It isn't the Administration, Bill, that is ignoring the deteriorating state of world affairs... or rather, it isn't primarily or just the Administration. Because they seemed to have their shit together enough to blunt the attack on Israel.
It is a HUGE chunk of the Amercian electorate that is the "problem.". A chunk that does not trust or…
It isn't the Administration, Bill, that is ignoring the deteriorating state of world affairs... or rather, it isn't primarily or just the Administration. Because they seemed to have their shit together enough to blunt the attack on Israel.
It is a HUGE chunk of the Amercian electorate that is the "problem.". A chunk that does not trust or believe in our institutions. A chunk that has an increasingly alternative perception of world affairs and of who the bad guys are (and it is not just the Right/MAGA we are talking about here). It is a chunk that watched us fight in Afghanistan and Iraq for twenty years, spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives... for, in effect, nothing. And they are unwilling to do that (or worse) again.
If the political will for something does not exist and/or cannot be mobilized, then it doesn't really matter that much what the administration believes or doesn't believe--unless they can do stuff on the down low to prepare for the inevitable confrontation.
And having a do-nothing, hostile GoP House majority that is effectively in the tank for the Bad Guys makes that difficult, if not impossible.
The prevailing public sentiment about all of this stuff is likely, just keep us out of it.
As is usual with America, it will require some kind of event that strikes close to home before the American public will be willing to do something. Stuff happening in UKR, the Phillipines, or Israel does not hit close enough. You need a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or Lusitania.
And so far, the Coalition of Bad Guys has been smart enough not to do something like that. So things will deteriorate until they are either that stupid, or they figure their time has come and they attack.
And THAT will be FAR more expensive to us than all of the stuff people are currently bitching about. It usually is.
As I remarked last week, one of the major lessons of history is that people do NOT learn the lessons of history. Even though history tries to teach us these things repeatedly.
I just don’t get why bill and co don’t realize that there is zero chance that America supports an American war in the Middle East. There just is no chance. Maybe in Asia (i don’t really believe this) but definitely not in the ME.
To further your point, the foreign policy of W Bush,Dick Cheney and John Bolton has had a devastating effect in Americans confidence and fears that have led to the current GOP/MAGA isolationism.
Yeah, not to be a jerk, but Bill Kristol is an expert in *failed* foreign policy. I was honestly sad to read this because it seems like he hasn't learned anything about how pointless and dangerous escalation is in the Middle East. I'm not an isolationist by any stretch, but I have the same loss of confidence in that kind of foreign policy that the MAGAs do. My friends were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not just numbers on a spreadsheet.
The last thing that you do is send in the troops, because that causes all types of problems and imposes a lot of costs. Especially gven that we are super reluctant to engage in "nation building," or nation building of late tends to be very corrupt... and it doesn't work when you haven't basically flattened the country (like was done to Germany and Japan).
And troops set down in the local environment are easy targets.
Killing the foot soldiers also doesn't do much, as they are easily replaced.
What you ARE trying to do is generate personal level fear in the leadership and reduce strategic and operational capability.
That means assasssinating a lot of people in "plausibly deniable" ways where everyone knows you did it. That means destroying equipment and infrastrucre, either kinetically or through cyber attacks or financial manipulation.
You kill enough leaders, sooner or later they tend to get the message. People get reluctant to be seen as the person in charge. You destroy institutional continuity, You destroy experience and capability.
We don't do that because that would mean that our political leadership then becomes a target (oh, noes) and the precious infrastructure of the American corporates might become targets, impacting their bottom line.
We live in a world where it is okay to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of peons (for little result) but it is NOT okay to kill the people making the decisions and ordering the deaths. Which is F'd up--but it also lets you know who runs things and in whose interests they are run.
The reality is that we could probably weather regular deaths in our leadership than most of these authoritarian states. Politicians are a dime a dozen.
Killing ten thousand HAMAS fighters, or Revolutiuonary Guards (or whatever) doesn't get you much beyond an operational pause (which is useful) and the reality is that violence is not a solution to most of these problems--UNLESS you emply it to the ultimate degree... and THAT has problems of its own.
So continued careful, deniable targetted killings, careful, deniable continual destruction of theft/assets--in other words, doing the things that they are doing, only better--because they cannot afford it as well as we can, in the end. They lack strategic depth.
Because the reality is that these people do NOT want to fight a war with us. The correlation of forces is NOT in their favor... so they will continually act below the threshold of open warfare until that correlation changes or we get tired of it and give up--they are banking on the second.
Case in point, destruction of the ship being used to funnel supplies to the Houthis that we have been warned by the Iranians to not attack. Ooops, looks like there was an unfortunate accident there. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
You use measured action to push the level of engagement down, by making too expensive and difficult for them to do it.
What we have done in the past hasn't been working, time to change gears.
All we're doing with this violent stuff is boosting terrorist recruitment drives. Especially in Gaza right now. And who can blame them? Deterrence doesn't work when you've already lost everything. Meanwhile, we have a LOT to lose. Our people get enraged when gas prices go up 20 cents, much less the whole town getting turned into rubble with half our family under it.
My ideal vision of America is to be a shield for the West. Exactly like what we just did in Israel and what we were doing in Ukraine. Protecting civilians, not killing them. Nothing makes us safer than general good will. Nuclear weapons aside, we built our military to be able to fight Russia and China, on different fronts, at the same time, and win. We might as well use it to protect people just trying to live their lives. We might as well live up to our values. I'm not a foreign policy expert, I just want us to operate in a way that doesn't make me fucking miserable for once in my adult lifetime. I got a taste of pride during our response to the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I'm hungry for more.
I'm watching what works and what doesn't. For example, diplomacy- got a bunch of hostages back. Bombing the shit out of everyone and their mom- lots of dead hostages.
They do not believe they are actually under threat. If you do not feel endangered/threatened, you have no real reason to engage in diplomacy (especially when you are getting away with all kinds of things).
You don't engage in what is an open act of war against another country unless you believe that there is no danger in it for you--which is exactly what they did with the attack on Israel.
And then we plainly said that we would not get involved, which simply reinforced their perception. No real price paid. Until they have to actually pay a price, why would they negotiate?
Besides, we are rather untrusdtworthy diplomatic partners, given what Trump did to them and what we have done in the past.
Iran was clearly retaliating against Israel for the embassy bombing, and they did it in the most slapfight way possible. They telegraphed it and leaked intelligence on the attack on purpose. Reminder of the catastrophic intelligence failure of Oct. 7th. This worked out so they could look tough with no fatalities. All the used armaments are now not headed to Russia to use against Ukraine.
Also, respectfully, since when do religious extremists respond the way you want them to? This could have gone so much worse.
Iran has been engaged in escalating attacks for years, usually through the mechanism of thinly veiled proxies. They have been escalating these attacks because there has not been significant pushback.
They have funded, trained, supported attacks against a variety of targets--American, Israeli, Saudi, ships from various nations at sea.
If they are religious extremists motivated only by their religious views and extremism (which I seriously doubt, given the nature of their activities over the years) then no negotiations are actually possible with them and you would be foolish in the extreme to lift sanctions and provide them with MORE resources.
What you have been looking at over the past several years is a three way contest between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel (with Israel largely stuck in the middle as the ethnic/religious differences actually preclude them positioning as an acceptable hegemon) about who gets to be the regional hegemon. It is part of a larger, historical contest between the Iranians (Persians) and the Arabs/Ottomans/ Byzantines/Romans (yes it goes back THAT far).
It is exacerbated by the ethnic and religious differences (Sunni v Shia and Arab v Iranian), with Israel thrown in as a handy target and rallying point/tool for Iran (and, in the past the Sauds).
The last thing you want to do at this point is lift sanctions. So what is there to actually negotiate?
Imagine how they will act WHEN they get nuclear weapons (because it is a question of when, not if).
We had an opportunity with the deal negotiated prior to Trump taking office--and then that got shat all over. There is, at this point, no real grounds for negotiations.
Bill does tilt a little too much to the John Bolton wing on foreign policy. I'm a big believer in how HW Bush handled foreign policy.(the opposite of W Bush)
I'm actually not sure that the entire GOP house is "hostile." They seem mostly to be in fear of the MTGaetzes of the party, afraid of offending trump because he will rile the base against them. Reports are that there are enough votes to pass the Ukraine aid bill, which is why Johnson, the one most seriously in thrall to the reactionary rump, keeps stalling.
I'm in the crowd that thinks Johnson is stalling so the vote comes after any GOP primary in which one of his members would face a challenge, even if it was a write in challenge.
I think he is stalling / not going to do it for the most obvious reason: he will lose his job AND he doesn’t care very much. He has never voted to support aid…ever
If you ar enot part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Your personal hostility is not required for you to be effectively hostile--because if you are following the trumpisn line, for whatever reason, you ARE hostile.
not sure I agree with you. If trump succumbed to one too many Whoppers, I don't think the cult would be easily transformed. There are GOP leaders who would continue to rile them up, particularly with immigration fears and other culture wars issues. But I do think some GOP congressmen would come out of the trumpian woodwork. They'd still be conservative, but I don't think reactionary.
I guess I was thinking of "hostile" in terms of personal hostility. There are better words to describe the GOP politicians enslavement to trump.
Here is the thing, these people are enslaved to the MAGA movement, in the person of Donald Trump... but the operative thing here is that they are beholden to that movement, if they want to continue to hold office.
Because you have to win the primary and guess who votes most in it?
Trump is the visible expression of that movement, not the movement.
The death of Trump will not end this. It will shift the ground slightly--but the reality is that things will get MORE vicious after Trump is gone, not less, as people fight to take his place.
People think that defeating Trump or jailing Trump or Trump dying is going to "fix things. It isn't. It is bigger than him. He just happens to be the one currently riding the horse.
All of the things these people want are not going to suddenly change.
I am definitely not saying that defeat or death of trump will 'fix things." We are burdened with MAGA for the rest of my lifetime. I am simply saying that if his actual threats are gone, some people in Congress may well be a little bit braver
Made me think what people like Bill would have said about FDR before Pearl Harbor. History tells us he was fully aware of the problems and dangers, but the Republicans and broad swath of the American public wanted nothing to do with it all.
Exactly. My Dad was at West Point in the late 30s and they knew they would eventually go to war and he spent the year before Pearl Harbor preparing for war. Just as with FDR, Biden knows the vast majority of Americans don’t want to hear, ‘we need to get ready to send troops to fight another war in the Middle East. And I find it hard to believe that Biden is oblivious to the changing/evolving global power structures and alliances. Once again, I breathed a sigh of relief over the weekend that he is our president.
My hope is that while we need to be prepared to send troops, we can manage things without the need to do so. Air and Naval power would hopefully be enough in most situations. That and standing firmly together with our allies.
It isn't the Administration, Bill, that is ignoring the deteriorating state of world affairs... or rather, it isn't primarily or just the Administration. Because they seemed to have their shit together enough to blunt the attack on Israel.
It is a HUGE chunk of the Amercian electorate that is the "problem.". A chunk that does not trust or believe in our institutions. A chunk that has an increasingly alternative perception of world affairs and of who the bad guys are (and it is not just the Right/MAGA we are talking about here). It is a chunk that watched us fight in Afghanistan and Iraq for twenty years, spending trillions of dollars and thousands of lives... for, in effect, nothing. And they are unwilling to do that (or worse) again.
If the political will for something does not exist and/or cannot be mobilized, then it doesn't really matter that much what the administration believes or doesn't believe--unless they can do stuff on the down low to prepare for the inevitable confrontation.
And having a do-nothing, hostile GoP House majority that is effectively in the tank for the Bad Guys makes that difficult, if not impossible.
The prevailing public sentiment about all of this stuff is likely, just keep us out of it.
As is usual with America, it will require some kind of event that strikes close to home before the American public will be willing to do something. Stuff happening in UKR, the Phillipines, or Israel does not hit close enough. You need a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or Lusitania.
And so far, the Coalition of Bad Guys has been smart enough not to do something like that. So things will deteriorate until they are either that stupid, or they figure their time has come and they attack.
And THAT will be FAR more expensive to us than all of the stuff people are currently bitching about. It usually is.
As I remarked last week, one of the major lessons of history is that people do NOT learn the lessons of history. Even though history tries to teach us these things repeatedly.
Really well said.
I just don’t get why bill and co don’t realize that there is zero chance that America supports an American war in the Middle East. There just is no chance. Maybe in Asia (i don’t really believe this) but definitely not in the ME.
To further your point, the foreign policy of W Bush,Dick Cheney and John Bolton has had a devastating effect in Americans confidence and fears that have led to the current GOP/MAGA isolationism.
Yeah, not to be a jerk, but Bill Kristol is an expert in *failed* foreign policy. I was honestly sad to read this because it seems like he hasn't learned anything about how pointless and dangerous escalation is in the Middle East. I'm not an isolationist by any stretch, but I have the same loss of confidence in that kind of foreign policy that the MAGAs do. My friends were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not just numbers on a spreadsheet.
The problem is that these people do it wrong:
The last thing that you do is send in the troops, because that causes all types of problems and imposes a lot of costs. Especially gven that we are super reluctant to engage in "nation building," or nation building of late tends to be very corrupt... and it doesn't work when you haven't basically flattened the country (like was done to Germany and Japan).
And troops set down in the local environment are easy targets.
Killing the foot soldiers also doesn't do much, as they are easily replaced.
What you ARE trying to do is generate personal level fear in the leadership and reduce strategic and operational capability.
That means assasssinating a lot of people in "plausibly deniable" ways where everyone knows you did it. That means destroying equipment and infrastrucre, either kinetically or through cyber attacks or financial manipulation.
You kill enough leaders, sooner or later they tend to get the message. People get reluctant to be seen as the person in charge. You destroy institutional continuity, You destroy experience and capability.
We don't do that because that would mean that our political leadership then becomes a target (oh, noes) and the precious infrastructure of the American corporates might become targets, impacting their bottom line.
We live in a world where it is okay to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of peons (for little result) but it is NOT okay to kill the people making the decisions and ordering the deaths. Which is F'd up--but it also lets you know who runs things and in whose interests they are run.
The reality is that we could probably weather regular deaths in our leadership than most of these authoritarian states. Politicians are a dime a dozen.
Killing ten thousand HAMAS fighters, or Revolutiuonary Guards (or whatever) doesn't get you much beyond an operational pause (which is useful) and the reality is that violence is not a solution to most of these problems--UNLESS you emply it to the ultimate degree... and THAT has problems of its own.
So continued careful, deniable targetted killings, careful, deniable continual destruction of theft/assets--in other words, doing the things that they are doing, only better--because they cannot afford it as well as we can, in the end. They lack strategic depth.
Because the reality is that these people do NOT want to fight a war with us. The correlation of forces is NOT in their favor... so they will continually act below the threshold of open warfare until that correlation changes or we get tired of it and give up--they are banking on the second.
Case in point, destruction of the ship being used to funnel supplies to the Houthis that we have been warned by the Iranians to not attack. Ooops, looks like there was an unfortunate accident there. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.
You use measured action to push the level of engagement down, by making too expensive and difficult for them to do it.
What we have done in the past hasn't been working, time to change gears.
All we're doing with this violent stuff is boosting terrorist recruitment drives. Especially in Gaza right now. And who can blame them? Deterrence doesn't work when you've already lost everything. Meanwhile, we have a LOT to lose. Our people get enraged when gas prices go up 20 cents, much less the whole town getting turned into rubble with half our family under it.
My ideal vision of America is to be a shield for the West. Exactly like what we just did in Israel and what we were doing in Ukraine. Protecting civilians, not killing them. Nothing makes us safer than general good will. Nuclear weapons aside, we built our military to be able to fight Russia and China, on different fronts, at the same time, and win. We might as well use it to protect people just trying to live their lives. We might as well live up to our values. I'm not a foreign policy expert, I just want us to operate in a way that doesn't make me fucking miserable for once in my adult lifetime. I got a taste of pride during our response to the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I'm hungry for more.
I'm watching what works and what doesn't. For example, diplomacy- got a bunch of hostages back. Bombing the shit out of everyone and their mom- lots of dead hostages.
They do not believe they are actually under threat. If you do not feel endangered/threatened, you have no real reason to engage in diplomacy (especially when you are getting away with all kinds of things).
You don't engage in what is an open act of war against another country unless you believe that there is no danger in it for you--which is exactly what they did with the attack on Israel.
And then we plainly said that we would not get involved, which simply reinforced their perception. No real price paid. Until they have to actually pay a price, why would they negotiate?
Besides, we are rather untrusdtworthy diplomatic partners, given what Trump did to them and what we have done in the past.
Iran was clearly retaliating against Israel for the embassy bombing, and they did it in the most slapfight way possible. They telegraphed it and leaked intelligence on the attack on purpose. Reminder of the catastrophic intelligence failure of Oct. 7th. This worked out so they could look tough with no fatalities. All the used armaments are now not headed to Russia to use against Ukraine.
Also, respectfully, since when do religious extremists respond the way you want them to? This could have gone so much worse.
Why negotiate? To lift sanctions.
Iran has been engaged in escalating attacks for years, usually through the mechanism of thinly veiled proxies. They have been escalating these attacks because there has not been significant pushback.
They have funded, trained, supported attacks against a variety of targets--American, Israeli, Saudi, ships from various nations at sea.
If they are religious extremists motivated only by their religious views and extremism (which I seriously doubt, given the nature of their activities over the years) then no negotiations are actually possible with them and you would be foolish in the extreme to lift sanctions and provide them with MORE resources.
What you have been looking at over the past several years is a three way contest between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel (with Israel largely stuck in the middle as the ethnic/religious differences actually preclude them positioning as an acceptable hegemon) about who gets to be the regional hegemon. It is part of a larger, historical contest between the Iranians (Persians) and the Arabs/Ottomans/ Byzantines/Romans (yes it goes back THAT far).
It is exacerbated by the ethnic and religious differences (Sunni v Shia and Arab v Iranian), with Israel thrown in as a handy target and rallying point/tool for Iran (and, in the past the Sauds).
The last thing you want to do at this point is lift sanctions. So what is there to actually negotiate?
Imagine how they will act WHEN they get nuclear weapons (because it is a question of when, not if).
We had an opportunity with the deal negotiated prior to Trump taking office--and then that got shat all over. There is, at this point, no real grounds for negotiations.
Bill does tilt a little too much to the John Bolton wing on foreign policy. I'm a big believer in how HW Bush handled foreign policy.(the opposite of W Bush)
I'm actually not sure that the entire GOP house is "hostile." They seem mostly to be in fear of the MTGaetzes of the party, afraid of offending trump because he will rile the base against them. Reports are that there are enough votes to pass the Ukraine aid bill, which is why Johnson, the one most seriously in thrall to the reactionary rump, keeps stalling.
I'm in the crowd that thinks Johnson is stalling so the vote comes after any GOP primary in which one of his members would face a challenge, even if it was a write in challenge.
I think he is stalling / not going to do it for the most obvious reason: he will lose his job AND he doesn’t care very much. He has never voted to support aid…ever
If you ar enot part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Your personal hostility is not required for you to be effectively hostile--because if you are following the trumpisn line, for whatever reason, you ARE hostile.
not sure I agree with you. If trump succumbed to one too many Whoppers, I don't think the cult would be easily transformed. There are GOP leaders who would continue to rile them up, particularly with immigration fears and other culture wars issues. But I do think some GOP congressmen would come out of the trumpian woodwork. They'd still be conservative, but I don't think reactionary.
I guess I was thinking of "hostile" in terms of personal hostility. There are better words to describe the GOP politicians enslavement to trump.
Here is the thing, these people are enslaved to the MAGA movement, in the person of Donald Trump... but the operative thing here is that they are beholden to that movement, if they want to continue to hold office.
Because you have to win the primary and guess who votes most in it?
Trump is the visible expression of that movement, not the movement.
The death of Trump will not end this. It will shift the ground slightly--but the reality is that things will get MORE vicious after Trump is gone, not less, as people fight to take his place.
People think that defeating Trump or jailing Trump or Trump dying is going to "fix things. It isn't. It is bigger than him. He just happens to be the one currently riding the horse.
All of the things these people want are not going to suddenly change.
I am definitely not saying that defeat or death of trump will 'fix things." We are burdened with MAGA for the rest of my lifetime. I am simply saying that if his actual threats are gone, some people in Congress may well be a little bit braver
Made me think what people like Bill would have said about FDR before Pearl Harbor. History tells us he was fully aware of the problems and dangers, but the Republicans and broad swath of the American public wanted nothing to do with it all.
Exactly. My Dad was at West Point in the late 30s and they knew they would eventually go to war and he spent the year before Pearl Harbor preparing for war. Just as with FDR, Biden knows the vast majority of Americans don’t want to hear, ‘we need to get ready to send troops to fight another war in the Middle East. And I find it hard to believe that Biden is oblivious to the changing/evolving global power structures and alliances. Once again, I breathed a sigh of relief over the weekend that he is our president.
My hope is that while we need to be prepared to send troops, we can manage things without the need to do so. Air and Naval power would hopefully be enough in most situations. That and standing firmly together with our allies.
That was kind of the connection I was implying there ;)
Well, put another notch in your successful communication belt, sensei! ;-)