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Notes -
Netanyahu speech to Congress
Wonder what his goals were here - are 2000 pound bombs really that necessary still? Getting republicans to clap like seals while his own generals are telling him to make a peace deal isn't going to do much to advance real war goals. Biden also gave his own speech hours later, perhaps intentionally to overshadow it - full respect to joe if that's what he was going for.
Seriously though why do Rs love this guy so much? He has like a 20% approval rating in Israel. Is it just because of his historical track record of disrespecting dems?
It's just good Republican strategy.
Just this very day in DC we saw protestors – many of the white and overeducated variety – take down the American flag, burn it, and then raise the Palestinian flag in its place.
If Democrats are the Palestine party then Republicans are the Israel party. They don't really care about Netanyahu specifically. But the war has driven a wedge between key Democratic Party interest groups. So many of our nation's richest and highest performing people are Jewish. The leftist fetish for Palestinian terrorists has been eye-opening to a lot of Jews who would have previously counted themselves as important Democratic donors and allies.
At some point Kamala will have to make a statement. And whatever she says is going to piss off a lot of her supporters. The contradictions in the Democratic Party are too strong. It's a brilliant wedge issue for the Republicans.
To piggyback on this comment rather than starting a new thread....
Lost in news last week, we just saw a major development in the Middle East conflict.
First, a little background... Yemen is a country just south of Saudi Arabia. It has territory on the eastern end of the Bab Al-Mandab strait, a 20km passage through which ships must cross to go between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. For over a decade, Yemen has been in a civil war between Shias and Sunnis. The Shia were supported by Iran, the Sunnis by Saudi Arabia. In any case, despite great odds against them, the Shia group (known as the Houthis) were able to hold out. Today, they control the capital and most populous regions of Yemen.
Caring naught for money or comfort, only the glory of paradise, the Houthis are trying to fight Israel in their own stupid way. Ever since the start of the Israel/Palestine war last year, the Houthis have been on a nuisance campaign against shipping in the Red Sea. They have attacked dozens of ships and managed to sink 2 or 3. As a result, transits through the Red Sea have fallen off a cliff. Instead, ships are forced to travel all the way around Africa adding significant time to their voyage. As a result, shipping rates are skyrocketing, approaching levels seen during the post Covid crisis of 2021/22.
The U.S. tried to stop the Houthis by sending the USS Eisenhower into the Red Sea in operation "Prosperity Guardian". This did approximately nothing. After a few months, the Eisenhower sailed back to the U.S. and the sailors all got medals. No worse for wear, the Houthis continued to attack shipping using cheap suicide drone boats.
Many thought the Houthis would stop after Israel and Palestine had a cease fire. For awhile, that looked close at hand, as Israel has killed a significant percentage of Hamas leadership. Then the Houthis directly attacked a Tel Aviv high rise with drones. They only killed one person, but it was a shocking development, as Yemen is 2000 km from Israel.
Israel retaliated on Sunday, bombing and incapacitating Yemen's largest port in a massive air attack which employed U.S. made F-35s. This is the port through which Yemen imports most of its food. It is devastating to Yemen, and by far the largest escalation so far.
In any case, the Red Sea is closed for a lot longer now. Israel must not only defeat Hamas, they must defeat the Houthis, over 2000 km away, who had previous fought and won against Saudi Arabia. Iran seems eager to give the Houthis drones and other supplies. There are rumors that Russia might supply them with hypersonics.
And just last week, U.S. secretary of state Blinken suggested that Iran was only weeks away from being able to make nuclear weapons.
Israel has defeated Hamas, but they still have to contend with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and ultimately Iran. Things are going to stay interesting in the Middle East for quite awhile still.
It's absurd that Israel is the only place with the guts to flatten the Houthis. Like, come on, this is literally a country which has decided to engage in generalised piracy; they are effectively at war with the rest of the world. Depopulating the Houthi areas would plausibly be worth it to end this craziness, and definitely would be when you consider the deterrent effect; there may be better options, but even this one beats "sit back and let the barbarians come in the gates".
I think Yemen has the Afghanistan problem. They're poor and militant. So there are two ways to stop the Houthis, both awful:
Boots on the ground
Attacks like this one which punish the population but do nothing to prevent further attacks
Drone technology is a game changer here in that it lets the Houthis have outsized influence. Iran can spend a few tens of millions of dollars giving them drones which can do hundreds of billions in damage to world trade.
I wasn't actually being hyperbolic when I said "depopulating"; I was suggesting slaughtering the entire population of the Houthi-controlled areas, which would presumably stop the attacks. Although, if it's only hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, I retract my claim of that being "definitely" the lesser evil; we are talking like 20 million people, after all.
Obviously, I would very much prefer a third option, assuming one exists.
They can’t do that. Saudi Arabia tried to do that, using all the hard handed tactics you described. Overt starvation warfare, massive airstrikes, including civilian infrastructure, using their actually pretty impressive air force. 185,000 Saudi and Saudi-allied troops on the ground. All the best gear, including M1 Abrams tanks. The CIA providing intel for airstrikes and ground operations. It didn’t work. The Saudis burned a lot of their goodwill with the umma, and the UN was up their ass for most of it. Israel doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty because their international reputation is in the toilet already. If the US tried that it would be a disaster. Iran and Russia would give the the Houthis massive support just to mess with the US. The supply lines would be difficult because there would be constant, intense missile attacks on US Navy assets in the region. There would be sympathy attacks on US bases and embassies all across the region. There’s a good chance there would be protests and rioting in the homeland. The UN would light the US up with toothless but embarrassing resolutions. There might be an oil embargo if things got bad enough. US troops would take casualties on par with the Iraq war. It’s a complete non-starter.
Saudi military is incompetent. It doesn't matter what the tech you have is of you can't fight. It's how the RPF beat the French supported government of Uganda in the 90s, because the government forces were just that pathetic and ill led.
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The Ummah doesn’t give a fuck about Yemen, certainly not if both sides fighting are Muslim. The Saudis backed out because lightly armed bands of roving Houthi militias could stage devastating cross-border drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities in the middle of the desert, thus threatening the central means for the continuing existence of the Saudi state AND because the US made it clear that it wanted peace and forced them to the table with the Houthis.
The Houthis can absolutely be starved to death by continuing the attacks Israel is doing on port facilities, which even the Saudis did only to a limited extent due to a fear that human rights enforcers in ‘the West’ (not the Muslim world) would get mad. To a greater extent the Mullahs in Tehran are able to maintain power only because, for all the general discontent among the domestic upper-middle class, they have still been middle income and safe for 30+ years.
USA was in a mood to punish Saudi Arabia following the Kashoggi slaying, and Biden made it a point to undo the designation of the houthis as a terrorist group once he came into power. I should clarify that the houthis had been unimaginably successful against the equally unimaginably incompetent Saudi forces, and continued support of the Saudis did not seem to be worth the pain. There was no indication that the Houthis would be inclined to further destroy themselves by pissing off more people. Saudi failures to engage in worse attacks on the Yemeni population largely stem from their support of the Hadi government (or what is left of it) who demand preservation of vital economic assets for the eventual potential of a government restoration.
The ummah DESPISES the saudis. The saudi government is barely able to keep a lid on its own clerics who espouse antiamerican hatreds, and the exported salafi clerics compete with deobandi and diyanet clerics who all espouse the same conservative rhetoric of 'the kuffar has subverted the arab governments'. Fervent dreams continue to exist whereby the ummah restores islamism to the political center of all their lands and expels the traitors who collaborated with the west, therefore being free to keep the spoils of their lands for themselves.
Arab politicians are happy to let the USA and Israel be the bogeyman responsible for starving out islamist terrorists because the governments are held back by their own populations eager to do Arab Spring 2.0 and cause new Syrian Civil Wars. The maghreb has been happy to export all its young aggressive shitheads to europe because europe spread its doors wide open, but the saudis and egyptians have no such easy means to let its young angry shitheads flow into other lands. The only western land rich with plunder and exploitable human rights is Israel, and the Israelis are happy to call an invasion for what it is and take appropriate action.
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