A serious red line has been crossed: America’s democratic freedoms, expansive on paper, will simply not tolerate serious dissent on the U.S.–Israel relationship. As criticisms of Israel have become more mainstream, the attempt to shut them down entirely has become more extreme.
In pursuit of this blank-check relationship with an Israeli government that is becoming ever-more intransigent with each passing year, pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away. And, if the recent campus crackdowns are any indication, these forces are winning their battle.
With tens of thousands of Palestinians left dead and the Israeli assault on Gaza ongoing, the U.S. protests targeting university ties with Israel over the last month — voluble and outspoken — have been overwhelmingly nonviolent.
Yet these nonviolent protests have met with the full brutal force of the U.S. security state. Dispersing the protest encampments, police have viciously beaten protesters, fired rubber bullets, and enveloped students in dense clouds of tear gas.
It was unfortunately fruitless. That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters. They just vilify them in the news and call the police. Now we know they don’t even flinch at an insurrection. They may even call you a patriot.
The best part was in 2006 when Democrats retook congress and demonstrated that they were just as much a rubber stamp for war as Republicans had been.
The US pulled out of Iraq in 2007.
And then stayed until 2011.
It took a while to hand full control back to their government after having destroyed and compromised so much of their nation.
Making up excuses after the fact doesn’t change what it was at the time.
It’s not an excuse. Bush knocked them back to the Stone Age and Halliburton got the contract to rebuild the nation while the US military supplemented their system of order. We created the problem.
We created the problem and continued to hang out and make it worse till we effectively were kicked out by the Iraqi govt that was supposedly “on our side.”
It’s an excuse. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and when your puppet says “nah y’all need to get the duck outta here” you done fucked up.
It would have been great if in 2007 when we called it, if instead of continuing to worsen the situation rebuilding actually occurred, maybe things would be different. But they aren’t.
I don’t need you gaslighting me about something I saw unfold.
Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the Iraq war. They made encouraging noises about stopping, but they did not get out in 2007 like you lied. They took until 2011, and if they had a Republican president to capitulate to at the time, they would have kept it going longer.
I distinctly remember the way liberals enthusiastically villified antifa when they were the only ones willing to throw down with the neo-nazis and their police protectors in the streets a few years ago. Stop pretending that liberals’ overtly fascist cousins are the only anti-democratic faction in the US political establishment.