“Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough.”
Can you believe this Radical Far Left Democrat has the NERVE to tell Israel what to do?!
diplomacy
States, treaties, and the gap between words and outcomes.
When the Interceptors Run Out
Known: The number of interceptors the US coalition forces have left.
Unknown: The number of ICBM launchers the Khameini regime is conserving underground.
I don’t mean to be a downer but if we don’t count the initial salvos at the start of the war, then the average daily rate of incoming missiles hasn’t really gone down. It’s held relatively steady. Don’t be fooled by the “90% reduction” stat.
In the next 5-6 weeks the US forces are expected to run out of interceptors. Resupply will be insufficient and take months at absolute best.
At the same time, the war is very unpopular in the USA. POTUS has every incentive to unilaterally declare victory and end US involvement in the war.
If the US withdraws, and if the Khameini regime has been conserving missile launchers in the enormous underground facilities it has maintained, will the Israeli air force be capable of continuing to eliminate those launchers on its own?
If more missiles are on the horizon, and there aren’t any interceptors to intercept them, then we’ll still have the early warning system when missiles are launched, right?
Again, I don’t want to be a downer, but that early warning system depends on detection hardware and installations in US-friendly Gulf states that have sustained increasing damage over the past two weeks, materially degrading our warning system, translating into much shorter times between warning, siren, and interception, and sometimes no warning/siren at all.
Take away the interception at the tail end of that system, and the early warning/siren at the front end of it, and all you’re left with is… missiles.
.
I don’t know if this war was inevitable or not. The Khameinist regime was definitely making moves to escalate its attacks targeting Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and just the week before Bibi launched the strike on Tehran, the IRGC had effectively taken direct operational control over its main proxy, Hezbollah.
That said, Bibi’s strike was a calculated political move in the context of both his longstanding relationship with right wing American Evangelicals and recent domestic developments in Iran. Bibi himself is an incompetent wartime leader, as his numerous failures with Hamas and the Gaza War show, and probably a criminal to boot, as indicated by the many Israeli investigations of him and his administration.
I don’t trust Bibi. I don’t support him in this war. And I’m wondering if he’s planned for the day when the US goes home.
.
Hopefully these are just the paranoid ramblings of someone stressed out by war.
The future is never clear, never certain, never determined.
Every day we wake up to a fresh world, perfectly balanced between merit and guilt, and waiting for our thoughts, words, and actions to tip the scales.
As a collective, our failures, errors, mistakes, and negligence are abundant – we need all the merit we can get.
May the Creator shield all innocents from all bombs and brighten the light at the end of this tunnel.
Questions About the War
So I’ve been doing some digging and I have some Questions:
– If, after 5 weeks, the remaining IRGC commanders refuse to surrender and the US is excluded from the succession process, then does that mean the USA won the war?
– If, after 5 weeks, the US has used up all or most of its interceptors against Iranian missiles and drones, what’s left to protect US allies in the Pacific and Europe from China and Russia? (Or Middle Eastern allies from local belligerents?)
– If, after 5 weeks, the US withdraws most of its assembled forces from the region but IRGC and Hezbollah missiles are still falling on Israeli citizens, will the Israeli military be able to continue effective operations in Iran and Lebanon?
– Are US Armed Forces capable of fighting and winning a sustained war on a single front (Iran), let alone two fronts (the assumed precondition for post-WW2 world order), let alone three (Middle East, Pacific, Europe)?
– As the domestic situation, the international standing, and the military capability of the USA respectively destabilizes, declines, and degrades, will Bibi’s ability to maintain a special relationship with GOP POTUS be a help or a hindrance in navigating the geopolitical waters in the years ahead?
🧐
Please note: I have not addressed the spiritual, moral, or economic costs related to any of the above. That reckoning raises its own Questions.
The Ceasefire Plan
The Trump ceasefire plan does not seem substantially different from the Biden ceasefire plan.
The timetable for some things is a little faster, for other things a little slower. There is a stark cosmetic difference in the language.
But it seems to set out roughly the same basic points for both Israel and Hamas as the previous administration’s proposal.
🤷
There are definitely good, if vague, points set out in the plan.
But there are also some red flags:
I think setting up a Board of Peace headed by a corrupt authoritarian to rule Gaza via a puppet technocracy sounds shady.
I don’t trust the current US government.
And I’m left with a lot of questions about many of the points and how they will be implemented.
So I have my reservations about this ceasefire plan, like I did about the war itself; but if it brings about an end to the war, the elimination of Hamas, the return of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza, then those will undeniably be good things.
Diplomacy Gone Bad: A Response and a Rant
This damned war is continuing not because of diplomatic cover and arms for Israel but for Hamas. It would be over in a day if Hamas was not still being propped up as an active threat (!) to Israel seven months into Hamas’s failed war (waged in violation of local ceasefire agreements and of international law).
Meaningless photo ops like the Irish, Norwegian, and Spanish politicians’ paper recognition of a state with no contiguous borders, no independent monetary policy, no actual army, and no functional popular government, are simply divorced from reality – the reality of state-building and the reality on the ground.
1948 was the last year an independent Palestinian State could have emerged. That ship sailed long ago and it doesn’t help Palestinians to pretend it still would be a viable option but were it not for Israeli obstinacy.
For a long time I’ve thought that people advocating a 2 State Solution are generally (but innocently) working against Palestinian interests, out of ideological bias. This impression was understandably strengthened by the USA’s injection of 2 State discourse into strategic talks during this war (as if establishing a paper state will prevent a new generation from taking up Hamas’s banner for Iran) and is confirmed by this latest episode of European “diplomacy” in attempting to reshape the Middle East (as if their new policy will change any facts on the ground and end the various conflicts in this region).
Enough of the endless foreign meddling and paper-pushing – and of trying to fit ourselves and our situation into the cultural categories and geopolitical theories of the West. Regardless of how the agents of imperialism and colonialism distort our histories and our identities, we are one people with one common destiny. Time to return to what we know.