US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Good...the is destroying Israel.

I don't understand how he wins. I know Israel has those complete nutbar settler fundies but they're only about 15% of the population, and I'm sure they have their hard core vigilante orcs and proto-fascists like here but, again, not all that many.

On the other side, it's a highly educated, highly historically-conscious population.

How did they wind up voting in, by comfortable margins, that group of low brow thugs for, what, a decade now? Longer?

Is the Israeli left just completely incompetent?

 

[mookie1995]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Maybe they are silent majority like all the bern bros who voted for tD (and will again in the solitary voting booth).

 

[Handyman]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

I don't understand how he wins. I know Israel has those complete nutbar settler fundies but they're only about 15% of the population, and I'm sure they have their hard core vigilante orcs and proto-fascists like here but, again, not all that many.

On the other side, it's a highly educated, highly historically-conscious population.

How did they wind up voting in, by comfortable margins, that group of low brow thugs for, what, a decade now? Longer?

Is the Israeli left just completely incompetent?

The same way we went hard right after 9/11. When you are in fear (and make no mistake they are) of attack you will follow anyone who vows to protect you. The people got sick of trying to make peace because the attackers never negotiated in good faith so they said screw it and went with the party that wasnt going to negotiate anymore.

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

The same way we went hard right after 9/11. When you are in fear (and make no mistake they are) of attack you will follow anyone who vows to protect you. The people got sick of trying to make peace because the attackers never negotiated in good faith so they said screw it and went with the party that wasnt going to negotiate anymore.

We settled this continent with a genocide, so we're ones to talk, but the impression I get is the Israelis stole the locals' land and property, the locals got angry and violent so the Israelis stole more land and property and put them on reservations. Under those conditions I'm not exactly sure what "negotiating in good faith" would have meant.

There are three solutions. (1) Our way, which is currently considered impolite, (2) Declare both sides incorrigible, take off and nuke the site from orbit, or (3) Enough people there grow up that they can Gandhi it. Or, I suppose, solution (0) More of the same for another millenium or two.

 

[joecct]

We settled this continent with a genocide, so we're ones to talk, but the impression I get is the Israelis stole the locals' land and property, the locals got angry and violent so the Israelis stole more land and property and put them on reservations. Under those conditions I'm not exactly sure what "negotiating in good faith" would have meant.

There are three solutions. (1) Our way, which is currently considered impolite, (2) Declare both sides incorrigible, take off and nuke the site from orbit, or (3) Enough people there grow up that they can Gandhi it. Or, I suppose, solution (0) More of the same for another millenium or two.

You and your nukes. Are you sure you're not related to Curtis LeMay?

 

[Handyman]

We settled this continent with a genocide, so we're ones to talk, but the impression I get is the Israelis stole the locals' land and property, the locals got angry and violent so the Israelis stole more land and property and put them on reservations. Under those conditions I'm not exactly sure what "negotiating in good faith" would have meant.

There are three solutions. (1) Our way, which is currently considered impolite, (2) Declare both sides incorrigible, take off and nuke the site from orbit, or (3) Enough people there grow up that they can Gandhi it. Or, I suppose, solution (0) More of the same for another millenium or two.

The Israelis didn't steal anything you might want to brush up on history. The Palestinians had zero claim to the land prior to 1948 (they had no real nation to speak of and it was a British territory) and it was the Allies, especially the US under Truman that put the Jews there. Should they have refused?

As for negotiating in good faith in 1948 they refused the deal that would have created both Palestine and Israel and went to war, in 1993 when Israel offered them 99% of what they asked to end the violence and create the dual state they walked away and reinstituted the violence...they balk at any attempts at peace and use any negotiation as either a prelude or distraction from further attacks.

Israel is hardly innocent, but the Academic Left needs to stop pretending they are the evil in this fight. The only reason Palestine doesn't exist in full is because of the Palestinians.

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

The Israelis didn't steal anything you might want to brush up on history

The problem here is I know my history. The Brits were playing their usual games and then Begin and his terrorists forced their hand. The local population got completely screwed, and the way they were forced off their land and out of their homes would have made Zimbabweans blush when they seized the white farms.

Everybody in that story is a villain: the Brits for being kingmakers, the other powers for playing geopolitics, the US for leveraging a crusader castle as a bridgehead for oil wars, Putin ne the Soviets for their particularly clueless comic book KAOS meddling, the other Muslim states for diverting attention from their dictatorships, the Israeli leadership and the Arab leadership for their genocidal sociopathology. The victims of the piece are the workaday Jews and Arabs who lived in peace for centuries before the West and the -isms made it their business to bring "justice" to the place.

Let the Chinese run it for a while. At least they don't play favorites -- they despise everybody non-Han.

 

[joecct]

The problem here is I know my history. The Brits were playing their usual games and then Begin and his terrorists forced their hand. The local population got completely screwed, and the way they were forced off their land and out of their homes would have made Zimbabweans blush when they seized the white farms.

Everybody in that story is a villain: the Brits for being kingmakers, the other powers for playing geopolitics, the US for leveraging a crusader castle as a bridgehead for oil wars, the Israeli leadership and the Arab leadership for their genocidal sociopathology. The victims of the piece are the workaday Jews and Arabs who lived in peace for centuries before the West and the -isms made it their business to bring "justice" to the place.

Let the Chinese run it for a while. At least they don't play favorites -- they hate everybody non-Han.

Are you saying the Chinese wouldn't go solo?

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Are you saying the Chinese wouldn't go solo?

I'm saying better a panda than a wookie.

<img src="https://thechurchofheughanology.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/pizap-com14551538979911.jpg?w=580&h=348" height="300" />

 

[Jimjamesak]

The problem here is I know my history. The Brits were playing their usual games and then Begin and his terrorists forced their hand. The local population got completely screwed, and the way they were forced off their land and out of their homes would have made Zimbabweans blush when they seized the white farms.

Everybody in that story is a villain: the Brits for being kingmakers, the other powers for playing geopolitics, the US for leveraging a crusader castle as a bridgehead for oil wars, Putin ne the Soviets for their particularly clueless comic book KAOS meddling, the other Muslim states for diverting attention from their dictatorships, the Israeli leadership and the Arab leadership for their genocidal sociopathology. The victims of the piece are the workaday Jews and Arabs who lived in peace for centuries before the West and the -isms made it their business to bring "justice" to the place.

Let the Chinese run it for a while. At least they don't play favorites -- they despise everybody non-Han.

So the “Sum of All Fears” solution but - the Vatican and the Swiss and + the Chinese?

 

[joecct]

I'm saying better a panda than a wookie.

<img src="https://thechurchofheughanology.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/pizap-com14551538979911.jpg?w=580&h=348" height="300" />

Very orthodox in your reply there. I wonder if Superman had a friend on Krypton named Hal-al?

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

So the “Sum of All Fears” solution but - the Vatican and the Swiss and + the Chinese?

I thought the Sum of All Fears solution was nuking Baltimore? Which, I'll grant, is a solution, but to a different problem.

I found out something interesting a few days ago. Evidently during the 68 riots the young, up and coming progressive mayor of Baltimore went on the radio and thanked everybody for not rioting... just as the riots in Baltimore started. It ruined his political career, which must have come as a shock to his kid sister who was then just starting on her undergrad degree at Catholic University. Her name was Nancy D'Alesandro. You may know her by her married name... Pelosi.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

 

[Jimjamesak]

I thought the Sum of All Fears was nuking Baltimore. Which, I'll grant, is a solution, but to a different problem.

I found out something interesting a few days ago. Evidently during the 68 riots the young, up and coming progressive mayor of Baltimore went on the radio and thanked everybody for not rioting... just as the riots in Baltimore started. It ruined his political career, which must have come as a shock to his kid sister who was then just starting on her undergrad degree at Catholic University. He name was Nancy D'Alesandro. You may know her by her married name... Pelosi.

And now you know... the rest of the story.

It’s from the book. Jack Ryan is DDCI after the events of A Clear and Present Danger and works with the National Security Advisor to negotiate a treaty between Israel and Palestine where Jerusalem becomes a Vatican protectorate guarded by the Swiss and governed by a triumvirate of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clerics, Palestine and Israel somehow coexist, and the US has to guarantee Israeli security. Then there’s a plot by PLO terrorists using an Israeli nuke from 1968 and East Germans to blow up the Super Bowl, involving the team owned by the Secretary of Defense, in Denver.

It’s a mess.

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

It’s from the book. Jack Ryan is DDCI after the events of A Clear and Present Danger and works with the National Security Advisor to negotiate a treaty between Israel and Palestine where Jerusalem becomes a Vatican protectorate guarded by the Swiss and governed by a triumvirate of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clerics, Palestine and Israel somehow coexist, and the US has to guarantee Israeli security. Then there’s a plot by PLO terrorists using an Israeli nuke from 1968 and East Germans to blow up the Super Bowl, involving the team owned by the Secretary of Defense, in Denver.

It’s a mess.

I was never impressed by Clancy, TBH. He seemed like just another camo-sniffer with John Grisham's ability to spin pap into gold.

 

[Jimjamesak]

I was never impressed by Clancy, TBH. He seemed like just another camo-sniffer with John Grisham's ability to spin pap into gold.

Pretty much. The President in the book is based on Dukakis and Clancy asserting that a liberal Democrat would be the one to use nukes because “their manhood would be questioned.”

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

I was never impressed by Clancy, TBH. He seemed like just another camo-sniffer with John Grisham's ability to spin pap into gold.

I loved the Dave Berry send up of a typical Grisham novel in a single humor column. Especially when the female lead initially says no to sex, "Not in the first chapter."

 

[Handyman]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

The problem here is I know my history. The Brits were playing their usual games and then Begin and his terrorists forced their hand. The local population got completely screwed, and the way they were forced off their land and out of their homes would have made Zimbabweans blush when they seized the white farms.

Everybody in that story is a villain: the Brits for being kingmakers, the other powers for playing geopolitics, the US for leveraging a crusader castle as a bridgehead for oil wars, Putin ne the Soviets for their particularly clueless comic book KAOS meddling, the other Muslim states for diverting attention from their dictatorships, the Israeli leadership and the Arab leadership for their genocidal sociopathology. The victims of the piece are the workaday Jews and Arabs who lived in peace for centuries before the West and the -isms made it their business to bring "justice" to the place.

Let the Chinese run it for a while. At least they don't play favorites -- they despise everybody non-Han.

I think you forget that the "local population" isnt all who you think they were. There were lots of various peoples there why are the "Palestinians" the only ones that seem to give the Academic Left the vapors? The Jews resided there dating back to Greece, the Arabs resided here, (in the past) the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Moors, the Romans the Nubians...yet apparently only the Palestinians have claim. What we call Palestinians were nothing but nomadic tribes and none of them settled anything there worthy of state/countryhood but hey...who cares right?

Here is a question, how is how Israel "stole" the land any different than any other country? Very few countries are ruled by their indigenous people. Follow up, lets assume that Britain stole Palestine and that by extension then Israel was stolen land from Palestine (which again isnt true because the original deal was Israel and Palestine both got states the Palestinians just said no) how does that justify the massive amounts of terrorist acts they have perpetrated ever since? And if Israel under Rabin was willing to give back almost all of the land, was willing to go back to the original '48 borders and it was the Palestinians who walked away what exactly should Israel do?

And you see that is the problem...much like how Netanyahu ruins Israel's moral argument with every decision he makes (he is the worst thing to happen to Israel since Rabin got shot) the Palestinians do that as well. It isnt Israel's fault that Arafat pillaged his own people. They should have been smart enough to know one of the most notorious terrorists of the modern era wasnt worried about doing right by them. They shouldnt align themselves with other terrorist organizations hell bent on making sure the Middle East is in chaos. They shouldnt walk away from peace talks every single time because they get a pep talk from Iran or Syria. Those countries dont give two craps about them. They dont give them aid or shelter, they have no rights in those countries and often times those countries kill them in mass quantities or put them in refugee camps. (looking at you Jordan) Yet...here we are.

Me and you go round and round on this every few months and I get your points (even agree with more of them than you think) but to me it always comes back to a basic question...if the Palestinians truly want peace and their own homeland why is it they do everything they can to make sure that doesnt happen? It is like the friend we all have that wants to be happy but sabotages themselves at every turn. Check this out:

<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XhaJ-4FpQHE/VKymrjDJ9aI/AAAAAAAAIiA/A9embUa6r8g/s1600/003_Shany_Mor_Intl_Proposals_Map.jpg" />

 

[burd]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

"Leading" Isrealis and Jews outside of Isreal must be terribly complicated. From what I remember from his book about the civil war in Lebanon, From Berut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman described the various constituencies in Israel with divergent views on the conflict. Among those were Jews who welcomed military conflict, not as a means to secure the State of Israel or to obtain more land, but to fulfill the Hebrew scriptures and usher in the end of times. It's been a long time since reading that book, but as I recall that constituency was not without influence, at least according to Friedman.

The observations Friedman made in that book may not have been accurate then, and if they were, they may no longer be of much use in the current discussion. But it is pretty clear that it is complicated far beyond our current president's ability or disposition to understand. Which is f king scary.

 

[bronconick]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

"Leading" Isrealis and Jews outside of Isreal must be terribly complicated. From what I remember from his book about the civil war in Lebanon, From Berut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman described the various constituencies in Israel with divergent views on the conflict. Among those were Jews who welcomed military conflict, not as a means to secure the State of Israel or to obtain more land, but to fulfill the Hebrew scriptures and usher in the end of times. It's been a long time since reading that book, but as I recall that constituency was not without influence, at least according to Friedman.

The observations Friedman made in that book may not have been accurate then, and if they were, they may no longer be of much use in the current discussion. But it is pretty clear that it is complicated far beyond our current president's ability or disposition to understand. Which is f king scary.

I though that was fundamentalist Americans.

 

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

The apes are at it again in everybody's garden spot.