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This is really sad.
Yet again, I can't help but look back towards Biden, who overall seems to have employed a practice of making no plans to safeguard any of his work against an election loss.
I wish he would've negotiated an end to this while Ukraine still had some leverage. I feel like that's been treated as a shocking proposal for the last three years. But it always seemed obvious to me: if Trump wins, you could lose any and everything. He could simply withhold weapons and invite Russia to complete full conquest. He could issue Zelinsky an ultimatum to surrender and live in exile or face a firing squad in St. Petersburg.
Ukraine will be lucky to simply survive these peace talks. Why they didn't negotiate this before the election seems to be another in an endless catalog of hubristic decisions.
Seems obvious to me why the Biden administration couldn’t negotiate with the Russians: the Russians were waiting for Trump to come back to power.
I'm sorry, but that seems like BS.
I recall very clearly that Biden and Blinken maintained that they were refusing to open any negotiations with Russia. Maybe Russia would've refused. But I distinctly recall Biden taking a hard line stance, and anyone who suggested that he, Blinken, and Zelinsky accepting that they weren't likely to recover full territorial control being basically tarred and feathered as MAGA puppets.
I just don't see the point. So many lives were spent to defend the country. Will it mean anything? We'll see.
Believe it. See also: Bibi
I do not understand what your point is.
What lesson did you take from the fiasco with Bibi? Biden claimed for months that he was going to get Bibi to agree to a ceasefire, and that it was close, and that the major obstacle was Hamas. And that they were working "tirelessly". And critics continued to insist that if he was serious, he needed to call up Bibi and say that he either accept a ceasefire or continue the war with rocks and sharp sticks, but that one way or another, Israel was about to stop firing US-made bullets at kids. And we were told that it doesn't work that way.
And then Trump said that Bibi had to agree to Biden's ceasefire by January 20th or there'd be "hell to pay". Obviously not because of any humanitarian concern, but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.
Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?
Yes.
One shouldn't get all foreign diplomacy information from sound bites. What Biden said, and what anyone else says is rarely every relevant. There are things going on that cannot be made public - most of what goes on cannot be made public for many and varied reasons.
It's well known that Bibi hated Biden and Biden was trying to use every tool available to get him to stop being a genocidal monster. He could have frozen the arms shipments - in fact, he did - until the republiQans forced them to continue because they knew what was up.
He could have gone nuclear. He could have torn up all the history and all the treaties and made the entire middle east dark. Because he's competent and a regular human he did not do those things. Should he have? Many think so. Many would be wrong. He tried to reason. He tried to cajole. He tried with the leverage on arms, on money, on access - all the things. Diplomacy was in full effect though some on here would have you not know about it for their own reasons.
And what the republiQans knew was this: Bibi was very much in the tank for trump. Because he knows how easy to manipulate trump is, and he knows with trump in office he'll get to do whatever he wants with zero pushback.
So they performed this charade where Bibi continues open war crimes, waits til the election, then trump does his tough-guy imitation, and then Bibi says "oh no! I'd better implement the ceasefire I'd already worked out months ago with Biden's team!" and everyone who doesn't know better thinks trump had a damned thing to do with it. He did not. That Bibi flew here pronto to lick trump's wig or whatever fucked up dance they do says more than any sound bite you'd get out of a headline.
Well, what do you think trump negotiated with? Do you think he'll stop the arms sales? Cut back the funding? Maybe something so drastic as to say a bad thing about what Likud has done publicly? No. trump negotiated with nothing because trump has no interest whatsoever in stopping Bibi's goals. He wants to participate. Bibi waited for trump to give whatever edge he could to the campaign and then moved forward gleefully.
I mean no disrespect, but I think you need to exercise a much more critical lens. If only as an exercise in understanding other viewpoints, even if you think they're somehow incorrect.
Biden didn't need to tear up treaties or threaten to invent new powers. He literally just had to obey US law.
A law known as the Leahey law states very, very frankly that it is illegal -- completely against US law -- for any US agency to knowingly provide weapons which they believe will be used to commit human rights abuses or violate international law.
Numerous whistleblowers in the state department -- Stacey Gilbert, Annelle Sheline, Josh Paul -- flagged the provision of weapons to Israel as a clear violation of the Leahy law. They repeatedly pointed out that internally, the State Department had clearly determined that weapons were routinely being used in a manner that made further deliveries a criminal act under US law. This happened in full public view. These three people (as well as others outside of the state department) resigned from the jobs they'd worked their whole lives for out of duty to the constitution to publicly disclose that Blinken and Biden were knowingly acting in direct violation of US criminal law. That's what makes this so frustrating. Biden had no excuse. Despite every claim to the contrary, his complicity in the war crimes in Gaza were conducted knowingly and deliberately. It was not passive, it required active, determined will to carry out. I think that based on numerous public testimonials from within his administration, frankly, the International Criminal Court had sufficient evidence to charge Biden with war crimes as they did Netanyahu and Galant. But obviously charging the US president is just way too hot a potato.
Biden withheld a single item: 2000 lbs bombs. That was a purely symbolic gesture. That in no way limited Israel's ability to conduct the war. And that was on purpose. If it had, he wouldn't have done it.
No one prevented him from withholding anything. I'm not sure what you think Republicans forced him to do, but that is the sole item that was withheld, and that restriction persisted until he left office.
This is very, very painful stuff to digest. But I hope you can take a deep breath and at least sit with these facts for a moment. I think we should all do so out of respect for people like Gilbert, Sheline, and Paul who sacrificed their careers and reputations over these plain facts.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/gaza-israel-resigning-state-department-sheline/index.html
Those are very well made points, and I didn't know a few of them, so thank you for that.
That said: What would you have him do? Biden, that is. In 2024, with the fate of the world as we know it at stake, would you tell Israel no more weapons?
If that were to have happened, what would be the result?
Do you think russia might have jumped in there with both feet? If not, why not? Would that have any effect on the rest of the middle east? If not, why not?
I'm not suggesting it's simple - in fact, I'm railing against those who do - but I don't believe Biden was interested in prolonging the war crimes of the Likud at all. And that's what every discussion about this ends up with and that discussion, in turn, leads us to trump. Every time.
I don't want to diminish that by claiming to have all the answers, but I would suggest a few things.
Preface: My overall advice would include a complete overall to the status quo US approach to Israel and the middle east pre-10/7. The prior plan -- which was to help buy the support of all of Israel's neighbors to isolate Palestinians from any consideration was deeply immoral, inhumane, and as 10/7 showed us, strategically unsound. But for the sake of the thought exercise, I'll answer as if I supported Biden's overall objective, which is to maintain the apartheid regime under a veneer of plausible deniability that preceded 10/7.
First, Biden should've imposed a series of limits of Bibi from the start of the war. He should've privately laid out the objectives the US would support and the length of time available to conduct it, and "leaked" some of these discussions. He acknowledged the risk that Israel would overreach as the US did during 9/11 -- which by the way, HE himself bears great responsibility for. He was the ranked minority member of the Senate foreign relations committee in 2001. Antony Blinken was his main foreign policy advisor when he passed the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force that began the Global War on Terror, and the separate Authorization for Use of Force to invade Iraq in 2022. Considering all this, there was no reason to agree to give Israel a blank check for actions he publicly acknowledged were likely to create a disaster.
Second, he should've made clear during the first ceasefire in November of 2023 that the war was now over. They'd already killed tens of thousands of people and collapsed most of the infrastructure in Gaza. They'd made their point, and it was time to get the hostages home and negotiate a "day after" arrangement. Again, I would advocate for an actual long-term peace plan for Palestine, because the whole framework prior to the war assumes a permanent immiseration of Gaza that I do not support, but if that's what you want, this would've been a practical time to do that.
Third, there was always the problem that Netanyahu was trying to stay out of jail. He knew that if the first ceasefire held, it would mean that the war cabinet would dissolve, opposition leaders would call for elections and an investigation into the failures of 10/7, he'd lose office, face trial, and likely go to jail. Personally, again, I think this sounds very appropriate. But if you're Biden -- who genuinely thinks of Bibi as his little brother despite the fact that Bibi is a ruthless psychopath who would slit Biden's throat without hesitation -- you could offer to cover Bibi's ass by arranging for his complete pardon in exchange for peacefully ceding control.
Overall, this isn't really chess. It's more like a standard operating procedure. But truth be told, Biden did what he did because ultimately, this was all the outcome he wanted.
I know that sounds sick and deranged, but if you go through his entire career, it's always been there. From when he shocked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin by justifying violence against civilians in a private meeting in 1982 to his repeated acts to undermine Obama in his dealings with Netanyahu, Biden has always been committed to a maximalist approach towards Palestinians. And now we're here.
Okay, thanks. I disagree. You're telling me Biden hates Palestine and wanted it decimated and the people erased from the earth. I'm not buying that.
I'm not suggesting he had all the right answers, but I am suggesting he's not interested in destroying Palestine and was opposed to almost everything Bibi did from the outset. You claim he manipulated the diplomacy with an express intent to continue the atrocious war crimes; I say no he did not, and you haven't shown that.
If this was the outcome he wanted, why have talks at all? Why build a ramp for supplies? Why advocate for those trying to bring relief at all? Why not let Bibi do whatever the hell he wants and maybe see if he could wring some money out of it for himself as our current anti-Biden administration is doing.
There was a huge anti-Biden sentiment pre-election that was predicated on this type of thinking and I'm not convinced at all it was warranted. I have no doubt it played an important role in bringing about the new horrors that will serve Palestine not at all.
Look: this isn't really as much of an anti Biden sentiment as it sounds. I know it hurts to hear these things. Believe me, I know.
I grew up a zionist. When I was 10, I won an art contest at my local JCC for a sculpture that was just the shape of what I thought was Israel on top of a star of David. I put as much thought into it as a kid drawing stars and spaceships. But that shape I thought was Israel included the entire region between the Jordon River and the Mediterranean sea. If I were Palestinian and the emblem were a crescent moon, that piece of casual art would be widely recognized as a call for genocide. And it won a Jewish art contest. It wasn't even good art. It was years before I understood why the judges liked it.
Biden is a die-hard Zionist. He doesn't consciously know the purpose and end-stage goal of his beliefs any more than I did when I was 10. But what is happening is the piecemeal annexation and ethnic cleansing of the entire region of historic mandate Palestine. That is the goal of Zionists, even the liberal ones. They do a lot of mental gymnastics to make sure they never have to think about it, but a year of unchanged policy for which this outcome was fully known is the simplest proof in the world.
I'm sorry. In most regards, I liked and admired Biden. I don't believe he ever meant to do evil. But he did mean to do what has happened in Gaza. And it happens to be very, very evil.
Yeah I just can't get there based on reading tea-leaves of diplomacy over a response to 10/7 and the subsequent war crimes. I know Biden's Catholic and there's a strong Evangelical -> Zionist link but even that isn't really clear because Catholics aren't (Protestant) Evangelicals. And anyway, the second-coming-prophecies with the red calf and all that garbage are pretty out there for a guy who is more known for being a Senator (obviously in the future this will make less and less sense because of the Qanuts.)
Let's just agree that the genocide should never be supported and go with that until we get direct evidence of how Biden was supportive of the IDFs activities. I see how it could be (mis?)construed that way, I don't see how it is that way.
That's all fair. Just for clarity, I want to firmly distinguish that I don't think Joe Biden's zionism is at all the same as Pat Robertson's zionism. What you're talking about, I think is the evangelical messianic cult belief that a holy war in the middle east will usher in the second coming of Christ. I've heard that the president of France thought that George W. Bush was in that camp a bit.
Biden, from all that I've read, simply shares the zionism of liberal Jews. It's the same kind of Zionism I grew up with. It's a belief that the return of Jews to Israel is a triumphant story of 20th century humanist values making the tragedy of the Holocaust and the second World War into an inflection point at which we as a global civilization broadly turned away from barbarism and colonialism and racism in favor of enlightened future of international law and justice. It was predicated on the notion that Jews had been mistreated for millennia, and finally were receiving reparations. And our victory (as Jews) was the symbolic case that would define the future of political and economic liberalism that was the birthright of humans around the world.
As long as you don't ever think about the Palestinians, it's a powerful, uplifting narrative. That's what Biden is on. But the reason that Bibi has sat on the thrown for so long is because unlike folks like Biden, he knows how the gefilite fish is made, and he's not squeamish about making it.
Do you know where the term "scapegoat" comes from? It's biblical. We used to transfer our sins onto goats and then sacrifice them. We made them dirty with our sins so we could claim to be clean. That's what Bibi has always been. His job has always been to do the things that that liberal zionists have always wanted done but cannot bear to soil their own souls doing.
If that zionism is "Israel has a right to exist" then, okay I'd agree he shares that belief.
I mean, that's where I'm not with you. If someone "wants [that] done" they're not a liberal zionist in my opinion. (Sorry, I don't know which definition of liberal you're using or which one means the Jews who want to peacefully coexist and which ones want to take land and support genocide.)
If you're telling me that all the Jewish people I know who hate what Israel is doing but want Israel to exist are secretly loving what Israel is doing, I just don't believe that. I don't believe that Biden is one of them.
Again, I totally understand. I have been down the road that your friends are on.
This question you're asking has been a point of debate since the start of the zionist project a century ago.
The concept of some form of peaceful coexistance used to be the default position of liberal zionists, which in this context means supporters of universal human rights who believe in the establishment of a sovereign Jewish national homeland. The counterweight to this that has emerged -- particularly since the conquest and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in 1967 -- has been secular Jewish Supremacy and Religious Zionism. These are technically distinct, but ultimately both are far-right ethnonationalist/ethnosupremacist groups that advocate for a maximalist approach. Both believe in the complete conquest and ethnic cleansing of historic mandate Palestine.
The problem is that following the Oslo Accords, the far-right recognized that momentum was slowly shifting their way, and the liberal zionists never fought it. They liked the idea of rights and justice, but they didn't really have the stomach to advocate for the agency of Palestinians. Many are scared of Palestinians. Many recognize how utterly inconvenient their continued existence is. It was assumed that after a generation, they'd give up and their culture would've dissolved, but it didn't happen. Media shifted to the right along with the center of power in Israel, and US government -- historically a bulwark against the Israeli far right -- kept moving with them.
Most of your friends were probably raised much as I was. They probably got a tree planted in Israel for their b'nai mitzvah. They may have gone on a Birthright trip. And as they got older, they got more uncomfortable with the the side of Israel they saw during the Second Intifada and Operation Cast Lead, but accepted the universal pacifier: "It's complicated."
Which brings us to today. The illusion of any chance of agency or self-determination for Palestinians -- in both the occupied territories as well as Palestinian citizens living in Israel's formal UN boundaries -- has been rendered an obvious farce. Which means that everyone is really forced into largely three paths:
Biden is has been in camp 3 his whole career. As I mentioned, he justified violence against civilians in a private meeting during the Reagan administration. He's always had an appetite for breaking a few eggs.
I'm in camp 2. I want a one-state solution. It can be binational states or whatever, but I want everyone to have free movement across the territory, full rights, and for everyone to get access to the same national budget for schools and hospitals.
Your friends are probably demoralized and don't know what to feel. But if you don't take any action, the default option is 3. I hope they'll join me in 2. I'm furious that my son won't enjoy the privileges I did. Jewish safety and our reputation around the world are the prices that are being paid for a bunch of real estate.
I'm sorry this is all so long. I don't know if you'll read this, but as you can tell, I've got a lot bottled up. I bet your friends do to. Give them my love and support.
Well I just want to say it's been an interesting conversation and I appreciate the measured tone you've taken and your efforts to explain your position. I really do.
I think you're right that my friends are probably in the 2nd group you outlined. I think Carter, Clinton, Obabma, (and yes, Biden) all fall into that category of working towards a two-state solution that allows everyone to live peaceably. Certainly that's the dominant message I've ever recieved from the Democrats.
But as for this part: The problem is that following the Oslo Accords, the far-right recognized that momentum was slowly shifting their way, and the liberal zionists never fought it. They liked the idea of rights and justice, but they didn't really have the stomach to advocate for the agency of Palestinians.
Wasn't that the whole issue about Yitzhak Rabin? As per Wikipedia:
So the way I saw it, was that his assassination was a coup for the far right as represented by Bibi and the Likud is the equivalent of the MAGATs here - that is to say, utterly reprehensible people who do not represent what most people want.
But you're making the case that in fact most people DO want what Likud is selling they just don't have the courage to express it? If that's the case, how do you know this? I mean is it strictly anecdotal or do you know of some other data that suggests that? I admit I'm only going by what I have heard and my assumptions from reading the news, so that's why I'm asking.
And, more than that, that Biden somehow falls into the category of supporting a two-state solution but secretly (?) wanting to eliminate all Palestinians?
In order for negotiations to conclude, both sides have to agree. The US isn't one of those sides. In 2022 there were a lot of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but they were so far from agreeing that they realized there's no use in negotiating for a long time.
There's nothing Biden could have done, apart from sending even more aid, to help the situation. And now with Trump chatting with Putin, there's hardly any difference. No deal will be reached without Ukraine agreeing, which they're clearly not.
The only result from this will likely be that the US completely stops all support, forcing the EU to send even more aid, and the war will drag on a lot longer, probably years.
I find it tragic the lack of strategic thinking or imagination that the national security world is capable of.
If what you're saying is true, this is the best outcome. Biden did the best that one could do. This result is the result you get from implimenting the best possible strategic war planning of the strongest military in all of history.
That's preposterous. If Biden, Blinken, and Austin sat down and applied the world's most formidable military power to simulating outcomes, among possible outcomes would certainly be these two:
Trump wins, withdraws all support, and possibly begins sanctioning Ukraine or supplying weapons and intelligence to Putin. Zelinsky is killed and Ukraine comes fully under Russian control as a puppet state.
Zelinsky agrees under pressure from Biden to negotiate a ceasefire in 2022. European leaders buy into a plan where they muster an overwhelming pressure campaign of limited duration to apply maximum pressure to Putin economically, and Biden warns that if Putin doesn't come to the table, all bets are off: Ukraine enters into a complete mutual defense pact with the US, and we begin building long range ballistic missile launchers on their border. OR; Ukraine agrees to surrender parts of Crimea and the Donbas in exchange for a complete withdrawal. Russia acquiesces. The war ends. Both sides are mad, but Trump comes into office more than two years after Russia has completely withdrawn, and Ukraine maintains a sizeable stockpile of American weapons, making a resumption of the conflict unappealing to Putin.
I don't love outcome 2. But can we not pretend that this was not an option obviously available to Biden? An option he refused to even consider, despite the obviously enormous risks?
Biden should've compelled an end to this by any means necessary before Trump took office. This was not an unforeseeable outcome, and they made no effort to even consider a response strategy.
Remember when Biden said some idiotic thing earlier in the war about how Ukraine wasn't thankful enough and felt that support was owed to them? That's when I knew Biden want taking this seriously. It was theatrics to him.
what