Plenty of people thought 9-11 would be the beginning of WWIII too. Didn't happen, though a lot of bad stuff did come of it, A direct confrontation between the US and Russia (the only WWIII I care about since nukes are in the equation) is possible in Ukraine, but in the Middle East? Not very possible at all, given that Russia is bogged do…
Plenty of people thought 9-11 would be the beginning of WWIII too. Didn't happen, though a lot of bad stuff did come of it, A direct confrontation between the US and Russia (the only WWIII I care about since nukes are in the equation) is possible in Ukraine, but in the Middle East? Not very possible at all, given that Russia is bogged down badly in Ukraine which is much closer to home and has only rhetoric and maybe some extra weapons to offer outside that theater.
On the larger issue, the question is not "Was Hamas justified in all it did"? Of course it wasn't. The question is, What should Israel do? And while I support Israel taking down Hamas, that does not entail a blank check for Israel to commit atrocities of its own.
I think MacGregor's point is that a lot has changed in the past 20 years. Other countries are stronger and the US is perceived as weaker. This could be an opportunity for other countries to try to break the hegemony.
I don't see anyone rushing into to try that. Russia is completely engaged closer to home. The Chinese are certainly offering themselves as an alternative hegemon to the US but they are not about to send troops to the Middle East. And Israel is still Israel: able to take on its neighbors as needed.
Yeah but I think all bets are off if the US takes a direct swing at Iran. And after the foreign policy blundering of the past 20+ years, I've no confidence we'll show restraint
What do you mean by "direct swing"? Trump had an Iranian general assassinated, which is certainly a causus belli (and unusual even in actual wartime).
So far the the evidence for any intent-- even on Israel's part-- to engage Iran militarily in fairly void. Are there warmongers, in the US, the UK and Israel, who would like to so? Absolutely yes. But there are no signs pointing to their being able to get their way.
Recall that in the First Gulf War Saddam Hussein fired off missiles at Israel although Israel had nothing to do with the conflict itself; yet the US held to its mission in Kuwait and did not use that as reason to go after Saddam after his army was expelled from Kuwait. And given the current disorder (polite word used) in the House right now, it's hard to see how the US could be rallied to such an effort at the moment (Yes, Congress would have to sign off on such a war with some sort of vote or other).
Yeah but I'm not thinking the First Gulf War, I'm thinking Iraq. I'm thinking "regime change." And I'm sure the neocons have allllll sorts of plans to rally Americans to their never-changing cause.
There is zero evidence that Iran has nukes, or can obtain them.
Do you think it possible Israel would use nuclear weapons in a merely conventional war against, say Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah? That the US would green light such a thing? The world's nuclear powers have not been able to entirely prevent other nations developing nukes (India; Pakistan) but they have been united about tamping down any possibility of those nations using them (again, India and Pakistan).
The use of nuclear weapons in the particular geography of this conflict would also come with an extravagant amount of blowback due to fallout patterns. I can see some truly depraved terrorists not giving a hoot and so being willing to expend Arab lives too-- but would any remotely responsible government including Iran, do so?
The idea that the Isrealis would blast off all their nukes against not just their immediate Arab neighbors but against most of the rest of the world, friend and foe alike, in a "burn it all down" scenario in the face of the loss of a conventional has it's own Wiki page.
Thinking that the US has the ability to convince the Isrealis not to do it if they thought they were out of options is pretty naive, IMO.
The US has the ability to turn Israel into a cauterized charnel. So does Russia, China, the UK and France. I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect there are unpublicized agreements out there which hang like the Sword of Damocles over every nation threatening destruction on any nation that uses nukes unprovoked. Hence the restraint shown by India and Pakistan too.
It's an unwelcome truth when we're all so uncomfortable: that it's almost unbearable to think of things not changing, but even more awful to imagine what would come after. So as bad as things get there's a sustaining and enormous pressure in quiet corners to keep chugging along. It may make us mad but it's also something to be profoundly grateful for.
There's the Samson Option, though, as Dukeboy pointed out. That's the idea that, if Israel were to be eliminated, it would nuke a large number of Middle Eastern and European capitals first, to go out with a bang. This isn't some weird fantasy; in 2002, the LA Times published an article openly advocating this.
Presumably, however, in most Europe and Middle Eastern capitals, there must also be the foreseen Samson Option, i.e. that if Israel's existence is ever imperilled, it will be nuked so intensely that its forces cannot fire missiles.
There is no clean, sanitized war. There is no war without atrocities. There is no way to "take down Hamas" without a months/years long campaign that will result in hundreds of thousands of casualties. We also take great pains to avoid civilian deaths (I’ve heard the details of this from a retired colonel, and I guarantee few other militaries take the steps we take), but it doesn’t sway world opinion, and it won’t for Israel either. I don’t see that Israel has an alternative to taking down Hamas, either. It really is a rock-hard place situation.
Hamas has carefully structured things to *maximize* civilian casualties. They *want* the videos of bodies and screaming injured children for their world propaganda campaign, which they have very good reason to expect to be successful (it has been for years). I don’t know what "blank check" means here. What would you suggest they do? Symbolically take out a few targets and declare everything goes back to Oct 6? Not going to happen.
If this turns into some vast bloodbath Israel will lose badly in the long run. And yes, I would suggest taking out the Hamas leadership, by assassins if possible. The Old Testament says "An eye for an eye", but it does not say "fifty yeas for an eye." WShy play rigyht intop Hamas';s propaganda campaign? See also: the US response to 9-11. Not a model to be followed.
Well that was the bet the Arab countries took in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and they lost every time. Or do you just mean "lose badly" in "world opinion"? The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground. All Hamas leadership would be instantly replaced, either with other Palestinian nutters right there in Gaza or with outside "freedom fighters" supplied by Iran or whomever.
I think Israel is in a trap, and I don’t see any great options. They’re certainly not going to mimic the Bush wars, that’s not even an issue. They’re not about to go out nation building and convince the Iranians of the glories of LGBTQ. I imagine they’re well aware of how they are about to do what Hamas wants and play into their propaganda campaign, but they don’t see an alternative path.
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.
And good grief this has nothing to do with our little domestic kerfluffles-- f*** all that LGBT crap and a plague on both thopse houses-- none of that matters at this level of things.
Things will not be good. But "very, very bad" is a purely matter of human choice-- and Heaven at least will judge those choices.
My only point with the LGBTQ comment was as an example of how very far our nation building efforts strayed from reason and reality. Unfortunately, just after we were finally recovering from Vietnam malaise, the Bush wars poisoned the well and have now left America full of eyes-covered isolationists. That will come back to bite us.
The Israelis are deeply divided between religious Zionists, and hiloni atheists, and the latter, with their stronghold in the tech industry, are full-on with the whole Sexual Revolution show, not to mention transhumanism, AI, etc. - a sort of sci-fi version of Folsom Street.
If there were no Arab threat, there would probably be civil war. However, the one thing the two sides have in common is that they really, really hate Christians.
When I try to think of factions in the Holy Land who I do sympathise with, they're these: (1) Christians; (2) anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews; and (3) moderate, tolerant Muslims.
Plenty of people thought 9-11 would be the beginning of WWIII too. Didn't happen, though a lot of bad stuff did come of it, A direct confrontation between the US and Russia (the only WWIII I care about since nukes are in the equation) is possible in Ukraine, but in the Middle East? Not very possible at all, given that Russia is bogged down badly in Ukraine which is much closer to home and has only rhetoric and maybe some extra weapons to offer outside that theater.
On the larger issue, the question is not "Was Hamas justified in all it did"? Of course it wasn't. The question is, What should Israel do? And while I support Israel taking down Hamas, that does not entail a blank check for Israel to commit atrocities of its own.
I think MacGregor's point is that a lot has changed in the past 20 years. Other countries are stronger and the US is perceived as weaker. This could be an opportunity for other countries to try to break the hegemony.
I don't see anyone rushing into to try that. Russia is completely engaged closer to home. The Chinese are certainly offering themselves as an alternative hegemon to the US but they are not about to send troops to the Middle East. And Israel is still Israel: able to take on its neighbors as needed.
Yeah but I think all bets are off if the US takes a direct swing at Iran. And after the foreign policy blundering of the past 20+ years, I've no confidence we'll show restraint
What do you mean by "direct swing"? Trump had an Iranian general assassinated, which is certainly a causus belli (and unusual even in actual wartime).
So far the the evidence for any intent-- even on Israel's part-- to engage Iran militarily in fairly void. Are there warmongers, in the US, the UK and Israel, who would like to so? Absolutely yes. But there are no signs pointing to their being able to get their way.
Recall that in the First Gulf War Saddam Hussein fired off missiles at Israel although Israel had nothing to do with the conflict itself; yet the US held to its mission in Kuwait and did not use that as reason to go after Saddam after his army was expelled from Kuwait. And given the current disorder (polite word used) in the House right now, it's hard to see how the US could be rallied to such an effort at the moment (Yes, Congress would have to sign off on such a war with some sort of vote or other).
Yeah but I'm not thinking the First Gulf War, I'm thinking Iraq. I'm thinking "regime change." And I'm sure the neocons have allllll sorts of plans to rally Americans to their never-changing cause.
Jon? You do know Israel has nukes, don't you? And if Iran gets them (whether home grown or somehow from Pakistan), WW III sounds possible.
There is zero evidence that Iran has nukes, or can obtain them.
Do you think it possible Israel would use nuclear weapons in a merely conventional war against, say Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah? That the US would green light such a thing? The world's nuclear powers have not been able to entirely prevent other nations developing nukes (India; Pakistan) but they have been united about tamping down any possibility of those nations using them (again, India and Pakistan).
The use of nuclear weapons in the particular geography of this conflict would also come with an extravagant amount of blowback due to fallout patterns. I can see some truly depraved terrorists not giving a hoot and so being willing to expend Arab lives too-- but would any remotely responsible government including Iran, do so?
Trees do not grow up to the sky.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
The idea that the Isrealis would blast off all their nukes against not just their immediate Arab neighbors but against most of the rest of the world, friend and foe alike, in a "burn it all down" scenario in the face of the loss of a conventional has it's own Wiki page.
Thinking that the US has the ability to convince the Isrealis not to do it if they thought they were out of options is pretty naive, IMO.
The US has the ability to turn Israel into a cauterized charnel. So does Russia, China, the UK and France. I can't prove it, but I strongly suspect there are unpublicized agreements out there which hang like the Sword of Damocles over every nation threatening destruction on any nation that uses nukes unprovoked. Hence the restraint shown by India and Pakistan too.
Sometimes I really like your posts.
I doubt North Korea is on that list.
It's an unwelcome truth when we're all so uncomfortable: that it's almost unbearable to think of things not changing, but even more awful to imagine what would come after. So as bad as things get there's a sustaining and enormous pressure in quiet corners to keep chugging along. It may make us mad but it's also something to be profoundly grateful for.
Carry on, we're British.
There's the Samson Option, though, as Dukeboy pointed out. That's the idea that, if Israel were to be eliminated, it would nuke a large number of Middle Eastern and European capitals first, to go out with a bang. This isn't some weird fantasy; in 2002, the LA Times published an article openly advocating this.
Presumably, however, in most Europe and Middle Eastern capitals, there must also be the foreseen Samson Option, i.e. that if Israel's existence is ever imperilled, it will be nuked so intensely that its forces cannot fire missiles.
There is no clean, sanitized war. There is no war without atrocities. There is no way to "take down Hamas" without a months/years long campaign that will result in hundreds of thousands of casualties. We also take great pains to avoid civilian deaths (I’ve heard the details of this from a retired colonel, and I guarantee few other militaries take the steps we take), but it doesn’t sway world opinion, and it won’t for Israel either. I don’t see that Israel has an alternative to taking down Hamas, either. It really is a rock-hard place situation.
Hamas has carefully structured things to *maximize* civilian casualties. They *want* the videos of bodies and screaming injured children for their world propaganda campaign, which they have very good reason to expect to be successful (it has been for years). I don’t know what "blank check" means here. What would you suggest they do? Symbolically take out a few targets and declare everything goes back to Oct 6? Not going to happen.
If this turns into some vast bloodbath Israel will lose badly in the long run. And yes, I would suggest taking out the Hamas leadership, by assassins if possible. The Old Testament says "An eye for an eye", but it does not say "fifty yeas for an eye." WShy play rigyht intop Hamas';s propaganda campaign? See also: the US response to 9-11. Not a model to be followed.
Well that was the bet the Arab countries took in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and they lost every time. Or do you just mean "lose badly" in "world opinion"? The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground. All Hamas leadership would be instantly replaced, either with other Palestinian nutters right there in Gaza or with outside "freedom fighters" supplied by Iran or whomever.
I think Israel is in a trap, and I don’t see any great options. They’re certainly not going to mimic the Bush wars, that’s not even an issue. They’re not about to go out nation building and convince the Iranians of the glories of LGBTQ. I imagine they’re well aware of how they are about to do what Hamas wants and play into their propaganda campaign, but they don’t see an alternative path.
Things are going to get very very bad.
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ - Nothing in Excess.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.
And good grief this has nothing to do with our little domestic kerfluffles-- f*** all that LGBT crap and a plague on both thopse houses-- none of that matters at this level of things.
Things will not be good. But "very, very bad" is a purely matter of human choice-- and Heaven at least will judge those choices.
My only point with the LGBTQ comment was as an example of how very far our nation building efforts strayed from reason and reality. Unfortunately, just after we were finally recovering from Vietnam malaise, the Bush wars poisoned the well and have now left America full of eyes-covered isolationists. That will come back to bite us.
Actually, I think LGBT is relevant here.
The Israelis are deeply divided between religious Zionists, and hiloni atheists, and the latter, with their stronghold in the tech industry, are full-on with the whole Sexual Revolution show, not to mention transhumanism, AI, etc. - a sort of sci-fi version of Folsom Street.
If there were no Arab threat, there would probably be civil war. However, the one thing the two sides have in common is that they really, really hate Christians.
When I try to think of factions in the Holy Land who I do sympathise with, they're these: (1) Christians; (2) anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews; and (3) moderate, tolerant Muslims.