I think that 3rd party spoiler effects in this election almost certainly won’t change the outcome, but regardless, Oliver will act as a spoiler for Trump, not Harris.
I started out by saying that I acknowledge that “Trump is worse on this score.” But I don’t think that “the US policy with regard to Israel” has to be treated as a fait accompli, a subject that a ruling elite has pre-decided and over which the public may have no input.
on what timescale are you talking about
Why? In 2016 Hillary lost by less than Stein’s margin in the swing states. In 2020 Gore lost by less than Nader’s.
WaPo gift link: New video, witnesses challenge Israel’s account of U.S. activist’s killing
The IDF said Aysenur Eygi was shot “unintentionally” during a “violent riot.” A Post analysis shows clashes had subsided and protesters had retreated.
So weird that the IDF keeps accidentally firing bullets that keep accidentally making their way into the bodies of protesters! They got a real whodunit on their hands.
I’m sure this going to just serve to inflame the region further but having the capacity to plan this or the recent assassination in Iran and instead just decide to bomb Gaza to dust is so crappy
Obviously any of this is not ideal but certainly better than what happened in Gaza (not saying good to indiscriminately blow up pagers just that they have so many options for assassinations vs just leveling cities)
I was just thinking that if the future of warfare is just blowing the dicks off of enemy soldiers with very little collateral damage then the future may be bright indeed. Maybe there’d be less war if all sides had the capability to blow off the other side’s dicks.
New doctrine is MADD - mutually assured dick destruction
Imagine a scenario where Iran managed to get the identity of a few hundred CIA, DOD, and NSA workers, along with some Trump administration officials who were responsible in some way for the Soleimani assassination. They managed to get small explosives into their cell phones, and then detonated all of them simultaneously. Some of the victims are at work, others in markets or shopping centers, walking down the street, with their families, etc.
A handful of the targeted individuals are killed, along with a few civilians. Hundreds injured, along with dozens of civilians.
Is this being discussed today as a brilliant plot, or terrorism? Are we invoking Article 5 against Iran?
Contrast that with the Mossad attack on Hezbollah, and it’s interesting. Obviously you cannot equate the US and Hezbollah, but I thought this would be the closest scenario possible wherein there’s a bunch of collateral damage.
You could also do it with Hezbollah or Hamas hitting Netanyahu administration officials and IDF leaders, and I’m pretty sure we’d all call it terrorism.
I think thing complicating analogies is this is context of them already being in an actual shooting war with each other. Obviously they not going all out but they actively attacking each other.
But I agree this just going to stir stuff and make world worse
It’s undeniably an act of war, but they’ve been in a de facto war for months.
Not sure about the analogy, but I reckon if you pull that on someone who has the upper hand on you, you’re gonna get your ass beat.
Well, let me simplify it then: this was once again a reckless disregard for innocent civilians from Netanyahu’s Israel.
Seems like the opposite, about as precise a strike on hezbollah operatives as you could hope for
I don’t know, all war is bad, but micro bombs attached to the crotch of the enemy soldiers seems a lot better than missiles.
Think we going to need more info on the actual impacts before deciding how “clean” this was. Like for all we know half the pagers were pawned by some corrupt Hezbollah distributors and random people had them now. Not saying I think that happened but we really don’t know what happened overall yet.
I’m going to agree with you first, then push back a little.
It’s unsavory, that Israel would compromise supply chains, put bombs in pagers, and then detonate all of them at once. They might kill some bad guys, sure, but surely there will be women, children, and non combatants standing around nearby that might die. All the people that die were in proximity of someone using pagers for special “secure” communications, which is clearly good enough to balance the calculation for Israelis.
By the time in WW2 that the Allies were firebombing Tokyo and Dresden, more people died in those than died in the first use of nuclear weapons in war. Once the war had gotten to that point, there was ZERO distinction between military and civilian targets. Civilian targets were simply enabling the war machine, and thus legitimate targets. The stakes were existential.
After everything the Middle East has been through, to say nothing of October 7th, the Israelis feel like THEY believe the stakes are existential. They aren’t rolling tanks in or firebombing Beirut, (while they ARE in Gaza), but it’s been a low level, undeclared state of war for BOTH sides, for generations. The intensity waxes and wanes over the years, but genocide has always been the stated goal. For BOTH sides.
I think the aim of this operation may simply have been to rattle Hezbollah’s operation to its core, and make them question everything about their security protocols. Bad guys, innocent guys are still very dead, to be sure. It seems Mossad has accomplished that goal.
These weren’t soldiers in battle, there’s video of one in a grocery store near (I assume) civilians.
