A string of security, logistical and weather problems has battered the plan to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza through a U.S. military-built pier.
We wasted months not giving them aid to build this pier…
It cost 320 million dollars, and lasted a fucking week.
And Palestinians are still starving to death.
I legitimately don’t know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional.
With the shit Biden openly says, it’s hard to believe there’s not worse shit he’s managing not to say. If not, isn’t saying whatever horrible pro genocide shit that pops into your head one of the reasons trump is bad?
trump is obviously worse, but running a campaign on that makes a genocide ok won’t get a Dem in office.
I legitimately don’t know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional.
If the purpose was to bring aid to the Palestinians, they’d just open the border crossing.
Rather, everything we see is consistent trying to create the appearance of doing something to help, but making sure you don’t actually affect the famine.
everything we see is consistent trying to create the appearance of doing something to help, but making sure you don’t
That’s the most we get these days. With pretty much any topic.
At most we get some breadcrumbs for optics right before elections, but never any real work towards real solutions.
It’s why not paying attention and just voting “blue no matter who” should never be a plan except for one election in a blue moon where something crazy just happened.
This is Trump’s 3rd election now, if the DNC can’t find a good candidate that can beat Trump and give Dem voters what we want, then we need new people running the DNC.
If the DNC won’t change, we need a whole ass new party.
Going along with this bullshit isn’t helping anyone.
The absence of evil isn’t good. It’s just the absence of evil.
We need politicians actually willing to do good things. Hell, it’s not even “absence of evil” the good guys are funding genocides these days.
At most we get some breadcrumbs for optics right before elections, but never any real work towards real solutions.
It’s why not paying attention and just voting “blue no matter who” should never be a plan except for one election in a blue moon where something crazy just happened.
I’m voting blue no matter who because I am paying attention to Republicans trying to burn the country to the ground. I’ll take half assed non-improvement over malicious self destruction, thanks.
Then you’re just incentivizing Dems to keep the status quo and never actually change anything for the better. This also ensures the Republican party will still exist forever since they’re the only alternative for someone who wants to vote but not for Democrats.
if the DNC can’t find a good candidate that can beat Trump
Hell if they don’t just tell Biden what he needs to do to win. They must be collecting data that tells them how wildly unpopular Biden’s actions are among the people they need to vote.
While I definitely agree with your general sentiment, how do you contend with the 66% of voters who think Israel is justified in this war, and the nearly 40% who think the way it is waged is acceptable? Wouldn’t the electoral risk be even more dire if you alienate them?
I’m not asking that rhetorically, I think it’s a genuinely hard problem.
You’re right, i didn’t have the breakdown by party and didn’t realize the size of the difference. I would have thought that establishment democrats would be more strongly in favour. Wholly agree with your comment then.
(i don’t have the link right now but if i remember to look for it on my phone i’ll edit it here later. It was from a run of the mill polling institute, i don’t remember which)
I found this article about a NPR poll which has a breakdown of support for Israel by age group and party affiliation.
I’m not sure exactly where Biden’s position on the Gaza invasion falls on this poll, but it seems closest to “Support Israels right to defend itself while encouraging a cease fire”. Biden definitely isn’t withholding all support, and he definitely isn’t fully supporting the military actions against Hamas.
About 33% of Democrats and 27% independents think the US should suspend aid to Israel until there is a cease fire.
Similarly 38% of gen z/millennials think there should be a cease fire until there is a suspension of aid. This is the smallest voting cohort at about 36% of the population according to Wikipedia, and also the least likely to vote historically. Perhaps voter turn out would be higher among this group if we had a different candidate, but no one is going to cater their political platform to a group that had never reliably voted, especially if doing so costs them votes among reliable voters.
Among Gen X and older less that 19% support a stopping aid until a cease fire happens. This is the largest and most likely to vote voting cohort.
Also noted in the article, Biden has a 15 point lead over Trump among baby boomers who have very little support for a ceasefire.
That wording is all you should need to hear to disregard the poll…
That’s a pretty extraordinary assumption to make.
Regardless of how you feel about that option there is little support among voters for withholding support for Israel until a ceasefire is reached. Less than 25% among all respondents, and less than 33% among Democrats and Independents who I’d consider potential Biden voters.
Literally no one is saying Israel can’t defend itself.
And it’s not what Israel has been doing the last 7 months.
Then that depends on what one thinks is necessary to achieve this.
They tried sitting back soaking up rockets and that just resulted in Hamas digging in and preparing to put a genocide on them
There’s probably no real other option to defend against this happening again than going in heavy handed. Just like the US had to put a genocide on IS in Mosul and Raqqa to conclude those sieges
Congress voted in favor of munitions aid. The State Department reported inconclusive evidence of war crime. It would be unprecedented for Biden to alter existing contracts without support from one of these branches, and would likely be challenged in the Judiciary Branch in the form of an impeachment hearing for bad faith or personal agenda.
We pay tens of trillions of dollars annually for the most informed State Department in the world. POTUS doesn’t decide based on information outside of our own intelligence, not news, the UN, the ICC, or the ICJ. Biden needs to pressure Blinken for a more thorough investigation, including the most recent “accidents” in civilian occupied areas, to provide a concrete platform for amendment or withdrawal of support.
TL;DR: POTUS doesn’t make decisions on international affairs based on polls.
I legitimately don’t know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional
It was either that or colossally incompetent.
Given that it had to go through several rounds of approval before being announced and every independent expert pointed out that it would be much less effective in itself than delivering aid by truck while doing nothing to keep the IDF from controlling it, that’s highly unlikely, though.
It’s a very transparent PR stunt that they almost certainly knew wouldn’t make a dent in the deliberately induced starvation.
We wasted months not giving them aid to build this pier…
It cost 320 million dollars, and lasted a fucking week.
And Palestinians are still starving to death.
I legitimately don’t know if it being such a giant waste of time and money was intentional.
With the shit Biden openly says, it’s hard to believe there’s not worse shit he’s managing not to say. If not, isn’t saying whatever horrible pro genocide shit that pops into your head one of the reasons trump is bad?
trump is obviously worse, but running a campaign on that makes a genocide ok won’t get a Dem in office.
If the purpose was to bring aid to the Palestinians, they’d just open the border crossing.
Rather, everything we see is consistent trying to create the appearance of doing something to help, but making sure you don’t actually affect the famine.
That’s the most we get these days. With pretty much any topic.
At most we get some breadcrumbs for optics right before elections, but never any real work towards real solutions.
It’s why not paying attention and just voting “blue no matter who” should never be a plan except for one election in a blue moon where something crazy just happened.
This is Trump’s 3rd election now, if the DNC can’t find a good candidate that can beat Trump and give Dem voters what we want, then we need new people running the DNC.
If the DNC won’t change, we need a whole ass new party.
Going along with this bullshit isn’t helping anyone.
The absence of evil isn’t good. It’s just the absence of evil.
We need politicians actually willing to do good things. Hell, it’s not even “absence of evil” the good guys are funding genocides these days.
It’s just “slightly less evil”.
I’m voting blue no matter who because I am paying attention to Republicans trying to burn the country to the ground. I’ll take half assed non-improvement over malicious self destruction, thanks.
May your self righteousness sit easy with your soul, while the right clicks each ratchet of the Overton window.
Voting ‘blue no matter who’ empowers that action - both with and without of your party.
Then you’re just incentivizing Dems to keep the status quo and never actually change anything for the better. This also ensures the Republican party will still exist forever since they’re the only alternative for someone who wants to vote but not for Democrats.
Hell if they don’t just tell Biden what he needs to do to win. They must be collecting data that tells them how wildly unpopular Biden’s actions are among the people they need to vote.
While I definitely agree with your general sentiment, how do you contend with the 66% of voters who think Israel is justified in this war, and the nearly 40% who think the way it is waged is acceptable? Wouldn’t the electoral risk be even more dire if you alienate them?
I’m not asking that rhetorically, I think it’s a genuinely hard problem.
My initial opinion is that 66% is about half republicans, leaving 16% of Biden voters feeling that he’s doing the right thing…
Can you link the survey you’re referencing?
You’re right, i didn’t have the breakdown by party and didn’t realize the size of the difference. I would have thought that establishment democrats would be more strongly in favour. Wholly agree with your comment then.
(i don’t have the link right now but if i remember to look for it on my phone i’ll edit it here later. It was from a run of the mill polling institute, i don’t remember which)
I found this article about a NPR poll which has a breakdown of support for Israel by age group and party affiliation.
I’m not sure exactly where Biden’s position on the Gaza invasion falls on this poll, but it seems closest to “Support Israels right to defend itself while encouraging a cease fire”. Biden definitely isn’t withholding all support, and he definitely isn’t fully supporting the military actions against Hamas.
About 33% of Democrats and 27% independents think the US should suspend aid to Israel until there is a cease fire.
Similarly 38% of gen z/millennials think there should be a cease fire until there is a suspension of aid. This is the smallest voting cohort at about 36% of the population according to Wikipedia, and also the least likely to vote historically. Perhaps voter turn out would be higher among this group if we had a different candidate, but no one is going to cater their political platform to a group that had never reliably voted, especially if doing so costs them votes among reliable voters.
Among Gen X and older less that 19% support a stopping aid until a cease fire happens. This is the largest and most likely to vote voting cohort.
Also noted in the article, Biden has a 15 point lead over Trump among baby boomers who have very little support for a ceasefire.
That wording is all you should need to hear to disregard the poll…
Literally no one is saying Israel can’t defend itself.
And it’s not what Israel has been doing the last 7 months.
That’s a pretty extraordinary assumption to make.
Regardless of how you feel about that option there is little support among voters for withholding support for Israel until a ceasefire is reached. Less than 25% among all respondents, and less than 33% among Democrats and Independents who I’d consider potential Biden voters.
If you have a different poll I’d love to see it.
I haven’t seen a single person in here link a poll, but y’all keep throwing out numbers…
So how about you link the poll you’re talking about before asking others to find one?
And it’s not what Israel has been doing the last 7 months.
Then that depends on what one thinks is necessary to achieve this.
They tried sitting back soaking up rockets and that just resulted in Hamas digging in and preparing to put a genocide on them
There’s probably no real other option to defend against this happening again than going in heavy handed. Just like the US had to put a genocide on IS in Mosul and Raqqa to conclude those sieges
What?
You think that’s what Israel has been doing?
That’s just not a factual statement…
What about Israel not spending decades violating Palestinian human rights or not seizing their land against international law?
What about not kidnapping Palestinians in the middle of the night from their own country and torturing them till they admit to crimes?
You don’t think that would ease tensions?
The money wasn’t wasted, it went directly where it was intended for. The pockets of multi billionaire defense contractors.
Congress voted in favor of munitions aid. The State Department reported inconclusive evidence of war crime. It would be unprecedented for Biden to alter existing contracts without support from one of these branches, and would likely be challenged in the Judiciary Branch in the form of an impeachment hearing for bad faith or personal agenda.
We pay tens of trillions of dollars annually for the most informed State Department in the world. POTUS doesn’t decide based on information outside of our own intelligence, not news, the UN, the ICC, or the ICJ. Biden needs to pressure Blinken for a more thorough investigation, including the most recent “accidents” in civilian occupied areas, to provide a concrete platform for amendment or withdrawal of support.
TL;DR: POTUS doesn’t make decisions on international affairs based on polls.
It was either that or colossally incompetent.
Given that it had to go through several rounds of approval before being announced and every independent expert pointed out that it would be much less effective in itself than delivering aid by truck while doing nothing to keep the IDF from controlling it, that’s highly unlikely, though.
It’s a very transparent PR stunt that they almost certainly knew wouldn’t make a dent in the deliberately induced starvation.