innocent Afghans. Obama would have taken a big political hit, like Biden did in 2021, for being the "good loser" who let the Taliban back in on his watch. But I personally think the policy of counterterrorism has been pretty effective to date, both in the US and Israel. For a well read guy, the implications for Israel seem pretty clear. Let Palestinians have the home they want. Most of them won't kill Jews. If they end up being corrupt, or inept, and fuck up their home, let them. But it means Israel, like the US, is going to have to be very good at counterterrorism. Which, happily, Israel tends to be very good at. Until Netanyahu fucked it up with his stupid and counterproductive "Hamas building" strategy. There. No more nation building. Except for the Palestinians. Problem solved. Next? I'm so glad nobody read this. Because I really enjoyed researching and writing it. 🙄

Okay love. Here ya go. Problem solved. Piece of cake! Thank God Israel listened to John and Yoko back when this was filmed. And there has been nothing but love and peace between Israelis and Palestinians ever since. I just fucking hate history and complexity. Let alone ambiguity. It's so unnecessary! Any other global crisis we need to solve with a bumper sticker? This was fun! I'm free tomorrow. Are you guys up for solving things between Vlad and Xi and Joe? I have a few great bumper stickers in mind. 😉