I recall very clearly that Biden and Blinken maintained that they were refusing to open any negotiations with Russia. Maybe Russia would’ve refused. But I distinctly recall Biden taking a hard line stance, and anyone who suggested that he, Blinken, and Zelinsky accepting that they weren’t likely to recover full territorial control being basically tarred and feathered as MAGA puppets.
I just don’t see the point. So many lives were spent to defend the country. Will it mean anything? We’ll see.
What lesson did you take from the fiasco with Bibi? Biden claimed for months that he was going to get Bibi to agree to a ceasefire, and that it was close, and that the major obstacle was Hamas. And that they were working “tirelessly”. And critics continued to insist that if he was serious, he needed to call up Bibi and say that he either accept a ceasefire or continue the war with rocks and sharp sticks, but that one way or another, Israel was about to stop firing US-made bullets at kids. And we were told that it doesn’t work that way.
And then Trump said that Bibi had to agree to Biden’s ceasefire by January 20th or there’d be “hell to pay”. Obviously not because of any humanitarian concern, but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.
Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?
Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?
Yes.
One shouldn’t get all foreign diplomacy information from sound bites. What Biden said, and what anyone else says is rarely every relevant. There are things going on that cannot be made public - most of what goes on cannot be made public for many and varied reasons.
It’s well known that Bibi hated Biden and Biden was trying to use every tool available to get him to stop being a genocidal monster. He could have frozen the arms shipments - in fact, he did - until the republiQans forced them to continue because they knew what was up.
He could have gone nuclear. He could have torn up all the history and all the treaties and made the entire middle east dark. Because he’s competent and a regular human he did not do those things. Should he have? Many think so. Many would be wrong. He tried to reason. He tried to cajole. He tried with the leverage on arms, on money, on access - all the things. Diplomacy was in full effect though some on here would have you not know about it for their own reasons.
And what the republiQans knew was this: Bibi was very much in the tank for trump. Because he knows how easy to manipulate trump is, and he knows with trump in office he’ll get to do whatever he wants with zero pushback.
So they performed this charade where Bibi continues open war crimes, waits til the election, then trump does his tough-guy imitation, and then Bibi says “oh no! I’d better implement the ceasefire I’d already worked out months ago with Biden’s team!” and everyone who doesn’t know better thinks trump had a damned thing to do with it. He did not. That Bibi flew here pronto to lick trump’s wig or whatever fucked up dance they do says more than any sound bite you’d get out of a headline.
but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.
Well, what do you think trump negotiated with? Do you think he’ll stop the arms sales? Cut back the funding? Maybe something so drastic as to say a bad thing about what Likud has done publicly? No. trump negotiated with nothing because trump has no interest whatsoever in stopping Bibi’s goals. He wants to participate. Bibi waited for trump to give whatever edge he could to the campaign and then moved forward gleefully.
I mean no disrespect, but I think you need to exercise a much more critical lens. If only as an exercise in understanding other viewpoints, even if you think they’re somehow incorrect.
Biden didn’t need to tear up treaties or threaten to invent new powers. He literally just had to obey US law.
A law known as the Leahey law states very, very frankly that it is illegal – completely against US law – for any US agency to knowingly provide weapons which they believe will be used to commit human rights abuses or violate international law.
Numerous whistleblowers in the state department – Stacey Gilbert, Annelle Sheline, Josh Paul – flagged the provision of weapons to Israel as a clear violation of the Leahy law. They repeatedly pointed out that internally, the State Department had clearly determined that weapons were routinely being used in a manner that made further deliveries a criminal act under US law. This happened in full public view. These three people (as well as others outside of the state department) resigned from the jobs they’d worked their whole lives for out of duty to the constitution to publicly disclose that Blinken and Biden were knowingly acting in direct violation of US criminal law. That’s what makes this so frustrating. Biden had no excuse. Despite every claim to the contrary, his complicity in the war crimes in Gaza were conducted knowingly and deliberately. It was not passive, it required active, determined will to carry out. I think that based on numerous public testimonials from within his administration, frankly, the International Criminal Court had sufficient evidence to charge Biden with war crimes as they did Netanyahu and Galant. But obviously charging the US president is just way too hot a potato.
Biden withheld a single item: 2000 lbs bombs. That was a purely symbolic gesture. That in no way limited Israel’s ability to conduct the war. And that was on purpose. If it had, he wouldn’t have done it.
No one prevented him from withholding anything. I’m not sure what you think Republicans forced him to do, but that is the sole item that was withheld, and that restriction persisted until he left office.
This is very, very painful stuff to digest. But I hope you can take a deep breath and at least sit with these facts for a moment. I think we should all do so out of respect for people like Gilbert, Sheline, and Paul who sacrificed their careers and reputations over these plain facts.
Those are very well made points, and I didn’t know a few of them, so thank you for that.
That said: What would you have him do? Biden, that is. In 2024, with the fate of the world as we know it at stake, would you tell Israel no more weapons?
If that were to have happened, what would be the result?
Do you think russia might have jumped in there with both feet? If not, why not? Would that have any effect on the rest of the middle east? If not, why not?
I’m not suggesting it’s simple - in fact, I’m railing against those who do - but I don’t believe Biden was interested in prolonging the war crimes of the Likud at all. And that’s what every discussion about this ends up with and that discussion, in turn, leads us to trump. Every time.
I don’t want to diminish that by claiming to have all the answers, but I would suggest a few things.
Preface: My overall advice would include a complete overall to the status quo US approach to Israel and the middle east pre-10/7. The prior plan – which was to help buy the support of all of Israel’s neighbors to isolate Palestinians from any consideration was deeply immoral, inhumane, and as 10/7 showed us, strategically unsound. But for the sake of the thought exercise, I’ll answer as if I supported Biden’s overall objective, which is to maintain the apartheid regime under a veneer of plausible deniability that preceded 10/7.
First, Biden should’ve imposed a series of limits of Bibi from the start of the war. He should’ve privately laid out the objectives the US would support and the length of time available to conduct it, and “leaked” some of these discussions. He acknowledged the risk that Israel would overreach as the US did during 9/11 – which by the way, HE himself bears great responsibility for. He was the ranked minority member of the Senate foreign relations committee in 2001. Antony Blinken was his main foreign policy advisor when he passed the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force that began the Global War on Terror, and the separate Authorization for Use of Force to invade Iraq in 2022. Considering all this, there was no reason to agree to give Israel a blank check for actions he publicly acknowledged were likely to create a disaster.
Second, he should’ve made clear during the first ceasefire in November of 2023 that the war was now over. They’d already killed tens of thousands of people and collapsed most of the infrastructure in Gaza. They’d made their point, and it was time to get the hostages home and negotiate a “day after” arrangement. Again, I would advocate for an actual long-term peace plan for Palestine, because the whole framework prior to the war assumes a permanent immiseration of Gaza that I do not support, but if that’s what you want, this would’ve been a practical time to do that.
Third, there was always the problem that Netanyahu was trying to stay out of jail. He knew that if the first ceasefire held, it would mean that the war cabinet would dissolve, opposition leaders would call for elections and an investigation into the failures of 10/7, he’d lose office, face trial, and likely go to jail. Personally, again, I think this sounds very appropriate. But if you’re Biden – who genuinely thinks of Bibi as his little brother despite the fact that Bibi is a ruthless psychopath who would slit Biden’s throat without hesitation – you could offer to cover Bibi’s ass by arranging for his complete pardon in exchange for peacefully ceding control.
Overall, this isn’t really chess. It’s more like a standard operating procedure. But truth be told, Biden did what he did because ultimately, this was all the outcome he wanted.
I know that sounds sick and deranged, but if you go through his entire career, it’s always been there. From when he shocked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin by justifying violence against civilians in a private meeting in 1982 to his repeated acts to undermine Obama in his dealings with Netanyahu, Biden has always been committed to a maximalist approach towards Palestinians. And now we’re here.
But for the sake of the thought exercise, I’ll answer as if I supported Biden’s overall objective, which is to maintain the apartheid regime under a veneer of plausible deniability that preceded 10/7.
. . .But truth be told, Biden did what he did because ultimately, this was all the outcome he wanted.
Okay, thanks. I disagree. You’re telling me Biden hates Palestine and wanted it decimated and the people erased from the earth. I’m not buying that.
I’m not suggesting he had all the right answers, but I am suggesting he’s not interested in destroying Palestine and was opposed to almost everything Bibi did from the outset. You claim he manipulated the diplomacy with an express intent to continue the atrocious war crimes; I say no he did not, and you haven’t shown that.
If this was the outcome he wanted, why have talks at all? Why build a ramp for supplies? Why advocate for those trying to bring relief at all? Why not let Bibi do whatever the hell he wants and maybe see if he could wring some money out of it for himself as our current anti-Biden administration is doing.
There was a huge anti-Biden sentiment pre-election that was predicated on this type of thinking and I’m not convinced at all it was warranted. I have no doubt it played an important role in bringing about the new horrors that will serve Palestine not at all.
In order for negotiations to conclude, both sides have to agree. The US isn’t one of those sides. In 2022 there were a lot of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but they were so far from agreeing that they realized there’s no use in negotiating for a long time.
There’s nothing Biden could have done, apart from sending even more aid, to help the situation. And now with Trump chatting with Putin, there’s hardly any difference. No deal will be reached without Ukraine agreeing, which they’re clearly not.
The only result from this will likely be that the US completely stops all support, forcing the EU to send even more aid, and the war will drag on a lot longer, probably years.
I find it tragic the lack of strategic thinking or imagination that the national security world is capable of.
If what you’re saying is true, this is the best outcome. Biden did the best that one could do. This result is the result you get from implimenting the best possible strategic war planning of the strongest military in all of history.
That’s preposterous. If Biden, Blinken, and Austin sat down and applied the world’s most formidable military power to simulating outcomes, among possible outcomes would certainly be these two:
Trump wins, withdraws all support, and possibly begins sanctioning Ukraine or supplying weapons and intelligence to Putin. Zelinsky is killed and Ukraine comes fully under Russian control as a puppet state.
Zelinsky agrees under pressure from Biden to negotiate a ceasefire in 2022. European leaders buy into a plan where they muster an overwhelming pressure campaign of limited duration to apply maximum pressure to Putin economically, and Biden warns that if Putin doesn’t come to the table, all bets are off: Ukraine enters into a complete mutual defense pact with the US, and we begin building long range ballistic missile launchers on their border. OR; Ukraine agrees to surrender parts of Crimea and the Donbas in exchange for a complete withdrawal. Russia acquiesces. The war ends. Both sides are mad, but Trump comes into office more than two years after Russia has completely withdrawn, and Ukraine maintains a sizeable stockpile of American weapons, making a resumption of the conflict unappealing to Putin.
I don’t love outcome 2. But can we not pretend that this was not an option obviously available to Biden? An option he refused to even consider, despite the obviously enormous risks?
Biden should’ve compelled an end to this by any means necessary before Trump took office. This was not an unforeseeable outcome, and they made no effort to even consider a response strategy.
Remember when Biden said some idiotic thing earlier in the war about how Ukraine wasn’t thankful enough and felt that support was owed to them? That’s when I knew Biden want taking this seriously. It was theatrics to him.
Seems obvious to me why the Biden administration couldn’t negotiate with the Russians: the Russians were waiting for Trump to come back to power.
I’m sorry, but that seems like BS.
I recall very clearly that Biden and Blinken maintained that they were refusing to open any negotiations with Russia. Maybe Russia would’ve refused. But I distinctly recall Biden taking a hard line stance, and anyone who suggested that he, Blinken, and Zelinsky accepting that they weren’t likely to recover full territorial control being basically tarred and feathered as MAGA puppets.
I just don’t see the point. So many lives were spent to defend the country. Will it mean anything? We’ll see.
Believe it. See also: Bibi
I do not understand what your point is.
What lesson did you take from the fiasco with Bibi? Biden claimed for months that he was going to get Bibi to agree to a ceasefire, and that it was close, and that the major obstacle was Hamas. And that they were working “tirelessly”. And critics continued to insist that if he was serious, he needed to call up Bibi and say that he either accept a ceasefire or continue the war with rocks and sharp sticks, but that one way or another, Israel was about to stop firing US-made bullets at kids. And we were told that it doesn’t work that way.
And then Trump said that Bibi had to agree to Biden’s ceasefire by January 20th or there’d be “hell to pay”. Obviously not because of any humanitarian concern, but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.
Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?
Yes.
One shouldn’t get all foreign diplomacy information from sound bites. What Biden said, and what anyone else says is rarely every relevant. There are things going on that cannot be made public - most of what goes on cannot be made public for many and varied reasons.
It’s well known that Bibi hated Biden and Biden was trying to use every tool available to get him to stop being a genocidal monster. He could have frozen the arms shipments - in fact, he did - until the republiQans forced them to continue because they knew what was up.
He could have gone nuclear. He could have torn up all the history and all the treaties and made the entire middle east dark. Because he’s competent and a regular human he did not do those things. Should he have? Many think so. Many would be wrong. He tried to reason. He tried to cajole. He tried with the leverage on arms, on money, on access - all the things. Diplomacy was in full effect though some on here would have you not know about it for their own reasons.
And what the republiQans knew was this: Bibi was very much in the tank for trump. Because he knows how easy to manipulate trump is, and he knows with trump in office he’ll get to do whatever he wants with zero pushback.
So they performed this charade where Bibi continues open war crimes, waits til the election, then trump does his tough-guy imitation, and then Bibi says “oh no! I’d better implement the ceasefire I’d already worked out months ago with Biden’s team!” and everyone who doesn’t know better thinks trump had a damned thing to do with it. He did not. That Bibi flew here pronto to lick trump’s wig or whatever fucked up dance they do says more than any sound bite you’d get out of a headline.
Well, what do you think trump negotiated with? Do you think he’ll stop the arms sales? Cut back the funding? Maybe something so drastic as to say a bad thing about what Likud has done publicly? No. trump negotiated with nothing because trump has no interest whatsoever in stopping Bibi’s goals. He wants to participate. Bibi waited for trump to give whatever edge he could to the campaign and then moved forward gleefully.
I mean no disrespect, but I think you need to exercise a much more critical lens. If only as an exercise in understanding other viewpoints, even if you think they’re somehow incorrect.
Biden didn’t need to tear up treaties or threaten to invent new powers. He literally just had to obey US law.
A law known as the Leahey law states very, very frankly that it is illegal – completely against US law – for any US agency to knowingly provide weapons which they believe will be used to commit human rights abuses or violate international law.
Numerous whistleblowers in the state department – Stacey Gilbert, Annelle Sheline, Josh Paul – flagged the provision of weapons to Israel as a clear violation of the Leahy law. They repeatedly pointed out that internally, the State Department had clearly determined that weapons were routinely being used in a manner that made further deliveries a criminal act under US law. This happened in full public view. These three people (as well as others outside of the state department) resigned from the jobs they’d worked their whole lives for out of duty to the constitution to publicly disclose that Blinken and Biden were knowingly acting in direct violation of US criminal law. That’s what makes this so frustrating. Biden had no excuse. Despite every claim to the contrary, his complicity in the war crimes in Gaza were conducted knowingly and deliberately. It was not passive, it required active, determined will to carry out. I think that based on numerous public testimonials from within his administration, frankly, the International Criminal Court had sufficient evidence to charge Biden with war crimes as they did Netanyahu and Galant. But obviously charging the US president is just way too hot a potato.
Biden withheld a single item: 2000 lbs bombs. That was a purely symbolic gesture. That in no way limited Israel’s ability to conduct the war. And that was on purpose. If it had, he wouldn’t have done it.
No one prevented him from withholding anything. I’m not sure what you think Republicans forced him to do, but that is the sole item that was withheld, and that restriction persisted until he left office.
This is very, very painful stuff to digest. But I hope you can take a deep breath and at least sit with these facts for a moment. I think we should all do so out of respect for people like Gilbert, Sheline, and Paul who sacrificed their careers and reputations over these plain facts.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/gaza-israel-resigning-state-department-sheline/index.html
Those are very well made points, and I didn’t know a few of them, so thank you for that.
That said: What would you have him do? Biden, that is. In 2024, with the fate of the world as we know it at stake, would you tell Israel no more weapons?
If that were to have happened, what would be the result?
Do you think russia might have jumped in there with both feet? If not, why not? Would that have any effect on the rest of the middle east? If not, why not?
I’m not suggesting it’s simple - in fact, I’m railing against those who do - but I don’t believe Biden was interested in prolonging the war crimes of the Likud at all. And that’s what every discussion about this ends up with and that discussion, in turn, leads us to trump. Every time.
I don’t want to diminish that by claiming to have all the answers, but I would suggest a few things.
Preface: My overall advice would include a complete overall to the status quo US approach to Israel and the middle east pre-10/7. The prior plan – which was to help buy the support of all of Israel’s neighbors to isolate Palestinians from any consideration was deeply immoral, inhumane, and as 10/7 showed us, strategically unsound. But for the sake of the thought exercise, I’ll answer as if I supported Biden’s overall objective, which is to maintain the apartheid regime under a veneer of plausible deniability that preceded 10/7.
First, Biden should’ve imposed a series of limits of Bibi from the start of the war. He should’ve privately laid out the objectives the US would support and the length of time available to conduct it, and “leaked” some of these discussions. He acknowledged the risk that Israel would overreach as the US did during 9/11 – which by the way, HE himself bears great responsibility for. He was the ranked minority member of the Senate foreign relations committee in 2001. Antony Blinken was his main foreign policy advisor when he passed the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force that began the Global War on Terror, and the separate Authorization for Use of Force to invade Iraq in 2022. Considering all this, there was no reason to agree to give Israel a blank check for actions he publicly acknowledged were likely to create a disaster.
Second, he should’ve made clear during the first ceasefire in November of 2023 that the war was now over. They’d already killed tens of thousands of people and collapsed most of the infrastructure in Gaza. They’d made their point, and it was time to get the hostages home and negotiate a “day after” arrangement. Again, I would advocate for an actual long-term peace plan for Palestine, because the whole framework prior to the war assumes a permanent immiseration of Gaza that I do not support, but if that’s what you want, this would’ve been a practical time to do that.
Third, there was always the problem that Netanyahu was trying to stay out of jail. He knew that if the first ceasefire held, it would mean that the war cabinet would dissolve, opposition leaders would call for elections and an investigation into the failures of 10/7, he’d lose office, face trial, and likely go to jail. Personally, again, I think this sounds very appropriate. But if you’re Biden – who genuinely thinks of Bibi as his little brother despite the fact that Bibi is a ruthless psychopath who would slit Biden’s throat without hesitation – you could offer to cover Bibi’s ass by arranging for his complete pardon in exchange for peacefully ceding control.
Overall, this isn’t really chess. It’s more like a standard operating procedure. But truth be told, Biden did what he did because ultimately, this was all the outcome he wanted.
I know that sounds sick and deranged, but if you go through his entire career, it’s always been there. From when he shocked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin by justifying violence against civilians in a private meeting in 1982 to his repeated acts to undermine Obama in his dealings with Netanyahu, Biden has always been committed to a maximalist approach towards Palestinians. And now we’re here.
Okay, thanks. I disagree. You’re telling me Biden hates Palestine and wanted it decimated and the people erased from the earth. I’m not buying that.
I’m not suggesting he had all the right answers, but I am suggesting he’s not interested in destroying Palestine and was opposed to almost everything Bibi did from the outset. You claim he manipulated the diplomacy with an express intent to continue the atrocious war crimes; I say no he did not, and you haven’t shown that.
If this was the outcome he wanted, why have talks at all? Why build a ramp for supplies? Why advocate for those trying to bring relief at all? Why not let Bibi do whatever the hell he wants and maybe see if he could wring some money out of it for himself as our current anti-Biden administration is doing.
There was a huge anti-Biden sentiment pre-election that was predicated on this type of thinking and I’m not convinced at all it was warranted. I have no doubt it played an important role in bringing about the new horrors that will serve Palestine not at all.
In order for negotiations to conclude, both sides have to agree. The US isn’t one of those sides. In 2022 there were a lot of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but they were so far from agreeing that they realized there’s no use in negotiating for a long time.
There’s nothing Biden could have done, apart from sending even more aid, to help the situation. And now with Trump chatting with Putin, there’s hardly any difference. No deal will be reached without Ukraine agreeing, which they’re clearly not.
The only result from this will likely be that the US completely stops all support, forcing the EU to send even more aid, and the war will drag on a lot longer, probably years.
I find it tragic the lack of strategic thinking or imagination that the national security world is capable of.
If what you’re saying is true, this is the best outcome. Biden did the best that one could do. This result is the result you get from implimenting the best possible strategic war planning of the strongest military in all of history.
That’s preposterous. If Biden, Blinken, and Austin sat down and applied the world’s most formidable military power to simulating outcomes, among possible outcomes would certainly be these two:
Trump wins, withdraws all support, and possibly begins sanctioning Ukraine or supplying weapons and intelligence to Putin. Zelinsky is killed and Ukraine comes fully under Russian control as a puppet state.
Zelinsky agrees under pressure from Biden to negotiate a ceasefire in 2022. European leaders buy into a plan where they muster an overwhelming pressure campaign of limited duration to apply maximum pressure to Putin economically, and Biden warns that if Putin doesn’t come to the table, all bets are off: Ukraine enters into a complete mutual defense pact with the US, and we begin building long range ballistic missile launchers on their border. OR; Ukraine agrees to surrender parts of Crimea and the Donbas in exchange for a complete withdrawal. Russia acquiesces. The war ends. Both sides are mad, but Trump comes into office more than two years after Russia has completely withdrawn, and Ukraine maintains a sizeable stockpile of American weapons, making a resumption of the conflict unappealing to Putin.
I don’t love outcome 2. But can we not pretend that this was not an option obviously available to Biden? An option he refused to even consider, despite the obviously enormous risks?
Biden should’ve compelled an end to this by any means necessary before Trump took office. This was not an unforeseeable outcome, and they made no effort to even consider a response strategy.
Remember when Biden said some idiotic thing earlier in the war about how Ukraine wasn’t thankful enough and felt that support was owed to them? That’s when I knew Biden want taking this seriously. It was theatrics to him.
what