Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, July 23, 2025
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63 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz describe cage-like units swarmed by mosquitoes (NBC News)
Is it fascist or not fascist to target migrant workers usually based on race, and then to cage and torture the same, who’ve been convicted of no crimes?
There is so much crap going on it is worth it to regularly remember events.
Army says 250th anniversary celebration in DC cost $30 million
I listen to two podcasts on my daily morning dog walk: NPR’s Up First and the NYT The Daily.
The last two The Daily podcasts I feel are worth listening to:
A D.O.J. Whistleblower Speaks Out.
Why Trump Just Gave China the Keys to A.I.’s Future
A week ago Trump was embellishing his claims to high intelligence by telling stories about his uncle, a electrical engineering professor at MIT. Trump declared a connection from his uncle to the Unabomber. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/politics/fact-check-trump-uncle-unabomber
I found this strange. After all, the actions of murderous terrorists are not usually considered manifestations of a superior mind.
Returning to the theme of familial high intelligence, does Donald think his sons reflect superior intellect?
@Scott: What has flown beneath the media radar is the cost of implementing Project 2025 and indulging Trump’s desire to be Vlad Kim Orban. The $30M wasted on his birthday parade; the immense (and not budgeted) cost of buying out federal employees*; the diversion of Justice Department resources to defend unconstitutional/illegal executive orders; the crushing financial impact of (unconstitutional) tariffs on small business owners; and the cost of vanity projects like Hegseth adding a makeup room to the Pentagon and the cringe inducing bedazzling of the Oval office, making it look like a gilded whorehouse waiting room. There’s more, of course – like the cost of Trump going to his own golf courses and charging the Secret Service for using carts, and of course the monumental cost of the ICE roundups and detentions – and the media and Dems should be tallying these figures and shouting them from the rooftops.
*I’m ignoring the dreadful loss of institutional knowledge that has been pushed out the door by Elon’s kiddie corps.
As an aside, Berkeley Breathed has been putting out a couple of new Bloom County strips WRT immigration and Epstein.
https://www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/
@Charley in Cleveland:
“*I’m ignoring the dreadful loss of institutional knowledge that has been pushed out the door by Elon’s kiddie corps.”
Which includes the immediate loss of government agency capability. This was widely reported after the Texas flash floods, including by the Hill:
When the doge cuts and so-called buyouts were announced, we were warned about the effects on services including air traffic control, weather forecasting services, and fighting wildfires. Then, within the first few months, we had the worst commercial airline accident in more than 20 years, the deadliest flash flooding in nearly 50 years, and a the worst loss of National Park Service structures to wildfire in many decades. And while the effects of attacking morale and forcing remaining employees be more thinly spread cannot concretely explain every problem, the NWS staffing in Texas is a clear contributor to the deadly result of that flash flooding.
@Slugger:
Oh, please, it makes perfect logical sense.
Remember Unabomber refers to the fact he sent nice letters, manypeoplesay the nicest letters, to universities and airlines. He’s a hero! If he were rich and alive, he’d have been El Taco’s first choice for the Department of Education!
If you wonder why El Taco would brag his uncle was a university professor, what’s wrong with you?
The whole world is getting stupider.
French president Macron sues influencer over claim France’s first lady was born male
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Adding to the complexity of this man-made disaster —
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This is evil. One-time Israel hawk here, I lost my fanaticism around the time of the 2nd Intifada, the obvious and overwhelmingly disproportionate response to Palestinian aggression, and the illegal displacement of Palestian settlements. Now this Gaza human catastrophe that can reasonably categorized as “ethnic cleansing” and genocide.
Definition of “genocide” from the U.S. own Holocaust Museum:
Oxford dictionary
Every single breakdown of social relationships in our human community that leads to intentional large scale death and suffering, creates widescale human trauma, widescale PTSD, that transverses generational cycles, increasing the likelihood of further violence. As a global community, we have got to figure out how to intercept violence before its full blown outbreak. Time is running out, the window is narrowing, for humanity to cooperatively solve large global problems that threaten our shared sustainability as a species.
Just got a text from Sen Cornyn’s campaign (maybe):
with link to Winred for money.
Note: Ken Paxton is our adulterous, indicted felon Attorney General running against Cornyn for Senator.
I rooting for injuries.
@Scott: They’ve been saying it about Michelle Obama for years.
@Kylopod: I mean, I don’t know why they don’t start saying it about each other. Maybe they do? I think Nancy Mace is a prime suspect. All her “anti-trans” rhetoric being a smoke screen.
Mind you I have no more reason to think Nancy Mace is trans than somebody has to think that of Michelle Obama or Brigitte Macron. But I mean, just look at her! And she went to the Citadel?! What cis woman would do that?
Not that it’s a bad thing, of course. Come on out of that closet, Nancy! You will be much happier in the long run!
@Jay L. Gischer:
Um….
Good to be back.
@Slugger:
But his manifesto — his long and beautiful manifesto — surely something with so many words can only be the work of genius. Many words. Such IQ.
Plus, Kazinski was able to remove all evidence that he ever attended MIT, which is an impressive feat.
(As impressive as Trump working out who the Unabomber was decades before it was revealed, so he could have a conversation about him with his uncle while he was still alive. Or raise his uncle from the grave and speak to him after the Unabomber was identified.)
@Rob1:
It is not genocide, and continuing to throw that word around does not help. Bret Stephens in the NYT today:
It is oppression, it is starvation, it is sometimes reckless use of military power and a callous disregard for civilians and journalists. It looks like an effort to create ethnic cleansing but with nowhere for Gazans to flee to. But if we call it genocide now in order to get clicks and excite protesters, what do we say if it gets even worse? Super genocide? Genocide extreme?
The end state here (or temporary end state before the next round) is not a depopulated Gaza, as much as a lot of Israelis wish they’d all self-deport to Egypt, but a Gaza sliced and diced into heavily-surveilled neighborhoods. In effect a series of concentration camps? Yes. Death camps? No.
Israel will try to break Hamas by fracturing Gaza into smaller reservations, reservations which will have their own issues and may perhaps reject Hamas for more local government. Israel will follow the American model. But when all is said and done 95% of Gaza’s population will still be there, and that is a lot of bad shit but it is not genocide.
A reminder: the killing ends as soon as Hamas says the killing ends. Turn over the hostages, give up weapons, and it ends.
@Scott: Paxton like Trump is an accomplished athlete— skating. Both have skated past criminal indictments. Metal worthy feats. As in leg irons.
@Rob1: Since it didn’t originate in the Genocide region of Germany, it is just sparkling mass murder of an ethnic population by a nation state.
My Mom and I got our Shingrix shots yesterday. Felt fine this morning, aside from the sore arm, but now I’ve got a raging headache.
My insurance covered mine, Mom’s Medicare did not cover hers. I was pleasantly surprised that the State of Wyoming has stockpiled doses specifically for seniors whose Medicare won’t cover them. Same with RSV and Covid/Flu shots.
@Jax:
Not a cause for concern, but the second shot of the two-dose Shingrix series is the worst. This is what I’ve heard and can also personally attest to–that is, completely out of action the day after the second dose. But individual responses will vary. And good on the state for making vaccines available for some who should get them but lack adequate coverage. If only vaccinations for certain communicable diseases were available, and would continue to be available, to all residents.
@Michael Reynolds:
Just doing a survey on “ethnic cleansing vs genocide” finds a variance of opinion for, against, and muddled. Clearly this a politically loaded and influenced issue. Tomayto, tomahto. Where are we going to go for absolute guidance on this matter? Especially since there exist enough aspects in Israel’s actions against Gazans, to meet criteria set forth by serious students of this issue.
Question (for you): Are 60,000 deaths including entire families, and the onset of mass starvation portending to an even larger death toll, not enough to level the charge of “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” at Israel? Is there a specific numerical threshold at which someone should be willing to say, okay, now it’s genocide or now it’s ethnic cleansing?
I purposely included the US Holocaust Museum definition of “genocide” to raise this issue of comparison and threshold.
It should be clear that a technical approach to defining/categorizing the Gazan catastrophe is encumbered by subjectivity. But why this is still important, is that we all need to know where our responsibility lies and how to respond.
A large group of American and foreign students have attempted to talk about the Gazan catastrophe. They have used the words “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and with some reasonable argument. The response has been a draconian clamp down including punitive measures and deportation. Wholesale institutional censorship, right here in America. Land of the free, home of the brave. That in itself, should be enough for us to reexamine what we’ve personally decided about Gaza and Israel’s behavior. And take a harder more critical look.
If there is some “technical” argument to be made, that “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” is not taking place (yet), that does not preclude openly, publicly raising the issue. We do not know where this is headed and at this moment nothing suggests a lot more Palestians aren’t going to suffer and die. Including whole families.
@Kylopod: That’s kind of hilarious.
Also, it sort of exists in superposition. That is, you accuse someone of having a different gender than they have, and you recognize that it’s a slur. If a cis woman had a double hysterectomy, would she stop feeling unhappy about being called a man? (Hint: My mother had a double hysterectomy, but still thought of herself as a woman). So it’s an insult to be misgendered. Which I agree with.
…
They are sooooo close. And yet so far away.
@Michael Reynolds:
Good discussion on use of the terms ethnic cleansing and genocide, but I really don’t see how Bret Stephens’ made-up criteria for the rate of killing or the asymmetry of the forces involved shed any light.
@Rob1: The threshold of genocide used by the UN and the Holocaust museum is far, far lower than the levels achieved in the Holocaust.
This causes some people distress, as part of their core identity is that the Holocaust was unique and that Jews are special victims, rather than just one in a long, long line of victims (Jews, Armenians, Native Americans, Jews, Cambodians, Jews again, Australian Natives*, Rwandans, Congoese, Palestinians, Bosnians…). It also undermines the “Never Again” bit. We have whole lobbying groups built around perpetuating the myth that the Holocaust was unique (given how often Jews end up being targeted, or groups in with the main target (if you’re rounding up Muslim men in parts of Bosnia that you’re occupying, you might as well round up the Jews too), I can definitely see why there is that desire to create and perpetuate that myth.
You will never get MR to not respond with this. It’s identity politics.
Anyway, when the X-Men come to the MCU, I hope they update Magneto’s origin so he isn’t 95 years old. I’d go with Rwandan, as there’s something particularly awful about that genocide — it was contemporaneous with the Bosnian genocide, but the developed world only put any effort into stopping the Bosnian genocide (and that was not a lot).
I do think they would run into complaints about creating a fictional genocide for the backstory, as I’m not convinced Americans realize Rwanda isn’t Wakanda, or that Hutus and Tutsis are actual people.
*: is “Aborigine” a slur?
ETA: “Never Again” is a much better slogan and rallying cry than “Over And Over With Depressing Regularity”
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m not sure that your distinction is much different.
Saying “Yes, its the deliberate starvation and murder of an entire nation of civilians, in an effort to either drive them out or subjugate them into a permanent underclass” is somehow less a damning indictment of the Netanyahu regime than just calling it genocide.
@Gustopher:
What I think is important to note is that the popular definition of genocide is really the Holocaust- the industrialized extermination of millions of people.
But the actual term is as you note, broader- it really means “geno- cide” the murder of a people- the eradication of their language, the exile from their land, the erasure of their culture.
We saw it with the Native Americans, the Armenians, twice now with the Ukrainians.
Even if the Palestinians are left alive, if they are left as nameless, culture-less, second class serfs in a hostile land to which they can never belong, it is certainly the murder of a people.
@Eusebio:
Exact opposite for me–I was knocked sideways by the first Shingrix shot (very sleepy the entire next day, sore arm, chills), but the second was no problem at all–barely sore, no other side effects.
Meanwhile, Senator Ron Wyden is pointing out to the DOJ that the Treasury Department had already received notice from banks about $1.5 billion in suspicious money transfers involving Jeffrey Epstein. Probably there’s some there there, worth investigating if there’s still any interest in justice in the Justice Department. Since Wyden saw the information in question in February 2024, this is not a proverbial fishing expedition.
https://newrepublic.com/article/198247/trump-epstein-fiasco-ron-wyden
How do people feel about using the phrase “ethnic cleansing” to describe what’s happening in Gaza?
Looking at the numbers I would say that Israel is actively using starvation as a tool. But what are they working towards? (I suspect it’s trying to get them to leave.) If people keep starving to death at what point do we call it genocide? What’s the magic number?
Steve
@Kingdaddy:
The legal definition of genocide provided by Rob1 is part of a binding international treaty that has been ratified by 153 countries – including Israel and the US.
Why bother calling it something else?
@steve222:
Adults do not have to wait for permission.
@Eusebio:
Yes, I was about to point that out.
Bret Stephens’ criteria for genocide is quite lacking, as he also makes his declaration in mid-processs (of Israeli actions) without any certainty of the endpoint.
Do we wait until an entire community of humans is wiped out to point out the similarities to our conceptualization of genocide or ethnic cleansing? Is there not value in saying “this is wrong and is looking like genocide or ethnic cleansing?” Is there not value in learning from our mistakes before we fully make them again?
Stephens doesn’t know where this is headed, and neither does Reynolds or myself. But, damn! 60,000 Gazans have been killed in 18 months. The size of a small city, anywhere. And now more are poised to die, while millions live suspended lives in uncertainty. Who the hell are we to look away, or parse out when it’s bad enough to call genocide or ethnic cleansing? There are Jewish voices who thoroughly condemn this as well.
Off topic, if there is one. Wife clipped a coupon for Bimbo bread, new to our area, so I read up on it and found its the largest baking company in the world. I especially enjoyed how they chose their name.
“The Bimbo name was created in 1945, drawing inspiration from “bingo” and “Bambi”, to evoke a sense of innocence and childhood. ”
Methinks this plan has ganged agley.
Steve
@Scott:
More, please. More defamation lawsuits against the parasitic partisan opportunists.
@steve222: Bimbo is a Mexican multi-national that bought up US baked good manufacturers to become one of the largest such companies in the world. This Mexican company bakes white bread for Americans. Wonder how that settles in upon the purity of MAGAland, as it gazes out over newly christened Gulf of not Mexico?
@Michael Reynolds:
This is Jempty’s argument for not calling Alligator Alcatraz a “concentration camp” and the same approach most people use when anyone calls Trump and his cohorts a “fascist.”
This constant need to call very, very bad things by the correct terms because they haven’t equaled the worst examples of those words from history kind of makes those words useless.
And I say that, still finding “genocide” a tough one to deploy, but what is “ethnic cleansing with nowhere to go” equate to?
Could be the most Alaska headline ever:
Plane in Alaska Crash Was Overloaded With Moose Meat and Antlers, N.T.S.B. Says
@Steven L. Taylor: another way to put it: when there is a a serious conversation about whether terms lie “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” might be deployable, the situation is not good.
@Rob1:
Bimbo has been a sponsor of the Philadelphia men’s soccer team, with their name in the center of the chest. For some reason, the team’s T-shirts are less popular with female fans.
The legal definition of genocide and the colloquial–and political–definition of genocide are very different. And politically, calling what’s happening in Gaza genocide seems to be a losing argument, as most people simply don’t know or understand the legal definition. The fact remains that genocide is associated with Nazi death camps, and that isn’t what is happening.
Ethnic Cleansing is more useful politically (in my opinion), since Israel’s current government is quite explicit about their desire for Palestinians to go away, and their actions clearly reflect that both legally and colloquially.
And as usual Steven makes the really salient point, that if we have reached the point of arguing about which term is most appropriate, the situation is morally repugnant regardless.
@Steven L. Taylor:
This is the two-step the white supremacists deploy:
Stephen Miller and JD Vance justify their crimes on the notion that white people and Western Civilization are under existential attack, an erasure of their culture, a white genocide which justifies the most barbaric and violent reaction.
What constitutes this attack? Oh, things like multilingual ballots, outreach to poor people (who are disproportionately nonwhite). In other words, the term is given so broad a definition as to allow almost any liberal democracy to qualify.
But their predations, randomly snatching any brown person off the street and sending them to foreign prisons without charges or trial?
Well, mister, you best break out Webster’s and be prepared to parse and litigate the etymology of the words and unless it is from the Bavarian region….
Well, this will help the conspiracy theorists out a bit:
Jeffrey Epstein defense lawyer Roy Black is dead at 80
@steve222:
I don’t suppose they considered what it would sound like in English speaking countries 8 decades hence.
It’s better than the story of Microsoft’s name. Allegedly it was named after a part of Bill Gates’ anatomy. I find that unlikely, but you never now with techbros.
@Jen: That’s a really good one, but I feel that this one beats it: B.C. woman hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose
And the light dawns. El Taco’s name is all over the Epstein files.
So, that’s why no more files will be released.
I expect a pardon for Maxwell in exchange for false exculpatory testimony. Or clumsy attempts at redaction with black Sharpie.
@Jen:
Wasn’t Black also the defense atty for Will Kennedy Smith?
@Kathy:
Oh yeah. She’ll be pardoned before Labor Day, for sure.
@Kathy:
@Daryl:
It’s crazy how intent MAGA seems to be in rehashing Trump/Russia.
This was thoroughly investigated by Mueller, Durham, and the Senate Bi-Partisan Committee. So cool.
LET’S FRIGGIN’ REHASH IT.
At the very least I want to hear Durham say that Gabbard was smart enough to find, in less than 6 months, what he couldn’t find in over 18 months.
Why no journalist has hounded down Mueller or Durham is beyond me.
@CSK: I believe so, yes–along with another famous cretin client I can’t seem to remember off the top of my head.
ETA: Ah, yes. Rush Limbaugh.
If you attempt genocide, but are stopped, or quit, before even 100,000 people are dead, it wasn’t real genocide, right?
@Kathy:
They employed 1000 FBI agents to comb through the files searching for Trump. They found Trump. And if they think they can silence 1000 FBI agents they don’t really understand how evidence, or the press, or FBI agents work.
How long til the first few MAGAts begin to think, “You know. . . is it just possible. . . stay with me here, I know it’s crazy. . . but do you think it’s possible Trump’s name is all over the Epstein files and he’s doing everything he can to keep the files from being made public because he raped underaged girls?” Duh?
Now watch all the good little Christian MAGAts explain away how it’s OK if Trump raped little girls because DEI and wokeness and Biden and Obama and and and. . .
@Steven L. Taylor:
You of all people are rejecting the idea that we should name things accurately? And this is in no way related to the back-and-forth with Jempty, which involved me pointing out to Bill that Alligator Alcatraz was not a death camp, but was a concentration camp. IOW, being accurate.
Listen, professor, we don’t call robbery murder because it ain’t murder. It’s bad, but it is not murder. You know what this is? This is war. WAR, huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, except of course for killing a bunch of people.
If this is genocide then the entire US involvement in WW2 was genocide. You like that rewrite of history? Are you going to teach that D-Day was merely a continuation of the American genocide of Axis civilians? Because we killed a metric fukton of Germans and Japanese and 20,000 Frenchmen who died as we were liberating them. We liberated them out of existence. Did US forces commit some war crimes? Yes. Was firebombing Japanese civilians a war crime? Yes. Was it genocide? No. It was war. War doesn’t need to be hyped, it’s war FFS, it’s blowing bodies apart, it’s burning flesh, it’s blinding and crippling, it’s torture and agony and shattered families and trauma and inconsolable grief. You know, like the Gaza war.
I realize it’s become an article of faith among the intellectually lazy Left that Israel is committing genocide, but it is manifestly, obviously, undeniably not true. You know it’s not true because you can do math, and 60,000 dead in 2 years is not genocide, it is war. And your dedication, I would have thought, was to the truth, not to amplifying inflammatory rhetoric in order to stay cool with the kids. And you are far too well-educated not to know that insisting on the use of the inaccurate word genocide has the effect – the intended effect in many cases – of diminishing the Holocaust which, yes, was genocide.
Open Forum, 50 hours in the past.
@Michael Reynolds:
In my most pessimistic moments, I figure the MAGAts won’t only legalize pedophilia, but make it mandatory. It will be ok as long as it’s only men “making love” to underage girls. Of course they’ll call it something else.
On other, less unpleasant things, I’m pondering why an advanced civilization would 1) colonize uninhabitable worlds and asteroids in their solar system, and 2) eventually set out to colonize habitable worlds around other stars.
Mike Duncan came up with a fictional reason to colonize Mars in his Martian Revolution series (can’t have a revolution in an uninhabited world, now, can you?) Essentially Mars is the richest, most convenient source of something that’s essential for making cheap, convenient, non-polluting energy “flex cells.”
So, how about a real reason?
The TV show For All Mankind suggests one reason to colonize the Moon (but doesn’t delve into it): helium-3 deposits.
This is probable, if the Moon can capture it from the Solar wind, and makes economic sense. He-3 would be the best fusion fuel, and a little bit goes a long way. So we’d be talking about tons, but not millions of tons.
The downside? We could make it on Earth. How? First you build a breeder uranium reactor and produce tritium using lithium compounds. Wait 12 years, and half your tritium will become He-3 on its own. Of course, this would require a massive investment. The current production of tritium worldwide is measured in grams. (I wonder how good straight up tritium would be for fusion?)
So, it’s not easy to find good reasons.
So, how about tourism?
No, seriously. Say the world grows incredibly wealthy it literally has money (aka resources) to burn, so enterprising entrepreneurs build hotels in orbit, on the Moon (or equivalent), on other planets and/or their satellites, etc. It would then be cheaper to grow food locally than to import it. Ditto to have the service personnel live on location, and also to make your own building materials and spare parts, and eventually everything else.
By the time ennui catches up and people complain vacationing on Mars is so 25th century, you have going civilizations on various worlds and asteroids.
Adn by then ennui might make you look for resort properties around other stars, too.
@Michael Reynolds:
IMO a lot of the MAGA congress critters were genuinely outraged by the deficits in the BBB. They have realized Trump is indeed only interested in himself and does not hesitate to ruthlessly bully them too, so they would now like now to diminish his power.
IOW: Screw him.
They know that operation must be conducted in a clandestine fashion, under the aegis of some issue which strikes deep, as they are aware their core (primary voting) constituencies have been thoroughly brainwashed. They participated in that effort themselves.
Some “rebels”, I heard in the news today, voted to proceed in the Epstein investigation today, in direct violation of a Trump order not to do so.
This genocide issue goes to Americans’ ignorance of war.
Why, we can’t just call it war because, somehow the word war, isn’t severe enough. We need a bigger word, a tougher word, a dire-sounding but inaccurate word because somehow the word war doesn’t meet our need for extreme condemnation.
War is not flying smart bombs through windows and killing only the bad guy. We humans have been fighting wars for 10,000 years and of those thousands and thousands of wars 0.000000001% involved flying smart bombs. All the other wars were unspeakably horrible. Read a description of Cannae some time. Read about the Mongols in Kiev. Or The Wilderness. Or the Somme. Or the Soviet advance on Berlin. Or the American war on Japan. Or maybe look at Ukraine where civilians are being maimed and killed daily, men, women, children, blown to bits in their own homes.
War is enough. Gaza is war. This is what war is. This is why we don’t like war. Because war is starving children slumped next to their dead mother. War is evil, even the just wars.
I’ll end with a quote from a wise writer, writing about war 25 years ago:
…
War is war, genocide is genocide, neither is a good way to spend your days.
@Michael Reynolds: Someone said that these actions might equate to “ethnic cleansing” but where Gaza’s have nowhere to go.
I think you need to intellectually engage with that person before you scold me, TBH.
@Michael Reynolds: I will ask this: is it your contention that US war aims in WWII was to force the German people to starvation and privation to the point that we could just take German land?
@Michael Reynolds:
The lack of things like air forces, navies, and anything resembling an army has no bearing? War is just “war” and that’s that?
I’m quite sure there is some level of violence, some number of slaughtered women and kids, you would find difficult to justify. Some number of kids you would be unwilling to burn through to get to one or two suspected HAMAS guys.
@dazedandconfused: Herein lies so much of the problem. Hamas is not a regular army, and Gaza is not a state. As such, this is definitionally not war in a conventional sense.
Worse, the war is against the Gazans themselves, which, at a minimum, makes MR’s simplistic “war is war” formulation a bit more complex than he wants it to be.
And because Hamas is not a regular military, the Israelis are basically at war with civilians, who are too busy starving and whatnot to fight back.
None of this conforms to a simplistic “war is war” paradigm, and it sure as heck cannot be appropriately analogized to WWII.
@Steven L. Taylor:
@Michael Reynolds:
Mostly no. There were however incidents/moments that exceeded putely “legitimate” military objectives; Dresden and Cologne to name two.
It would be wrong and perhaps dishonest, for someone to say that the mass killing and starvation of civilians caught in the crucible that is Gaza, constitutes “legitimate” collateral war damage. Especially given the massive humanitarian food and medical supplies that sit nearby, blocked from distribution by Israel. Humanitarian relief workers have been continuously systematically attacked and killed. These are not actions of a purely military objective, but intended to harm an entire population, the majority of which is civilian.
I’m betting that people who offer a somewhat cavalier assessment of the inhumane horror in Gaza, would have a much different opinion if members of their own family were trapped in the crossfire for the past 18 months and now face starvation.
If this is not “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” or even “genocidal” then what is it? Because simply calling it “war” with the requisite shoulder shrug is such a deficient response from us. Certainly “war crimes” have taken place in Gaza with such mass and breadth, that confining our assessment to only that label, is not adequate. Something more has to be asserted to make this stop, to draw a red line.
Coincidentally, Reynolds, we had a back and forth months ago challenging your assertion that “the real fighting” in WWII did not start until after DDay. There was so much fighting and loss of life prior to Normandy — in North Africa, Sicily, and the skies over Europe. I mostly took your statement as enthusiasm for the heroics that began and followed June 6, 1944. But given how you look at Gaza, it appears your war metrics and definitions are clearly different from mine.
Right now, in real time, large numbers of Gazans are dying, and many more are poised for starvation and continued killing. This, following 60,000 deaths. This with no clarity (or assurance) from Israel on long term objectives. This, with various Israeli leadership on record alluding to wiping out any trace of Palestians in Gaza (which I will post later).
So, we can continually minimalize the civilian horror taking place in Gaza by dismissing these atrocities (and crimes) as justifiable under the banner of “war” thereby publicly enabling Israel’s deadly excesses — or we can take a stand, draw a line, and point to established guidelines and thought on genocide, on ethnic cleansing. Unless of course, we agree with the decimation of a community of people.
Two more things that must be pointed out:
– there are Israeli and Jewish voices in opposition to what is going on. The suppression of university student protests under guise of blocking “antisemitism” was a contrivance, a red herring. Protests then and now are largely
anti-inhumanity.
– even if the population of Gaza is kept in a state of starvation or near starvation (which has been happening) without mass death, the life long lingering impact of that condition on the well being of infants, seniors, and all humans is well established medically and scientifically. To categorically deny a population food as Israel has been doing, is deliberately cruel and inhuman. And the impact is upon the entire population of Gaza. This in itself, cannot be written off as merely a consequence of “war.” Please consider these points.