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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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I was alive then

Me too, and I admit that the initial vibe was pretty well captured by The Onion's "We Must Retaliate With Blind Rage vs. We Must Retaliate With Measured, Focused Rage" debate. Bill Maher got bumped from ABC for saying a suicide attack wasn't "cowardly", because "murder is bad, cowardice is bad, therefore murder is cowardice" wasn't a textbook example of the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle, it was just something Real Americans should bellyfeel.

That definitely wasn't happening after 9/11.

Depends on how long you define "after" to mean. It started happening faster than the wars did.

There was some "Voter March"/"No Blood For Oil" protest on 9/12 that only attracted a thousand protesters ... but by the time the reaction to 9/11 was clearly in motion it was attracting the largest anti-war rally in history.

murder is cowardice

What an absolute soycuck tier shit to say and feel as if you've said something profound. I've lost the last bit of respect I didn't even know I still had for Bill Maher.

What? His point was it wasn't cowardice.

I just looked it up and at one point afterwards George Bush had a 92% approval rating. I would say that is pretty different from now. Obviously you can find examples of people disagreeing, but objective measures like polling and voting show it was a much different time. That link you posted was a year and a half after 9/11.

I was too young by then but did Bush already commit to war at the period his popularity was so high?

Yeah the Afghanistan war was launched less than a month after September 11 and the rhetoric started pointing that way almost immediately. Bush started by demanding the Taliban hand over Bin Laden or else, they didn't, and the "or else" happened.