Another Myth: Non-Support for Israel

No No NO. They gave them money. A nuanced analysis of diplomatic and political motives doesn’t count in this thread. Money is support, period.

And they were given money to pay for prisoners. But the point stands that they gave a sworn enemy of israel hundreds of millions of dollars. Giving hundreds of millions of dollars to a country trying to build nukes to wipe Jews off the earth ain’t exactly a wonderful thing to do to a special ally.

Everything you are saying here is wrong. I don’t know what “nuanced analysis of diplomatic and political motives doesn’t count in this thread” specifically refers to, but it suggests to me that you’re aware that what you’re saying is wrong and are saying it anyway in order to prove a point. I don’t have interest in that, but I do have interest in this: military aid to Israel is evidence of warm relations (“support”) in exactly the same way that settling outstanding claims under international arbitration in an adversarial diplomatic effort to extinguish Iranian nuclear ambitions is not evidence of warm relations (“support”). This is simple enough that there isn’t any use in arguing it.

Not entirely wrong no. Besides that being just the most recent thing that came to mind, it still has merit. I never stated that he has supported Israel’s enemies as much as Israel, only noted that he has at times supported them. You just don’t give hundreds of millions to a country with espoused genocidal aspirations much less when the vowed genocide is against what is supposed to be your super close ally. Regardless of whether it’s part of some halfcocked idiotic good intentioned idea to prevent nukes. I’d like to see what Obama would think if Israel unilaterally gave ISIS money in some harebrained appeasement scheme. BUT THEY MEANT WELL!

Warm relations and the overwhelming diplomatic ties we’ve had to Israel are 2 different things. While yes, the relationship is still warm, it has cooled under Obama. We supposedly no longer always offer the friendly heads up on policy changes and have at times left our ally scrambling after being caught off guard by our actions. Supposedly intelligence has also be less free flowing too. It is entirely possible to still have a very strong relationship and to have lost some trust and support. Yes, it’s still strong, no it isn’t everything it used to be.

[quote=“DoubleDuce, post:43, topic:221772”]
You just don’t give hundreds of millions to a country with espoused genocidal aspirations much less when the vowed genocide is against what is supposed to be your super close ally.[/quote]

If the money is part of a diplomatic effort to stop the “country with espoused genocidal aspirations” from attaining the only instrument by which it could carry out those “espoused genocidal aspirations,” then you do.

Whether or not you think the nuclear deal “halfcocked” – and the immensely reductive way you’re talking about all of this suggests to me you don’t really have any idea whether it’s halfcocked or not – the settlement of the Iranian claim is unambiguously not an act of “support” but, on the contrary, part of an adversarial diplomatic effort to avert the utter catastrophe (and for no state is this more true than for Israel) that would be an Iran with nuclear weapons capability.

Edit: the point being that if you think the settlement of the outstanding Iranian claims was a form of “support,” you don’t understand the situation. Or you have a useless and fatuously ad hoc understanding of the word “support.” There isn’t any way around this.

“Or you have a useless and fatuously ad hoc understanding of the word “support.””

Wasn’t my definition.

This report lists that it was prepared for members and committees of Congress

Here is an annual breakdown for Israel since 1949

No, it was. The (correct) definition against which you argued here had it that a military aid package such as the one offered to Israel last week constitutes “support.” This (correct) definition has nothing to do with the one you’ve concocted in order to argue that the January settlement of Iranian claims was also “support.” For reasons that have already been detailed, the two are categorically different and therefore incomparable. One is a very direct, very obvious form of support; the other is obviously not.

In fact, it’s precisely the opposite of the support offered to Israel in the form of military aid, because it’s an instrument in service of an explicit effort to thwart a (catastrophic-for-Israel) Iranian military ambition. There really isn’t a reason for us to continue arguing the point because there isn’t an argument to be had.

Edited.

Appeasement of mad fanatics is support.

Fine, you don’t like the example and are going to cling to the idiotic notion that negotiations and appeasement of insane people is not only possible but actually positive. That negotiating with and giving aid in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t supportive and legitimizing. You still as of yet have only argued with one example of a tangent and have refused to address my actual argument that the special relationship between the US and Israel has waned, despite payouts and press statements.

People who understand world affairs laugh at people who think in juvenile terms like these. The Iranian regime is not “insane,” and this reductive fantasy you’re peddling is explicitly contradicted by Martin Dempsey, Stanley McChrystal, DNI Clapper, the chief of Israel’s DMI, publicly available American intelligence community estimates (viz., 2007 NIE on Iran), and the totality of the evidence (to name just a few). In the most generous light this nonsense you’re presenting as obvious, objective fact is a distorted oversimplification of a tendentious minority view riddled with stupid internal contradictions and gaping evidential holes.

As for the rest of it, I don’t have much interest in further exploring your view of foreign policy. I interjected specifically re: the above, and now I have said my piece.

Really, because I can tell you exactly what will happen. The US will play by the rules. Iran will play nice and obey the new rules as long as it’s useful and as soon as it stops being useful they will tell us and our agreement to fuck off. The deal will end up a miserable failure. Same old story over and over.

Let’s see some things their current leaders have said…

“The beautiful cry of ‘Death to America’ unites our nation.”

“[Israel is] the great Zionist Satan.”

“Saying ‘Death to America’ is easy. We need to express ‘Death to America’ with action. Saying it is easy.”

“[There is only one possible solution to unrest in the Middle East], “namely the annihilation and destruction of the Zionist state.”

“It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.”

“There are documents showing close collaboration of the Zionists with the Nazi Germany, and exaggerated numbers relating to the Jewish holocaust were fabricated to solicit sympathy of the world public opinion, lay the ground for the occupation of Palestine and to justify the atrocities of the Zionists. There is even evidence on hand that a large number of non-Jewish hooligans and thugs of Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to Palestine as Jews. The purpose was to install in the heart of the Islamic world an anti-Islamic state under the guise of supporting the victims of racism and to create a rift between the East and the West of the Islamic world after 1400 years of unity between those two parts.”

“Our people say “Death to America,” and this is like saying “I seek God’s refuge from the accursed Satan,” which is recited before any chapter of the Koran, even before “In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Why is this? So the believer will never forget, even for a moment, the presence of Satan. So he will never forget, even for a moment, that Satan is ready to attack him and to destroy his spiritual shield and is faith… The saying “Death to America” is for this purpose.”

And on and on and on. Okay, I’m not a doctor. I don’t have their medical history. I cannot clinically diagnose them as insane. Their leaders just say and do incredibly insane things. Maybe you know better than me what is in their hearts, but no, you cannot bargain with and appease people that believe such nonsense. The “I believe a God given mandate of my people to wipe a race off the map because those people are literally Satan” is kind of the end of rational discourse.

And I leveled very specific charges over how our relationship with Israel has changed, if you don’t want to address the point of the thread, fine.

What Google gives you in Iranian soundbites accomplishes exactly nothing vis-a-vis things like National Intelligence Estimates or the assessments of the intelligence community, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the DNI, the commander of JSOC, and so on. Are you actually not aware of the fact that the real, adult world of intelligence analysis consists of digging miles beyond things elites and leaders say (which tend to be just about worthless), or are you playing dumb?

Anyway, I cited more than I needed to. I’m not going to argue with you about whether or not your Google query tells us more about Iran than does the assessment of the Director of National Intelligence. It doesn’t.

I wanted to address exactly what I quoted and discussed. Your argument vis-a-vis the settlement of Iranian claims was egregiously ignorant of the facts. That’s what interested me.

The larger debate doesn’t interest me enough to pull me into what will undoubtedly become an addled mess of a thread. The chief material element of our support of Israel – hard military aid – is literally stronger than ever. There are strains, but then I don’t operate under the fantasy that there shouldn’t be. In any case, Netanyahu was responsible for by far the biggest solecism in the saga of his mutual dislike of Obama.

Oh, so now money doesn’t equal support AND sound bites of officials (like in the OP) are meaning less? OK.

I’ll admit, I do not value the “expert” nearly as much as you seem to. I find the “expert” vastly overrated in virtually every field. It is a bias of mine developed through reading in a number of fields of interest, though not primarily politics or international intelligence and diplomacy. Through reading nutrition research, physics, economics, Kissinger, ets I’ve come to the one overriding notion that an expert is someone that can explain exactly and intelligently why they are wrong 50% of the time. International politics with irrational people (meaning all people are irrational, not specific people) are impossible to predict.

I actually agree that my view is juvenile. But that doesn’t make it wrong and it has the advantage of lacking the means to obfuscate.

For the record, if we can get out of the pissing contest, I am open to refutation of this notion. Most of what I’m saying comes from what I got out of the former Israeli ambassador Micheal Oren in the book Ally. Many of the unwritten courtesies broke down under Obama and Hilary. Now it’s written before the notorious speech you keep bringing up, so what he wrote wasn’t affected by it, but he also doesn’t cover it. Though there were a number of times Oren tries to stop Netanyahu from doing disrespectful things before the speech in question.

Let me put it this way. You are trying to derive general relativity in international politics. I’m just pointing out entropy. Eventually I’ll be right because it’s the nature of things you can’t make exacting predictions about.

Oh but if you look at these 10000 pages of intel and project international politics and economics decades into the future while considering the position of Uranus and the shape of my bowl movement, we gave them money as an ingenious means of subversion of their religious fanatic public foreign policy.

But you still gave millions to people publicly espousing the genocide of our closest ally.

I’ll pass, but props to you for reading the intel and measuring the poop.

Always a good idea, and good to be reminded of the fact that not everything needs to be a pissing contest. Thanks for that.

I’ll be sure to read and respond to the rest of what you’ve written. For now I have things to do for both the dog and girlfriend. I owe sig a response in a different thread so bear with me.

Good call… lol.

Maybe not “wiping all the Jews off the earth” but sworn to the destruction of Israel.

Ahmadinejad made the comment about wiping Israel off the map, whether by a nuclear strike, military force or revolution, it’s anyone’s take.

Here is an article which discusses this topic:

You can’t win, my friend.

I’ve been there.

This deserves more than a Like
:sweat_smile: