Hmm, I seem to recall US Intelligence swearing that Saddam Hussein definitely had WMDs and was definitely about to use them on his own people and we definitely needed to invade Iraq to stop him. US Intelligence is not a fact or truth seeking operation; its purpose is to further American imperial interests all else be damned.
Hopefully they’re giving real intel to the decision makers, but anything released to the public is intended for influence purposes. Nothing in their mission requires or even encourages telling the general public true things.
They gave the wmd ‘intel’ to lawmakers who were then pressured into supporting the illegal US invasion of Iraq.
Not much has changed since then. Hell, the Afghanistan Papers detailed how everyone in the intelligence community knew the war was a lost cause, but it still came as a shock to most law makers.
One does not really need US intelligence’s confirmation to undestand that the use of human shields is standard operating procedure for islamistic terrorists. It’s not that they don’t care about their own citizens but they simply don’t see getting martyred as a bad thing. Quite the opposite.
To me it comes down to a strategic approach. In how many ways is it possible for Hamas to actually hurt Israel in a significant way? Not very many, even thousands of civilians dead doesn’t genuinely weaken the country much. But they can make Israel hurt themselves, by basically making them go evil and lose their allies.
Similar to how Bin Laden very much succeeded in his goals for the Sept 11th attack, by getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart imo.
Regardless, arguing this position on here is going to be like trying to swim up a waterfall. Israel has gone too far, and the hate against them is too strong because of that. The middle of a war is not the time for nuance.
Similar to how Bin Laden very much succeeded in his goals for the Sept 11th attack, by getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart.
Bin Laden’s goals were to get Americans to replace their government with one that would get out of the Arabian peninsula and stop supporting Israel. He consummately failed.
Not sure why someone would believe a fighter when they say why they fight. It’s not like propaganda is unique to western countries or something. It’s everywhere. It’s a tool that creates effects, you think he’s above using it or something?
getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart.
This assessment of al Qaeda’s goals I have only ever heard from Western propaganda and the popular consciousness, not any serious attempt to analyse them. While bin Laden’s statements could be lies (more relevant than whether they’re propaganda, which can be true), I think it makes more sense to take his word for his own motivations than what amounts to nothing more than the popular Western view of his motivations, filtered through years of our own media. Of course there may be some serious analysis of his goals somewhere I haven’t read - feel free to point me at it. It should come along with some reason not to believe his own explanation though.
I’m skeptical that it exists though, because this understanding of his goals essentially denies that he has any goals beyond hurting America: it’s “they hate us because we are free.” But bin Laden laid out perfectly clearly that his hatred of America developed from seeing Muslims killed in attacks which were enabled by American intervention - something which I see no reason to cast doubt on, and as such see no reason to doubt his explanation.
How does it not make sense? One way of achieving your aims is making it very costly for the people blocking those aims to continue doing so.
No people on Earth would just go “oh welp, guess we better go home now.”
Conflicts often end in a negotiated peace where neither side has been conclusively defeated, often indeed amounting to “welp, we’d better go home now.” The cost to the US military in Vietnam turned public opinion against the war until it became politically unsustainable.
More broadly, this attitude inevitably leads to post-hoc cynicism, where you look at someone who failed to achieve their stated goals, conclude in hindsight that they made no sense and that they therefore couldn’t ever possibly have believed sincerely in them.
If it really made zero sense, it would make zero sense to use as propaganda. The fact that it makes enough sense that you believe bin Laden even used it to convince others means you accept that people could believe it. It’s not unreasonable to think that bin Laden was smarter than the people following him, but you haven’t done the work to show he couldn’t believe it.
Propaganda is a quantity game, it can make anywhere from no sense to complete sense, because different messages will be received differently by different people.
The Sept 11th attack was not a piece of some greater war. It was a declaration to an unsuspecting people, very few of us had any expectation that something like that would happen. I can understand when the Japanese made the mistake in 1941, but its much less understandable now. It’s certainly no Vietnam, which didn’t end until we had lost large numbers for many years. Comparing that to an expectation that a surprise attack on our civilians would have similar effects is simply ridiculous.
America is a box of hornets. It was still, and got kicked. No other possibility was even remotely likely to anybody that knows anything about us. He couldn’t have been that totally and completely ignorant.
To the contrary, it is far more likely he was an intelligent adversary that researched and understood his opponents, and struck effectively. I simply find that far more plausible than him being a fool that wanted a quicker way to get him and his organization to heaven, and otherwise failed miserably.
I don’t disagree. Just disagree that his method was as simple and straightforward as people here seem to think, just believing what he’s spoon feeding them 100%. He was sophisticated, a leader. Not some simpleton.
As if Americans would just give him what he wants for knocking down a couple skyscrapers. Have you even seen our culture? We shoot each other in our own streets, much less foreign attackers. How people think we could just forego a chance at revenge is just utterly, hilariously wrong in every way.
He believed we would leave because he grew up in a world of Western countries being driven out by anti colonial violence. It’s not that complicated. He wasn’t a political science guy, or an anthropologist. He was a radicalized construction engineer.
I don’t think you need to be an anthropologist to figure out that attacking someone’s civilians nearly guarantees counterattack. We still needed the oil out of the region back then to boot.
It’s a jihadist group. It’s not about this life, it’s about the next. When you’re dealing with a zealot, everything becomes a tool to get to heaven, no matter how evil other people see it.
Look at our evangelicals bending over backwards to support Trump, who is not very Christ-like. If the Prince of Peace came down from heaven today, he would be very angry with his “followers”. Might even take his belt off and start swinging, and he didn’t get violent very often.
I understand that Gazans made a mistake in 2007, the same way Gazans knew they made a mistake once Hamas canceled elections forever and started torturing dissidents.
There’s no reason for people today to copy that mistake by supporting Hamas now.
Hmm, I seem to recall US Intelligence swearing that Saddam Hussein definitely had WMDs and was definitely about to use them on his own people and we definitely needed to invade Iraq to stop him. US Intelligence is not a fact or truth seeking operation; its purpose is to further American imperial interests all else be damned.
Hasn’t the IDF been in control of the hospital for like a month, and are yet to produce any evidence (those 3 rifles and the calendar don’t count)?
They also insisted for years that a baby formula factory was a chemical weapons plant.
They also reaffirmed and spread the hoax of the beheaded babies, even when the IDF had already denied it.
To be fair, they also said Russia was about to invade Ukraine and no one believed them.
It’s hard to believe someone’s telling the truth if they lied about almost everything else.
Hopefully they’re giving real intel to the decision makers, but anything released to the public is intended for influence purposes. Nothing in their mission requires or even encourages telling the general public true things.
They gave the wmd ‘intel’ to lawmakers who were then pressured into supporting the illegal US invasion of Iraq.
Not much has changed since then. Hell, the Afghanistan Papers detailed how everyone in the intelligence community knew the war was a lost cause, but it still came as a shock to most law makers.
That’s not quite on point. The IC wants the facts. What the political leadership do with those facts is a whole different thing.
One does not really need US intelligence’s confirmation to undestand that the use of human shields is standard operating procedure for islamistic terrorists. It’s not that they don’t care about their own citizens but they simply don’t see getting martyred as a bad thing. Quite the opposite.
To me it comes down to a strategic approach. In how many ways is it possible for Hamas to actually hurt Israel in a significant way? Not very many, even thousands of civilians dead doesn’t genuinely weaken the country much. But they can make Israel hurt themselves, by basically making them go evil and lose their allies.
Similar to how Bin Laden very much succeeded in his goals for the Sept 11th attack, by getting us to pass the Patriot Act, invade some countries and start ripping ourselves apart imo.
Regardless, arguing this position on here is going to be like trying to swim up a waterfall. Israel has gone too far, and the hate against them is too strong because of that. The middle of a war is not the time for nuance.
edit for a qualifier
Bin Laden’s goals were to get Americans to replace their government with one that would get out of the Arabian peninsula and stop supporting Israel. He consummately failed.
Not sure why someone would believe a fighter when they say why they fight. It’s not like propaganda is unique to western countries or something. It’s everywhere. It’s a tool that creates effects, you think he’s above using it or something?
This assessment of al Qaeda’s goals I have only ever heard from Western propaganda and the popular consciousness, not any serious attempt to analyse them. While bin Laden’s statements could be lies (more relevant than whether they’re propaganda, which can be true), I think it makes more sense to take his word for his own motivations than what amounts to nothing more than the popular Western view of his motivations, filtered through years of our own media. Of course there may be some serious analysis of his goals somewhere I haven’t read - feel free to point me at it. It should come along with some reason not to believe his own explanation though.
I’m skeptical that it exists though, because this understanding of his goals essentially denies that he has any goals beyond hurting America: it’s “they hate us because we are free.” But bin Laden laid out perfectly clearly that his hatred of America developed from seeing Muslims killed in attacks which were enabled by American intervention - something which I see no reason to cast doubt on, and as such see no reason to doubt his explanation.
It makes zero sense though. No people on Earth would just go “oh welp, guess we better go home now.”
Do we seem hesitant to kill people to you?
How does it not make sense? One way of achieving your aims is making it very costly for the people blocking those aims to continue doing so.
Conflicts often end in a negotiated peace where neither side has been conclusively defeated, often indeed amounting to “welp, we’d better go home now.” The cost to the US military in Vietnam turned public opinion against the war until it became politically unsustainable.
More broadly, this attitude inevitably leads to post-hoc cynicism, where you look at someone who failed to achieve their stated goals, conclude in hindsight that they made no sense and that they therefore couldn’t ever possibly have believed sincerely in them.
If it really made zero sense, it would make zero sense to use as propaganda. The fact that it makes enough sense that you believe bin Laden even used it to convince others means you accept that people could believe it. It’s not unreasonable to think that bin Laden was smarter than the people following him, but you haven’t done the work to show he couldn’t believe it.
Propaganda is a quantity game, it can make anywhere from no sense to complete sense, because different messages will be received differently by different people.
The Sept 11th attack was not a piece of some greater war. It was a declaration to an unsuspecting people, very few of us had any expectation that something like that would happen. I can understand when the Japanese made the mistake in 1941, but its much less understandable now. It’s certainly no Vietnam, which didn’t end until we had lost large numbers for many years. Comparing that to an expectation that a surprise attack on our civilians would have similar effects is simply ridiculous.
America is a box of hornets. It was still, and got kicked. No other possibility was even remotely likely to anybody that knows anything about us. He couldn’t have been that totally and completely ignorant.
To the contrary, it is far more likely he was an intelligent adversary that researched and understood his opponents, and struck effectively. I simply find that far more plausible than him being a fool that wanted a quicker way to get him and his organization to heaven, and otherwise failed miserably.
edit for some sloppy wording
It was literally his manifesto and single demand for two decades.
I don’t disagree. Just disagree that his method was as simple and straightforward as people here seem to think, just believing what he’s spoon feeding them 100%. He was sophisticated, a leader. Not some simpleton.
As if Americans would just give him what he wants for knocking down a couple skyscrapers. Have you even seen our culture? We shoot each other in our own streets, much less foreign attackers. How people think we could just forego a chance at revenge is just utterly, hilariously wrong in every way.
He believed we would leave because he grew up in a world of Western countries being driven out by anti colonial violence. It’s not that complicated. He wasn’t a political science guy, or an anthropologist. He was a radicalized construction engineer.
I don’t think you need to be an anthropologist to figure out that attacking someone’s civilians nearly guarantees counterattack. We still needed the oil out of the region back then to boot.
Perhaps they should have focused on governance instead of martyrdom.
It’s a jihadist group. It’s not about this life, it’s about the next. When you’re dealing with a zealot, everything becomes a tool to get to heaven, no matter how evil other people see it.
Look at our evangelicals bending over backwards to support Trump, who is not very Christ-like. If the Prince of Peace came down from heaven today, he would be very angry with his “followers”. Might even take his belt off and start swinging, and he didn’t get violent very often.
I understand that Gazans made a mistake in 2007, the same way Gazans knew they made a mistake once Hamas canceled elections forever and started torturing dissidents.
There’s no reason for people today to copy that mistake by supporting Hamas now.
Well the Palestinians have two options: support Hamas and be bombed by Israel or support Fatah and lose your homes to Israeli settlers.
Israel’s clear objective is to genocide all the Palestinians either by killing them all or driving them out of their homes.
SOP? Sure. Actual case here where a protected target was bombed? Prove it.