site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 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.

40
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't fully understand the Israel conundrum.

The ideological stake over the issue hasn't been divided merely between the left and right, but within each aisle too. In recent years, it seems as though liberals have fallen out of love with them and many of them believe that (on principle) Israel shouldn't exist. While others believe in the two state solution. The mainstream media has been louder about the IDF's excesses in occupied territories (like this one, a cursory search). Tankies over at GrayZone and related websites are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel. I don't get this position, are they arguing that western media isn't criticising Israel enough or that the media is silent altogether? The right seems to be divided too, many of them enthusiastically support them while others don't like that billions of dollars of taxpayer money is sent to Israel every year and they're convinced that their lobby in the US is most supportive of liberalism and progressivism and the war machine.

My questions are what drove the evolution of these views into what they are, exactly how influential is the Israel lobby in the US, why do tankies believe that Israel doesn't get criticised in the media, are the liberals starting to decouple from Israel, are there any other reasons besides the treatment of Palestinians that the Israel question takes up so much oxygen in the foreign policy room?

Read Mearsheimer's 'The Israel Lobby'.

It's absolutely astonishing how much Israel gets from the US and how much harm it causes the US.

Israel didn't participate in either of the Gulf Wars (in fact they sucked up Patriot missile batteries that could've been used elsewhere due to Iraqi Scud strikes attempting to fracture the US-led Coalition). They provided dubious/faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMDs to encourage the second Gulf War. Their invasion of Lebanon in 1982 led to the foundation of Hezbollah, which then attacked US forces in the area. People like Ramzi Yousef (first WTC bomber) was a single-issue anti-Israeli terrorist. Osama Bin Laden was heavily influenced by US support for Israel (and its treatment of Palestinians) in the development of his views. Iran's nuclear program is a threat to US interests aside from Israel but it was heavily motivated by the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Said arsenal also exposes the lie in the US's non-proliferation efforts and makes it harder for the US to negotiate.

While Israel did help beat up Soviet allies in the Middle East, US unwillingness to sell weapons to Egypt and co pushed them towards the Soviets in the first place. The Cold War is over, so the US could dump Israel like they dumped South Africa.

The US-Israeli alliance angers a lot of Arabs making them uncooperative with the US (even supposedly US-friendly states worry about losing their legitimacy by openly helping the US). When the US provided massive aid to Israel in the 1973 war the Arabs responded with an oil embargo that cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars.

Furthermore, US aid to Israel is unusually generous in scale and type. The US funded billions for the development of indigenous, Israeli-only weapons like the Merkava tank and the (cancelled) Lavi aircraft. The US prepositioned military supplies in Israel (ostensibly for their own use there), which the Israelis then used for their 2006 war in Lebanon. The US provides billions of dollars to Israel's neighbours like Egypt and Jordan to maintain good relations with Israel. The aid Israel gets has very little oversight and it gets sent out at the beginning of the year rather than in monthly or quarterly installments, so they get interest on it.

And then there's all the espionage, selling US technology to the Chinese and the USS Liberty incident.

The US has allies who actually participate in American wars, who provide useful intelligence and bases, who don't cause all kinds of problems for the US. Nobody else gets special treatment like this, a fact that is due to the astonishing power of the Israel lobby. They have tremendous influence. I'll add some excerpts from the book:

Former House Speaker Richard Armey said in September 2002 that "my No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel."

Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once noted, "There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill] . . . who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level

Bill Clinton once described AIPAC as "stunningly effective" and "better than anyone else lobbying in this town," while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it "the most effective general-interest group . . . across the entire planet."

Harry Lonsdale, the Democratic candidate who ran unsuccessfully against Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) in 1990, has described his own visit to AIPAC headquarters during that campaign. "The word that I was pro-Israel got around," he writes. "I found myself invited to AIPAC in Washington, D.C., fairly early in the campaign, for 'discussions.' It was an experience I will never forget. It wasn't enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually, I was told what my opinion must be, and exactly what words I was to use to express those opinions in public . . . Shortly after that encounter at AIPAC, I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel . . . that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called; they gave, from Florida to Alaska.

Philip Zelikow, a member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board ( 2001 - 03 ) , executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and counsellor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ( 2005 - 06 ) , told a University of Virginia audience on September 10, 2002 , that Saddam was not a direct threat to the United States. "The real threat," he argued, is "the threat against Israel." He went on to say, "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat . . . And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.

There's an entire chapter devoted to Israel's antipathy for Syria (over the Golan Heights which the Israelis annexed from Syria and the Syrians want back) and attempts to get America to deal with them. Familiar names like John Bolton pop up now and again, it's like seeing the prequel to a TV show. Now that Syria's been engulfed in an extremely bloody civil war, it's easy to see how Israeli influence might have been involved in bringing the US into the conflict. US troops still patrol parts of Eastern Syria to this day.

And the book goes on further! There's the Lebanon chapter, where the Israelis killed 1100 Lebanese civilians after Hezbollah killed a handful of their soldiers. They were partially using nominally US-owned weapons as part of their war effort, of course. The calumnies and skullduggery just goes on and on...

I have great sympathy for the tankies on the matter of Israel and media bias.

It's a bit weird tbh to mention US aid to Israel without mentioning the Camp David Accords, since the ongoing aid was essentially the cost of brokering peace between Israel and Egypt (who similarly is the recipient of 1.3B in military subsidies a year). The Accords were a massive, historic achievement, fracturing the Arab bloc and bringing Egypt back into an uneasy harmony with the West, after Suez threatened them being a fixture of the Soviet sphere. The aid sent to Israel and Egypt is of little consequence for what it has bought. Mearsheimer, of course, is too much of a natural contrarian to recognise that though, as we can also see in his dim opposition to Western involvement in the Ukraine crisis (despite it being a course of action that is almost expressly prescribed by the offensive realism he put his name to).

You think he doesn't mention Camp David?

As discussed in Chapter 1, the American delegation at Camp David took most of its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, coordinated negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer its own independent proposals for settling the conflict. Even the "Clinton parameters" presented in December 2000 were less an independent American proposal than Clinton's summary of where the negotiations stood and his assessment of the bargaining space within which a solution might be found. Palestinian negotiators complained that the Israelis would sometimes present them with a specific proposal, and then later the Americans would offer the same idea, only the Americans would label it a "bridging proposal." As another member of the U.S. team later admitted, Israeli proposals were often "presented [to the Palestinians] as U.S. concepts, not Israeli ones," a subterfuge that fooled no one and reinforced Palestinian suspicions. Not surprisingly, Palestinian representatives protested that they were "negotiating with two Israeli teams—one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag.

Let's not forget Israeli involvement in the ill-fated Suez operation. There was a third party to Britain and France's invasion, that managed to escape most of the blame. As I said above, Egypt and Syria moved towards the Soviet Union because the US was unwilling to sell them weapons that might be used against Israel. Israel certainly didn't help bring the Arab world towards the US - quite the opposite.

Furthermore, why is the US aiding Egypt? To benefit Israel, as I said above.

Finally, the aid that the United States provides to several of Israel's neighbors is at least partly intended to benefit Israel as well. Egypt and Jordan are the number two and three recipients of U.S. foreign aid, but most of this money should be seen as a reward for good behavior—specifically, their willingness to sign peace treaties with Israel. Egypt received $71.7 million in U.S. aid in 1974, but it got $1.127 billion in 1975 and $ 1.320 billion in 1976 (in constant 2005 dollars) following completion of the Sinai II disengagement agreement. U.S. aid to Egypt reached $2.3 billion in 1978 and soared to a whopping $5.9 billion in 1979, the year the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty was signed. Cairo still gets about $2 billion annually. Similarly, Jordan received $ 76 million in direct aid in 1994 and only $57 million in 1995, but Congress rewarded King Hussein's decision to sign a peace treaty in 1994 by forgiving Jordan's $ 700 million debt to the United States and removing other restrictions on U.S. aid. Since 1997, U.S. aid to Jordan has averaged roughly $ 566 million annually. U.S. willingness to reward Egypt and Jordan in this way is yet another manifestation of Washington's generosity toward the Jewish state.

And compare the magnitude! This is a lot of money for a fairly wealthy country.

In per capita terms, this level of direct foreign assistance amounts to a direct subsidy of more than $ 500 per year for each Israeli. By comparison, the number two recipient of American foreign aid, Egypt, receives only $ 20 per person, and impoverished countries such as Pakistan and Haiti receive roughly $5 per person and $27 per person, respectively.

Finally, Mearsheimer's suggested strategy in Ukraine does not espouse offensive realism but realism generally as opposed to liberalism, which he blames for NATO expansion. Just because he invented offensive realism it does not follow that he endorses it for all situations. Rising powers like China should be treated to declining powers like Russia, in his mind. Context matters.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats