WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The killing of three U.S. troops and wounding of dozens more on Sunday by Iran-backed militants is piling political pressure on President Joe Biden to deal a blow directly against Iran, a move he’s been reluctant to do out of fear of igniting a broader war.
Biden’s response options could range anywhere from targeting Iranian forces outside to even inside Iran, or opting for a more cautious retaliatory attack solely against the Iran-backed militants responsible, experts say.
American forces in the Middle East have been attacked more than 150 times by Iran-backed forces in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and off the coast of Yemen since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.
But until Sunday’s attack on a remote outpost known as Tower 22 near Jordan’s northeastern border with Syria, the strikes had not killed U.S. troops nor wounded so many. That allowed Biden the political space to mete out U.S. retaliation, inflicting costs on Iran-backed forces without risking a direct war with Tehran.
Now I’m no supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but your statement is way too reductive.
The current disaster in Gaza was ignited by Hamas on October 7th, no doubt at the encouragement of Iran. And yes, Israel definitely bears a significant amount of responsibility for creating the tinder box that October 7th sparked, and also has certainly fanned the flames with enthusiasm.
But responsibility for the escalation and continuation of the situation rests also on Iran, on Hamas and the Houthis, and also to a lesser degree on the US and other Western allies that enable Israel.
Talk about reductive.
The October 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas was also a result of 75 years of illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.
I’m sorry, I don’t follow what you’re trying to convey here.
That there is an even bigger picture than in my comment? Well, yes, of course. The Israel-Palestine situation is a hundred year old mess.
But how was my comment reductive as well? I didn’t lay the blame squarely at the feet of any one party, which is far closer to the truth than saying “It’s all Israel’s fault.”
And if you take contention with me being nuanced, please consider that by doing so you don’t actually do any favours to the conversation and therefore a peaceful resolution that is as fair as can possibly be achieved.
So, if it helps you come back to the table, please know that I absolutely think what Israel is doing is appalling and they have an obscene power disparity over the Palestinian people and are abusing that wholesale - when they could use it to create peace.
It’s about as illegal as the US’s occupation of America.
By that logic, the solution to the conflict is a federation in which all citizen subjects have representative power 👹
Legally speaking, sure, but we haven’t killed natives to expand territory in a while. And they fought back when we did.
Unrelated, but my policy would be to give texas back to Mexico, the west coast to the natives, and accelerate global warming and hope Florida just sinks.
Sure you have. When funding is kept to the lowest levels possible, and people die as a result of it, it’s the same thing.
Just 'cause it takes longer than a bullet doesn’t change the outcome.
What on earth are you on about? Not spending money on native Americans is not the same as annexing their lands.
When your fighters start mutilating, torturing, raping, and kidnapping civilians, It doesn’t matter how righteous you think your cause is.
Indeed. Something Israelis have been doing since before 1948.
“no u”
The earliest massacres in mandatory Palestine were instigated by Arab nationalists. That’s what really got the cycle of violence going and led to the various Jewish terrorist groups and militias.
More relevant to the current war, modern Israel does not behave that way.
Are you considering the deaths of 25,000 people to not be a massacre?
Literally, no. It’s not indiscriminate, these deaths are due to attacks against legal targets, intentionally selected due to evidence of Hamas militants and infrastructure.
So grandmas and babies are Hamas militants. Got it.
Collateral damage, happens in every war. Especially against Hamas who is fond of using Palestinians as human shields, yet curiously remains popular among them.
So any action from Hamas (or Palestinian resistance in general) gets hit back with Israeli retaliation. Does that mean they should just not do anything and hope daddy Israel gives them a mile of land after a century?
I’m… really not sure what point you’re trying to make to me here, sorry.
Unless you’re trying to strawman me, in which case - why?
You said the escalation of the situation is the fault of Hamas. But the thing is, if Hamas (and Palestinian resistance in general) don’t do anything they’ll never get out of their situation. And anything they do can be presented as an escalation.
No, that isn’t what I said. I said Hamas ignited the current disaster - which is one step in a whole series of disastrous moves by both the State of Israel and Hamas.
But to address your point of what are the Palestinians to do? There isn’t a nice clean answer for that because the burden of responsibility lies on both sides - moreso on the side with the greater power (so, Israel).
But terrorism isn’t helpful when it leads to the genocide of your people.
If Hamas hadn’t done October 7th, then a lot more innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and Gazans would still be alive today.
If you’re trying to suggest that it’s a means to an end… Well first of all, the ends do not justify the means. Second of all - what end exactly has Hamas helped achieve here?
Yes, but like I just said that logic can be extended to any action by Hamas that invites Israeli response, which is most of them.
Palestinians are the victims of genocide either way at the pre-Oct 7th rate. Israel was waiting for an excuse to do something like this.
This logic doesn’t apply to the concept of war. The whole idea of war is that there’s some goal that one or both sides decides is worth killing people for. There are some things the world has agreed (while crossing their fingers behind their backs) can’t be done no matter your cause, but war has always been about the ends justifying the means.
Israel is rapidly losing international support. This is having effects even now, but it’ll be even more apparent as older generations die off. And they stopped Saudi naturalization.
killing people, using hospitals as base of operations and raping hostages sure does not aid those terrorists of the Hamas…
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Unconditional surrender worked out pretty well for Japan and Germany. Palestine keeps choosing violence, losing more and more because of it, and they’re all out of ideas.
You always go on about this, but just for anyone who actually buys this Germany and Japan are completely different situations. More correct comparisons would be North Ireland during the Troubles or Apartheid South America, or the civil rights movement in America. Something tells me unconditional surrender wouldn’t have helped in these situations.
Palestine is a separate nation than Israel. I suppose the troubles is the most comparable of all of these examples, but the methods Palestinians use make even Sinn Fein distance themselves from them.
My point is that choosing violence didn’t work for Palestine, they lose more and more every time they try it, yet polling shows most still want intifada, most don’t want a two-state solution, or a one state solution where Jews have equal rights. Around 3/4 approve of October 7th and Hamas.
Well, with this sort of hard line approach, a hard line response is unsurprising. Perhaps it’s time to try something new.
The reason the civil rights movement was successful is because they embraced pacifism. Where is the Palestinian MLK or Gandhi?
Violence is at least producing results (declining international support for Israel). Peace (the Oslo accords) did nothing except give us the dysfunctional PA and ever-increasing numbers of settlements. Remember the Great March of Return where nothing happened except Palestinians getting shot by laughing IDF snipers? You can’t have peace with an oppressor that rejects your existence.
Yes but no. The IRA also relied a lot on car bombing and other blatant terror actions, because nothing else worked. That’s the case in Palestine, and in settler colonialist societies in general; when you outnumber the natives (or at least have numerical parity with them), there’s no reason to listen to their demands since they have no leverage. That’s how you get violence; it’s a way to produce leverage out of nothing.
The civil rights act was only passed after the riots that came after MLK’s death. There was very much violence involved, though that violence would’ve been impossible without the base MLK built.
Those two lived in completely different situations. Also they weren’t peaceful; they were nonviolent. On the subject of MLK, where are the Israeli youth who are going to march with said Palestinian MLK? Where’s the unfair but at least functional justice system they can use to fight against Apartheid? And that’s not to mention how Israel’s left wing basically rolled over and died in the 80s. The base that MLK used in America simply doesn’t exist in Israel. Palestine is under a military occupation; they get tried by military courts and can be shot by Israeli soldiers and civilians with impunity. That’s not a situation where you can peacefully resist; the closest anybody got to that was the first Intifada, and look how that turned out.
In Gandhi’s case, he correctly observed that the British occupation of India was impossible without the cooperation of Indians, so he called on Indians to completely boycott the occupation government and let it collapse. Palestine is different; Israel can (and is in the case of Gaza) maintain their occupation with exactly 0 Palestinian cooperation. Palestine is a cage with people locked inside by Israeli people with guns, and every other day the cage gets just a little smaller. There’s very little you can do in that situation except violent resistance. This is why I prefer the comparison with the Troubles; it gets most accurately the situation Palestine is in across, and why “well they should just negotiate peacefully” doesn’t work.
I believe their cause would be a lot more sympathetic if they had stuck to military targets and not simply murdered, raped, kidnapped, tortured, and mutilated israeli civilians, employed suicide bombings, or blindly fired rockets into population centers. For me, any claims of Palestinean righteousness and legitimate resistance evaporated when I watched October 7th footage. I simply cannot see such atrocities as a righteous war for liberation.
I mean yeah no argument there; I’m not defending the atrocities committed on October 7th (that said the attack’s targets were military sans hostages, they didn’t “simply” murder civilians).
Then did claims of Israeli self-defense evaporate when you watched Gazans being brutally massacred? Punishing all of Gaza (let alone the West Bank which is being caught up in this for some reason) for the crimes inflicted against Israeli citizens is collective punishment.
I’ve never seen the IDF do anything remotely comparable to the barbarity on display by Hamas. At worst they don’t care as much about collateral damage when attacking legal targets as some people say they should, despite taking precautions that no other countries do to minimize civilian deaths during their military operations.
Reacting to a nation collectively when their government declares war on your nation is par for the course. Were Gaza occupied, you’d have a point, that would be collective punishment and therefore a war crime… but Israel unilaterally left Gaza in 2005.
I’m less informed about what’s going on in the West Bank, but the news articles I’ve read seem to indicate that it’s mostly settler violence that is the problem there, civilian violence. I hope for everyone’s sake that Israel prosecutes and punishes those responsible for crimes.