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.
Carborundum
I don’t think we should model this as Iran “letting” their proxies be taken out; I honestly don’t see a move they could have made that would have placed Israel in check. They absolutely could increase Israeli costs, but even if they expended 100% of their strategic rocketry forces against IAF basing I don’t see them degrading Israeli capabilities to an extent that changes the course of events (their CEP looks to be about 500m, at best) and if they don’t reserve enough throw weight to hold Gulfie energy infrastructure under threat, the risks the Iranians are taking on board become extreme. My interpretation would change if I saw convincing indications that they have better systems that they haven’t fielded, but they certainly *said* they sent the good stuff before it became clear how dispersed the lay down was.
The big thing I think we need to internalize is that the strategic positioning of distant adversaries is very different to the strategic positioning of near adversaries. As an example, I don’t think that the Houthis are particularly virtuous because they are willing to use military force against Israel. My view, because they are distant, the risks and cost of action are significantly lower – it’s comparatively easy for them to keep lobbing systems that actually don’t meaningfully contribute to their security at symbolic targets. Similarly, it’s comparatively easy for them to seek to blockade commercial shipping and, so long as no one is willing to step up and get serious about stopping them, it’s pretty low risk. Woe betide them if that calculus changes, however. It would be pretty difficult for Western powers to completely stop them, but it would not be at all difficult for them to inflict way more damage than the Houthis think they are likely to suffer.
I think this is an illustration that the folks who are advancing supposedly lower risk strategies like this need to have considerable skin in the game. As an example, you think it’s central to your nation’s security concerns to encourage proxies to face down distant adversaries, great – you live there now and I don’t care that you are five levels in echelon and expect clean sheets to go with your exalted state of Generalitude.
Curt Kastens
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/report-trump-weighing-pre-emptive-air-strikes-against-iran/ss-AA1vOimU?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=2e4de7bbe7d54a9b9b0e0a663b5db291&ei=23
Scare Crow, thank you for your reply
bruce wilder
some people would benefit from a close and careful reading of everything that Colonel ( Retired) Pat Lang wrote about Israel and related subjects. . .
your reference reminded me of how the late Colonel was prone to some very convoluted reasoning in order to blame the Ottomans and absolve the Turks for the genocide of the Armenians. “analytical rigor and exactitude of factual correctness” sure didn’t slow him down any when that was his chosen task. his romantic views of the American Civil War did not always credit his character either.
I am not attracted by the current fashion for harsh criticism of “settler colonialism” as harboring an unforgivable original sin that taints all they do or have done. I personally would not be inclined to condemn the Zionist project as a concept or from its inception.
I do fault my friends who are Jews, Zionists or not (and most Jews are at least mild Zionists), for being ineffectual in opposing what Zionists-in-power have been doing to kill off the Palestinians and not incidentally undermine the U.S. Constitution.
I do not know if I quite agree that humans deserve hell, but I acknowledge that many humans work openly and consciously for “hell for other people” while many others are complicit in those hell-bound projects. To me, the problem is one of building and sustaining workable institutions that constrain and channel corrupt human nature: we need conscious, deliberately chosen and equitable rules. Not so easy to entrust anyone with the power to enforce rules without inviting corruption. I do not know all the reasons people I know or know of are not more alarmed by corruption. Many are enveloped by the corruption in their employment and yet feel powerless even as they contribute to the power that grinds us all down. Being pure of heart doesn’t seem to me to help much, so I remain skeptical of “leftist” analysis that projects, say, doing away entirely with hierarchy or banishing “greed” just as I despair of those who imagine that the only barrier to “doing something” to mitigate climate change is the unwillingness of some sing, “kumbaya.” But, I digress.
Does a sharp conceptual distinction between Jew and Zionist serve any purpose other than virtue-signaling? Who is confounding contemporary anti-Zionism with historic anti-semitism? Not me. Those who are doing it — what is their purpose?
Feral Finster
“Conversely, an Iran that isn’t practicing foreign adventuring as an element of national strategy is an Iran that everyone can live with.”
What “foreign adventuring”? The last time Irain attacked another country was in the 18th century and it was called “Persia” back then.
If you are redefining “foreign adventuring” as “having ties to other countries and factions with similar outlooks to one’s own” then look to the lumberyard in your own eye.
Every country out there engages in such “foreign adventuring”.
shagggz
@bruce wilder,
“Who is confounding contemporary anti-Zionism with historic anti-semitism? Not me. Those who are doing it — what is their purpose?”
Imperialism, of course. Going back at least as far as the 1840s-era Bush presidential forefather scheming (in writing) on achieving just that, by doing just that.
Hitler was a Zionist, and Zionists allied with Nazis in the creation of the Zionist Entity. “Zionazism” is a perfectly apropos portmanteau.
different clue
@shagggz,
” Hitler was a Zionist” sounds like a very creative revision of what Hitler was and what Hitler wanted. I always understood Hitler to be a jew-hater who wanted to catch and exterminate every Jew within his eventual reach. Is there any reason to read the historical record of events and say that isn’t so?
Is there any writing in the record that you can link to where Hitler wrote that he approved of a long-term Jewish State somewhere?
@bruce wilder,
What makes you think any of the Jews you know would be any more effectual than you are at opposing Israel’s gazacide or anything else? Why hold “being ineffectual” against the Jews you know when you are just as ineffectual as they are? Do you believe the type of ordinary Jews you know are supposed to have some mystical power of being especially effectual?
shagggz
@different clue,
I don’t consider being a jew-hater disqualifying for being a Zionist. The considerable overlap in imperial interests can often unite such strange bedfellows, as we can see today with most American Zionists being (so-called) Christians whose eschatological beliefs enabling Zionist bulldozing over (secular) legality entail the forced conversion of Jews to Christianity once the prophecy of a Jewish Jerusalem is fulfilled. Here is an overview of the Zionazi symbiosis in birthing Isnotreal:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/24/the-treachery-of-the-nazi-zionist-alliance/