Israel says it wants to eliminate Hamas specifically, and radical Islamism generally, in Gaza. Ironically, its war against the Gaza Strip, in which the vast majority of victims are innocent civilians, will only serve to recruit a bigger generation of angry Palestinians to the anti-occupation resistance.
A frequent talking points that Israel is their complaint that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Of course, this ignores the fact that it’s difficult to build infrastructure away from civilians in a densely-populated urban environment like the Gaza Strip.
After Hamas left Gaza and carried out of a brutal raid in western Israel, killing 1400 Israelis, Israel enjoyed the sympathy of the international community. They immediately retaliated with a saturation bombing campaign. Now many thousands of Palestinians are dead and that sympathy for Israel is all but gone.
What if Joe Biden were to admit to Vladimir Putin the obvious truth, that the United States is an expert in all the acts of villainy Russia is committing and accused of in Ukraine? What if he warned Russia that it would suffer the same loss of credibility United States has in criticizing Russia?
One of the more persuasive arguments in favor of supporting Joe Biden is that things would go back to normal after Donald Trump leaves office. For those of us who remember what normal was, and is, that’s not necessarily appealing.
What if other countries mourned their national tragedies the way we do? The United States reads off the names of the dead during annual commemoration ceremonies and builds walls with names. Other countries have far bigger death counts, often due to us, but the scale of the carnage makes it impossible for them to wallow in such niceties.
The intelligence community says that ISIS is not a threat to the United States, but that it might someday become one. Why? Because we’re attacking them.
Until a few weeks ago, the United States was sending weapons and money to the Islamic State in Syria, and providing covert training both directly through the CIA and indirectly through the Gulf Arab states. Now the US is seriously considering bombing ISIS not only in Iraq, but in Syria, where we supported them in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. At some point, this gets confusing, no?
NGOs are doing good work in the developing world. But the US government is working against them.
