I don’t know how to explain this to readers, but I’m going to try.
If you want to live in a good world or good society, certain types of behaviour have to be off the table and the response to them has to be harsh and overwhelming.
Understand the next statement: Anyone who will take what they want from someone else just because they are stronger is a threat to you.
The moment you say “none of my business” when someone abuses their power, you have created the conditions for Hell.
This is why certain behaviours have to be opposed. Genocide. Rape. Torture. Elites making the price of medicine a thousand times the cost.
Now, in the Middle East, Israel wants Greater Israel. They haven’t been shy about it. All of their neighbours and even some of their non-neighbours are in danger if Israel expands and grows more powerful. All of them are in danger if Israel eliminates the near enemies: Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinians because they will then be able to turn their full power and attention (and that of America) on new enemies with lebensraum.
This is so obvious I shouldn’t have to state it.
And Israel is a threat to America, too. They control your politics (no, don’t even) and make your rulers do things that are evil and against American interests, and certainly against the interests of the vast majority of actual Americans. Yeah, they aren’t genociding you, but as millions are homeless you’re spending billions on helping Israel commit genocide.
Israeli cops teach American cops how to brutalize Americans the way they brutalize Palestinians. Everything American elites are willing to do Palestinians they are willing to do to you if they ever decide it’s in their best interest. If you think they have the least fellow feeling for you you are so stupid I’m surprised you can keep breathing.
Hell is hell because evil is tolerated or even admired and suckers who do good are despised. Heaven is heaven because evil is not tolerated and people who do good are admired and emulated.
Update: Israel is now 20 miles from the northern border to Lebanon in Syria. But Syria falling is no big deal, honest.
mago
Hell Is What Humans Deserve
And it’s what we’ve got
Kinda sorta
But close enough
Anonymous
Is Hell is inevitable, then how did the Chinese, Algerians, Vietnamese, Cubans, and Haitians liberate themselves? How many decades did each of these struggles take with their violent and nonviolent permutations? How many deals with the devil and painful mistakes did they make along the way?
You think that because something that’s happened countless times in history is happening again (btw also happening in the Congo and Sudan barely any notice) and got Western leftists hot and bothered, that MENA resistance forces are obligated to act now and get their cities blown up and possibly their movement completely destroyed by Israeli nukes or American invasion?
If anyone could be held responsible, there’s an argument for China to have the responsibility to act, as it’s the only force with sufficient strength to beat down the US credibly by stopping all trade with the US and manipulating the currency market to destroy the dollar. But putting that obligation on Iran and Hezbollah, especially at a time when most Sunni Arabs are gleefully celebrating the fall of a secular Syria, is absurd.
Ian Welsh
Again, Khameini’s own argument is that if you let the Empire take out others, they will move on to you. Fighting before your allies is destroyed, in other words.
But sure, once Hamas and Hezbollah are destroyed along with Syria, I’m sure everything will be OK for Iran.
someofparts
A couple of things stood out for me in the current news cycle. The US response to the killing of that healthcare CEO and the uprising in South Korea both demonstrated nearly universal outrage at their leaders by the citizens in each country. And yet, despite the outrage of citizens at such scale, there is not the slightest chance that this will cause any change in government practices for either nation.
Meanwhile, it sounds like Russia is getting ready to unleash another Oreshnik in response to the latest missile strike into their territory from Ukraine. The interesting part is that Maria Zakharova has publicly cautioned Russian citizens to avoid travel to the US. I think the US may have even warned our nationals to stay out of Russia as well. So now I’m waiting to see what it is about this impending strike that warrants such warnings from the leaders in each nation.
The spectacle of powerless populations in the US and South Korea leads me to wonder what could shake things up enough to create some breathing room for change. Maybe this next strike from Russia is the spark that will start the much needed shake up.
Israel will not stop until they drag the US into their unholy war against all their neighbors. Once Asia is finally pushed too far and starts fighting back in earnest, it will be the world saying NO to Zionist evil at a global scale.
Curt Kastens
I tend to agree that Iran should have launched an all attack against Israel and UKSA bases in the region. The worst thing that the US could have done to retaliate against Iran would have been to kill 75 million iranians. That may sound horrible. But climate change is going to kill 75 million Iranians between 1 and 15 years from now anyways. Not only that but since the US has been appeassed by the rest of the world for the past 200 years the US leadership has become so evil that may decide to kill tens of millions of Iranians anyway, even if the Iranians do not launch an all attack.
But my thoughts that Iran should have not held back are based up on potential information that I do not have. Such as what kind of progress is Iran making on a nuclear weapon. And is China and or Russia telling Iran not to launch an all out attack because Iran helps China meet critical energy requirments. I do not know if Iran helps Russia meet any critical needs. But the Russians may have reasons for telling the Iranians to wait.
I also want to repeat a comment that I made on the thread about the death of the health insurance CEO.
Back in 2004 I thought that it would take the deaths and or 40 year prison sentences for about 10,000 Americans to be able to create an American republic. But now after witnessing the history of the last 20 years I would say that the number should be raised to at least 10 million to even have a 25% chance of creating an American Republic. One which would not last long though as the effects of climate change will destroy everything soon.
Arnold
Did Sartre say there is no need for hell when we have other people
Bill H.
I wonder to what extent the killer of the United Healthcare CEO was influenced by the official US policy of firing Hellfire missiles at the head of any organization we dislike and then bragging that we have done something wonderful for humanity. Maybe in his mind he was simply carrying out US policy here at home.
Carborundum
Actually, one can make quite a cogent argument that things would be better for Iran if their ties to HAMAS, Hizbollah and Syria were stripped off. As with any nation in that region Iran has legitimate security concerns, but those concerns are *fully* met by a combination of geography and their conventional forces. Anyone who wants to strap Iran on, even considering that their forces are qualitatively overmatched, has clearly been under a rock for the last 20 years. Not worth the damage you’d take.
The thing that keeps getting Iran in trouble are the ways they use their unconventional and strategic forces, which are much more determined by inter-factional domestic competition than by security concerns. This is a relatively low risk, low cost strategy that allows them to punch above their weight class. The problem is that it is low-risk, low cost for *them* but not so much for the proxy forces who do the dying when someone decides they are willing to take them on.
The Iranians have done a good job of putting themselves into a materially worse position than they were two years ago. Their proxies have taken significant damage and lost assets that took decades to build and are going to be very difficult to replace. They’ve demonstrated that they are willing to use their strategic rocketry forces offensively, but can’t inflict serious really damage without equipping them with unconventional warheads. Their opponents are now going to be on an absolute hair trigger for any indication they’re moving in that direction and they will regard it as an even higher threat than they did previously. Combine that with decision-making driven primarily by internal factional competition and it’s quite the little mess they’ve made for themselves, particularly if there are concerns about regime stability.
Conversely, an Iran that isn’t practicing foreign adventuring as an element of national strategy is an Iran that everyone can live with.
bruce wilder
Pedersen et alia (2013)
we found that victims of unfairness punished transgressors, whereas witnesses of unfairness did not. Furthermore, witnesses’ emotional reactions to unfairness were characterized by envy of the unfair individual’s selfish gains rather than by moralistic anger towards the unfair behaviour.
Contrary to the above research, I know that in the emotionally manipulative environment of a movie, it is possible to get an audience to identify with an underdog and cheer the downfall of a bully. Ditto for the CIA staging the toppling of a tyrant’s statue in the capital city’s square.
There are also templates for organized, collective punishments of the bully, which I suppose arise from the adverse experience of vengeance cultures. The latter is what was put in place after WWII. Never again, as they said.
We, humans, are not good at this, that is for sure. But, “how is this suppose to work?” seems like a valid question.
I say, “go Luigi!” I genuinely do. I want to vomit on Obamacare Democrats.
I am horrified by the genocide in Gaza. I am seriously tempted to end my friendships with Jews regardless of what they say their politics is.
All politics is local and personal in our hellscape and nothing can ever get better, because, no way.
Stormcrow
@Curt Kastens:
If Iran had a working nuclear weapon, the US would have known about it within minutes after it was first tested. Even if the test was underground. So would every other nation who was genuinely interested. And that means the data would have leaked to absolutely everyone else on the planet by this time, irregardless of security measures taken or not taken.
Ian Welsh
Carborundum,
not sure I agree about the missile forces. They were clearly pulling their punches. But yes, their strategic doctrine seems too determined by internal factional politics. I would prefer that they go “all in”, but they would be better off if they simply chose — are they seriously anti-Israel or not? If not, make peace.
Agreed on letting their proxies being taken out doing huge damage to them long term.
different clue
@Bruce Wilder,
Ian Welsh and others have said/written that the Israeli conflation of “Jew” with “Zionist” is factually incorrect and is an effort to exploit Jews in general to support Zionism and Israel in particular.
If you decide to excercise your perfect right to end your friendship with Jews regardless of what their politics, then if any Jews you decide to end your friendship with were already, or were becoming, zioskeptical or zio-anti, they may decide to excercise their perfect right to decide that antizionism really was just antisemitism after all, and they may decide to rezionize themselves. If that is what you want to have happen, then that is what you will do.
I believe some people would benefit from a close and careful reading of everything that Colonel ( Retired) Pat Lang wrote about Israel and related subjects.
Here is a link to the “Israel” category. https://turcopolier.com/category/israel/
Link to the “Palestine” category. https://turcopolier.com/category/palestine/
Link to ” USS Liberty ” ( as in ” attack on the . . . “)
https://turcopolier.com/category/uss-liberty/
Colonel Lang was always anti Zionist. But he was neither pro-semitic nor anti-semitic about it. He was nothing-either-way semitic about it. He showed his readers what analytical rigor and exactitude of factual correctness , along with spiritual uprightness, is. He never did break off actual friendships he had with actual Jews because ” Jew”. He may well have broken off friendships with Zionists because of their politics in theory and in practice. I don’t know if he ever did or not. I suspect he would have broken off any friendship he had with a pro-Israelist whether Jewish or not if that pro-Israelist affected to believe that Israel’s attack on the Liberty was a case of mistaken identity. But I don’t know if he ever did or not.
Regardless, we can all benefit from a close and slow reading of what Colonel Lang and/or guest posters wrote on these three subjects listed by category.