> I do know my dad said we should nuke and glass the whole middle east, them included. It'd be the only way the middle east would stop fighting. (He was deployed there, desert storm)
> Edit: and -1's poured in less than 1 minute.
Re: downvotes, these lines imply immaturity. You should either be explicit about your degree of agreement with your father, or remove the anecdote entirely. And complaining about downvotes is always pointlessly distracting.
That might be and while the government certainly takes advantage of that sentiment to preserve its Israel policies, but the real reason the US government supports israel has more to do with the general region being oil rich and having a reliable and strong nuclear secular ally in the region.
They’re dispensationalists, though. Actual biblical literalists would probably have a hard time reconciling St. Paul with this idea that the modern nation-state of Israel has anything at all to do with the Israel of either the Old or New Testaments.
It is literally impossible to state objectively what "actual biblical literalists" would believe, as the document is massive, self-contradictory, and written with heavy use of allegory and metaphor.
This is true. I’m sure most dispensationalists consider themselves “literalists” even though they require charts upon charts to demonstrate how their “literalism” isn’t just creative interpretation. And besides, “literalism” is just a modern framework; none of the Church fathers (or most interpreters of Scripture for over 1900 years) were literalists in the sense it’s meant today. And heck, read the Sermon on the Mount to see that Jesus himself probably wouldn’t have qualified as a “literalist” lol.
The MIC loves expensive constant un-winnable wars and Israel is the devil that provides them. I’m very glad the youth oppose Israel so this nightmare can end in a few generations, hopefully before a million more people die.
If you read the article you find out that it's against American law to provide weapons if Israel evaded treaties to get nukes. So America is knowingly breaking its own law every time it sends more bombs to Isreal.
I'd actually feel safer if Iran just got it over with and developed/tested their own nuclear weapons. Then SA would get theirs, along with Egypt and Turkey, and all this low-grade (and brutal, primarily to civilians) nonstop warfare in the middle east would come grinding to a halt as everyone is forced to treat their neighbors with respect.
That’s a strange take. Pakistan and India are both nukes and continue to have border wars. Israel has nukes and has had a perpetual war. The UK and Egypt had conflict when UK has had nukes.
China had battles with Vietnam, Laos, and the Soviet Union. It’s amazing the restraint these nations have shown. Adding more nations to the pot adds more risk, especially when in the hands of unstable, immature, and emotionally irrational leaders. Russia and NK are threatening nuclear attacks annually. Let’s pray it never comes to that
Of all the conflicts you listed, only India and Pakistan are at nuclear parity, and their body count in all their conflicts is a rounding error compared to the others.
You’re forgetting that the US and Soviets /Russians fought multiple proxy wars with high body counts, even most recently in Syria. It doesn’t have to be direct confrontation
You actually want a theocracy whose religion considers non-muslims to go sub-humam to have nukes and would even feel safer?
The only thing that would make this constant war stop would be to cut all nations participating in these wars entirely off from the modern world. Revoke any travel permits, and stop any and all goods traveling to/from their borders, including to any nations ignoring such a ban.
The only reason why that's not am option is because of the vested interests of billionaires which procure oil from that area
But if we did, that would actually stop the wars, within a very short period of time.
It just can't be done passively like with NK, because China likes to ignore such initiatives
You seem to be confused about the definition of the word theocracy if you unironically consider Israel one. No, you don't seem to be - you unquestionably are considering how you argued the point.
theocracy
/θɪˈɒkrəsi/
noun
a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god.
you're absolutely correct. it would be more accurate to call Israel an ethnosupremacist state. For all intents and purposes, I consider the alternative terminology a reasonable substitute when looking at outcomes.
Even if what you're saying is true (theocracy, subhuman etc etc), the reality is we have almost 60 years of experience saying Israel isn't irresponsible with nukes. We can't say that about any of the other countries in the region like Iran, Turkey, Syria, Yemen etc etc. It would be one giant experiment to have everyone armed with nukes.
> We can't say that about any of the other countries in the region like Iran, Turkey, Syria, Yemen etc etc.
Can we for a second, step back and acknowledge who CAUSED the instability in those countries? Iran, off the top of my head, had a secular democratic government until the CIA orchestrated a coup.
Meanwhile, I certainly don't trust a country with nukes that has single handedly spearheaded a genocide that has resulted in the death of over 20 thousand children. Its literally a magnitude order more deaths per year than any other armed conflict. If you want to argue that religious zelots should not be trusted with nukes, I fully agree with you. but lets apply that logic to all countries. not just the ones that "ally" with us.
The US and Russia up until recently were committed to nuclear disarmament. Reagan even pledged to work towards "a world free of nuclear weapons," a goal that many on both sides of the political spectrum shared. Bizarrely, now I see plenty of leftists (tankies specifically) not just resigned to a world beset by nuclear proliferation, but even enthusiastic about it.
> step back and acknowledge who CAUSED the instability in those countries
Even if what you're saying is true, which is a reach imo, that's still not really a good justification to be pro nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
> According to our elected leaders, we should be very scared of the possibility that Iran could get a nuclear bomb. But Israel already has them, and ...
For the past 80 years, it's been all-but-guaranteed that you won't win an American election if you seem insufficiently pro-Israel.
Yes, there are plenty of objective arguments for America's foreign policy being far less pro-Israel than it has been for 8+ decades. US Sec. of State (and former US Army General) George Marshall made those arguments to US President Harry Truman back in 1948 - and was overruled. Truman had staked out a pro-Israel position before his previous election (which he had won), then won another election 6 months after overruling Marshall.
- If your real priority is sounding sophisticated, you can make fancy arguments about America being far too pro-Israel.
- If your real priority is understanding why America is so pro-Israel, then you need to shut up with the fancy arguments, and analyze the American electorate's strong preference for that.
- And if your real priority is winning American elections, then you need to present as "obviously" pro-Israel. And ignore the idiots making fancy arguments.
Arguably, the last Presidential election was lost because the candidate was insufficiently anti-Israel. I heard a number of people claim that the incumbent's support for Israel during the Gaza conflict was sufficient to reject his hand-picked successor.
It's impossible to know for sure, of course. I do not trust people's claims about their reasons. If she had somehow taken a position that would attract their votes, I can't know how many votes that position would have lost.
Nonetheless... AIPAC didn't make an endorsement in the last election. I don't think that she could have taken an even-more-pro-Israel position and gotten their endorsement. So it may well be that the only path forward is to hope that the anti-Israel crowd would vote if they were pandered to.
(I'll note that I don't believe that they will. I am quite certain they will find some other reason not to vote. But options are becoming thin on the ground.)
I don't know what the point of nukes are anymore. They will never be used. You'd figure giving Ukraine long range missiles would provoke Russia into using theirs, but they haven't. What would it take other than another nuclear strike to cause Russia or anyone with nukes to actually use them?
Separately, if Israel nukes Iran, will we be OK with it? Is there anything Israel can do that would make us say "Stop"?
I'm not sure there was ever a nuke permitting board deciding which countries are allowed nukes. I mean Russia and N Korea having them isn't ideal. It's just some countries got hold of them and some the west tries to stop getting them for strategic reasons.
While it's generally estimated that Israel has nukes, there's actually no evidence that they do. They've never tested one and you're never going to hold something in your pocket for defense that's untested.
1998 India/Pakistan was a rough year; but every nuclear power has tested their bombs to make sure they work.
There are detection systems that were able to detect sub kiloton explosions in NK from across the world; with triangulation that's quite precise. We would know if Israel has tested.
If they havent tested, they really dont have anything.
Now lets assume they do in fact have some; perhaps smuggled or sourced plans from some other nuclear power.
Why are they allowed to? Well what are you going to do about it? They'll nuke you to keep them.
With Israel as the most likely country that did the test with SA permission. It's very unlikely that the Soviet, Pakistan, India or France to do nuclear test there.
> While it's generally estimated that Israel has nukes, there's actually no evidence that they do. They've never tested one and you're never going to hold something in your pocket for defense that's untested.
That's one take.
It's really hard to say what the US has allowed as regards Israel. Locals near a particular nuclear facility can recall an Israeli "team of scientists" mysteriously visiting the facility, a year or so before Israel declared themselves a nuclear power. The assumption is that they "snuck" material out, while US officials were "distracted" - by prior agreement.
>It's really hard to say what the US has allowed as regards Israel. Locals near a particular nuclear facility can recall an Israeli "team of scientists" mysteriously visiting the facility, a year or so before Israel declared themselves a nuclear power. The assumption is that they "snuck" material out, while US officials were "distracted" - by prior agreement.
Israel has never declared themselves a nuclear power. They literally have a hebrew word for their refusal to answer questions on the matter.
That's also a very very suspicious story that anonymous locals near an anonymous nuclear facility that supposedly knew about a top secret team of israel scientists...
I think the deal is that any country is allowed to have nukes or give up having nukes. No country without nukes is allowed to get nukes - unless they already have them of course.
Well it considered the 51 state, it's an extension to USA. Every horrible thing done by them is just what USA want and not the other way around.
Strong country can pose any rules what ever they like this is history repeating it self, The US regime has it's racist roots and colonialism run in their blood, seeing millions of Muslims getting killed is what make them happy.
They allow themselves to have the best weapons but not for the people they kill so they can't retaliate this the real answer here.
58 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadRelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_affair
> Edit: and -1's poured in less than 1 minute.
Re: downvotes, these lines imply immaturity. You should either be explicit about your degree of agreement with your father, or remove the anecdote entirely. And complaining about downvotes is always pointlessly distracting.
It's not Kearney & Ritchie.
Of all the conflicts you listed, only India and Pakistan are at nuclear parity, and their body count in all their conflicts is a rounding error compared to the others.
The only thing that would make this constant war stop would be to cut all nations participating in these wars entirely off from the modern world. Revoke any travel permits, and stop any and all goods traveling to/from their borders, including to any nations ignoring such a ban.
The only reason why that's not am option is because of the vested interests of billionaires which procure oil from that area
But if we did, that would actually stop the wars, within a very short period of time. It just can't be done passively like with NK, because China likes to ignore such initiatives
theocracy /θɪˈɒkrəsi/ noun
Can we for a second, step back and acknowledge who CAUSED the instability in those countries? Iran, off the top of my head, had a secular democratic government until the CIA orchestrated a coup.
Meanwhile, I certainly don't trust a country with nukes that has single handedly spearheaded a genocide that has resulted in the death of over 20 thousand children. Its literally a magnitude order more deaths per year than any other armed conflict. If you want to argue that religious zelots should not be trusted with nukes, I fully agree with you. but lets apply that logic to all countries. not just the ones that "ally" with us.
Even if what you're saying is true, which is a reach imo, that's still not really a good justification to be pro nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
> According to our elected leaders, we should be very scared of the possibility that Iran could get a nuclear bomb. But Israel already has them, and ...
For the past 80 years, it's been all-but-guaranteed that you won't win an American election if you seem insufficiently pro-Israel.
Yes, there are plenty of objective arguments for America's foreign policy being far less pro-Israel than it has been for 8+ decades. US Sec. of State (and former US Army General) George Marshall made those arguments to US President Harry Truman back in 1948 - and was overruled. Truman had staked out a pro-Israel position before his previous election (which he had won), then won another election 6 months after overruling Marshall.
- If your real priority is sounding sophisticated, you can make fancy arguments about America being far too pro-Israel.
- If your real priority is understanding why America is so pro-Israel, then you need to shut up with the fancy arguments, and analyze the American electorate's strong preference for that.
- And if your real priority is winning American elections, then you need to present as "obviously" pro-Israel. And ignore the idiots making fancy arguments.
I thought that it was mostly because Israel is backed by evangelists who have a large electorate + lobby from the people with Jewish roots or faith.
Electorate or lobbyist and entrenched power? Losing funding is a way to lose votes, but doesn't imply anything about voter preference.
It's impossible to know for sure, of course. I do not trust people's claims about their reasons. If she had somehow taken a position that would attract their votes, I can't know how many votes that position would have lost.
Nonetheless... AIPAC didn't make an endorsement in the last election. I don't think that she could have taken an even-more-pro-Israel position and gotten their endorsement. So it may well be that the only path forward is to hope that the anti-Israel crowd would vote if they were pandered to.
(I'll note that I don't believe that they will. I am quite certain they will find some other reason not to vote. But options are becoming thin on the ground.)
Separately, if Israel nukes Iran, will we be OK with it? Is there anything Israel can do that would make us say "Stop"?
The more countries that have them, and the more nuclear weapons over all, the greater the likelihood they'll be used, even if only by accident.
1998 India/Pakistan was a rough year; but every nuclear power has tested their bombs to make sure they work.
There are detection systems that were able to detect sub kiloton explosions in NK from across the world; with triangulation that's quite precise. We would know if Israel has tested.
If they havent tested, they really dont have anything.
Now lets assume they do in fact have some; perhaps smuggled or sourced plans from some other nuclear power.
Why are they allowed to? Well what are you going to do about it? They'll nuke you to keep them.
Vela Incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
That's one take.
It's really hard to say what the US has allowed as regards Israel. Locals near a particular nuclear facility can recall an Israeli "team of scientists" mysteriously visiting the facility, a year or so before Israel declared themselves a nuclear power. The assumption is that they "snuck" material out, while US officials were "distracted" - by prior agreement.
I believe the US nuclear-armed Israel directly.
Israel has never declared themselves a nuclear power. They literally have a hebrew word for their refusal to answer questions on the matter.
That's also a very very suspicious story that anonymous locals near an anonymous nuclear facility that supposedly knew about a top secret team of israel scientists...
>I believe the US nuclear-armed Israel directly.
I doubt.
not sure how locals can see "team of scientists" visiting it
Strong country can pose any rules what ever they like this is history repeating it self, The US regime has it's racist roots and colonialism run in their blood, seeing millions of Muslims getting killed is what make them happy.
They allow themselves to have the best weapons but not for the people they kill so they can't retaliate this the real answer here.
I always prey for the day that Rome will fall.