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I am split between love and hate for these kinds of phrases. I can appreciate the rhetoric and my favorite art form to consume is standup comedy which is basically all rhetoric. But funny and witty isn't the same thing as true or useful. Scott has a few good posts on this somewhere, but I can only remember where he makes the case that we haven't really been trying 'debate' and instead only been trying rhetoric: Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons.
I'd like to encourage people not to try and make more of these phrases, because most people horribly fail political touring tests. And instead of making gotcha phrases they instead make what I'd call a shitstorm of stupidity. The phrase betrays such an extreme ignorance that anyone confronted with it can only win by walking away and ignoring them (making the idiot even more confident).
Phrases such as
“Jet fuel can't melt steal beams”
“The Earth is flat, look out your window”
“If vaccines work, why do vaccinated people still get sick?”
“If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
“If the Earth was spinning at 1,000 mph we’d all fly off.”
I think more earnest conversations would do a lot of good. I have asked a few palestine supporters how they think palenstine might treat the Jews if they were suddenly in charge. Only one was fucked up enough to say something like "exactly as they deserve". Most of them got thoughtful looks and realized ... ya there might just be another genocide going the other direction. Which turns the situation into the old joke:
In the case of Israel we have already accepted there is going to be genocide, now how bad do you want it to be? And to whom should it be committed against?
I could write a long reply, but to keep it short:
I dont want to use my tax money to make sure jews are the ones who dominate Palestinians and not the other way around.
From a humanitarian perspective, I would prefer if they find some workable 2-state solution. There are plenty of Palestinians in the West Bank who live with constant harassment from IDF and settlers, and they mostly try to live their lives the best they can. I think that shows some promise towards peaceful coexistence being possible. Muslims and Christians also coexist in the West Bank much better than with Israeli settlers.
But again, even if it is not possible, I dont particularly get riled up over possible future bloodshed among Israelis
I am against American funding or intervention in the middle east. But I think that position is rarest among people willing to express an opinion about the conflict, and it's also probably the most common opinion among people who are quiet about it. I've had very little success in converting interventionists of either stripe into non-interventionists.
You get to have that political opinion today because America got very good at shale oil and became an energy powerhouse.
Non-intervention in the ME was not a possible political position pre-2010 unless you were also willing to accept a lower quality of life in the US. Back then we needed to keep the oil flowing.
Today the biggest benefit to America playing geopolitical games in the ME is Jared Kushner getting a PE fund.
Any market that sells to the world is open to world price fluctuations. Holding the position today is the same as it was back then. That also fails a basic cost benefit analysis. We spent in the trillions to decrease the price of a thing that was in the 100 billions. If we had just eaten the higher oil costs and not started wars over there we would have been better off. And its likely we would have arrived at the "American energy powerhouse" situation earlier.
So we have had lower quality of life to do these interventions. But even if that wasn't true I'd still bite the bullet of non-intervention, for many reasons.
Energy prices are inelastic in the short term.
It’s a core necessity for production of anything. If you don’t have chocolate well you don’t eat chocolate. If you don’t have energy a lot of high value add businesses needs to stop because energy goes into everything.
2 & 3. Imply that gdp impact is > import costs
Iraq and Afghanistan were not oil wars but about terrorism. Long term backing of Saudi Arabia was oil. Iran war now is probably oil but to deny it to China. Afghanistan doesn’t even have oil. Iraq 90% of it was probably wanting to fuck some brown people because of 9/11. So the trillions in the 2000’s was mostly not about oil.
I don’t know the true amount the US spent on securing oil supplies over decades but it’s not the trillions of the Iraq War. It also had spillover benefits for allies securing oil.
I don’t know when the US would have become an energy powerhouses if oil surged sooner. Higher prices would have started the process earlier. The 1970’s oil prices didn’t trigger shale. And Europe has high energy prices and no plans to improve on that situation.
I'm confused. First I say I don't want middle east spending and intervention. Next you say I couldn't have had that opinion pre-2010s because the intervention was required for lower oil prices. Next I say we spent trillions on that intervention so it seems not worth it. Now you say that intervention wasn't related to oil prices (which I agree with) but makes your original objection seem strange and pointless.
Some interventions were necessary. Arming the Saudis 100%. Doing some form of balance of power politics etc.
It’s just the Iraq War and Afghanistan were not about oil directly. Iraq War 1 could be considered an oil war. The post 9/11 stuff was terrorism related and the only oil connection was some OBL hating us for propping up the Saudi regime.
I don't think any interventions were necessary anywhere. It's in everyone's interest to keep the oil flowing. Who exactly wants the money train to stop, and with what money are they gonna raise an army to stop it?
And if your answer to my original point is "oh we could have paid 95% less on intervention" then I would be happy with that compromise.
This conversation also started about Israel, how much oil does Israel have? I thought the answer was effectively none.
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