Ramping up against the Houthis in Yemem

[GKinnear]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

We might be advocating for different things... I'm suggesting (and I think Gkinnear agrees) that the only real solution is the forced relocation of the Palestinians out of Gaza (or I suppose the slaughter of all Israeli Jews). At which point Israel can do whatever they want with it. 

To my knowledge this has not been tried yet. 

I agree with almost everything stated here...the only thing is "Palestinians".  If you said HAMAS instead, then yes absolutely, no white-space between our positions. 

But the non-HAMAS tolerant Palestinian civilians are an issue to figure out.  I've seen some media reporting about some small-scale protests against HAMAS happening, but not enough yet.  However, I'd like to give them the chance to throw off the shackles of HAMAS oppression and join the international community as Israeli citizens...who happens to grant full citizenship to "Palestinians" people who choose to live in peaceful coexistence under Israeli rule.

[Lord Ratner]

53 minutes ago, GKinnear said:

I agree with almost everything stated here...the only thing is "Palestinians".  If you said HAMAS instead, then yes absolutely, no white-space between our positions. 

But the non-HAMAS tolerant Palestinian civilians are an issue to figure out.  I've seen some media reporting about some small-scale protests against HAMAS happening, but not enough yet.  However, I'd like to give them the chance to throw off the shackles of HAMAS oppression and join the international community as Israeli citizens...who happens to grant full citizenship to "Palestinians" people who choose to live in peaceful coexistence under Israeli rule.

Being against Hamas is not the relevant metric. By the time of October 7th I believe Hamas had already lost a support of the majority of the Palestinians living in Gaza as political leadership. 

However there was practically no daylight between the "citizens" of Gaza and Hamas on the key issue: October 7th was to be celebrated and the Jews are to be killed. 

 

To further clarify using your distinction, I believe that Hamas needs to be exterminated with lethal force. I believe the people of Gaza (who have not individually murdered Jews, but pray for it daily) must be forcibly relocated from Gaza to another part of the world where they are with and/or surrounded by other Muslims.

 

We could not exist peacefully with Mexico as a neighbor if a core identity of the Mexicans was the religious calling to murder, rape, and otherwise dominate Americans.

 

And yes, of course an alternate solution would be to move the Israelis, but since they have no stated or apparent desire to rape and murder every Palestinian they can find, I think they get the benefit of the doubt.

Edited May 10 by Lord Ratner

[GKinnear]

29 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Being against Hamas is not the relevant metric. By the time of October 7th I believe Hamas had already lost a support of the majority of the Palestinians living in Gaza as political leadership. 

However there was practically no daylight between the "citizens" of Gaza and Hamas on the key issue: October 7th was to be celebrated and the Jews are to be killed. 

 

To further clarify using your distinction, I believe that Hamas needs to be exterminated with lethal force. I believe the people of Gaza (who have not individually murdered Jews, but pray for it daily) must be forcibly relocated from Gaza to another part of the world where they are with and/or surrounded by other Muslims.

 

We could not exist peacefully with Mexico as a neighbor if a core identity of the Mexicans was the religious calling to murder, rape, and otherwise dominate Americans.

 

And yes, of course an alternate solution would be to move the Israelis, but since they have no stated or apparent desire to rape and murder every Palestinian they can find, I think they get the benefit of the doubt.

I may disagree with the intensity of your statement, but not the overall point you're making.

If the non-HAMAS Palestinians want to take a stand against that death-loving cult, then they need to do it...otherwise, they are unfortunately guilty by association.

[dream big]

On 5/9/2025 at 11:09 PM, Pooter said:

I would exert political pressure on that ally (Israel) to knock it off in Gaza. They have more than retaliated for Oct 7 and gone orders of magnitude past that. The stated position of the houthis is that they are attacking Israeli ships "in support of their muslim brethren in gaza." Which I actually believe because so far the only time the houthis have stopped shooting was during the short lived Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.  I would immediately stop any talks of a Gaza riviera developed by us and Israel. The gaza riviera is a bad idea of biblical proportions that will have Israel cemented as a permanent pariah state, with us as the enablers. 

Of course all of this assumes im king for a day and not completely beholden to AIPAC like the current admin and most of the left are.

edit: The other biggest problem with the gaza riviera plan is that it's the stumbling block preventing any meaningful negotiations from happening to get back the remaining hostages. Think about it from the perspective of hamas. Once you give up the hostages you've given up your last card, then israel is free to completely bulldoze the place. So what incentive do you have to negotiate a cease fire and return hostages if the only thing looming on the horizon afterward is complete displacement?

Why would Israel do that? When you have terrorist living football fields away from your citizens you don’t just tuck tail. 

[Pooter]

Guys I think the only logical solution here is to forcibly displace these people from their claimed ancestral and religious homeland and then re-settle them into like-minded Muslim countries. Definitely won’t result in fertile ground for more terrorist cells surrounding Israel on all sides. 
 

If I’ve learned anything from 20 years of terror wars it’s that it super easy peasy to squash Islamic fundamentalism and imposing our will on them never blows up in our face. Guess we just really have to make a middle eastern Monaco in Gaza. It’s literally the only logical thing to do 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Pooter]

On 5/9/2025 at 6:47 PM, TreeA10 said:

If your neighbor had a pack of vicious dogs that attacked and butchered your child, would you be satisfied that killing a couple of the dogs would prevent your other children from being attacked from the remaining pack of dogs or would want to completely eliminate the threat?

 

 

See this analogy fails because it does what tons of Israel fans do by assuming Oct 7th is the first and only important event to consider when thinking about this conflict. 
 

A more apt analogy here is as follows:
 

You’ve been neighbors for 70 years. You’ve been trading tit for tat dog attacks for that entire time. You have blockaded your neighbor’s house and won’t let him go to the grocery store, receive mail, or otherwise interact with the outside world. You randomly encroach on his property claiming portions of his yard as your own. THEN his dogs get out and kill your kid. So you go kill his dogs, his wife, his kids, him, burn down his house, and burn down every surrounding house in a 2 mile radius.  

[Pooter]

On 5/10/2025 at 7:18 AM, GKinnear said:

Thanks for the reply...some we can agree on, some I see the logic of your decision-making, but I disagree with the assumption it's based on.

@TreeA10 and @Lord Ratner speak to the assumption part...HAMAS has had semi-independence for 20 years and never pursued a peaceful co-existence with Israel, and the world basically encouraged them not to.  See multiple examples of the UN and AP journalists dual-hatted as HAMAS operatives.

Also, HAMAS specifically targeted soft civilian targets.  The killing would have been bad enough, but the torture, mutilation, kidnapping, and raping (regardless of age) puts it on another level.  I pray for peace in the middle east, but it takes both sides to be honest participants, and HAMAS has never proven themselves to be anything other than what the world saw on Oct 7th.  

So your plan to get the Houthis to stop is dependent on Israel, which is dependent on HAMAS...like I said, makes sense from your POV, we just disagree about the nature of HAMAS.

I celebrate your right to free speech under the 1st Amendment, but your AIPAC comment made me pause.  Jews can be criticised, just as blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, Polish, etc, can; however, there are many anti-semetic conspiracy theories about global Jewish cabals running the world that seem to have echoes in your statement.  I may have some bias since we've been on opposite ends of this conversation.

To end on a positive note, I agree with you and @Day Man on the Gaza Riveria plan.  US Government has no standing to get directly involved in post-war plans in any way, and I don't think there's a public outcry to justify a change.

Thank you for the productive disagreement. I agree that Hamas hasn’t done a single thing in good faith ever but I would argue those actions aren’t in a vacuum and Israel hasn’t behaved in a productive manner toward Gaza/Hamas either. 
 

It’s really easy to point to how radicalized Hamas is but the nuance comes from coming to terms with the conditions those people have been subjected to that contributed to their radicalization.

Also AIPAC is just an objectively very powerful lobbying group. I don’t think it’s invoking some grand anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that US and Israel interests are not always aligned and AIPAC more often than not lobbies for the Israeli interest. 

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, Pooter said:

See this analogy fails because it does what tons of Israel fans do by assuming Oct 7th is the first and only important event to consider when thinking about this conflict. 
 

A more apt analogy here is as follows:
 

You’ve been neighbors for 70 years. You’ve been trading tit for tat dog attacks for that entire time. You have blockaded your neighbor’s house and won’t let him go to the grocery store, receive mail, or otherwise interact with the outside world. You randomly encroach on his property claiming portions of his yard as your own. THEN his dogs get out and kill your kid. So you go kill his dogs, his wife, his kids, him, burn down his house, and burn down every surrounding house in a 2 mile radius.  

Tit for tat? 😂🤣

 

Bro you have no idea what you're talking about. 

 

Just another Westerner with no concept of how other cultures think. Ironically, this is the same misinterpretation of Islamic fundamentalism that brought us the forever-wars you seem to be (incorrectly) comparing this to. 

 

If only the Palestinians weren't under a blockade, there'd be peace!

 

Thanks for the chuckle.

[slc]

What happened to the billions of dollars poured into Gaza the last few decades?  That place should be thriving..... oh wait

[brabus]

The Palestinians voted for Hamas in 2006 - they can blame themselves for their shit sandwich. 

[Lord Ratner]

6 hours ago, slc said:

What happened to the billions of dollars poured into Gaza the last few decades?  That place should be thriving..... oh wait

Well, you see, uh, the Israelis had a blockade, so, uh, all that money *had* to be spent on building terrorist tunnel networks that civilians weren't allowed to use for shelter, and, uh, lavish penthouses in Qatar. Because it's like if you and your neighbor had dogs, and...

The extent to which people will go to draw equivalence between any two groups of people is astounding. But seeing this new wave of neoconservatism embrace moral relativism is fascinating... I understand it from the socialists, everything is about power hierarchies and their entire philosophy requires people to have no agency or moral worth. But if the Palestinians and the Israelis are on some sort of equal moral footing, or even more hilariously, if the Israelis are somehow *more* responsible for the bloodshed than the monsters holding the machete and gleefully raping a woman before she dies, why concern ourselves with right and wrong at all, ever?

Sure, if you took a Palestinian baby and raised it in an Israeli household, that baby would almost certainly grow up with no hatred of the Jews and a western Outlook on freedom, morality, individual agency.

Now, aside from the fact that that premise *supports* the strategy of occupation and forced relocation, what does it matter? People don't exist as individuals, they exist as part of social communities. And social communities have unique characteristics that make some better than others. For example, since the enlightenment the West has had a historically unique appreciation for individual sovereignty and rule of law. That makes our culture *better* than say, a group of cannibals living on the Amazon. Or for example, a society motivated to rape and slaughter their neighbors based solely off of religious history and guidance from their political and spiritual leaders. 

 

It's perfectly reasonable to suggest the US shouldn't be involved in the Palestinian conflict. But to suggest equivalence is bananas. It's like saying we are no better than the Taliban. Somehow this entire twisted philosophy requires accepting that any mistake by the West justifies any response by our adversaries. 

Edited yesterday at 05:37 PM by Lord Ratner

[Lawman]

Oct 7 eliminated the possibility of the two state solution for the next 35 years. The odd part is that was about how long the Israelis kept offering it to the refusal of Arafat and the rest of the Palestinian leadership.

At this point, you’ve demonstrated for greater than a half century your inability to govern yourselves, so now the offer is assimilate or die in your open air prison.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pooter]

12 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

It's perfectly reasonable to suggest the US shouldn't be involved in the Palestinian conflict. But to suggest equivalence is bananas. It's like saying we are no better than the Taliban. Somehow this entire twisted philosophy requires accepting that any mistake by the West justifies any response by our adversaries. 

I'm not suggesting equivalence. Israel kills civilians in far higher numbers and with far more efficiency than hamas could ever dream of. I used to buy the Daily Wire line of thinking too but after the 40th hospital/school/refugee camp got bombed I stopped buying the "they hide behind the civilian population" line. I won't tell you guys what to think but when I took off the "Israel good, palestinians bad" blinders it became easy to see that an atrocity of historic magnitude is happening right now. 

Also, a lot of your arguments are undercut by years of Netanyahu's covert strategy of indirect support for hamas to ensure the Palestinian government remained divided and dysfunctional. It also likely contributed to October 7th. 

https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/

[Lord Ratner]

4 hours ago, Pooter said:

but after the 40th hospital/school/refugee camp got bombed I stopped buying the "they hide behind the civilian population" line.

So... They hide behind civilians, which gets the civilians bombed, and because they implement the strategy consistently and effectively you no longer believe it? Copy.

 

What's hilarious and sad is that Hamas is not even particularly shy about this, admitting their strategy openly over the years. 

4 hours ago, Pooter said:

I'm not suggesting equivalence. Israel kills civilians in far higher numbers and with far more efficiency than hamas could ever dream of.

Ah, there it is. So strange to have someone who is/was in the military have such a morally confused position. 

 

Your geopolitical philosophy is ultimately incoherent and incompatible with the realities of human nature, so the things you must believe (and refuse to believe) will be increasingly unhinged as the inconsistencies build. 

 

4 hours ago, Pooter said:

Also, a lot of your arguments are undercut by years of Netanyahu's covert strategy of indirect support for hamas to ensure the Palestinian government remained divided and dysfunctional. It also likely contributed to October 7th. 

 

17 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Somehow this entire twisted philosophy requires accepting that any mistake by the West justifies any response by our adversaries. 

 

Edit: Also, holy shit dude, *that's* the source you want to post 😂🤣. This is like asking a Boeing lobbyist for dispassionate facts about the 737 Max crashes. For anyone interested, check out their statement of "journalistic" integrity: https://www.972mag.com/about-journalism-israel-palestinian/

Edited 12 hours ago by Lord Ratner

[Pooter]

Ok perhaps you’d like these sources more. 
 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-netanyahu-bolstered-hamas/tnamp/

I’m sure these are somehow also bad and not worth consideration because how could Israel do anything bad right?

But to your broader point, my position is actually really coherent. And very simple: killing civilians is bad.

I don’t buy the BS justifications when Hamas does it and I don’t buy the BS justifications when Israel does it.

[Lord Ratner]

33 minutes ago, Pooter said:

But to your broader point, my position is actually really coherent. And very simple: killing civilians is bad.

You're right, incoherent was not the right word to use. Childish, ignorant, meaningless... Those would have been better descriptors. 

 

It is fascinating to see someone in the military make such a vapid comment, considering their profession has and always will understand the (bad) necessity of killing civilians. 

 

In fact, it is precisely the banality associated with your statement that has led to Hamas hiding behind civilians as their primary strategy. 

 

The Useful Fools are multiplying. I expect it from a college campus, not from supposed educated service members. Oh well.

[Banzai]

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

You're right, incoherent was not the right word to use. Childish, ignorant, meaningless... Those would have been better descriptors. 

 

It is fascinating to see someone in the military make such a vapid comment, considering their profession has and always will understand the (bad) necessity of killing civilians. 

 

In fact, it is precisely the banality associated with your statement that has led to Hamas hiding behind civilians as their primary strategy. 

 

The Useful Fools are multiplying. I expect it from a college campus, not from supposed educated service members. Oh well.

A Field Guide to Rhetorical Deflection by @Lord Ratner

Step 1. Dismiss evidence that contradicts your biases without addressing its substance.

Step 2. Label ethical concerns as "childish" when unable to refute them on merit.

Step 3. Resort to personal attacks rather than engaging with documented historical context.

Step 4. Invoke military experience to shield weak arguments from scrutiny.

Step 5. Use condescension as a substitute for substantive counterpoints.

Step 6. Characterize principled consistency ("killing civilians is bad") as naive rather than acknowledging ethical complexity.

[Lord Ratner]

12 minutes ago, Banzai said:

A Field Guide to Rhetorical Deflection by @Lord Ratner

Step 1. Dismiss evidence that contradicts your biases without addressing its substance.

Step 2. Label ethical concerns as "childish" when unable to refute them on merit.

Step 3. Resort to personal attacks rather than engaging with documented historical context.

Step 4. Invoke military experience to shield weak arguments from scrutiny.

Step 5. Use condescension as a substitute for substantive counterpoints.

Step 6. Characterize principled consistency ("killing civilians is bad") as naive rather than acknowledging ethical complexity.

1. Nothing was dismissed. A source was laughed at. Hell I'm still laughing at it. I even addressed the point about Netanyahu. Think, McFly.

2. I am able, simple unwilling. See below. I don't feel the need to explain why slavery is bad either. Grownups should know why already. 

3. The history is fine. The slogan "killing civilians is bad" is, as I said, childish, ignorant, and meaningless. You can have a stupid opinion without being stupid. I will say, however, that at this point I am starting to think he's stupid as well. You, however, just seem like another nsplayer. I guess there must always be one. 

4. Specifically the insanity of a military member simplifying collateral damage to "bad." I expect that of a 21 year old English major. Not an officer. 

5. Toughen up. There are stupid ideas. 

Also, Step 6? "Killing Civilians is Bad" is naive specifically because of the ethical complexity. 

If you have a point to make for once, by all means, let's hear it. But if you're going to make a stupid point that everyone within the community should already be completely familiar with, such as the aforementioned point on civilian death, don't expect a ton of effort dispelling it. 

[StoleIt]

UN Halves Its Estimate of Women and Children Killed in Gaza

It's also difficult to reduce casualties when Hamas completely subverts your tactics and uses them against you (example: Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza, Hamas Manual Calls for Hiding Bombs in Civilian Homes)

Is the IDF guilt free? Of course not. But I feel, just like we did during GWOT, they are trying to minimize civilian casualties to the max extent possible while their enemy wants to maximize damage to everyone, including their own people: "(Hamas)...justify the deaths of Palestinian civilians as a “necessary sacrifice” according to the messages".