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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29662 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I don’t know, this just seems too badass and super-competent to not inspire some level of positive reaction among people who are not already committed to the pro-Hezbollah position

Some of us don't want a regional war, but Israel obviously does. What is the point of this except provocation? Intermingling hidden explosives among civilian populations is not impressive, it's called terrorism.

Israel intermingled explosives among the enemy combatants. Intermingling said combatants among the civilian population was, as usual, the decision and the primary tactic of their enemy.

The precision repeatedly shown by Israel in such conditions is, indeed, impressive.

What war has ever contained enemy combatants entirely separately from the civilian population? Even when a massive percentage of the military is deployed to a warzone, there are certainly plenty of personnel who still go home to their families each night.

It seems to me that the real argument becomes what qualifies as a warzone, and when.

Please. There's the usual grey-zone mixing of combatants and civilians, and then there's the Western islamophilic media front that the Palestine and co primarily fight on as opposed to the physical warzone.

Gaza is roughly 141 square miles, with around 15.6k inhabitants per square mile. It's not like they'd have room for a military base even in the upside-down world where Israel allowed them to. They've been fenced in and treated like literal prisoners. So obviously any militant uprising is going to be near civilians by virtue of having zero alternate choices.

None of this should surprise anyone, and none of it should have happened in the first place.

True, but it’s also true that for many years the status quo was that Palestinians could live and work in Israel relatively freely until they started committing large numbers of terrorist attacks against civilians.

I reject the terms "terrorist"/"terrorist attack" on the basis that they are wielded entirely on the basis of who presently holds political power and who does not. (e.g. your "terrorist attack" is another man's "mostly peaceful protest", etc.)

I mean this is just one more permutation of the classic problem in the Middle East, which is that in many of these countries terrorists (or people who are employed by terrorist organizations) are walking around intermingled with the civilian population, and therefore fighting those terrorists inherently risks significant harm to civilians. I’m sympathetic to the position that in such a scenario, it should be considered unacceptable to expose those civilians to risk even if it means forgoing a clear tactical victory, but I’m also equally sympathetic to the opposite view. I don’t particularly care if there is a “regional war” or not, provided that nobody I personally care about gets conscripted to fight in it, but I’ve made my weakly pro-Israel position clear, and this certainly didn’t move the needle away from that position for me.

I don’t particularly care if there is a “regional war” or not, provided that nobody I personally care about gets conscripted to fight in it

That's a really silly perspective. So if it causes a lot of damage to your home country- economically, politically, geopolitically, militarily, you don't care as long as you don't know someone who was conscripted?

Yes, it's called nationalism.

It’s not clear to me that such a war would cause all of that damage to the United States. It seems like it could go all sorts of ways! I simply do not feel as though I have a strong enough grasp of all of the possible outcomes to have a strong opinion on the issue. When faced with this level of uncertainty and complexity, I think it’s pretty reasonable for a person like me - a random civilian whose job and livelihood seem not to stand much of a chance of being seriously impacted either way - to throw up my hands and say, “Not my problem!”

Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria all being strong data points that ME war has negative effects on the home-front doesn't persuade you? Or maybe you don't think Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syrian wars have had negatives impacts on the US and Europe?

Iraq and Afghanistan had terrible effects on the home front in America primarily because American troops themselves were fighting those wars, at great expense to the United States.

Syria doesn’t appear to have had any massive negative effect on the American home front. It has had a very bad effect on Europe, because European countries pursued incredibly stupid immigration/refugee policies. (I know, you likely believe that Israel or Global Jewry strong-armed them into those policies, but I just don’t think the evidence is there.)

I don’t see that previous wars in the Middle East - say, the Iran-Iraq War, or the wars Israel fought against its neighbors in the 60s and 70s - did actually have a significant long-term negative impact on countries outside of the region. Perhaps I’m simply too ignorant about the subject.

Iraq and Afghanistan had terrible effects on the home front in America primarily because American troops themselves were fighting those wars, at great expense to the United States.

This is even an exaggeration. Those wars had negative effects at home partially because American troops were fighting those wars but primarily because of policy decisions that really werent related to war per se. Instead it was the choices about occupation and the goals of that being discordant with the prosecution of the war.

If we wanted to occupy Iran and Afghanistan and reform the countries, we needed to engage in total war that put the fear of god into the natives, then appointed a local governor of our own to govern with an iron first for some decades.

If we wanted a surgical strike to remove a few bad guys, we could conduct the war as we did, then put in a couple of military bases to conduct strategic raids when we wanted to and mostly never have our boys leave those until we get tired of the minor expense and go home.

I guess it's strange to on one hand say, you only care if someone you know personally is drafted, and then on the other hand admit that these other wars have had terrible consequences. But since you don't know what the impact of war on Lebanon and Iran will be, you are indifferent as to whether or not the US goes to war with those countries?

It sounds like you're just carrying water, honestly.

You haven’t demonstrated to me that a war between Israel and Lebanon will have those effects. Provided that the United States does not join the war directly, I don’t see how it will have the same direct effects on the homeland that Iraq and Afghanistan did. And if the countries of Europe continue to get serious about tightening their immigration policies, then the war will not have the same effects as Syria did. Do you have specific reasons to believe that this hypothetical war will be more like Syria, and less like the Iran-Iraq War (two Middle Eastern countries going at it, the West basically unaffected) or the Six-Day War?

The US has already deployed an enormous naval presence to the region. It has vowed to defend Israel if it is attacked. The prospect of joining the war is very real, and it is already costing the US billions of dollars in aid and the expenditures involved in dedicating so much naval power to defending Israel.

It's also a diplomatic rebuff. The Biden administration has made its position clear- to avoid a regional conflict. For good reason. Obviously the Biden Administration does not believe this is in the best interests of the US. You can say that they are wrong, but to pretend "we just can't know if this is in our interests" is incredibly naive. What exactly does the US stand to gain from more war on behalf of Israel? How does the US benefit from a regional war? It doesn't, it can only be costly.

Everything you are saying now could have, and was, said on the eve of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Do you have specific reasons to believe that this hypothetical war will be more like Syria, and less like the Iran-Iraq War (two Middle Eastern countries going at it, the West basically unaffected) or the Six-Day War?

The Six-Day War led to an intractable quagmire in the entire region. But there is plenty of reason to suggest this will turn into a protracted conflict. Israel wasn't able to pacify Gaza in six months, much less six days. Against Hezbollah? Yeah, that's going to look more like Syria and Iraq/Afghanistan than the Six Day War because Hezbollah is more well-armed, financed, they are experienced fighters. They are entrenched. There is very good reason the Biden administration's policy is a negotiated settlement and not a regional war.

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