Leo Gura

Because Israel is a "Western" nation and all the Arab nations are not. The US wants a Western foothold in the Middle East. Religious alignment is also a huge factor. Christians are more aligned with Jews than with Muslims. So in a sense this is a war of religions. The US also has a big population of wealthy powerful Jews who have outsize influence in US politics. Israel is also an important ally to the US for hunting down Arab terrorist networks. US and Israel probably share a lot of sensitive intelligence.

No, that underestimates how strategic and intelligent terrorists are. Hamas is very calculated in its strategy, it is not about random aimless violence. There are even quotes of Palestinian leadership saying stuff like: It is better to kill 1 Jew in the city where everyone can see it vs killing 10 Jews out in the desert where no one will see. The purpose of the violence is to create as much public attention as possible. Because they know they cannot kill all the Jews with terrorist attacks. They aren't stupid about that. Terrorism is a rational policy, not an irrational one.

Yeah, but the Soviets were spreading communism to Afghanistan. The Muslim locals did not want to live under a secular communist puppet regime. It is proper for Islamists to be in charge of Afghanistan. Most of the population are Islamist there. Soviet communism is out of place there. It was the Afghans' choice to fight for their independence from Soviet influence. Just like how Ukrainans choose now to resist Putin's influence. If Afghans wanted communism they could have just accepted it peacefully. But obviously that would have been a bad choice for them. Debunked?? It literally happened in dozens of nations. Communism was a global movement that spread like cancer, infecting dozens of nations like North Korea, Cuba, the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc. Lenin's whole thing was international communism, gaining a foothold in Russia and then spreading to cover the whole globe. That's what the whole Cold War was about. Stalin tried to inflitrate every nation he could with his commuist influence and stage communist revolutions across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Many of these revolutions failed, or were stopped with the help of capitialist powers.

That's really none of our business.

But China isn't invading anyone. And Taiwan is part of China. You can have a policy where the US does not interfere with any foreign nation unless that nation invades an internationally recognized nation, at which point the US will supply that nation with funds for its own defense. If China invades the Philippines then the US could intervene, otherwise the US does not need to interfere with China. This notion of US world hegemony simply cannot hold. Fundamentally it isn't fair. No one nation has sovereignty over the world. So a foreign policy based on that notion must ultimately fail. This is just a recognition that multipolarity is the natural and fair state of the world. You can't just bully everyone to align under you. It won't work and it breeds injustice, resentment, and hatred.

The US was fighting a Cold War against the spread of Soviet Communism. That was mostly done by funding local opposition. That was pretty smart strategy overall, given how disasterous communism was. I don't fault the CIA for that. The spread of communism was a major problem. It was spreading like a cancer. It's hard to give a general answer. But in general what you do is deescalate by not making aggressive moves, and very importantly you have to be open to genuinely hearing their perspective, you have to really want to understand their greivances, rather than just insisting that that you are good and they are evil. Once the other side feels heard there can be genuine compromise. This is exactly what Israel refuses to do.

That's actually not true. I just read a book about this. The CIA did not fund Al Queda. The CIA funded anti-communist local Afghans fighters. Al Queda and Bin Laden were self-funded and had no cooperation with Americans. Bin Laden was not a local, he just larped around the local Afghan fighters. Bin Laden had less than 100 fighters in Afghanistan while the local Afghan fighters were 100,000+. The CIA did quite a good job hunting after Bin Laden long before 9/11. The CIA understood the Bin Laden threat back in the mid 90s, long before 9/11. He was just hard to catch.

I doubt it. The CIA is actually pretty smart. They knew that invading Iraq was an insane idea. The heads in the CIA opposed the Iraq War. They were forced into it by Cheney and his minions.

I hope Americans are not stupid enough to put troops in the Middle East again.

But it has been successful in highlighting the injustice of how Israel treats Palestinians. Of course terrorism does backfire too.

I don't think that's true because most governments try to hide such things. Even the Nazis were not announcing their gas chambers to the world. They hid it. Torture and rape is also hidden and denied by most nations. So the purpose there is something else.

Netanyahu's whole plan was to circumvent negotiations with Palestinians by making business deals with the rest of the Arab world, thereby isolating and weakening Palestine. Oct 7th was done to let the world know that that's not acceptable. Netanyahu has been horny for the US to do a war with Iran for 25 years now.

That's not a question Walsh wants an answer for

I don't see that as so different.

That was the whole purpose of the Oct 7th attack. The #1 purpose of all terrorism is to raise global awareness to injustice which would otherwise go ignored and unrecognized. Terrorism is basically a marketing strategy.

I will soon add a bunch of new books to my book list about politics, terrorism, Zionism, Arab history, Middle East politics, and so on. A lot of basic reading is necessary to properly make sense of these issues.

They were pro-Palestine from the beginning, but after years of failed wars and efforts and stalemate they have mostly moved on to handle their own internal affairs. Pan-Arab sentiment has died down over the years as each nation prioritized its own prosperity and survival. But there is still massive grassroots support across the Arab world for Palestine. Especially after Oct 7th. The support is mostly from the streets vs from the palaces. The people in the palaces are too comfortable to risk a war with Israeal.

Explain how is it different?

That's what Bin Laden said. That's why Bin Laden wanted to overthrow some of those regimes, like Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia revoked Bin Laden's citizenship because he critcized them for being too friendly with the West.

@Emerald At your next ceremony, splash some Aya in the ol' cooch and let us know how that goes. For science!

You should notice that it's a very convenient, self-serving opinion though.

That's no different than European wars between Catholics and Protestants. Of course Arabs fight amongst themselves, because it is a huge region with many cultural and tribal differences.

Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion man.

According to who? You? Why should your view be the right one?

ISIS was just a response to the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. You should actually read why Arabs are fighting you, from their own mouths vs from Western media. Yes! Absolutely 9/11 and Yemen attacks were to free Palestinian land. Arab Spring was a grassroot Arab movement for more democratic local governance. Not much related to terrorism. Arabs want sovereingty over their historic and religious lands. That's all this is about. That's all Bin Laden wanted. The entire history of Islam is about building and unifying the entire Middle East under one religious order that follows Sharia Law. The reason why Arabs hate America is because America and West interfere in their internal politics to install secular autocratic leadership. They don't want secular West rule, they want Sharia Law.