Yeah, I suppose that’s one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I’ve ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime (“cohesive plan” quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.
Look, I’m not saying we’re clean here, and aren’t complicit. We’re walking a line of “being supportive” and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening “really fast” on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we’re complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.
It’s slow. Its maddening. It’s also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I’m not OK with that and I’m struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it’s probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.
People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I’m trying to trust that.
People are looking at it from a moral perspective, which is admirable and good but does nothing to explain why it’s happening or how to stop it. Geopolitics is about power, not morals. I wish it weren’t so but that’s the world we live in. When you look at it through the eyes of power, it will still be complicated but it will be honest and constructive.
Yup. Think of a country like a large freighter. It takes a lot of time between turning the wheel and the ship actually turning. Especially when there’s something wrong, like we’ve seen in Baltimore…
Basically “if we don’t support their genocide then someone else will”?
Yeah, I suppose that’s one read if you completely disregard the rather startling drift in US policy in Israel from October 2023 to now. We abstained from a UNSC veto on a ceasefire. SoS Blinkin is going more aggressively at Netanyahu than I’ve ever seen a US official go at ah Israeli PM in my lifetime (“cohesive plan” quote), Biden called out Bibi in his SOTU when there are DIRE domestic issues at hand.
Look, I’m not saying we’re clean here, and aren’t complicit. We’re walking a line of “being supportive” and bringing unorecedented diplomatic pressure on Israel to knock it off. Things are happening “really fast” on the scale of decades old policy, and that means something. Keeping hold on those ties means (a) yes, we’re complicit in the eyes of history, but (b) we are using those ties to try to minimize further bloodshed.
It’s slow. Its maddening. It’s also real politics on an international scale which, I am sorry, marginalizes death. I’m not OK with that and I’m struggling to make sense of it myself, but among other likely outcomes it’s probably the best play the US can make given the alternatives.
People with a lot more information than me are making the decisions. I’m trying to trust that.
Ding ding ding!
People are looking at it from a moral perspective, which is admirable and good but does nothing to explain why it’s happening or how to stop it. Geopolitics is about power, not morals. I wish it weren’t so but that’s the world we live in. When you look at it through the eyes of power, it will still be complicated but it will be honest and constructive.
Geopolitics can also be painfully slow:/
Yup. Think of a country like a large freighter. It takes a lot of time between turning the wheel and the ship actually turning. Especially when there’s something wrong, like we’ve seen in Baltimore…