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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict. It's not going to cause Hezbollah to surrender or significantly disrupt their wartime capabilities at the northern front. It's just a terrorist attack

I see this attitude - you can't beat Muslim terrorists and militias and will only make it worse so don't even try- a lot amongst Americans (usually left leaning ones) and I don't get it.

What's the alternative? Full scale war? Some peace deal?

you can't beat Muslim terrorists and militias and will only make it worse so don't even try- a lot amongst Americans (usually left leaning ones) and I don't get it.

How did 20 years of bombing Afghanistan go?

Why should they not fight back when getting occupied? Why should I as a right winger support people who went to the middle east and try to bring wokeness and globalism to the third world? The neo con/globalists wars have caused massive waves of refugees to Europe. There is no critical race theory and gender studies in Iraq. They fought back and kicked the globalists out.

These wars have given us nothing but a surveillance state, migrants, and debt. It is a good thing that the locals manage to resist.

How did 20 years of bombing Afghanistan go?

The bombing went fine. It was the pretending that building schools for girls in a muslim nation was a good idea that went poorly.

I have no qualms with Palestinians trying to reconquer everything from the river to the sea. I have a problem with them expecting any sympathy from me when they do it. No other historical border in world history is talked about in the way the "1967" borders are. That sort of thing is tiresome. If they want that land they can get good and win. Or else they can accept a peaceful 3 state solution with something similar to current borders.

This using your own women and children as human shields because you know antisemites and progressives will cry foul is totally lame.

“Skill Issue.”

I agree.

At this point enough precedent has been set to paint the Arab / “Palestinian” / Islamist resistance to Israel as what they are; sore losers and pathetic failures who start fights and continually get their asses handed to them, no matter the price to their people.

Any dialogue about this issue that conveniently skips over this very obvious point I just automatically flag in my mind as fundamentally dishonest. It’s incredibly tiresome.

Stop starting wars with Israel and losing. Or don’t, I really don’t care.

This makes me far less anti-anti_dan. What a well reasoned comment. The quadruple think required for all of this can be reduced down and you have done so. Please continue.

Why should they not fight back when getting occupied?

If the battle is to stop the occupation of Lebanese land, then Hezbollah can make some ploughshares now.

I obviously get that it's a GWOT hangup, it's the first response you get. I was being polite: I don't "get" it in the sense that I think there are significant disanalogies I often see the sorts of people making the above argument or your comparison simply ignore for unclear reeasons. If OP gave an alternative to violence, it'd explain why he thinks those don't apply.

Also, you switched the question. Nobody is really asking why Hezbollah is doing this.

The question was why Americans seem to behave with not only with absolute fatalism but also with condemnation that others don't take them at their word that, because they lost, nothing can be done. And why they think that's an option for a nation that can't just fly away and let any Afghans dumb enough to believe that they were now global citizens fall to their deaths or be beaten back into niqabs.

Why should I as a right winger support people who went to the middle east and try to bring wokeness and globalism to the third world?

Also not the question. These people, like OP, don't say they don't support it. They actively condemn. "Their bed to lie in" is totally different. Because that goes both ways.

What does "actively condemn" mean? Few people are going as far as saying that the US should bomb Israel. The condemnation is only relative to a baseline of close to unconditional material and political support. Not that I'm American (though I'm a citizen of another major IL supporter), but I don't see why I can't vote and advocate to withdraw all support and let the situation solve itself, or how I could do this without condemning the load-bearing parts of the overwhelming consensus to continue support.

Declaring the government structures of your enemy terrorists and therefore outside of normal conventions of acceptable wartime conduct is all fun and games until it is done to you and yours. Israel has performed targeted assassinations of scientists involved with the Iranian nuclear programme; I would like to see the reaction if Islamists killed some US academic involved in DARPA, or any Israeli scientist involved in defense projects. Ukraine has killed journalists and lobbed basically unguided ordnance at Russian cities; I doubt it would be framed as an acceptable wartime move if Russia pulled something like the pager trick on Ukraine's leadership or even merely on GRU/whoever is behind the assassinations on the Ukrainian side by any of its cheerleaders.

but I don't see why I can't vote and advocate to withdraw all support and let the situation solve itself

This would be "their bed to lie in" I think.

or how I could do this without condemning the load-bearing parts of the overwhelming consensus to continue support.

The cynical answer to perceived hypocrisy (often on the left anyway) is that it's all power all the way down. If America's enemies aren't terrorists because that is a cynical judgment on the US' part, it doesn't necessarily follow that the US are terrorists. They may all be hypocrites.

Then it's just a pragmatic judgment what you prefer.

But it often doesn't go like this. America's judgments of its opponents are false, but their judgments are correct.

What's the alternative? Full scale war? Some peace deal?

No just Xinjiang is enough

Israel doesn’t have the resources or political cover to go full Xinjiang in Gaza.