site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

America is supporting Egypt to support Israel!

I don't know who this Adelson person is that you're talking about, but if you were even vaguely familiar the last 100 years or so of middle eastern history/politics you'd recognize how just how absurd that claim is. Egypt has been one of Israel's chief adversaries/rivals since it's founding. We support Egypt not because it helps Israel (just the opposite in fact) we support Egypt to keep a lid on North Africa and because over 10% of the world's shipping passes through the Suez Canal. Meanwhile we support the Israeli's because "democracy" and as a counterweight against the Iranians. We paid the Egyptians off because it's a bit awkward to have two ostensible US allies fighting each other.

Now if you had chosen the Saudis as your example you might have been able to make a case, but you didn't because you don't know middle eastern history/politics.

Did you miss the part where I described how US aid went up an order of magnitude as they signed treaties with Israel?

Why would the US not care about Egypt in 1974, like them 10x more in 1975 and then even more in 1979? If you were right about the shipping, you'd expect aid to be consistent through that whole Cold War period. Or at least it would rise when they open the Suez canal, which it did in 1975. Your theory explains only the 1975 surge but not 1979. And then there's Jordan too, a country not known for its shipping lanes.

If it's just Egypt and just 1975, maybe they're buying the shipping lanes. But Egypt and Jordan, just after they sign treaties with Israel? The common denominator is Israel.

Don't say I don't understand Middle Eastern history when you haven't even understood my post.

Did you miss the part where I described how US aid went up an order of magnitude as they signed treaties with Israel?

Did you not understand my post? What do you think the "Pay off" I was referring to was?

The Egyptian-Israeli talks at Camp David happen in the context of a long simmering border conflict between Egypt and Israel punctuated by three shooting wars in as many decades. Despite the pro-West Egyptian monarchy being overthrown in '52, the US had formally recognized the new government and supported them against against the French and British. The US thinking at the time being that a stable and "neutral" and Islamist government in Egypt would be vastly preferable to a Communist one aligned with the Soviet Union. The countries that are now Syria and Iraq had already started cozying up to the Soviets and there were concerns that the whole region might "go red". This put the US in the awkward position of supporting both Egypt and Israel even while Egypt and Israel were at war with each other. As such, any support for one naturally viewed as a betrayal by the other. I can't help but notice that as much as Reddit-Nazis and the BDS crowd both like to talk about the USS Liberty and similar incidents they never talk about why tensions between the US and Israel were so strained through the 60s and 70s. Anyway, in an effort to resolve this awkwardness the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish Gaza and the Sinai to Egypt while simultaneously offering the Egyptians a security pact and generous financial incentives to walk away from the conflict. The rest as they say is history. Israel relinquished the Sinai and Egypt got paid.

My point is that it's not just Egypt and it's not just '79, nor is it just Israel, it's a whole tangled mess going back to first world war.

  1. If the US wanted to gain favor with the Arabs, they could simply not support Israel, their number one enemy.

  2. Syria and Egypt started cozying up to the Soviets precisely because the US was extremely reluctant to provide them weapons that might be used against Israel. The region was going red because of US support for Israel.

  3. Tensions between the US and Israel were hardly strained through the 60s and 70s. They were improving, despite Israel's best efforts. Israel nuclearized, making the NPT into an even bigger joke and successfully got massive US miiltary aid in the '67 and '73 wars, bringing down the Arab oil embargo that cost the US hundreds of billions.

This put the US in the awkward position of supporting both Egypt and Israel even while Egypt and Israel were at war with each other

The US might have wanted Egypt onside but clearly not at the cost of dumping Israel, otherwise they would have. There's nothing messy about it, the situation is quite clear. The US clearly weighs Israeli security very highly, they were and are willing to sacrifice relations with the Arabs, oil security (quite literally when it comes to the deal where Israel gets a guaranteed US-supplied oil reserve), nuclear-nonproliferation and considerable amounts of money for this goal.

If the US was so concerned with Egyptian security, why not provide them military aid? Why not fly in billions worth of armaments if they look like they're losing a war? Because the US did not want them to defeat Israel, Israel was valued higher.

And there's US aid for Jordan too, as I keep mentioning.

The countries that are now Syria and Iraq

??? You are surely aware that Syria got its independence from France in 1946, that the shortlived United Arab Republic was between Syria and Egypt, not Syria and Iraq?