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On November 21 2023 23:09 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2023 22:40 MaGic~PhiL wrote:
So is it all whataboutism cirle jerking in the end?
Well I for one, when Im talking about this issue dont think it really is. Because "whataboutism" kinda implies the thing you are talking about are somewhat equal. And I dont think the numbers, the geographical pictures, the expertise of many experts in the field, many objective facts ect. show that the Israeli people suffered to the same extent then the people of Palestine.
Now I dont really know if I like this stuff being waved aside as a whataboutism.
Im not saying this captures this conflict perfectly or precisely. It is just a picture/metaphor to kinda, vaguely show what I mean:
A six year old boy tells his child care worker that he got punched in the arm by another child. When trying to confront the other five year old child the child care worker finds him screaming in extreme agony, bleeding all over his head. The children around him tell her: The Boy that came to you, that was upset about getting punched in the arm.. kicked him in the head repeatedly with this iron rod laying there.
Several child care worker witnessing this yell out "whataboutism" and move away to attend to the child complaining about the pain in its arm.
Now this isnt whataboutism territory. It is two indiviudals in this case and you can compare a) who started it b) for what reason c) how vicious/damaging the thing was that they inflicted on each other..
I will reiterate that this is obviously not presicely how I look at this conflict. NO i am not comparing what is happening to Israel and the death people due to hamas as a mere punch in the arm. DO NOT GO THERE.
Unless stated otherwise the thing I assume is: When someone talks about the suffering of Palestines/Civs in Gaza and at the same time doesnt talk about the suffering of israeli population he is still aware that Israel citizens are suffering as well.
AND VICE VERSA
H O W E V E R.. for me it is extremely clear who is suffering more. It is very murky who is to blame for this whole conflict and it what capacity (Like if I had to use % id say it is almost 50/50 maybe slightly in favour of Palestine 45/55 Israel due to the insane power discrepancy and the fact israel is occupying large parts of Palestine and not the other way around)
So just a short question without evading (to anyone but in particular to JimmiC):
1) Who do you think suffered more in this conflict (beginning with ~1947/48) Israel or Palestine/Gaza?
2) If you would be willing to give % who is at fault for this conflict starting/ worsening/ still going on.. how would you weight them on Israel & Palestine?
I’m going to just completely stay away from your analogies. 1. Palestinians/gaza 2. I think it is incorrect to frame this as Isreal vs Palestine. That would insinuate Hamas is fighting for Palestinians which is clearly not the case. I would frame this as a conflict between the Arab states with Israel with the Palestinians as victims from both camps. I will take the very unpopular position that it is slightly worse what the Arab states have done partly because they are selling themselves as trying to help the Palestinians. For example the Arab states mostly refused the Palestinians citizenship or even the right to work. If I had to put it to % I’d go with Isreal 45% Palestinians 0% and Arab world 55% Exodus did a really in depth history early on in this conflict and there is so many twists and turns of awfulness that I do not write those percentages with much confidence. And I basically feel like Palestinians are victims suffering some sort of Stockholm syndrome. What puts Israel so slightly ahead is they treat the Arabs within their borders a million times better than the Arab world treats Jews. Their values (at least of the Arab Israelis and secular Jews ) is closer to mine. For example they do not persecute LGBTQ+, they do not believe in the right for husbands to use violence on their wives, they are against female genitalia mutilation, they are against honor killing, so on. When you move to the orthodox and ultra orthodox Jewish people it gets much closer. I should also state that with secular and moderate Muslims I would also have lots in common with, just sadly right now there is not many that hold power and sway.
Firstly I appreciate it a lot that you answered pretty directly to my questions. I now feel like we have talked past each other for the last 10 pages. I accept responsibility there too. I feel like to some extent ist also happend because so far you never really tried to engage with my questions. Now you did and I feel like we are very close in terms of opinions and views regarding this conflict.
Weird.
But if you (as in everyone) are somwhere in the 50/50 range +- 10% I think that is a stance I can agree with. However the people in power in Israel have a 95/5 stance at best. Likewise Hamas..
Regarding your point 2: I think you are largely wrong. If this truly were a conflict between Arab states vs Israel it would basically be WW3. And it clearly has not been so far and isnt yet. So Id say you could be correct with that in the future but for now it is wrong.
If you need/want me to expand on why I think it would basically mean WW3 I can do that. But I assume you know why. At the very least it would be a very credible way into a conflict that could easily expand to WW3.
But overall I think and feel for basically the first time that we are not that far off. And Im thankful you replied very clearly and did not evade.
The only question Im now faced with:
Did I 100% distort your views and not read properly OR did you post a lot of conflicting stuff that did not sound like this most frequent post (at all.. sometimes).
Probably als always the truth is somewhere in between. But I think/feel confident if you are being honest with your last post we are basically agreeing.
I also agree that Hamas is NOT a good thing for Palestine/Gaza. However I would like to ask you:
1) What do you think (no absurd fantasy land ideas; has to be somewhat realistic) could exist as a "military" substitue for "Palestine"/"Hamas"..?
2) Or looked at it from another angle: Palestine is not really a country but a territory. How can there ever be a "normal military power" there?
(What Im insinuating here is that I think it is a bit dishonest when people constantly say "Hamas is not fighting a fair war and attacking civs as much or more than the israel military" .. as if there was EVER anything else that a Palestine Territory could manage to do in terms of military action.)
My point is: IF Palestine/Hamas had the weaponry/military prowess/might of Israel/IDF they would not (need to) retort in the horrible way they do but could fight a "real war"..
Broader food for tought: Did you realize that the "war game" changed immensly compared to pre WWl WWll Vietnam IraQ war ect.. as in: There is NO parity in the means of how the war is fought. And the logical outcome is that the weaker/less advanced side uses abhorrent strategies in what they feel .. is "standing their ground"
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On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 16:23 ChristianS wrote:On November 20 2023 11:46 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 09:50 ChristianS wrote:
Okay, since I wrote my post this morning, it looks like we have a couple developments: a video apparently showing a hidden access tunnel into the hospital, and some security cam footage purporting to show hostages being taken to the hospital (they’re calling it a “terror tunnel” but I don’t think that actually means anything). I trust independent investigators are already at work verifying that’s what these videos actually are; for the moment I’ll take it at face value.
So it seems like Hamas had some secret ways to get into the hospital. They also brought hostages there, which certainly suggests they consider it a “base” of some kind. So far it doesn’t seem like much of a “main headquarters” for a military organization, although maybe now is a good time to think about what that would even mean. Decentralization is kind of a big thing for insurgent groups like Hamas; what are the odds they even *have* a big Bond villain secret headquarters anywhere in Gaza? In all likelihood they’ve got a dispersed network of small cells, each with a few hiding places and some weapons at their disposal.
To me the biggest question from the start of this is what “eliminating Hamas” would even look like. I mean, there’s a lot to criticize in Israel’s concept of just how cheap Palestinian lives are when they’re deciding what strikes are “worth it,” but fundamentally all that would have to be judged against an achievable overall objective that they just don’t seem to have. They can kill a lot of Palestinians; some percentage of those (I doubt it’s over 10%) are militants that would have taken up arms against Israel. They can track down some weapons and military infrastructure, and seize or destroy them. But at the end of the day there’s still going to be millions of Palestinians, some percentage of which will still be willing to take up arms against Israel, and those insurgents still won’t have trouble getting ahold of guns to do it with.
It’s not impossible to “win” a war of occupation but nothing we’re seeing from the IDF seems even remotely capable of achieving it. It’s just the usual escalation of cruelty that wars of occupation always promote, with no end in sight. I agree that decentralizing is 9999x more likely and I don’t think any Bond villain base” kinda thing even exists. It would be an easy target and would eliminate a huge reason Hamas chooses to use human shields to begin with. Decentralizing and spreading within easy sympathy targets is ideal in basically every way. We are seeing very clearly that from a strictly “military engagement” perspective, Hamas can be easily compared to some alt right militia group that managed to win an election. It’s not an army so much as a collection of shit heads all interested in genocide of Jews. They are getting completely clobbered. But useful idiots are still useful. That’s why Iran and others will continue to try to make sure they have what they need to engage in whatever shit head activities tickle their uneducated fancies. Right now I think “winning” should be framed as eliminating Hamas’s ability to control land and slither between hospitals. Now that I think about it, a blackberry bush is probably a perfect comparison. It’s a fool’s errand to try to wipe out all blackberries, but it’s totally achievable to carve out an area where you get rid of all of it and then take steps to make sure any little sprouts are noticed and plucked quickly before it turns into a big issue. That’s the ideal way to remove the threat of Hamas, IMO. The way IDF seems to be approaching it is: squeeze Gaza like a tube of toothpaste and pull out all the Hamas roots (tunnels) they can along the way so that the total number of hospitals Hamas to slither around between is significantly reduced and the land they control is minimal or zero. We’ve seen Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran all express very clearly just how important the people of Gaza are and how it’s imperative they are relieved of their suffering. They sound like great candidates to help establish a new government to replace Hamas. Hamas being out of the picture will make it a lot harder for those nations to pretend they wish they could help but can’t. Here’s their chance. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of effort Arab nations with the means to help choose to help. I hope my cynicism is proven wrong. I get extremely nervous any time you decide you’ve come up with a great analogy, although in this case I’m not really sure what this blackberry business even is. Maybe you have to have experience picking blackberries? To some extent it sounds like you’re getting at a clear and hold strategy. Which, you know, is certainly how the British or US handled it whenever they had some insurgent territory they wanted to beat into submission. In this case, though, I’m not sure what the strategically important footholds would even be. You keep saying “slither between hospitals” like you think if the IDF just controls all the hospitals, there will be nowhere else to hide. But the whole point of a decentralized insurgency is to not be as predictable as to only hide in one type of building. They can hide in apartments or tunnels or the back room of a grocery store or w/e, there’s no reason they even need to poke their head out until the IDF has moved onto another area. Meanwhile the IDF strategy you’re describing is the exact opposite of clear and hold – it’s apparently to match an army around the map, fight whoever is there, and then keep marching. If Hamas is split up into thousands of little hidey-holes across the territory I don’t see how they have any chance of even killing Hamas militants preferentially over civilians in the slightest; compared to civilians Hamas fighters are much more likely to have the resources and training to hide and avoid Israeli troops and bombs indefinitely. Then after they’ve done that for a while, your best hope is that they can persuade some other Arab nation to occupy Gaza indefinitely? Why the hell would that be a good outcome? Insurgents aren’t blackberries, and they aren’t toothpaste. If they’ve got hundreds or thousands of hideouts like the one under that hospital, I don’t see how Israel has any chance of “eliminating Hamas” in a reasonable time frame. At which point what are they even accomplishing? Lotta dead civilians, lotta angry survivors who are almost certainly more receptive than ever to joining an insurgency, but other than that, seems like not a whole lot? I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion.
Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation.
If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones.
I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been.
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United States42004 Posts
On November 21 2023 07:37 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2023 07:20 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The way I read that is that the statement includes 'support for Israel', and thus the current campaign in Gaza. Everybody in the west condemns the terrorist attack, but they can do so without supporting Israel's retaliation. Oh boy do I wish you were right about everybody in the west condemning the attack. In a world where people don’t use political opinions as a replacement for an identity, that may be a more realistic fantasy.
The attack was brutal and abhorrent. Even westerners who support Hamas’s struggle aren’t, as a rule, on board with weaponized rape and killing children.
You can always find some weirdos that are exceptions to “everyone” but in this case everyone is basically true.
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On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 16:23 ChristianS wrote:On November 20 2023 11:46 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 09:50 ChristianS wrote:
Okay, since I wrote my post this morning, it looks like we have a couple developments: a video apparently showing a hidden access tunnel into the hospital, and some security cam footage purporting to show hostages being taken to the hospital (they’re calling it a “terror tunnel” but I don’t think that actually means anything). I trust independent investigators are already at work verifying that’s what these videos actually are; for the moment I’ll take it at face value.
So it seems like Hamas had some secret ways to get into the hospital. They also brought hostages there, which certainly suggests they consider it a “base” of some kind. So far it doesn’t seem like much of a “main headquarters” for a military organization, although maybe now is a good time to think about what that would even mean. Decentralization is kind of a big thing for insurgent groups like Hamas; what are the odds they even *have* a big Bond villain secret headquarters anywhere in Gaza? In all likelihood they’ve got a dispersed network of small cells, each with a few hiding places and some weapons at their disposal.
To me the biggest question from the start of this is what “eliminating Hamas” would even look like. I mean, there’s a lot to criticize in Israel’s concept of just how cheap Palestinian lives are when they’re deciding what strikes are “worth it,” but fundamentally all that would have to be judged against an achievable overall objective that they just don’t seem to have. They can kill a lot of Palestinians; some percentage of those (I doubt it’s over 10%) are militants that would have taken up arms against Israel. They can track down some weapons and military infrastructure, and seize or destroy them. But at the end of the day there’s still going to be millions of Palestinians, some percentage of which will still be willing to take up arms against Israel, and those insurgents still won’t have trouble getting ahold of guns to do it with.
It’s not impossible to “win” a war of occupation but nothing we’re seeing from the IDF seems even remotely capable of achieving it. It’s just the usual escalation of cruelty that wars of occupation always promote, with no end in sight. I agree that decentralizing is 9999x more likely and I don’t think any Bond villain base” kinda thing even exists. It would be an easy target and would eliminate a huge reason Hamas chooses to use human shields to begin with. Decentralizing and spreading within easy sympathy targets is ideal in basically every way. We are seeing very clearly that from a strictly “military engagement” perspective, Hamas can be easily compared to some alt right militia group that managed to win an election. It’s not an army so much as a collection of shit heads all interested in genocide of Jews. They are getting completely clobbered. But useful idiots are still useful. That’s why Iran and others will continue to try to make sure they have what they need to engage in whatever shit head activities tickle their uneducated fancies. Right now I think “winning” should be framed as eliminating Hamas’s ability to control land and slither between hospitals. Now that I think about it, a blackberry bush is probably a perfect comparison. It’s a fool’s errand to try to wipe out all blackberries, but it’s totally achievable to carve out an area where you get rid of all of it and then take steps to make sure any little sprouts are noticed and plucked quickly before it turns into a big issue. That’s the ideal way to remove the threat of Hamas, IMO. The way IDF seems to be approaching it is: squeeze Gaza like a tube of toothpaste and pull out all the Hamas roots (tunnels) they can along the way so that the total number of hospitals Hamas to slither around between is significantly reduced and the land they control is minimal or zero. We’ve seen Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran all express very clearly just how important the people of Gaza are and how it’s imperative they are relieved of their suffering. They sound like great candidates to help establish a new government to replace Hamas. Hamas being out of the picture will make it a lot harder for those nations to pretend they wish they could help but can’t. Here’s their chance. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of effort Arab nations with the means to help choose to help. I hope my cynicism is proven wrong. I get extremely nervous any time you decide you’ve come up with a great analogy, although in this case I’m not really sure what this blackberry business even is. Maybe you have to have experience picking blackberries? To some extent it sounds like you’re getting at a clear and hold strategy. Which, you know, is certainly how the British or US handled it whenever they had some insurgent territory they wanted to beat into submission. In this case, though, I’m not sure what the strategically important footholds would even be. You keep saying “slither between hospitals” like you think if the IDF just controls all the hospitals, there will be nowhere else to hide. But the whole point of a decentralized insurgency is to not be as predictable as to only hide in one type of building. They can hide in apartments or tunnels or the back room of a grocery store or w/e, there’s no reason they even need to poke their head out until the IDF has moved onto another area. Meanwhile the IDF strategy you’re describing is the exact opposite of clear and hold – it’s apparently to match an army around the map, fight whoever is there, and then keep marching. If Hamas is split up into thousands of little hidey-holes across the territory I don’t see how they have any chance of even killing Hamas militants preferentially over civilians in the slightest; compared to civilians Hamas fighters are much more likely to have the resources and training to hide and avoid Israeli troops and bombs indefinitely. Then after they’ve done that for a while, your best hope is that they can persuade some other Arab nation to occupy Gaza indefinitely? Why the hell would that be a good outcome? Insurgents aren’t blackberries, and they aren’t toothpaste. If they’ve got hundreds or thousands of hideouts like the one under that hospital, I don’t see how Israel has any chance of “eliminating Hamas” in a reasonable time frame. At which point what are they even accomplishing? Lotta dead civilians, lotta angry survivors who are almost certainly more receptive than ever to joining an insurgency, but other than that, seems like not a whole lot? I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any.
The problem with the PA is that it has no legitimacy. I think Acro called them a paper tiger earlier in the thread but I think they're not even a paper tiger. More like a paper mouse. They cannot even control the West Bank without Israels help. The PA is also hopelessly corrupt and oppressive. Meanwhile Abbas is approaching year 20 of his 4 year term and ruling by decree. It's why the US talks about a revitalised PA to take over. They cannot take over in its current form.
On November 22 2023 00:07 MaGic~PhiL wrote:
credible?
Afaik this was not a secret. They built it for the hospital not for military purposes.
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lol Houthis basically saying “don’t worry Hamas, I’ll tag in while you’re on a ceasefire you’ll violate anyway” by indicating they’ll keep attacking until Israel destroyed.
It makes sense, since Yemen is one of the many neighboring nations that love to use collective punishment of Jews. Ethnic cleansing is quite common in nations neighboring Israel.
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On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 16:23 ChristianS wrote:On November 20 2023 11:46 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 09:50 ChristianS wrote:
Okay, since I wrote my post this morning, it looks like we have a couple developments: a video apparently showing a hidden access tunnel into the hospital, and some security cam footage purporting to show hostages being taken to the hospital (they’re calling it a “terror tunnel” but I don’t think that actually means anything). I trust independent investigators are already at work verifying that’s what these videos actually are; for the moment I’ll take it at face value.
So it seems like Hamas had some secret ways to get into the hospital. They also brought hostages there, which certainly suggests they consider it a “base” of some kind. So far it doesn’t seem like much of a “main headquarters” for a military organization, although maybe now is a good time to think about what that would even mean. Decentralization is kind of a big thing for insurgent groups like Hamas; what are the odds they even *have* a big Bond villain secret headquarters anywhere in Gaza? In all likelihood they’ve got a dispersed network of small cells, each with a few hiding places and some weapons at their disposal.
To me the biggest question from the start of this is what “eliminating Hamas” would even look like. I mean, there’s a lot to criticize in Israel’s concept of just how cheap Palestinian lives are when they’re deciding what strikes are “worth it,” but fundamentally all that would have to be judged against an achievable overall objective that they just don’t seem to have. They can kill a lot of Palestinians; some percentage of those (I doubt it’s over 10%) are militants that would have taken up arms against Israel. They can track down some weapons and military infrastructure, and seize or destroy them. But at the end of the day there’s still going to be millions of Palestinians, some percentage of which will still be willing to take up arms against Israel, and those insurgents still won’t have trouble getting ahold of guns to do it with.
It’s not impossible to “win” a war of occupation but nothing we’re seeing from the IDF seems even remotely capable of achieving it. It’s just the usual escalation of cruelty that wars of occupation always promote, with no end in sight. I agree that decentralizing is 9999x more likely and I don’t think any Bond villain base” kinda thing even exists. It would be an easy target and would eliminate a huge reason Hamas chooses to use human shields to begin with. Decentralizing and spreading within easy sympathy targets is ideal in basically every way. We are seeing very clearly that from a strictly “military engagement” perspective, Hamas can be easily compared to some alt right militia group that managed to win an election. It’s not an army so much as a collection of shit heads all interested in genocide of Jews. They are getting completely clobbered. But useful idiots are still useful. That’s why Iran and others will continue to try to make sure they have what they need to engage in whatever shit head activities tickle their uneducated fancies. Right now I think “winning” should be framed as eliminating Hamas’s ability to control land and slither between hospitals. Now that I think about it, a blackberry bush is probably a perfect comparison. It’s a fool’s errand to try to wipe out all blackberries, but it’s totally achievable to carve out an area where you get rid of all of it and then take steps to make sure any little sprouts are noticed and plucked quickly before it turns into a big issue. That’s the ideal way to remove the threat of Hamas, IMO. The way IDF seems to be approaching it is: squeeze Gaza like a tube of toothpaste and pull out all the Hamas roots (tunnels) they can along the way so that the total number of hospitals Hamas to slither around between is significantly reduced and the land they control is minimal or zero. We’ve seen Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran all express very clearly just how important the people of Gaza are and how it’s imperative they are relieved of their suffering. They sound like great candidates to help establish a new government to replace Hamas. Hamas being out of the picture will make it a lot harder for those nations to pretend they wish they could help but can’t. Here’s their chance. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of effort Arab nations with the means to help choose to help. I hope my cynicism is proven wrong. I get extremely nervous any time you decide you’ve come up with a great analogy, although in this case I’m not really sure what this blackberry business even is. Maybe you have to have experience picking blackberries? To some extent it sounds like you’re getting at a clear and hold strategy. Which, you know, is certainly how the British or US handled it whenever they had some insurgent territory they wanted to beat into submission. In this case, though, I’m not sure what the strategically important footholds would even be. You keep saying “slither between hospitals” like you think if the IDF just controls all the hospitals, there will be nowhere else to hide. But the whole point of a decentralized insurgency is to not be as predictable as to only hide in one type of building. They can hide in apartments or tunnels or the back room of a grocery store or w/e, there’s no reason they even need to poke their head out until the IDF has moved onto another area. Meanwhile the IDF strategy you’re describing is the exact opposite of clear and hold – it’s apparently to match an army around the map, fight whoever is there, and then keep marching. If Hamas is split up into thousands of little hidey-holes across the territory I don’t see how they have any chance of even killing Hamas militants preferentially over civilians in the slightest; compared to civilians Hamas fighters are much more likely to have the resources and training to hide and avoid Israeli troops and bombs indefinitely. Then after they’ve done that for a while, your best hope is that they can persuade some other Arab nation to occupy Gaza indefinitely? Why the hell would that be a good outcome? Insurgents aren’t blackberries, and they aren’t toothpaste. If they’ve got hundreds or thousands of hideouts like the one under that hospital, I don’t see how Israel has any chance of “eliminating Hamas” in a reasonable time frame. At which point what are they even accomplishing? Lotta dead civilians, lotta angry survivors who are almost certainly more receptive than ever to joining an insurgency, but other than that, seems like not a whole lot? I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any.
Just to be clear, I don’t think any of what’s happening is something to raise a glass to. All the folks involved are morally failing in profound ways and I view it all as a tragedy.
However, one assumption I make that others appear to avoid is that time continues to progress forward regardless of if we feel ready for what comes next. All of my discussion here is predicated on the idea that regardless of how many people will die, it will indeed happen regardless of how tragic it is, so long as time continues. God did not stop time right before the holocaust to give humans time to avoid unimaginable tragedy. He just kept his foot on the gas and said “guess it sucks to be a human right now, figure it out”.
So when I say something appears to be the best path or whatever, it is based on inherent tragedy we can all assume is real so long as time moves faster than our ability to solve problems.
I am also making a conscious decision to interpret previous dynamics and assume many of them will continue until disrupted. For example, the reason it’s illegal to use human shields by operating out of hospitals is that it’s an extremely safe assumption that the enemy will not say “golly, guess I lose now” and allow a portion of their enemy’s military to be invincible. Tragically, that hospital is gonna get dumpstered so long as it is being used as a part of war. So when a faction uses their own civilian hospitals for military purposes, they are making a conscious decision to use their civilians as a human sacrifice as a means of increasing their military capabilities. This is an example of how a huge tragedy just kind of still happens despite the fact that I view it as a tragedy. My sensitivities don’t play a role in how the world overcomes tragedy. I am profoundly insignificant when god is scratching his chin deciding what happens next. So all I can really do is ponder the least shitty thing, since as described above, time doesn’t stop to allow for a Disney happy ending.
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On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 16:23 ChristianS wrote:On November 20 2023 11:46 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 09:50 ChristianS wrote:
Okay, since I wrote my post this morning, it looks like we have a couple developments: a video apparently showing a hidden access tunnel into the hospital, and some security cam footage purporting to show hostages being taken to the hospital (they’re calling it a “terror tunnel” but I don’t think that actually means anything). I trust independent investigators are already at work verifying that’s what these videos actually are; for the moment I’ll take it at face value.
So it seems like Hamas had some secret ways to get into the hospital. They also brought hostages there, which certainly suggests they consider it a “base” of some kind. So far it doesn’t seem like much of a “main headquarters” for a military organization, although maybe now is a good time to think about what that would even mean. Decentralization is kind of a big thing for insurgent groups like Hamas; what are the odds they even *have* a big Bond villain secret headquarters anywhere in Gaza? In all likelihood they’ve got a dispersed network of small cells, each with a few hiding places and some weapons at their disposal.
To me the biggest question from the start of this is what “eliminating Hamas” would even look like. I mean, there’s a lot to criticize in Israel’s concept of just how cheap Palestinian lives are when they’re deciding what strikes are “worth it,” but fundamentally all that would have to be judged against an achievable overall objective that they just don’t seem to have. They can kill a lot of Palestinians; some percentage of those (I doubt it’s over 10%) are militants that would have taken up arms against Israel. They can track down some weapons and military infrastructure, and seize or destroy them. But at the end of the day there’s still going to be millions of Palestinians, some percentage of which will still be willing to take up arms against Israel, and those insurgents still won’t have trouble getting ahold of guns to do it with.
It’s not impossible to “win” a war of occupation but nothing we’re seeing from the IDF seems even remotely capable of achieving it. It’s just the usual escalation of cruelty that wars of occupation always promote, with no end in sight. I agree that decentralizing is 9999x more likely and I don’t think any Bond villain base” kinda thing even exists. It would be an easy target and would eliminate a huge reason Hamas chooses to use human shields to begin with. Decentralizing and spreading within easy sympathy targets is ideal in basically every way. We are seeing very clearly that from a strictly “military engagement” perspective, Hamas can be easily compared to some alt right militia group that managed to win an election. It’s not an army so much as a collection of shit heads all interested in genocide of Jews. They are getting completely clobbered. But useful idiots are still useful. That’s why Iran and others will continue to try to make sure they have what they need to engage in whatever shit head activities tickle their uneducated fancies. Right now I think “winning” should be framed as eliminating Hamas’s ability to control land and slither between hospitals. Now that I think about it, a blackberry bush is probably a perfect comparison. It’s a fool’s errand to try to wipe out all blackberries, but it’s totally achievable to carve out an area where you get rid of all of it and then take steps to make sure any little sprouts are noticed and plucked quickly before it turns into a big issue. That’s the ideal way to remove the threat of Hamas, IMO. The way IDF seems to be approaching it is: squeeze Gaza like a tube of toothpaste and pull out all the Hamas roots (tunnels) they can along the way so that the total number of hospitals Hamas to slither around between is significantly reduced and the land they control is minimal or zero. We’ve seen Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar, and Iran all express very clearly just how important the people of Gaza are and how it’s imperative they are relieved of their suffering. They sound like great candidates to help establish a new government to replace Hamas. Hamas being out of the picture will make it a lot harder for those nations to pretend they wish they could help but can’t. Here’s their chance. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of effort Arab nations with the means to help choose to help. I hope my cynicism is proven wrong. I get extremely nervous any time you decide you’ve come up with a great analogy, although in this case I’m not really sure what this blackberry business even is. Maybe you have to have experience picking blackberries? To some extent it sounds like you’re getting at a clear and hold strategy. Which, you know, is certainly how the British or US handled it whenever they had some insurgent territory they wanted to beat into submission. In this case, though, I’m not sure what the strategically important footholds would even be. You keep saying “slither between hospitals” like you think if the IDF just controls all the hospitals, there will be nowhere else to hide. But the whole point of a decentralized insurgency is to not be as predictable as to only hide in one type of building. They can hide in apartments or tunnels or the back room of a grocery store or w/e, there’s no reason they even need to poke their head out until the IDF has moved onto another area. Meanwhile the IDF strategy you’re describing is the exact opposite of clear and hold – it’s apparently to match an army around the map, fight whoever is there, and then keep marching. If Hamas is split up into thousands of little hidey-holes across the territory I don’t see how they have any chance of even killing Hamas militants preferentially over civilians in the slightest; compared to civilians Hamas fighters are much more likely to have the resources and training to hide and avoid Israeli troops and bombs indefinitely. Then after they’ve done that for a while, your best hope is that they can persuade some other Arab nation to occupy Gaza indefinitely? Why the hell would that be a good outcome? Insurgents aren’t blackberries, and they aren’t toothpaste. If they’ve got hundreds or thousands of hideouts like the one under that hospital, I don’t see how Israel has any chance of “eliminating Hamas” in a reasonable time frame. At which point what are they even accomplishing? Lotta dead civilians, lotta angry survivors who are almost certainly more receptive than ever to joining an insurgency, but other than that, seems like not a whole lot? I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role.
The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas?
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On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:On November 20 2023 16:23 ChristianS wrote:[quote] I get extremely nervous any time you decide you’ve come up with a great analogy, although in this case I’m not really sure what this blackberry business even is. Maybe you have to have experience picking blackberries? To some extent it sounds like you’re getting at a clear and hold strategy. Which, you know, is certainly how the British or US handled it whenever they had some insurgent territory they wanted to beat into submission. In this case, though, I’m not sure what the strategically important footholds would even be. You keep saying “slither between hospitals” like you think if the IDF just controls all the hospitals, there will be nowhere else to hide. But the whole point of a decentralized insurgency is to not be as predictable as to only hide in one type of building. They can hide in apartments or tunnels or the back room of a grocery store or w/e, there’s no reason they even need to poke their head out until the IDF has moved onto another area. Meanwhile the IDF strategy you’re describing is the exact opposite of clear and hold – it’s apparently to match an army around the map, fight whoever is there, and then keep marching. If Hamas is split up into thousands of little hidey-holes across the territory I don’t see how they have any chance of even killing Hamas militants preferentially over civilians in the slightest; compared to civilians Hamas fighters are much more likely to have the resources and training to hide and avoid Israeli troops and bombs indefinitely. Then after they’ve done that for a while, your best hope is that they can persuade some other Arab nation to occupy Gaza indefinitely? Why the hell would that be a good outcome? Insurgents aren’t blackberries, and they aren’t toothpaste. If they’ve got hundreds or thousands of hideouts like the one under that hospital, I don’t see how Israel has any chance of “eliminating Hamas” in a reasonable time frame. At which point what are they even accomplishing? Lotta dead civilians, lotta angry survivors who are almost certainly more receptive than ever to joining an insurgency, but other than that, seems like not a whole lot? I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment.
I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it.
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On November 22 2023 06:34 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 01:27 Mohdoo wrote:
[quote]
I agree with all of your skepticism and most of your predictions. I think that’s why Israel’s actual plan is likely to just force as many people towards Egypt as possible so that Egypt can end up with a big enough Muslim Brotherhood 2.0 problem that they are forced to be a non-zero contributor to solving the problem. So long as Palestinians are only an Israel problem, neighboring Muslim nations are more than happy to kick their feet back and grab a bag of popcorn. I expect that would change if Egypt started getting wobbly again. It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that. Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment. I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it. Based on things like the North Korea starvations I'm going to take a wild stab and say less Palestinians die from Israel then if Gaza was like North Korea.
I'll take living in Gaza over North Korea pretty much every day of the week.
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On November 22 2023 06:36 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 06:34 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:On November 21 2023 02:01 ChristianS wrote:
[quote]
It sounds to me like your analysis of Israel’s plan isn’t actually that different than GH’s. They’re just going to make life as miserable for Palestinians as they can until they die or vacate the territory. “Clear and hold” – except they’re not just clearing insurgents, they’re clearing all Palestinians, and they’re not just holding strategically important footholds, they’re holding the whole territory. In fact, the only people that *might* be able to survive a campaign like that are insurgents. Whisper communication networks, concealed tunnels, and hidden weapons stashes all sound pretty useful if you’re hoping to stay alive through an apocalypse like that.
Here maybe GH or Neb would call me overly optimistic, but I simply don’t believe Israel’s international backing is willing to tolerate that. Fundamentally Israel needs the US et al. to survive and keep doing this. Maybe a Trump administration would want to back a campaign like that, but for the moment I just don’t think an outcome that bloody is actually within their ability to achieve. Which means all they’ll be able to do is march around massacring civilians and shouting “Oct 7” at critics until that loses its rhetorical force enough that they’re forced to go home. Lots dead, nothing accomplished. I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck. What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost? I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way. I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment. I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it. Wait Israel is as bad as North Korea? I do not think any of the 20% of the population of Israel who are Palestinians would take that trade.
I'm not comparing Israel to North Korea. That was only my first comment (and I was comparing Israel to South Korea, because it was about their military might). South Korea is able to hold off North Korea. Likewise Israel should be able to hold off Hamas.
My second comment was about Palestinians getting bombed (by Israel) vs not getting bombed (by Hamas). Despite both Israel and Hamas being horrible regimes, at least Hamas doesn't intend to bomb tens of thousands of Palestinians.
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On November 22 2023 06:54 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 06:36 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 06:34 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 21 2023 02:27 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
I don’t always agree with mohdoo but what I really appreciate about him is he takes bold stabs at answers then really engages with the answers and lets the jerks comments just roll off his back like a water off a duck.
What would you do? How does the world rid itself of the Hamas’s? Can it what is the cost?
I totally agree this is not the way, but leaving Hamas to abuse every Palestinian and try to kill as many innocents as possible is also not the way.
I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo. I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war. Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was. Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both. That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment. I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it. Wait Israel is as bad as North Korea? I do not think any of the 20% of the population of Israel who are Palestinians would take that trade. I'm not comparing Israel to North Korea. That was only my first comment (and I was comparing Israel to South Korea, because it was about their military might). South Korea is able to hold off North Korea. Likewise Israel should be able to hold off Hamas. My second comment was about Palestinians getting bombed (by Israel) vs not getting bombed (by Hamas). Despite both Israel and Hamas being horrible regimes, at least Hamas doesn't intend to bomb tens of thousands of Palestinians. I think saying that South Korea is "holding off" North Korea is miscasting the situation. NK seems perfectly capable of inflicting massive damage on SK if it wanted to. But they don't want to because they have a lot to lose, or its ruling family does anyway.
The problem with Israel/Hamas is that Hamas doesn't have enough to lose. They don't have a country that they rule in wealth.
If Israel wants to hold of Hamas how SK holds of NK then you first need to make Hamas's leadership live in wealth and splendor.
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On November 22 2023 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 06:54 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:36 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 06:34 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:
[quote]
I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo.
I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war.
Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was.
Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both.
That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment. I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it. Wait Israel is as bad as North Korea? I do not think any of the 20% of the population of Israel who are Palestinians would take that trade. I'm not comparing Israel to North Korea. That was only my first comment (and I was comparing Israel to South Korea, because it was about their military might). South Korea is able to hold off North Korea. Likewise Israel should be able to hold off Hamas. My second comment was about Palestinians getting bombed (by Israel) vs not getting bombed (by Hamas). Despite both Israel and Hamas being horrible regimes, at least Hamas doesn't intend to bomb tens of thousands of Palestinians. No they kill them much more personally and only if they disobey their perverted version of religion. So far Israel is killing lots, but we have no idea how many are civilians vs fighters and we may never know. We also have no idea how many of the dead were killed directly by Hamas, either because they wouldn’t flee or because their rocket didn’t make it to Israel. Israel is not close to the same level of Hamas it is not remotely comparable. This is my huge issue with many of the people here you are starting from a position of Israel is evil and all their actions are evil with evil motivations. I start from the position that Israel is a democracy with all the good and bad that comes with it. The people there are a med as well and terrified and angry, as most of us would be if a friend, family member or someone we knew was killed by Hamas in the manner it happened. If this had happened to any other democratic country but Israel these are not the assumptions that would be made about them. Its possible for Hamas to be worse then Israel and for Israel to still be 'evil'. And if anyone other then Israel was doing what Israel is doing now the world would complain a whole hell of a lot more.
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On November 22 2023 07:07 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2023 06:54 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:36 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 06:34 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 06:31 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 05:29 Magic Powers wrote:On November 22 2023 05:19 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:38 ChristianS wrote:On November 22 2023 00:20 JimmiC wrote:On November 22 2023 00:03 ChristianS wrote:
[quote]
I’m not sure I find the willingness to advocate war crimes and then ignore critics as admirable as you do. That’s not *always* what is happening but it is frequently where things seem to land with Mohdoo.
I think your prompt here is basically “what would a good version of this war look like?” But I’m not sure there is one within the conceivable range of possibility. I mean in the US context, look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, all of which most people tend to think were mistakes in retrospect. What was the “good” version of invading Vietnam? Leaders at the time would have assured us that Viet Cong really were very bad guys, but even if that’s true it doesn’t mean there’s a good version of the war.
Of course if we’re sufficiently willing to strain reality we can imagine anything, even a “good” Iraq war. Suppose we’d had perfect intelligence of the crimes committed by each member of the regime, and we had swiftly and nonlethally seized the territory and put each of them on trial with a jury of their peers? Then quickly rebuilt the infrastructure to be as good or better than we found it, stationed peacekeepers until elections could be held, and then left? That sounds pretty good. If we also psychically replace the mind of Bush with someone like Trotsky on September 12th, 2001 and imagine him invading Iraq solely for the purpose of creating a safe haven for revolutionary socialism, we might even get GH on-board. But in the range of things the US was capable of and willing to do, there just wasn’t a good outcome to be had, despite what a bad guy Saddam was.
Bringing it back to Israel: if you find yourself wondering “how do I win a war of occupation?” frequently the more ethical answer is “don’t.” The insurgents might be bad guys, but pretty consistently you wind up killing a lot more civilians than insurgents, and the remaining civilians are more eager than ever to join the insurgents. Empires do win such wars sometimes, but it’s rarely quick or easy and even more rarely moral. The sorts of actions I could imagine actually helping Gaza instead of hurting are too far out of the range of possibility for the IDF. They either lack the capability, or the willingness, or both.
That said, Hamas is going to be a big problem for whoever ultimately tries to govern this place, and they’re going to find themselves trying to tackle a lot of the same problems eventually. But, say, a Palestinian Authority government would have some moral credibility in saying “there will be some collateral damage while we try to root out all these criminal networks; we’ll do our best to limit it, please don’t get mad and join the insurgents.” The IDF has none and plainly has no interest in building any. I'm going to leave your first paragraph out of my response because it will just take it down the same rabbit hole and no one seems willing to go any where interesting and confront the difficulty of what we actually define as a "war crime". I'm not asking how you win a war of occupation. I've stated over and over again I do not think the IDF has made the correct strategic or ethical/morale choice. Hamas is governing that place and they did so by force, by killing many members of the Palestinian Authority and anyone who supported them. So exactly how would you give them control? My question is not "what would a good war look like?". My question is not a hidden gotcha, it is a legitimate what is right decision. And if you work all the way back I believe a lot of people feel like Israel has no right to exist. I say this because every move that seems to approved of means giving control to people who want to kill all the people of Jewish decent and Religion. Maybe some clarification is in order. In my view Hamas are the main insurgent faction in a war of occupation. You started from the premise that leaving Hamas in power can’t be the right answer, which to me means that some version of “eliminate Hamas” is a necessary component of an acceptable outcome. And “eliminate the insurgent faction” is essentially the occupier’s win condition in a war of occupation. If we remove “eliminate Hamas” from the prerequisites of acceptable outcomes, I think the clear right answer is the same as Iraq or Vietnam or any of the rest: just go home and stop killing people. It means admitting defeat, but victory was never really on the table; it means those bad guys will still be in charge, but it was hubristic to think you had the power to go around the world replacing bad governments with good ones. I suspect any official recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a government in a two-state solution would require the presence of international peacekeepers; otherwise Hamas is likely to just murder the members of any government that isn’t them. But pretty much any military in the world besides the IDF would have a better chance of being seen as impartial peacekeepers. It would also go a long way for the international community to make substantial investments in rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, considering the state the IDF has left Gaza in; unexploded ordnance alone has got to be absolutely everywhere, considering how bomb-happy they’ve been. When I say can not I meant unacceptable to me. I would hope unacceptable to everyone if they think Hamas is as bad as they say they do. But I did not mean it was impossible. I think there is a fair bit to unpack here. In both Iraq and Vietnam the threats were more existential and they are half a planet away. A better example might be North and South Korea, If NK was not a nuclear threat and did what Hamas has done (not just Oct 7th), would you be giving them the same advice? Should have the west supported SK and should it still be? From your third paragraph can I assume your suggestion is that post Oct 7th Israel does nothing outside their boarders. Then the UN sends some sort of force into Gaza and they fight Hamas and give power to the PA? Wouldn't all those soldiers and UN workers not to mention the PA people be in mortal danger at all times? I do not think they would have any more success defeating Hamas without killing civilian's, so they really could not fight them. Which would mean they would just to accept that on a regular basis and as often as Hamas could they would be attacked and killed. Are you certain that this would be better than this in the long term? I do not see it as realistically working. I know that Canadian peacekeepers that are targets for Hamas would be extremely unpopular here and likely true the rest of the world. I can not see any foreign government stepping up to fill that role. The comparison to the Korean conflict is apt, and I'm somewhat surprised that you don't conclude that something similar would be achievable - if given a solid effort - with Israel and Palestinians. I believe it absolutely is. Seeing that South Korea manages to hold North Korea at bay, I wonder why Israel wouldn't be able to accomplish something similar with Hamas? Is that a good outcome for Palestinians or anyone ? Short term less people die but I hope we are shooting higher than complete subjugation of a population not to mention an ongoing threat of them starting a war back up at any moment. I mean, I do think it's preferable for people to be under a horrible regime that isn't bombarding them than to be bombarded by a different horrible regime. I don't know how else to put it. Wait Israel is as bad as North Korea? I do not think any of the 20% of the population of Israel who are Palestinians would take that trade. I'm not comparing Israel to North Korea. That was only my first comment (and I was comparing Israel to South Korea, because it was about their military might). South Korea is able to hold off North Korea. Likewise Israel should be able to hold off Hamas. My second comment was about Palestinians getting bombed (by Israel) vs not getting bombed (by Hamas). Despite both Israel and Hamas being horrible regimes, at least Hamas doesn't intend to bomb tens of thousands of Palestinians. The problem with Israel/Hamas is that Hamas doesn't have enough to lose.
I think there's merit to the argument that if Hamas had something to lose then it wouldn't really exist, or it would exist in a form that is very different from what we see today.
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EPT
