mirth
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Posts: 931
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Post by mirth on Nov 20, 2012 12:26:58 GMT -5
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Post by dasein on Nov 20, 2012 21:52:38 GMT -5
Not without US intervention, no...
Remember, despite the Israeli government's giant crocodile tears over Hamas rockets, this is exactly what they want.
Hamas has fired countless thousands of rockets since the end of the Second Intifada... that's a decade's worth of rockets... and they've managed to kill 28 people with them. These qassam rockets are just about one step up from a bottle rocket, a bunch of scrap metal and some gasoline that, to paraphrase Tommy LaSorda, "couldn't hit water if it fell out of a fucking boat."
But it's a perfect situation for the Israeli government and military. Remember when you were a kid and you would annoy your sibling ad infinitum until they finally shoved you and then you went and beat the shit out of them? "But mom, he hit me first!"
The Israeli government and military will insist that they'll be ready to negotiate a return to '67 borders "once Hamas decides they want peace." But they have absolutely no desire to negotiate, and why would they need to? Every day, they're building new settlements on the West Bank... settlers who are the Israeli version of Tea Partiers and are a huge voting bloc in their own right... while moving the Palestinians to Gaza (it's insanely difficult for a Gaza resident to even VISIT the West Bank). They don't want to kill all the Gazans since even the most hardcore Israeli supporter would have a hard time explaining that, so they blockade Gaza, basically make it a prison, and hope that they make it so miserable that everyone leaves it for some other Middle Eastern country. Plenty of them do... Palestinians are to the Middle East what Mexicans are to the US, a sort of underclass of underpaid janitors, construction workers, and domestic servants in places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Only the US can stop it, since we're basically writing the checks that keep the IDF going (Fun fact: Israeli citizens get universal healthcare. We pay for the Israeli military so that they don't have to choose between a gigantic military and healthcare... in other words, to avoid the choice the actual American government made). But of course, it's political poison right now... so long as Florida helps decide Presidential elections, you'll never see any shift in US policies. Plus, Israel is a useful watchdog for the US government, an extension of the US military in a part of the world where we'll be fighting a Cold War with China for the next 50 years for dwindling oil reserves.
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Post by Infinite Ego on Nov 21, 2012 8:23:31 GMT -5
On a side note, younger Cuban Americans in FL are no longer under the Castro spell their parents and grandparents were/are.
As Das is pointing out, you cannot grasp Israel (external) without linking it to our domestic logic. Israel is to the US as N Korea is to China. A proxy state that does our bidding in the region. Arab Spring was a catastrophe for the US (all the State Dept. could do was sit on its hands as revolution after revolution in the name of freedom and democracy toppled friendly dictators) -- resulting in the new Asian 'tilt' to US naval deployments and the creation of our new Best Buddy, Australia where we will base new forces.
Just look at a world map: what are we encircling?
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Post by dasein on Nov 21, 2012 10:50:21 GMT -5
Another fun fact: the U.S. has more political prisoners in Cuba than Cuba does. The Cuban government, according to various international human rights organizations, has approximately 200 political prisoners in their system... since 2001, we've sent 779 prisoners to Guantanamo. This doesn't include prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any of the CIA blacksites.
As far as the Middle East goes, it's incredible to look at the history of the region and wonder what could have been without U.S. and British intervention. Afghanistan had a leftist, secular government in the 70's, one where 50% of all college grads were women. But the U.S. thought they might have had connections to Moscow, so we started funding and training the muhajideen who eventually became the Taliban. Iran had a very strong secular, leftist contingent before the Revolution (watch or read "Persepolis" to see a good depiction of it) that got swept aside first by the US and British-backed Shah and later by the fundamentalists.
The US had no problem backing fundamentalists against left-leaning governments during the Cold War, but of course those fundamentalists bring their own set of problems. The Saudis are pretty good about playing ball, so the Americans don't care that they treat women like second-class citizens. But will the fundamentalists in Egypt or Syria be so reticent? I suspect not.
Really, when Americans talk about spreading "Western values" it means that they just want an areligious, apolitical, apathetic Middle East where they all eat McDonalds, sign free trade agreements, come up with the occasional tech start up, and don't cause too much trouble.
America is a country that runs on oil, and once we start having to ration it, we're in deep shit. I think the strategy now is, again, get the Middle East in a place where most everybody is friendly with the U.S. so we can get our first pick of whatever oil's left, and then pray that scientists come up with a feasible energy alternative in the meantime.
Any actual war with China over resources would be a disaster that would inevitably lead to nucelar annihilation, so I suspect that the U.S. strategy is to fight "pre-emptive wars" to get their ducks in a row (Hello, Iran!) and hope that if there's an energy crisis, China will be the one to collapse and not the U.S.
I'm not so sure that's a guarantee, though. The top-down state capitalist approach in China might be better suited to reorganize itself in a way that it survives oil shortages. Can you say the same about the US? If people were made back in '79, imagine how the U.S. populace reacts when we start having to ration our oil? But luckily for the US, we've managed to turn our police forces into miniature armies with near limitless surveillance powers, so we have a good shot of keeping the angry mobs in line.
I mean, the reaction to something like Occupy Wall Street doesn't make sense without the context. You've got a bunch of hippies and NYU students in a park, playing in a drum circle, and they have an itinerary for their protest that they give to the police ahead of time... these people don't pose anymore of a threat to Wall Street than a Dave Matthew's Band concert. But the police respond with a full blockade, riot gear, and armored vehicles? They've been terrified of civilian riots since the late 60's (Watts, Chicago, Angola, Detroit, etc. all got them REAL scared) and they've been preparing for it ever since.
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Post by brucestevens on Nov 21, 2012 10:56:42 GMT -5
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Post by Infinite Ego on Nov 21, 2012 11:18:30 GMT -5
keep in mind, re. the mess in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, etc.....the whole win or lose mentality no longer applies to these operations. At the macro level, they function as dumping grounds for surplus young American males that have no other opportunities in the imperial core (read: Oklahoma, TX, Alabama, Georgia, Tenn., Kentucky, W. VA, etc. -- all the moocher Red states)
Any war on Terror is not something that is lost or won just so long as it is prosecuted. For every 'terrorist' we kill we manufacture three more. It keeps the Chinese freaked out; it keeps India and Pakistan freaked out; it keeps Russia freaked out; it keeps arms manufacturers cranking out more stuff; and war always concentrates more power in the hands of the Executive branch and the DoD so they must keep expanding fronts.
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Post by aliensporebomb on Nov 21, 2012 15:41:22 GMT -5
My friend who has a place in Miami who is pretty in-tune to cuban culture there basically says that old people and young people alike are not happy with Fidel Castro - and it's been that way for a couple of decades only now they're not afraid to voice it. Some interesting stuff I've heard.
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