Capacity v.s. Desire: What I Got Right & Wrong At The Start of the Gaza Genocide

There was/is the influence of Russia and China both of which are Israeli friendly. A fist strike on Iran’s part wouldn’t have gone down well with them or other world players. But they have no obvious reason to hold back from hitting Israel hard in the gonads now.

I’m no proponent of nuclear weapons, but Iran should’ve taken that path a few years ago, and we wouldn’t be in this mess today. It still may not be too late.

Anyway, yes, hard lessons learned and heavy prices paid with worse to come.

The MOU failed, ultimately, because Israel would not stop attacking in Lebanon.

The MOU was bullshit from the get-go. It was never intended to succeed by either side. You can’t fail at something when it was never serious from its inception.

(Trump has shown that, contra arguments I heard for decades, that in fact, the President can “just do things”.)

Yeah, if a president does them openly illegally and you’re conservative. Reagan and Dubya showed that already. However, if president dared introduce Medicare-for-All by fiat the way Trump did, he’d be impeached and jailed within a week with pious commentary about how “we are a nation of laws…”

But to your point, let me quote of all people, Adolf Hitler, who said this shortly after all the high-fiving among the Nazi leadership after the successful start of Barbarossa (the invasion of the USSR) in June 1941:

“The beginning of every war is like opening the door into a dark room. One never knows what is hidden in the darkness.”

That, and inevitable horror and suffering which will be inflicted, is the reason why ‘reasonable, decent people’ don’t just go off and start wars, and consider war the last option after everything else has been tried [note: by corollary, this means that the US and Israeli leadership aren’t reasonable or decent, something I think most readers would not disagree]. Maybe the Iranian leadership was too Neville Chamberlain-like, but if Chamberlain was wrong it was his adversary was determined to have war regardless, an analogy that would fit Bibi was he’s been aching for an “Israel uber alles” for decades and now he has a blackmailed US president to follow him around like a badly-treated but obedient dog.

The Resistance# lacks the will and stomach. Russia does not want to end The West, but to be allowed to join it. China simply wants to be able to continue to sell things and make money.

The West, by contrast, cares for nothing but power, domination, and control and they are not only utterly ruthless, but perfectly happy to harm their own material well-being in order to maintain power, domination and control.

That is why they win.

north korea understood the lesson that bill clinton taught them in yugoslavia, arm yourself with weapons that can hit back just as hard and devastating. and don’t be afraid to advertise you have them, and be willing to use them.

today north korea is almost untouchable by the west, and is having a economic renaissance.

russia never understood international law, and for the last two years, kept blubbering on about why its being broken, and never understanding its all voluntary.

now its being targeted by the west, and is only now sorta starting to put the fear into the west. to little, to late.

the blubbering on has only emboldened the west. who are desperate to hang onto their 500 year old trading empires.

it was incredible that the iranian leadership actually thought they were safe behind their borders. no on is safe if the oligarchs and elites of other countries, covet what you own.

and on top of that, those same ones who covet you, have openly stated in 1995, that you are the main key in the road map, to oppress and seize from others.

borders have never been safe, and never will be safe. north korea learned the lesson, it seems very few are capable of being educated, till its to late.

“Iran knew full-well Trump could not be trusted to honor a deal let alone agree to a deal, so yeah, Iran was never serious.”

China was pressuring Iran to accept a deal, so wrong again.

I should have added that L&S’ attempt to apportion blame on Iran for signing an agreement that everyone knew that the US would break is a new level of victim-blaming and felching for Empire.

China was pressuring Iran to accept a deal, so wrong again.

Exactly. This further proves my point. Iran going through the fruitless motions to appease the world stage, or in this case to appease an “ally”, China.

I think we have very little insight into what Iran or Hezbollah want beyond survival. People are tweeting very confidently about this, from thousands of klicks away, given that such large proportions of the previously known leadership personalities of both organizations have been taken off the board. Preconception and generalities look to me to be substituting for analytical work in most of the commentary and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that few are saying anything that can be falsified.

L&S , you are the one claiming Iran and the US were at fault for the US attacking Iran again.

Now, if you want to argue that China is not a particularly reliable ally, fine, but that had nothing to do with PR and everything to do with a China that just wants to get back to making money and wants to be lied to.

There really is a lot of freedom at the top: they have a great deal of choice about what to do and what not to do.

People at the top, trying to formulate and execute policy thru committees and loosely organized mass constituencies by coordinating large bureaucracies, polities and multilateral alliances are often very conservative because they are intensely aware of the chaos that can intervene between a consensus about intentions (assuming it is even possible to obtain and retain a stable and coherent consensus) and control of consequences and results. A lot can go wrong. No political class is of one mind about anything, ordinarily; what stability there is, rests on precedents and habits and expectations within the frames of repeated play in the patterns of “games” people and societies “play”.

The MOU is classic diplomacy to do what diplomacy is meant to do: to agree to “rules of the games” to ringfence the chaos and draw order and the benefits of at least some cooperation from the anarchy of international affairs.

As usual in our era, I feel I am missing key and critical detailed information about just about everything — not even able to draw on the insights of much better informed observers. In this, I agree with what Carborundum said, among other commenters.

Morally, I think what Israel has been doing to dominate and destabilize Iran and various associated co-belligerents is reprehensible. There are good reasons, both in principle and consequentialism based in historical experience for attempts to classify Israel’s conduct as criminal.

The moral indictment of Israel’s policy and U.S. cooperation and complicity is easy on the available evidence.

That said, it is tempting to allow cheerleading for Iran or “the Resistance” to paper over the huge lacunae in knowledge of details of the myriad political conflicts that fracture Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

I think the Zionist view is malignant narcissism manifest in international relations. They have lashed out at everyone hostile to Israel. I understand that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas prior to October 7 were hostile to Israel. Iran was pursuing a policy of destablizing Lebanon and Syria long-term as part of a contest with Israel. That kind of very long-term pursuit of goals by subsidizing violence and threats of violent retaliation is, unfortunately, pretty much S.O.P. in international relations.

The appeal to the arbitrament of arms was long-standing, albeit a stalemate. Challenged by a desperate Hamas, Israel chose to try to pursue its goals by means of ruthless escalation dominance instead of a diplomatic negotiation and settlement. A realistic appraisal would acknowledge that Israel was remarkably well-prepared to carry out its strategy of escalation dominance operationally, while the loose coalition sponsored and led by Iran was not well-prepared to defend itself or its constituents diplomatically or militarily at lesser stages of escalation — there’s been a lot of tit inflicted with no tat. That incapacity to match Israel or to defend/neutralize at lower gradations of the escalation ladder is conspicuous. I don’t really understand Ian’s argument about “capacity”. Iran, with its back against a wall, has a hole card to play, due to investing in drone and missile tech and production capacity. Yes, I get that. But, there were a whole series of lesser capacities Iran and its associates (Assad, Hezbollah, Hamas) overestimated and treated as part of the furniture of stalemate-in-stasis that have been demolished or severely diminished. The now-extinct leadership of Iran were playing a long game with a lot of pieces that have been wiped from the board with little apparent compensation.

I expect Iran is still playing a long game, but is understandably chastened. Israel’s economy and society are under considerable strain, but Israeli public opinion is fanatical. Iranian popular support for the regime, I can only assume, is more solid than for some years past, but must inhere some credibility / competence issues. China has prepared for a prolonged oil drought and may be willing to behave sympathetically. Russia is fighting its own war against a NATO proxy. That said, in the long run Iran, China and Russia are at odds in Central Asia — a three-way conflict (or four-way with Türkiye) built into the geography and centuries. And, Iran is not good at alliances with equals, especially in the Gulf with Arabs.

If there is a check-and-mate on the board by which Iran wins, it turns on the vulnerability of the U.S., which does not benefit from this war, but is dominated by a ruling class completely controlled by their mortal Zionist enemy. The war is unpopular in the U.S. with the general population, but the political class is completely corrupt and all-in. Turning the Trump card seems a delicate matter, involving the stance of the various neighbors — the Arab states, Pakistan and Türkiye as well as political power shifts in the U.S. Iran might try a dramatic gesture like sinking an aircraft carrier, but I would think the immediate consequences might be hard to anticipate — which I count as a sound reason for Iranian leadership to be hesitant and conservative, preferring to play on the opportunity inherent in U.S. ambivalence and vulnerability, military and moral. We should allow that many in the Iranian ruling class may have a stunted understanding of the U.S. as well as the Arabs.

I can understand why Iran’s new leadership might struggle with the calibrating of their play. Their economy is in a somewhat precarious state from drought as well as the blockade and bombardment.

@Dan Kelly,

You are correct. I shouldn’t wish for such a nasty thing. But we need to somehow achieve the total psychological and emotional defeat of the millions of irreformable and irredeemable racists and Christianist Fascists who voted for exactly that kind of misery against me and my part of America. It really is only fair that they get for themselves exactly what they voted to impose on others.

That is what is meant by “leopards eating face”. They voted to unleash the leopards to eat OUR faces. It is only fair that THEIR OWN LEOPARDS eat THEIR OWN FACES instead. It is, after all , THEIR LEOPARDS which they deliberately and maliciously unleashed on US.

That, after all, is what Black Content Creators have been saying for many months now. “Racism is expensive” and by rights it should be most expensive against those who decided to unleash it against others by voting for it deliberately on purpose with open eyes and with malice aforethought.

But you are right. I should dial my wish down to : Let them get just enough of the pain they deliberately voted for against us to where they vote to make the pain stop for us and for themselves. If we get no relief, they deserve no relief. I could find and bring here any number of Phillip Scott podcasts making that very point. ” If we ( Black People) are going to be uncomfortable, let everybody else be uncomfortable. Let nobody else get anything which we don’t get our equal share of.)

We didn’t truly crush and extinguish Confederate culture and civilization in 1865. This time we need to crush and extinguish KlanMAGA culture and civilization thoroughly enough that nothing of it remains to ” rise from the dead and try it again”.
KlanMAGA must not be allowed to rise again. Same for Christianazianity. Same for Billionairism, if we are strong enough to crush and destroy them too.

The more the subhuman kumbaya bipartisan cuck Democrats prove themselves unequal to that mission, the more and faster the Democratic Socialist Party will grow and expand.

One more Phillip Scott podcast and then I’ll stop for a while. I know that Black America is at least 40 million people strong, and they say that Black America is not a monolith, the same as many other particular grouploads of people are not monoliths.
So I don’t know how many different thought streams run through Black America or how representative various Black Content Creators are of those various thought streams.

But I think that Phillip Scott could be considered representative of the Black America First thought stream, sometimes verging on Black America Only. He also offers a Whole Heaping Helping of Biblical Retributionism and “God’s Historical Justice” type thinking. Here is a video emblematic of a whole subgenre of videos he has done lately and promises he will do more of in the months and possibly years to come.

“White American Says He Cant Afford Groceries, Gas & A Home, Should FBAs Have Sympathy?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqAuelo1ZFA

I’m just glad and grateful I never got married, or bought a house or a car, or had any children. Its almost as if I too got default-ready almost by long-running accident for the Revolution of Falling Expectations coming our way and going into the future as far the eye can see.

Well . . . ” a while” wasn’t as long as I thought it might be. Here is another Phillip Scott podcast of a White Woman in economic distress. After he runs the video segment, he delivers a lecture based on such a long and heavy dose of Biblical Retributionism that I don’t think any other examples of that particular strain of thinking will be necessary to illustrate it.

White Woman Says She’s Tired Of Struggling After Having To Split Groceries Into 3 Payments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeM9wTJj7Bg

Busy these days, so infrequent on here . . . Great comments by Finster, calling out LAS’ endless “You can change nothing, just hunker down and prepare to die” defeatism. Briefly smart enough to consider emigrating, Fascist-adjacent opinions so he figures in the great culling he won’t go into those Concentration camps. He may be right, I’m far away so can’t know.

Mostly good comments from bruce wilder, yes Dan, I rebutted him thoroughly on the “Hispanics don’t exist in the US and never have” disbelief. I think he thinks we are cucarachas? In any case, there’s several million of us here in the Southwest who beg to differ with him. This morning, very active, speaking about 2/3 Spanish & 1/3 English. Friendly dude said hi to me, I responded in Spanish, he was baffled. I code-switched to English, asked him what the futbol team shirt he was wearing was and he didn’t even know. Nice kid, anyway.

I appreciate Dan Kelly’s hat-tip in any case, not going to get up on the podium about sexuality again. Puritans are shitty, miserable people, and they want you to be too. And every Puritan who hates “the gheys” or fat people or whatever are demonatrating a Freudian-Pavlovian confusion, they secretly fear they are what they pretend to hate. See: Larry Craig.

Some good drops from diff clue today too– Yes, “The South never Died” bullshit Optimism is the same as the Banderist Western Ukraine Dead-ender shtick. This does I think relate to Bruce a bit, thinks we’re stupider if we’re browner? It wasn’t that way in my family, but I am not necessarily representative of a larger sample.

Things I love about Latino culture, having spent 2/3rds of my over 65 year existence in it. 1. People are friendly and sweet, not “armored” and suspicious like Anglo-Saxon types. When I went to Nicaragua in 1983-84 and there were Contra attacks nearby, my buddies and the girls and ladies picking with us, you ask “Como estas?” everyone replies “Tranquilo, tranquila”. (Gender dependent.) But the direct object is the gender of the object. “La mochilla es mia”, a bag is feminine . . . El mano is feminine but takes the masculine prefix, odd. They’re trying to re-enslave us, but we don’t give a shit, we are fearless was the attitude.

2. Note that I am not saying that suffering oppression makes people more noble; with a few it does, many it does quite the reverse. When I did a summer semester at Universidad de Guadalajara in 2016 (beautiful town at the time, dangerous now, depends on neighborhood and how much you blend in) I took 6 units, 3 in Mexican history, 3 in Mexican literature. In the Lit class we read “Los De Abajo,” the English title translation is “The Underdogs.” Peasant revolts in the South and North, some of the Elites leading the Revolution were great humanists, dignified, fearless; some of the peasants were just enraged people who’d been abused too much, wanted to kill the bourgeois and Elites, rape their daughters, etc. Could fight with courage, but muy borracho cuando viene la noche, migth slash their former best friends’ face with a broken bottle over som imagined slight . . . one of the darkest moments in Mexican history was a town that had nearly half Chinese-Mexicans, Chinos. (They look pretty goddamn similar as Mexicans likely crossed the Siberian Ice Sheet, populated the hemisphere with Meso-Americans.) The Mexicans got resentful and killed 80% of the Chinos, some escaped. At my favorite spot to buy coffee in the a.m., a dude named Matt. I thought he was a Native person until he told me he was taking a vacation home, to South Korea.

3. Here’s my last bit of lore on being Hispanic or Latino. (Venn diagram mostly but doesn’t 100% align.) In Mexican families, siblings can pass a white, blonde-blue-eyed, a sister, her brother will be dark brown. Some people con mucha sangre India look black, nearly!! Diversity is strength, homogeniaty is boring. One thing that I can say that I’m sure bruce’s evident racialist essentialism can’t rebut– Exogamous marriage creates healthier, more handsome children. Endogamous interbreeding results in illnesses (Tays-Sachs among some Jews, e.g.), mental retardation and hereditary sickness.

It’s like the old Chris Rock joke– “All interracial children are so good-looking and strong. Harvey Weinstein could have a baby with Condoleeza Rice and it’d be beautiful!!” Life is always more beautiful on the other side of the fence, my Conformist (Silent Generation) Parents taught me, I have crossed many fences, 85% of the time things are better and I grow, contain more of Walt Whitman’s multitudes. It’s a good feeling. And yes, Dan, this does pertain to sexuality as well as to race. My dad didn’t respect Hispanics much, yet he married a Spanish-French dark-skinned woman. The heart (& the dick and the ovaries) wants what they want.

Here’s what I have read about Tay-Sachs disease. If you get two alleles for a particular gene, you get Tay-Sachs disease. If you get one of those alleles for that gene, you get increased resistance to tuberculosis. So it appears that Tay-Sachs disease is the both-alleles genetic-disease tax that the Ashkenazi Jews pay for having increased tuberculosis resistance from one such allele.