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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Perhaps no one has noticed given Trump, Ukraine, Yemen, Trump, and eggs: war in the Middle East is back! Very strong words from America in support of Israel:

All hell will break loose, and all of the terrorists in the Middle East – again, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian-backed terror proxies and Iran themselves – should take President Trump very seriously when he says he is not afraid to stand for law-abiding people. He is not afraid to stand up for the United States of America and our friend and our ally Israel.

as compared to “Canada only works as a state”. Israel’s reasoning is as follows:

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement cited by Israeli media that the attacks had “the goal of achieving the war objectives as determined by the political leadership, including the release of all our hostages – both the living and the fallen”.

Prompt: what is it that makes Israel worthy of the friendship of the US whereas NATO is worthy of relegation given both would pull it into wars of choice half way around the world of no strategic importance? Follow-up: should Israel be the 51st state?

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/17/middleeast/israel-strikes-gaza-hamas-ceasefire-intl-hnk

  1. Maga is a coalition of various groups Trump has managed to get onboard by promising them various things. He has an issue that he has Tulsi Gabbard, America first nationalists and voters who have nothing to gain from warmongering in the middle east in the same coalition as Israel-first jews. They are at odds with each other.

  2. Bombing countries to fight insurgencies doesn't work. Laos was bombed harder than any country in WWII with little effect. Afghanistan was bombed relentlessly for 20 years with US troops on the ground coordinating the fire. Bombing Yemen is not going to be more effective than bombing the taliban was.

Afghanistan was bombed relentlessly for 20 years

That was more about justifying military spending, if they really wanted to end Afghanistan they could have, easily.

And how would they do that?