CleverOleg

I’ll be honest I know more centrist normie republicans than I do MAGA chuds and the centrists I know are not in favor of it either. The only person I know who is in his 70s, racist as fuck, and is a Christian Zionist so there you go

I’m… not sure about that. The MAGA folks I know are against this. They are not blaming Trump, they’re just like “I don’t think it’s a good idea”.

Watching Hasan right now, he had the feeds on and showed nothing, could be the military censorship is really clamping down hard

MARG BAR AMRIKA!!!

I am having flashbacks to 2003. If you are not old enough or not American… I wish I could be more articulate on this. It’s a feeling of foreboding because events are in motion and there is nothing in the universe that can or will stop it. From the perspective of the mainstream media and US politicians, it’s like they’ve learned nothing. Everyone just agrees “this is what we have to do”, and there is no questioning how we move forward.

But one thing is very, very different; and this is what I’m hanging my hopes on. The bloodlust from the American people just isn’t there like it was in 2003. I know there were some people who were against it but really, pretty much everyone was. All the Barbaras and Debbies (as Hasan says) were on board. All your “apolitical” folks were for it. Everyone had an opinion that was all of 3 minutes old and it was always the company line. The manufacturing consent machine said it had to be done, and the people bought it.

Before Iraq, Americans viewed actual hot, boots-on-the-ground war in the way we view sanctions today: why not do it, it’s easy our military is great we’ll be in and out easy. Saddam is bad and scary and maybe he has WMDs and maybe he doesn’t but probably a good idea to invade, just to be sure. I do think the one enduring legacy of Iraq on the American psyche is that we are now snake bitten on invading other countries (this is ofc a good thing).

That is not the case at all right now, the people don’t buy it, and honestly things could not be more different. No one wants intervention. Obviously what the people want won’t stop this train if it’s hell bent on attacking Iran, but I do think it’s something.

The population of Israel that’s made up post-1991 Russian emigres is huge.

Tim Kaine Moves to Force War Powers Vote to Prevent Trump From Attacking Iran

Warning against "another endless conflict" in the Middle East, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from attacking Iran without congressional debate and authorization.

Given its status as a privileged resolution, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate will be forced to swiftly consider and vote on the measure, which would require "any hostilities with Iran" to be "explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force."

"It is not in our national security interest to get into a war with Iran unless that war is absolutely necessary to defend the United States," Kaine said in a statement. "I am deeply concerned that the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran could quickly pull the United States into another endless conflict."

"The American people have no interest in sending servicemembers to fight another forever war in the Middle East," said Kaine. "This resolution will ensure that if we decide to place our nation's men and women in uniform into harm's way, we will have a debate and vote on it in Congress."

While I can’t blame anyone for thinking that any congressional vote on attacking Iran would probably go down the same way it did for Iraq in 2003, as someone who was there… I wouldn’t be so sure. In 2003, Americans viewed actual war more like how we think of sanctions today: sure, why not, it won’t really cost us anything. Not to mention there was so much energy towards deposing Saddam and making sure he didn’t have WMDs, and that energy is absolutely not there right now for Iran. AIPAC will of course throw the kitchen sink at this but I think quite a few lawmakers are going to think long and hard about signing their name to what will undoubtedly be a long and costly war that is very likely to end in embarrassment for the US.

But I don’t think handing over US dollars can replace the production and circulation of value. Sending dollars can help the Israeli state import weapons, energy, food, etc… but none of this will stop capitalism in Israel from seizing up. Could the Israeli state completely put the capitalists under their thumb and basically do command economy capitalism? Maybe, but I don’t know if Israel is capable of that from a material standpoint. Iran, which already has some aspects of a command economy IIRC, may have an easier time. But I also don’t think the Iranian economy is shut down quite to the extent that the Israeli economy is.

Personally I don’t think this leads to the Israeli economy collapsing, not immediately anyway. I just think it means the Israeli people will be pushed out of their bunkers and back to work.

I don’t disagree.

My understanding is that Israel, as a nation, has completely shut down economically. No one is working, everyone is in bunkers and safe rooms. IF this is true, this is the most unsustainable aspect of the war. It cannot continue for much longer. Israel, as a much a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as any western nation, will either have to sue for peace or force people out of the bunkers and back to work under fire.

David Harvey defines capitalism as “value in motion”. Motion is the process of producing something, selling it, then taking the proceeds and investing it in more production. Marx explicitly proves this at the end of volume 2 of Capital but really, the idea that capitalism must always be in motion and always be expanding saturates his works. Motion is the beating heart of capitalism. It’s not that a country can’t survive because there’s no economic activity. Under other economic systems yes, but the lack motion in capitalism will kill it.

In the US, we were always going to just let COVID rip. One reason is because neoliberalism has hollowed out the state’s ability to respond to crises. But just as much as that, capitalists cannot let everyone just stay home, even if the state reimbursed their losses.

I don’t think can go on for many more days, much less weeks. I expect we’ll hear stories about how Israelis need to “get back to work” to show Iran they’re not scared or whatever. But even Israelis are not above the whims of capital.

Yeah, the Russia/Israel relationship is interesting. I read in The Shock Doctrine recently that by the early 2000s, Russian emigres from the former USSR who had come only after 1991 comprised between 15-20% of the population of Israel (or maybe just of the Israeli Jewish population, I don’t recall at the moment). Russian is the third most common language spoken amongst Israeli Jews after Hebrew and English. Israel is very firmly enmeshed in the western security complex but at the same time there seems to be a limit to how much against Israel Putin will/can be given this large Russian population.

(As an aside, in that book Klein posits that it was this large influx of former Soviet citizens escaping the desperation of the 90s that helped allow Israel to be less reliant on cheap Palestinian labor, thus allowing them to act even more genocidal than before. It’s an interesting theory, something I’m trying to look more into).

I wonder what the current military trade status is between Russia and Israel, if it exists at all.