People, like myself, who feel that the world has turned the corner on the ‘existential threats to Israel’ logically do not see a need to continue to address such a possibility. You are supporting a strategy to accomplish a goal that has already been won.
The scientific advances will still keep coming from the country of Israel without our support or with reduced support; also, more varieties of cherry tomatoes.
Nuclear weapons are rarely useful in war. This is the best explanation for why they are used so infrequently.
Oil facilities are dispersed. I don’t see how a sprinkling of atomic weapons discharges around Saudi oil fields would achieve any Israeli war aim.
Israel has had several wars with bad outcomes. The 2006 Second Lebanon War is widely considered a defeat. If you mean by a defeat that the Israelis are compelled to unconditionally surrender, well, I do think the nuclear deterrence makes that unlikely scenario even less likely.
Once again, the question asked was not “why do people in the US support Israel”, it was 'what advantages strategic or economic does the US obtain … '.
A reponse that people support Israel because they identify with Israelis, or that people support Israel because they either are fundies, neocons, or Jews, or are influenced by some cabal of the same, is not responsive to the question asked.
Unless the point being made is that there are essentially no strategic or economic benefits and that the alleged benefits are simply shams put forward by fundies, neocons, Jews, etc. Which is, in a nutshell, what the OP appears to be angling for.
Hence, “conspiracy thinking”.
Huh? The “best explaination” is that nuclear powers have not, since WW2 (the only time they were used), been involved in existential wars.
Screwing up the economy of their enemies by making their primary product unsalable to their customers.
So? What’s the significance of that?
If you are looking for “bad outcomes”, the Lebanon war is a fart in a hurricane compared to '73.
The Israelis left off fighting in Lebanon after a month because killing lots of civilians was doing them harm with their image, not because Hezbollah defeated them in battle. In contrast, in '73 the Israelis came close to actual defeat, taken completely by surprise by Soviet portable missile tech.
How does that jibe with your previous conclusion that “Nuclear weapons are rarely useful in war”?
I know that this thread isn’t about facts so much as CT’s (and/or a “Let’s use the fallacy of hasty generalization on The Guardian’s unsubstantiated, uninvestigated anecdotes to get in some condemnation and ignore the OP”) but of course Malthus’ analysis is correct. Instability is bad for business, and we like doing business. Radioactive oil fields are even worse for business. But to address the CT’s briefly:
While the religious right in the US might, rather obviously, be seen as a force on the right, it’s folly to use it to explain the actions of the left. It’s pure CT to point to Evangelicals (to say nothing of “neocons” and “Jews”) in order to explain the broad bipartisan support in the US for certain ME policies. They started during the cold war largely to oppose Soviet ambitions in the region, they’ve continued to preserve stability and avoid all-out war, and fringe benefits like having Israel destroy Iraq and Syria’s nuclear programs have already been mentioned. Those who can’t accept the facts will, perforce, turn to fictions. Those who, like the Walt-and-Mearsheimers of the academic world, start with the conclusion that nobody can disagree with them for rational reasons or honestly make different value judgements, will perforce look for irrational reasons and dishonest value judgments.
But even though the factual basis of our alliance has been well addressed, I’d just like to touch on the nonsense that the course our politicians have chosen is largely unchallenged because of “neocons” or “Jews”, rather than the fact that by an overwhelming ratio, Americans support those policies and view Israel more favorably than the Palestinians.
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](Support for Israel in U.S. at 63%, Near Record High)
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Israel Thread [sup]tm[/sup].
It depends what you mean by “our support.” If you mean monetary support, even though I’m pro-Israel, I’m not too keen on it. Does anyone know when the legal requirement, pledged by the peace treaties, that we give money to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan runs out? When it does, we should cut off all three, as well as the Palestinians. If they don’t care enough to make peace with each other without being bribed, I question how much that peace is worth.
If you mean our verbal support for the partition of Palestine along rough ethnic/religious lines, well, I am for that. That’s been the way to go as long ago as before World War II. Most Israeli governments have been for it. Indeed, the Israeli War of Independence was about there being one, and only one, side willing to accept partition. The current Israeli government is indeed less forthcoming than the last few before it. But so long as the other side is insisting on their sacred right of return, which would result in a voted-in anti-Jewish, anti-Gay, anti-you-name-it, regime, who the Israeli PM is makes no difference.
What does support for Israel get us? What does support for any country get us? It’s mostly a matter of whether we should stand up for our values, which of course I believe are closer to those of Israel (without being identical) than to those of the Gaza or West Bank regimes.
Israeli research does benefit our military, as well as some leading US companies (Microsoft, Intel), and this would end if they were overrun, as would the Nobel prizes. But our foreign policy should be based on values rather than commerce, when possible.
FinnAgain: Your statistics support the combined statements of Brainglutton (as well as others in the beginning of the thread), Malthus, and Argent Towers. Thanks for adding in the data.
Of course you failed entirely to notice that many of those who are listing Neocons, Jews and some types of Christians were also saying things like inertia from the Cold war. Your CTizing about CTizers has blinded you a bit to what they are trying to say.
I guess this line of questioning is unfolding because people have generally done a poor job of identifying specific economic and strategic advantages that clearly depend on our alliance with Israel. Vague apparitions of stability don’t count. Anyway, it appears that policy failed about as badly as it could in the last year: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and I am probably forgetting some.
The more I think about the past decade: Iraq, Palestinian elections, Iran, supplying Kurdish “freedom fighters”, the neverending Somalian clusterfuck w/piracy, terrorism throughout the region, I am completely in awe of how our policy of stability has failed so spectacularly.
Wrong.
CT’s often include bits of actual reality. The WTC was a real place. JFK was a real person. The moon is a real celestial body. The US support for Israel was initially as a counerweight to Soviet influence. But it’s amusing that you think I’m “blinded” by their ever-so-complicated-and-nuanced political analysis. What, now I need to keep track of “Jews”, “neocons”, “fundies” and inertia? The devil you say!
Also wrong. Many folks just refuse to accept the facts since they’re arguing backwards from the conclusion that we shouldn’t maintain a strong relationship (we don’t have an alliance with Israel).
People have already addressed shared military goals, access to Israel’s intelligence network and the desire for regional stability, and so on. That you view keeping the oil fields non-radioactive as somehow flimsy is, one might think, not necessarily a measure of the cogency of that reason.
That you think policies designed to guarantee stability and avoid more pan-regional wars have failed, that likewise reveals something about the process you’re using to analyze the issue. Well, that and your reliance on the fallacy of equivocation. I’d ask you to point to how many pan-regional wars Israel’s been involved in recently, let alone those which have caused the oil weapon to be deployed, but we both know that the number is zero. If you honestly believe that Malthus’ argument is about how Israel being too strong to take in a conventional war would lead to internal political stability in all the MENA nations, you have missed his point by several orders of magnitude.
They do. Right.
I think it’s possible to have a logical discussion regarding the demographics that shape our government’s behavior without resorting to labeling people as CTs.
Shared military goals like? Are they like the military goals that British, Canadian, German, Dutch, Danish, Turkish, etc. soldiers have died or been wounded for?
How, without invoking a fantasy terrorist conspiracy, are nuclear reactors in Iran, Syria or Iraq a threat to the USA?
Intelligence network? The one that labels the IHH a terrorist organization? Did it help us get data for the Iraq War? What’s it doing for us now?
Once again: Regional Stability? Lebanon 2006? You’re really just talking about stability for Israel against a massive regional threat, but the time for that is gone. Which countries are going to march on Israel if we withdraw support thus forcing them to use nukes? Sounds like a neat fictional story like Left Behind or The Turner Diaries.
I don’t dispute, given the facts available and my disinterest in looking further into it, that our policies served a purpose in the past and possible prevented further pan-regional war. I’m currently writing from 2011 though - from here it looks like the threat of pan-regional wars, oil embargoes and glass oil fields belongs in Red Dawn 2.
I can’t answer this without questioning your fantasy premise.
See: What Iran Plans for America
Is it possible that these reactors are all for peaceful purposes? Sure, it’s possible. A nation’s nuclear weapons program, if any, tends to be its most closely guarded secret, so it is hard to say.
I think that the danger of nuclear weapons being used, when in the hands of one of the unstable nations you mention, is greater than than in the case of nations like, say, India and Israel. Maybe I’m wrong, but calling it a fantasy seems a bit much.
Is the probability of a nuclear Iran starting a nuclear war less than 50-50? Yes. But short of starting a war, if we can prevent the risk, we should.
I’m going to ignore most of the nonsense you posted as there really is no point offering facts and logic if the response is to have it handwaved away by you.
I will, however, point out a few of your rather odd errors of omission, and leave it to the readers to determine the quality of the rest of your argument based on this representative bit:
I count multiple errors of omission with this little nugget, which have a significant bearing on the context and rhetorical accuracy of your argument. Let’s analyze, shall we?
First of all, the IHH is a member of the Saudi umbrella organization, the Union of Good. The UoG is, in fact, a terrorist organization and has been identified as such by the US government (and others). The US government also confirmed that the IHH has had numerous contacts with senior Hamas members. Of course, The EU’s former top man for investigating terrorist financing concluded that the IHH is a terrorist organization and noted that when Turkey raided the IHH offices, they “discovered weapons, explosive materials and forged documents”. The Dutch government concurs that the IHH is a terrorist organization. There have been other similar calls within Europe, but they must be as deluded as you imply, or maybe just (non-conspiratorially) mislead by the Mossad. As for Israel, the IHH was banned by Israel in 2008 not for being a “terrorist organization”, but for being part of the UoG. In 2010, it was added by Israel to its terror watch list due to its intention for another flotilla, from Lebanon, that was supported by Hezbollah, which is also a designed terrorist organization according to the US Government (and others)
Funny that you didn’t mention those facts…
Guess they got lost in the shuffle while supporting those questioning The Official Story.
Iran is not the new Soviet Union. I see no reason to base our foreign policy on their silly pronouncements. They are vanishing toward irrelevancy and it has nothing to do with our foreign policy decisions. Whatever they may do with their nuclear program, it has little to no chance of affecting us. No, I do not buy the “giving a nuke to a terrorist organization to use on our soil”. It’s a Cheney fantasy that acted as the prelude to the most shameful behavior of our government in my lifetime.
How is Iran unstable? Iraq’s instability was due to us. Syria’s instability might lead to a huge change in government long before it would have ever had a decent functioning reactor. It’s fantasy, it’s illegitimate, it’s not a danger to my country. This concern is an emergent property of our imaginations like Zeus or Santa Claus.
I do not agree with your sense of risk. Iran is far below a 50/50 chance of starting the war. I feel foolish even typing “50”. Here’s the chance I’d give: .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001. I think I might be exaggerating, but you get the point.
The term risk can mean a lot of things - I want real information on the severity of this risk. I suspect it’s on the same level as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.
I am not hand waving anything away. It’s called testing a hypothesis with evidence and the “stability” hypothesis is found wanting. It may have been great awhile ago, but there’s no sense to it now.
Ah the guilt by association argument. This has been such a successful way of understanding those we are already paranoid of in the past! Remember when Saddam Hussein was good buddies with Osama Bin Laden or had “contacts” and allowed terrorists in his country (terrorists hiding with the Kurds)? Which terrorist operations has this Turkish humanitarian organization planned and executed?
You have the same old tired recipe for Terrorist Network Conspiracy Theories but never the meat. You have the propaganda but not the evidence. You have Israel’s accusations, a country trying its best to make it look good that its soldiers shot unarmed Turks in the back, and that’s pretty much it.
Thank you for proving my point.
You have no point, but you have a wall of links and poor interpretation. I’d be embarrassed to post that link:
So what you posted to is: (1) An organization, in its form from 15 years ago, had connections to running passports and was about to go fight wars where we were neither involved nor sided against them; (2) Was raided by Turkish authorities who seem unworried now; (3) No evidence of anything since - no terrorist activities; (4) engages in humanitarian efforts in many countries; (5) is unloved by a former official who is out of the loop.
You posted a link to a guess made on data that is 15 years old and you are completely and thoroughly ignoring modern information such as the fact that the IHH is a UN recognized NGO with charitable activities in several African countries, Haiti, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Libya and in Gaza. I wonder why they talk to Hamas so much when they engage in charity in Gaza? Judging from the traces of information you can get from those who accuse them of terrorism, 90% of it stems from their charitable work in coordination with Hamas.
The United States is unable to make a link between IHH and terrorist activity. The EU is unable to do so as well. At least Israel, the Netherlands and a former French official spouting off on out of date information has their eye on them.
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Bonus points for the ‘ZOMG wall of [del]text[/del] factual citations!’ gambit. Always a winner.
More stuff you take out of context and only provide half the information for: (1) You have no point because you never stated whether the IHH are terrorists in your opinion; (2) You posted a wall of links that primarily show Israel’s opinion that the IHH is a terrorist organization. You did not show any list of recent IHH terrorist activities but there is of course their working with terrorist organizations in the places where they are attempting to help; (3) I also said that you are poorly interpreting the factual content of your links, but then again you didn’t really offer an opinion, just links; (4) So it’s not just ZOMG! Go ahead and pretend you’re overreacting, or at least state an opinion that you derive from your facts. I did not omit anything. I was already aware of the accusations made by the Israeli government against the IHH. I just already found them to be spurious considering the USA has never listed them and Turkey has not either.
Go figure.
Simple fiction, never happened. Only one single link, out of the dreaded “wall”, was about how the IHH was added to Israel’s terrorism watch list, and that was after the first flotilla. I could also note that you actually used an argument that would have required Israel to travel backwards in time to ban the IHH in 2008 in order to justify their raid of the flotilla years later, but that’s just one of the pitfalls of arguing backwards from your conclusion and trying to find facts to fit it.
And that, I think, is a bridge too far.
People can certainly look over the last few posts and decide for themselves if you did, in fact, omit anything or neglect to mention essential context in order to sell a disingenuous rhetorical stratagem. Let them read those posts and make up their own minds.
Read the posts, made my mind up.
I alluded to this briefly before, but a direct example of U.S.-Israeli cooperation to the benefit of both countries involves the cantaloupe.
You may sniff at the idea of a mildew-resistant muskmelon (some are quite fragrant, by the way), but this one has the potential to save $$$ on fungicides.
In terms of Middle East relations, it is noteworthy that the Galia melon (developed in Israel) is now being grown in Egypt, as well as a number of other countries.
Well since two of your links are identical and report Israel adding the IHH to the terrorist watch list, we are up to 2 out of 6. Since a 3rd is about Israel banning the IHH due to links with Hamas, that’s 3 out of 6. The .pdf you link to only discusses the results of the Israeli think tank and then plays ‘guilt by association’ since the IHH is under the umbrella of the Union of Good - a terrorist organization - but probably a necessary step in aiding Gaza. So that’s 4 out of 6. French judge on visit to Israel lends support to Israeli claims with his 15 year old prosecuted information: 5 out of 6. As far as disingenuous goes, “fox smells his own hole first”.
You make no point, you make no direct argument, again, you say I am being disingenuous and omitting evidence, but I am only omitting a single viewpoint shared by few countries whose governments I trust.
One thing I did get from your links is that Israeli intelligence may have nothing to do with this “cover-up-the-fact-we-shot-unarmed-Turks-in-the-back-with-propaganda” campaign.
The IHH, n 2011, sounds like it engages in the what most NGOs in the region do - deal with the scum that bar the gate to their humanitarian mission.