Tag Archives: #War

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World War III watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!

It seems that the neoconservatives — who haven’t seemed very conservative when it comes to domestic policy — simply have never met a war in which they didn’t want the United States to fight. Of course, by that, they meant other Americans to fight, not themselves. We have previously reported on Bill Kristol, the neoconservative founder and later destroyer of The Weekly Standard, because as a dedicated #NeverTrumper he couldn’t stand to allow any support of Donald Trump in a magazine marketed to conservatives and Republicans. Mr Kristol and the other neocons, such as Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, all love wars and want the United States to participate in them. Today’s left have managed to become so seduced by President Biden’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia than even the very much not-a-neocon Amanda Marcotte was supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, albeit for different reasons.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin also fits into that category:

Are there four brave GOP House members with the courage to save Ukraine?

That’s all it would take to get the majority needed to bypass speaker Mike Johnson and get a vote on Ukraine aid to the House floor.

by Trudy Rubin | Friday, February 23, 2024 | 6:30 AM EST

Wanted: Four GOP House members with a tiny fraction of the courage of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Saturday marks the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. It comes one week after Navalny died in an icy Siberian prison for his fight for democracy and opposition to the Ukraine war.

Yet the United States is on the verge of surrendering Ukraine into Putin’s hands because House Republican leaders refuse to allow members to vote for urgent military aid for Kyiv, a vote that would most likely pass (as it did with in a bipartisan vote in the Senate).

Pressed by Donald Trump and extremist MAGA members, Congress may doom brave Ukrainians to destruction by a Russian dictator who despises the West — and is armed by Iran and North Korea. Nothing like this has been seen since British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain conceded part of Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler in 1938 in hopes of dissuading him from occupying more European lands.

Mrs Rubin is most certainly dedicated to fighting the evil Vladimir Vladimirovich — addressing someone by his given and patronymic names is considered polite and respectful in Russian — but her comparison is accurate only in the most inaccurate of ways. Adolf Hitler was only 49½ years old when the Munich Pact was signed on September 30, 1938, and France and the United Kingdom were neither willing to fight Germany, nor able to send much aid to Czechoslovakia at the time. The Wehrmacht was an unknown quantity at the time, but Josef Goebbels’ propaganda made the world believe it was a tremendous fighting force.

Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, is 71½ years old, and the Russian military, if not mostly exhausted by the two-year-long war in Ukraine, would still be in no shape to invade any other countries for perhaps ten years or more after their war with Ukraine is over.

These are undisputed facts which must be taken into account, but the neocons don’t really do that, because those facts just don’t fit the narrative they wish to push.

Whether Trump and GOP extremists succeed in gifting Ukraine to Putin may depend on whether four GOP House members have the courage to stand up to MAGA appeasement and defend America’s long-term security.

Here’s how it could work.

The best chance to skirt House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to permit a vote on Ukraine aid would be via a discharge petition. That is a parliamentary maneuver that effectively bypasses the speaker to bring a bill before the full House for a vote — if a majority of members agree to do so. If all Democrats signed on, it would only require four Republicans to get the Ukraine supplemental aid bill to the floor.

Heaven forfend! “Trump and GOP extremists”! “MAGA appeasement”! Mrs Rubin is telling Inquirer readers that there is no reasoned debate here, that only the extremists could possibly, possibly! be opposed to wasting sending yet another $60 billion in money and war materiel to Ukraine.

But let’s tell the truth here: it doesn’t matter how much money and military aid we send to Ukraine, they cannot defeat Russia absent the US and NATO sending actual ground troops to fight Russia, and fighter aircraft and pilots to gain air superiority. That would mean the US and NATO in direct combat with Russia, a nation with a strategic nuclear arsenal.

Given Russia’s relatively poor showing against the Ukrainians, it would seem probable that American and NATO troops could push the Russians out of Ukraine, at least once they got there, but it has to be asked: at what point of a seeming military defeat would President Putin decide to cross the nuclear threshold? A concentration of US and NATO troops would be the perfect target for Russian ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, and once that threshold is crossed, who could say when the nukes would stop being used? Would Russia even risk that deployment, rather than strike the deployment bases, either in Poland, a NATO member, or Ukraine once the troops moved into the country but before they reached the front lines?

There is something truly sickening about the fact that Johnson — and so many GOP supporters of aid for Ukraine — are too scared to allow Congress to vote on such a key measure. Johnson fears being ousted from his speakership by the MAGA clique, as was the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy. House members fear that, if they buck the Trump line, a MAGA candidate will run against them in the GOP primary. And above all hangs the threat of physical danger to them or their families by deranged MAGA supporters who take Trump’s ugly rhetoric to heart.

Yet, surely, among more than 200 GOP House members, there are four whose belief in democracy and U.S. security would embolden them to take the risk.

Mrs Rubin, naturally, asserts that there’s a serious physical danger to any Republicans who voted to support this, “by deranged MAGA supporters who take Trump’s ugly rhetoric to heart,” but, shockingly enough, no such thing has happened to the Republicans in the Senate who voted to support Ukraine.

But, more importantly, Mrs Rubin noted that Republican House members who voted for such might face primary opponents. Well, if they fear primary opponents, then they must believe that their constituents wouldn’t support wasting sending more aid to Ukraine. Aren’t congressmen supposed to represent their constituents?

“This is not just about Ukraine, it is about our security,” (Representative Brendan) Boyle (D-PA) told me. “Putin is evil on the same level as Hitler. It is a lot less expensive to stand up to him now; if we wait until later, it will be much more costly in money and lives.”

Mr Putin might be “evil on the same level as Hitler”, but his military forces have not proven to be on the same level as the Wehrmacht in 1939. We are not likely to see Russian troops landing on the beaches of Maine and Virginia even if Ukraine collapses completely. We’re not going to see them invading even tiny Estonia, a NATO member roughly the size of New Hampshire and Vermont, because Ukraine has shown the Russians that they simply don’t have the wherewithal to do invasions well. Perhaps in ten years Russia will have rebuilt its forces enough to contemplate that, but Vladimir Vladimirovich will be 81 years old in ten years. if he’s even still alive then.

I don’t want to see Ukraine lose either, but I am not willing to waste American dollars and American weapons, and possibly American lives — remember: my older daughter is a reservist with the Army Corps of Engineers — to prop up Ukraine.

$60 billion in US aid would do what? It would help Ukraine to keep fighting the stalemate they’ve managed to achieve, but that’s all. $60 billion would keep the war going, and keep the killing on both sides and the destruction in Ukraine marching ever-forward, but it wouldn’t enable Ukraine to throw the Russians out of their country.

Mrs Rubin noted that the European Union have committed twice as much aid to Ukraine as the US has, to which I say, “Great! It’s a European problem; let the Europeans handle it! But leave the United States out of it.”

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Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine end their hunger strike Noble Hahvahd students staged their own twelve hour hunger strike in solidarity.

When I heard about the hunger strike by the Brown University Students for Justice in Palestine, I asked, admittedly mockingly, for them to define exactly what they meant by a hunger strike. I did point out, at one point, that human beings going more than three days without water can lead to serious problems or even death.

Of course, they never answered, so I didn’t know exactly what they meant. But I got an answer, of sorts, from The Harvard Crimson:

More Than 30 Harvard Students Hunger Strike for 12 Hours in Solidarity With Brown Protesters

By Michelle N. Amponsah and Azusa M. Lippit, Crimson Staff Writers | Monday, February 12, 2024

More than 30 pro-Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike Friday in solidarity with 17 students at Brown University who refused to eat for eight days to pressure the Brown Corporation to divest from Israel.

If the Brown University hunger strikers really did refuse to eat for eight days, that is something of an accomplishment. Eight days is not enough for a reasonably health person to starve to death, but it’s going to be pretty uncomfortable after three days or so. But the Crimson telling us that 30 pro-Hamas Palestinian Harvard students participated in a 12-hour hunger strike is just plain mockworthy. I’ve gone through plenty of 12-hour-workdays in which I had nothing to eat because I was just too plain busy to take a lunch; that’s something that can happen in the ready-mixed concrete industry.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and millions of Catholics around the world will be engaged in a 12-hour fast; it’s something we also do on Good Friday. Me? I’m giving up soda for the entire seven weeks of Lent; do I get some kind of political credit for a 46-day Mountain Dew strike? 🙂

Nineteen students at Brown began the strike — which was originally indefinite — on Feb. 2, ahead of the Brown Corporation’s planned meetings beginning Feb. 8.

The students intended to strike until the Brown Corporation considered a resolution to divest from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine,” but they ended the strike[1]Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor … Continue reading after Brown University president Christina H. Paxson denied their request, citing “now-obsolete demands,” per the Brown Daily Herald.

The 17 students ended their strike at 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, along with the Harvard demonstrators and more than 200 other Brown students who fasted for 32 hours in solidarity.

The Brown Daily Herald Editorial Page Board included an editorial documenting the history of hunger strikes at the University and beyond, noting that very few hunger strikers actually starved themselves to death. But the hunger strike, while an extreme method of peaceful protest, relies on the people against whom they are striking to actually care about whether the hunger strikers suffer, or even whether they live or die.

References

References
↑1 Documentary hyperlink added by D R Pico, and was not in the Harvard Crimson original. Given that the paragraph cites the Brown Daily Herald, the failure to include the hyperlink is pretty poor journalism from these Harvard journalism students!
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The Associated Press make story about rescue of two Israeli hostages all about the poor, poor Palestinians! Maybe Hamas shouldn't have started a war they knew they couldn't win?

The Israel Defense Force have rescued two elderly hostages seized by Hamas in the October 7th terror raid, but Associated Press reporters Najib Jobain, Josef Federman, and Samy Magdy want you to sympathize with the Palestinian Arabs who held them captive!

Israeli forces rescued two hostages in a Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians

Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

by Najib Jobain, Josef Federman, and Samy Magdy, Associated Press | Monday, February 12, 2024 | 7:37 AM EST

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in the Gaza Strip and extracting the captives under fire in a dramatic raid that was a small but symbolically significant success for Israel. Heavy airstrikes that provided cover for the operation killed at least 67 Palestinians, according to health officials in the beleaguered territory.

The plight of the hostages has profoundly shaken Israelis, and the rescue in densely populated Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from Hamas’ cross-border raid last year that started the war. Israel has described Rafah — a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled fighting elsewhere — as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the territory and signaled that its ground offensive may soon target the city.

In Gaza, the operation unleashed another tragedy in a war that has killed 28,340 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80% of the population, and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.

More than 12,300 Palestinian minors — children and young teens — have been killed in the conflict, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means minors make up about 43% of the dead and women and minors together they make up 73% of the dead.

As Messrs Jobain, Federman, and Magdy lament the “at least 67 Palestinians” killed in this operation, the 28,340 Arabs killed overall, and the “73% of the dead” being women and children, I am reminded of what would have saved their lived, namely Hamas not launching the October 7th terror assault in the first place!

The Wall Street Journal already documented how Hamas were using civilian facilities as shields:

Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza

Subterranean complex had air-conditioned room with computer servers, office space

by Dov Lieber and David Luhnow | Saturday, February 10, 2024 | 3:52 PM EST

GAZA CITY—Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that Israel’s armed forces say served as an important communications center and intelligence hub for the Islamist militant group.

For those who are stymied by the Journal’s paywall, you can also read the article here, for no charge.

Part of a warren of tunnels and subterranean chambers carved from the Gaza Strip’s sandy soil, the compound below the United Nations Relief and Works Agency buildings in Gaza City appears to have run on electricity drawn from the U.N.’s power supply, Israeli officials said.

A Wall Street Journal reporter and journalists from other news organizations visited the site this week in a trip organized by Israel’s military. A tunnel also appeared to pass beneath a U.N.-run school near the headquarters.

Gosh, I’m shocked, shocked! that the Hamas facilities were drawing power from the UNRWA’s building power. Are we supposed to believe that no one at UNRWA noticed the power drain?

The location of a Hamas military installation under important U.N. facilities is evidence, Israeli officials say, of Hamas’s widespread use of sensitive civilian infrastructure as shields to protect its militant activities. Tunnel complexes have also been found near or under some of Gaza’s largest hospitals.

Israel’s discovery of the Hamas operations below Unrwa offices is likely to put further pressure on the agency, which is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.

Israeli military officials assert that people working at Unrwa would have been aware of the tunnel complex, either from activities during its construction or by what they said would have been a jump in electricity usage when the complex started operating.

I’m trying to figure out just how Hamas could construct concrete-lined tunnels and excavate the material as they dug those tunnels with nobody noticing? The answer, of course, is that they couldn’t. It took a great deal of effort, mostly by hand, to excavate and line those tunnels, and the obvious question is: if the work effort put forth to construct those tunnels had instead been put to use building Gaza’s housing and infrastructure, how much better would that miserable place have been?

Next to the room with computer servers, which was air-conditioned, was an electricity-supply room fitted with massive batteries, apparently to serve as a backup if power was disrupted.

The electricity room and server room were beneath the Unrwa compound’s own electrical supply room, the officer said. He said wires snaked down into the underground base from the Unrwa compound, allowing Hamas to steal electricity from the U.N agency to power its underground facility.

If Hamas had computer servers in the tunnels, then the odds are that they were also stealing internet services from UNRWA, even though such is not mentioned in the article.

The three Associated Press reporters who wrote this article were certainly aware that Hamas were using the civilian population to shield themselves and their facilities from the IDF, but never mentioned that. They did, of course, have to give us a oh-the-poor-Palestinians bit:

In Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and militants took 250 people captive, according to Israeli authorities. .  .  .  .

Mohamed Zoghroub, a Palestinian living in Rafah, said he saw a black jeep speeding near the Shaboura refugee camp in the town followed by clashes and heavy airstrikes.

“We found ourselves running with our children, from the airstrikes, in every direction,” he said, speaking from an area flattened by the heavy strikes overnight.

Footage circulating on social media from Rafah’s Kuwaiti hospital showed dead or wounded children. The footage could not immediately be verified but was consistent with AP reporting.

A young man can be seen carrying the body of an infant who he said was killed in the attacks. He said the girl, the daughter of his neighbor, was born and killed during the war.

“Let Netanyahu come and see: Is this (infant) one of your designated targets?” he said.

When the fighters use the civilian population as shields, civilians will get killed. This is all on Hamas!

The three Hamas-sympathetic reporters seem to want you to believe that Israel should not defend itself, and should not carry the fight to its enemies. They want you to believe that the IDF’s response is wholly disproportionate, in that 28,340 Palestinians have been killed compared to roughly 1,200, as though this ought to be a matter of competing body-counts rather than a war against enemies. They want you to believe that the lives of 67 Arabs were far too high a price to pay to rescue two Israeli citizens, two Joooos! Stories like this are designed to further inflame passions in the civilized West against the Israelis.

Hamas have made their goals clear: they want to destroy the Jewish state. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has made Israel’s policies clear: they must destroy Hamas. In the end, one has to destroy the other.

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Israel is great, militarily, but let’s tell the truth here: they have proven to be poor conquerors. 

New York Times website main page, October 8, 2023. Click to enlarge.

That The New York Times is unabashedly liberal is of no surprise to anyone, but at least the Gray Lady does cover the news. My normal first read of newspapers is The Philadelphia Inquirer, which showed exactly one story concerning the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, on the website main page.

The Times had eight stories, covering the story from several different angles. Two clearly-labeled opinion pieces, by Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens, added to the Times coverage, while none of the Inky’s columnists seemed interested in the story, the most important story of the day.

Hamas’s Control of Gaza Must End Now

by Bret Stephens | Saturday, October 7, 2023

It’s easy to note the parallels between Hamas’s attack on Israel on Saturday morning and the Yom Kippur war, which began 50 years ago Friday. Continue reading →