Ned Lazarus in the Atlantic wrote an essay asking the question whether there was any alternative to a ground war in Gaza. I think not, and this is why:
Palestine is a region. It is not a state, not a country, and not an ethnic people group. It was promised to the descendants of Abraham both in Genesis and Exodus, and that promise is core to Israel's claim to the land and the fight against that claim. The result is the crucible of misery that is Palestine today, and in which Israel finds itself.
Over millennia it has been a place of passage and settlement for Jews, Arabs, Christians and others. It has been conquered, ruled, and lost by Phillistines, Persians, Assyrians, Romans, Ottomans and others. More recently the land, the people, and the conflict today reflect the outfall of British and European policy which lead to artificial and poorly defined borders, ill defined policies for governance, and displacement of people through proxy power struggles between the Hashemite rule in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. The result has been a vacuum of authority and leadership within the Arab population that has given them the PLO, Hezbollah, and now Hamas which has neutered the Palestinian Authorities ability to govern Gaza. Splinter terrorist groups spawned from the PLO and the Black September Jordanian conflict are now embedded in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. They are a threat to both Israel and their Arab neighbors. Since the 2006 Palestinian elections factional infighting between Fatah and Hamas has upended all potential peace settlement negotiations not only offered by Israel, but brokered through international diplomacy involving both the west, the arab world, and the UN. Both Jordan and Egypt have no interest in destabilizing their governments through allowing immigration or conferring citizenship to stateless Palestinian arabs, as they fear those actions would be a conduit for Hamas and other groups to expand and foment uprisings against both Jordan and Egypt. To that end, Israel is literally stuck in the middle figuratively and literally. Politically the way forward to peace can only happen through further negotiations and treaty extensions with Jordan and Egypt both who play a vital role in any settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel must accept that it will require removal and resettlement of Israelis currently living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Those settlements only comprise 15% of the Jewish West Bank population. The expansion of settlements has not added to Israel's security, but rather has been a political move that destabilizes the situation and stretches the capacity of the IDF to protect those residents. Relocating these settlements would not destabilize the Jewish west bank population, which currently is 77% Palestinian Arab, but would bridge the chasm of conflict and address the Palestinian presence and acknolwedge support for a two state solution. In exchange Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, and Israel must cooperate to begin a new era that would lead to security for Israel, safety and the end of Hamas oppression of arabs in Palestine, and a pathway for restoration of Gazan Arab citizenship to the stateless residents in Gaza. Only Jordan and Egypt can take the lead to do this. Israel can be a partner, but in the end, peace is primarily an Arab solution. Without this vision there is no hope for peace that would replace hopelessness with a new era of economic development and improvement in wealth, health, and education for the West Bank and Gaza.
None of this is possible unless Hamas is eliminated. There is no other alternative.
Support of allies (Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, European countries dependent upon Middle Eastern oil, our energy requirements).
There is and was an international system opposed by those who oppose us, maintained in part by our military power. As Stalin said, how many divisions does the Pope have. To ascribe foreign policy to a cabal of profiteering warmonger is an idealistic and narrow vision.
I’ve been affected big time by the Bari Weiss interview of Condoleezza Rice.
I can’t seem to shake free of it!
I think it’s Condi’s intelligence and experience. Her sober and thoughtful analysis. But, more than anything else, it’s her grace. She declines to name-call, point fingers, hyperventilate.
When asked about Jake Sullivan’s remarks that the Middle East is quieter than it’s been in decades, know what she said?
Bari - thanks for all your great reporting during the last week. As Churchill said our institutional leaders take great risk by “stroking the Tiger hoping it will turn into kittens”.
I have to disagree with Condi on the flag nomination issue. She says Tuberville is putting abortion politics over military readiness, but the same could be said about the administration, especially if he sincerely just wants a return to the status quo ante as of June 2022. That relates to the manning shortfall she mentioned next: I think part of that may be due to prospective recruits getting the impression that right now the Current Thing is more important than the mission.
Great interview, Condi addresses nuances which don’t get reported much. Frankly, we could use more people with the statecraft skills she articulates. Thanks, Bari.
Condoleeza Rice is no one to admire. The Bush era neocons are the reason behind thousands of dead soldiers and over a million dead Middle Eastern lives. If anything, we should conclude that fighting barbarism with barbarism wasn’t the best solution and very much affected US foreign policy legitimacy throughout the world. I feel like the same is going to happen for Israel.
From Raziel: "I am Jewish and support Israel, but I am sorry Bari, getting Condoleezza Rice or any one else from Bush Jr administration is not helping to build trust for anything."
Listen to Condoleezza Rice's interview. The debacle of Iraq2 was also a failure of the Congress. It was a failure of a loyal opposition to question the narrative from the Bush Administration. It was a failure of the combined power elite of the United States. I was living in Tokyo at the time and had dinner with a Frenchman who, as a statistician worked on the French nuclear program, he had a business in Japan which engaged in market analysis. He was deeply critical of the US decision to invade Iraq, calling Bush stupid, etc. I took the position that the US as a world power had the obligation to pursue its interests. With the next breath, I noted that if I were Osama bin Landen I would pray that the US take the bate. This was obviously a trap.
I hope that Israel does not fall into a similar trap. I hope that with Israel's fight for its very existence it does not succumb to the muddled thinking of the Bush2 administration. I would hope that Israel also wages a psyops war which presents HAMAS as a tool of Iran and a malignant parasite of the ambitions of the Palestinians. For that is what HAMAS truly is.
The movement of so many Palestinians to the south of Gaza is a clear signal of the lack of solidarity with HAMAS. These people need aid and assistance. Certainly there will be provocateurs and HAMAS members in that migration to the South; however, not acting impulsively and honoring the life of the majority of Palestinians will ultimately defeat HAMAS. HAMAS with its extreme vision for Palestine will never lead to peace and stability.
Comments seem pretty much as usual, with exception of the passions of the current Israel/Gaza morass driving some commentary madness. You want serious insanity, try the “Notes” feature it is stupid beyond belief.
I certainly don't agree with all of Condi Rice's comments (especially about Ukraine) or prior actions, but this was a good conversation with an intelligent and knowledgeable woman. Bari conducted a strong interview that included many important issues.
I think Samuel Huntington was very prescient when he proposed that with the end to the Cold War, further conflict would not be between nation states within the same civilization (European history in a nutshell) but between civilizations. The West has developed a process of mitigating excesses of violence. This has been honed over centuries and requires mechanisms which provide wealth and opportunity to as many of its citizens as possible. At this time, this mitigation is largely within its own civilization though with the end of WW2 it spread to Eastern/Central Europe, Japan and parts of Asia as well. Sinic and Orthodox civilization propose that they are under attack from the West. In part this is true, but the "attack" is not military, it is oriented towards rules of governance. Islamic civilization also has difficulty with the West because again the "attack" stresses governance over the force of will.
HAMAS has employed very old tools of trade craft which have been well discussed in this thread. Their strategy is transparent and intended to ensure their survival. Their game is strictly zero-sum. The zero-sum game has dominated human existence since the emergence of civilization and the creation of large communities of humans. The solutions to nettlesome problems have always rested with war. The conclusion of WW2 brought about the potential for a different path. The path is being criticized as colonialism, US hegemony, and the evils of Capitalism. If the US is an empire then it is different from previous ones. The US, instead of immiserating its vassal states tends to run trade deficits with them. It enriches them.
Israel is a part of Western civilization and is under attack just as Western Civilization has been under attack. The Ukraine has, similar to Poland and parts of Eastern Europe, been looking to the West. What does it matter if the Ukraine is corrupt? Corruption exists in all civilizations, the question is one of degree. This does not mean that the Ukraine cannot realize joining the EU.
In many respects, Ukraine and Israel are part of the continuous conflict between the power elites of competing civilizations. One of the issues we face is that there are factions within the US power elite who would be more that happy to set up an autocratic and authoritarian regime here in the US. Consider it as a further embracing of one of the foundational economic models of the United States: The Plantation. This trend began with Ronald Reagan and the Southern Strategy of the GOP. It has come to full fruition with the current dysfunction of our Congress. It is a Royalist solution to the human condition. Such a solution embraces concentration of power in as few hands as possible, controlling human behavior by suppressing any criticism or descent, and the concentration of wealth based on a devaluation of labor. To maintain Western civilization, this too must be opposed. Absolutism of any stripe is equally pernicious. Its model is not dissimilar to the model followed by HAMAS.
Support of Israel remains essential. Opposing the fatuous rhetoric of the so-called Left is necessary. The West has engaged in sufficient self-criticism and is taking steps to deal with just criticism. Hopefully, Israel will not act solely alone and repeat the mistakes of the US after 9/11. The mass movement of Palestinians to the south of Gaza indicates that the control of HAMAS is less than absolute. There needs to be aid for what could evolve into a worsening humanitarian crisis. The extremists within Israel will hopefully be effectively opposed by more moderate elements. Israel will hopefully work with its allies towards the long term irrelevance of HAMAS. How so? Being demonstrating the absence of a tenable solution from HAMAS.
The destruction of HAMAS will be a long campaign. As much as anything, it needs to be discredited and shown for the pernicious force that it is. Its primary objective is continued chaos in pursuit of a goal that is unfeasible. The same applies to Hezbollah.
Wow, so much hate for Rice. How about focusing on what she actually said in the interview, which I found insightful and on target about the *current* situation? What she did or didn’t do under Bush is not the point of the interview, other than a reference point for her previous foreign policy experience. I love all the Monday morning quarterbacking from a bunch of people who never had to make life and death decisions.
You say that as if the Bush administration made an accdental bad decision in Iraq, rather than deciding in Jan 2001 to invade it eventually and then using the War on Terror as a way to hype the people up in support.
The UN set up a special inspection force, led by Brix who was no fan of Hussein, and they had gone in in late 2002 and announced they found nothing. It was not the case that we didnt know there were no WMDs. It was the case that Bush and cronies could construct a logic how there might be anyway to get what they always wanted to do.
A little off topic, but I just read daily wire article about American universities supporting Hamas. My city is home to what is considered “the most antisemitic campus in the USA”; SF State. I wonder if the pro-Palestinian support is connected to Equity DEI “sympathy for brown people” + censorship that silences the pro-Israel voices.
I think you’re on to something. When color is one’s primary moral metric, it can get one into some uncomfortable moral situations. That many are oblivious to this, speaks to their ignorance or hatefulness.
Hmmm. In thinking about your comment something occurred to me. I’m going to take this even more off topic.
It appears to me that progressives adhere to a set of ‘truths’. One being, roughly put, light skinned people oppress darker skinned people. That is not a principle. It’s not a moral rubric that can help one navigate through grey areas. It’s boolean: light skin = oppressors; dark skin = oppressed.
Once you buy into the ‘truth’ you have to do mental gymnastics when confronted with things like 10/7. In my opinion, it can lead one to become the very thing they profess to hate.
What, pray tell, is NEW about the usual Axis of Evil. China, Russia, Iran and their client armies.
Ned Lazarus in the Atlantic wrote an essay asking the question whether there was any alternative to a ground war in Gaza. I think not, and this is why:
Palestine is a region. It is not a state, not a country, and not an ethnic people group. It was promised to the descendants of Abraham both in Genesis and Exodus, and that promise is core to Israel's claim to the land and the fight against that claim. The result is the crucible of misery that is Palestine today, and in which Israel finds itself.
Over millennia it has been a place of passage and settlement for Jews, Arabs, Christians and others. It has been conquered, ruled, and lost by Phillistines, Persians, Assyrians, Romans, Ottomans and others. More recently the land, the people, and the conflict today reflect the outfall of British and European policy which lead to artificial and poorly defined borders, ill defined policies for governance, and displacement of people through proxy power struggles between the Hashemite rule in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. The result has been a vacuum of authority and leadership within the Arab population that has given them the PLO, Hezbollah, and now Hamas which has neutered the Palestinian Authorities ability to govern Gaza. Splinter terrorist groups spawned from the PLO and the Black September Jordanian conflict are now embedded in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. They are a threat to both Israel and their Arab neighbors. Since the 2006 Palestinian elections factional infighting between Fatah and Hamas has upended all potential peace settlement negotiations not only offered by Israel, but brokered through international diplomacy involving both the west, the arab world, and the UN. Both Jordan and Egypt have no interest in destabilizing their governments through allowing immigration or conferring citizenship to stateless Palestinian arabs, as they fear those actions would be a conduit for Hamas and other groups to expand and foment uprisings against both Jordan and Egypt. To that end, Israel is literally stuck in the middle figuratively and literally. Politically the way forward to peace can only happen through further negotiations and treaty extensions with Jordan and Egypt both who play a vital role in any settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel must accept that it will require removal and resettlement of Israelis currently living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. Those settlements only comprise 15% of the Jewish West Bank population. The expansion of settlements has not added to Israel's security, but rather has been a political move that destabilizes the situation and stretches the capacity of the IDF to protect those residents. Relocating these settlements would not destabilize the Jewish west bank population, which currently is 77% Palestinian Arab, but would bridge the chasm of conflict and address the Palestinian presence and acknolwedge support for a two state solution. In exchange Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, and Israel must cooperate to begin a new era that would lead to security for Israel, safety and the end of Hamas oppression of arabs in Palestine, and a pathway for restoration of Gazan Arab citizenship to the stateless residents in Gaza. Only Jordan and Egypt can take the lead to do this. Israel can be a partner, but in the end, peace is primarily an Arab solution. Without this vision there is no hope for peace that would replace hopelessness with a new era of economic development and improvement in wealth, health, and education for the West Bank and Gaza.
None of this is possible unless Hamas is eliminated. There is no other alternative.
Support of allies (Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, European countries dependent upon Middle Eastern oil, our energy requirements).
There is and was an international system opposed by those who oppose us, maintained in part by our military power. As Stalin said, how many divisions does the Pope have. To ascribe foreign policy to a cabal of profiteering warmonger is an idealistic and narrow vision.
I’ve been affected big time by the Bari Weiss interview of Condoleezza Rice.
I can’t seem to shake free of it!
I think it’s Condi’s intelligence and experience. Her sober and thoughtful analysis. But, more than anything else, it’s her grace. She declines to name-call, point fingers, hyperventilate.
When asked about Jake Sullivan’s remarks that the Middle East is quieter than it’s been in decades, know what she said?
“I was saying the same thing.”
Makes me homesick for days we once had.
Bari - thanks for all your great reporting during the last week. As Churchill said our institutional leaders take great risk by “stroking the Tiger hoping it will turn into kittens”.
I have to disagree with Condi on the flag nomination issue. She says Tuberville is putting abortion politics over military readiness, but the same could be said about the administration, especially if he sincerely just wants a return to the status quo ante as of June 2022. That relates to the manning shortfall she mentioned next: I think part of that may be due to prospective recruits getting the impression that right now the Current Thing is more important than the mission.
Great interview, Condi addresses nuances which don’t get reported much. Frankly, we could use more people with the statecraft skills she articulates. Thanks, Bari.
This was a good interview. I suggest people listen first
Condoleeza Rice is no one to admire. The Bush era neocons are the reason behind thousands of dead soldiers and over a million dead Middle Eastern lives. If anything, we should conclude that fighting barbarism with barbarism wasn’t the best solution and very much affected US foreign policy legitimacy throughout the world. I feel like the same is going to happen for Israel.
From Raziel: "I am Jewish and support Israel, but I am sorry Bari, getting Condoleezza Rice or any one else from Bush Jr administration is not helping to build trust for anything."
Listen to Condoleezza Rice's interview. The debacle of Iraq2 was also a failure of the Congress. It was a failure of a loyal opposition to question the narrative from the Bush Administration. It was a failure of the combined power elite of the United States. I was living in Tokyo at the time and had dinner with a Frenchman who, as a statistician worked on the French nuclear program, he had a business in Japan which engaged in market analysis. He was deeply critical of the US decision to invade Iraq, calling Bush stupid, etc. I took the position that the US as a world power had the obligation to pursue its interests. With the next breath, I noted that if I were Osama bin Landen I would pray that the US take the bate. This was obviously a trap.
I hope that Israel does not fall into a similar trap. I hope that with Israel's fight for its very existence it does not succumb to the muddled thinking of the Bush2 administration. I would hope that Israel also wages a psyops war which presents HAMAS as a tool of Iran and a malignant parasite of the ambitions of the Palestinians. For that is what HAMAS truly is.
The movement of so many Palestinians to the south of Gaza is a clear signal of the lack of solidarity with HAMAS. These people need aid and assistance. Certainly there will be provocateurs and HAMAS members in that migration to the South; however, not acting impulsively and honoring the life of the majority of Palestinians will ultimately defeat HAMAS. HAMAS with its extreme vision for Palestine will never lead to peace and stability.
Anyone else noticing a deterioration in commentariat ?
Comments seem pretty much as usual, with exception of the passions of the current Israel/Gaza morass driving some commentary madness. You want serious insanity, try the “Notes” feature it is stupid beyond belief.
I certainly don't agree with all of Condi Rice's comments (especially about Ukraine) or prior actions, but this was a good conversation with an intelligent and knowledgeable woman. Bari conducted a strong interview that included many important issues.
We have many conflations here.
Israel and Ukraine are caught in the same trap.
I think Samuel Huntington was very prescient when he proposed that with the end to the Cold War, further conflict would not be between nation states within the same civilization (European history in a nutshell) but between civilizations. The West has developed a process of mitigating excesses of violence. This has been honed over centuries and requires mechanisms which provide wealth and opportunity to as many of its citizens as possible. At this time, this mitigation is largely within its own civilization though with the end of WW2 it spread to Eastern/Central Europe, Japan and parts of Asia as well. Sinic and Orthodox civilization propose that they are under attack from the West. In part this is true, but the "attack" is not military, it is oriented towards rules of governance. Islamic civilization also has difficulty with the West because again the "attack" stresses governance over the force of will.
HAMAS has employed very old tools of trade craft which have been well discussed in this thread. Their strategy is transparent and intended to ensure their survival. Their game is strictly zero-sum. The zero-sum game has dominated human existence since the emergence of civilization and the creation of large communities of humans. The solutions to nettlesome problems have always rested with war. The conclusion of WW2 brought about the potential for a different path. The path is being criticized as colonialism, US hegemony, and the evils of Capitalism. If the US is an empire then it is different from previous ones. The US, instead of immiserating its vassal states tends to run trade deficits with them. It enriches them.
Israel is a part of Western civilization and is under attack just as Western Civilization has been under attack. The Ukraine has, similar to Poland and parts of Eastern Europe, been looking to the West. What does it matter if the Ukraine is corrupt? Corruption exists in all civilizations, the question is one of degree. This does not mean that the Ukraine cannot realize joining the EU.
In many respects, Ukraine and Israel are part of the continuous conflict between the power elites of competing civilizations. One of the issues we face is that there are factions within the US power elite who would be more that happy to set up an autocratic and authoritarian regime here in the US. Consider it as a further embracing of one of the foundational economic models of the United States: The Plantation. This trend began with Ronald Reagan and the Southern Strategy of the GOP. It has come to full fruition with the current dysfunction of our Congress. It is a Royalist solution to the human condition. Such a solution embraces concentration of power in as few hands as possible, controlling human behavior by suppressing any criticism or descent, and the concentration of wealth based on a devaluation of labor. To maintain Western civilization, this too must be opposed. Absolutism of any stripe is equally pernicious. Its model is not dissimilar to the model followed by HAMAS.
Support of Israel remains essential. Opposing the fatuous rhetoric of the so-called Left is necessary. The West has engaged in sufficient self-criticism and is taking steps to deal with just criticism. Hopefully, Israel will not act solely alone and repeat the mistakes of the US after 9/11. The mass movement of Palestinians to the south of Gaza indicates that the control of HAMAS is less than absolute. There needs to be aid for what could evolve into a worsening humanitarian crisis. The extremists within Israel will hopefully be effectively opposed by more moderate elements. Israel will hopefully work with its allies towards the long term irrelevance of HAMAS. How so? Being demonstrating the absence of a tenable solution from HAMAS.
The destruction of HAMAS will be a long campaign. As much as anything, it needs to be discredited and shown for the pernicious force that it is. Its primary objective is continued chaos in pursuit of a goal that is unfeasible. The same applies to Hezbollah.
Wow, so much hate for Rice. How about focusing on what she actually said in the interview, which I found insightful and on target about the *current* situation? What she did or didn’t do under Bush is not the point of the interview, other than a reference point for her previous foreign policy experience. I love all the Monday morning quarterbacking from a bunch of people who never had to make life and death decisions.
You say that as if the Bush administration made an accdental bad decision in Iraq, rather than deciding in Jan 2001 to invade it eventually and then using the War on Terror as a way to hype the people up in support.
The UN set up a special inspection force, led by Brix who was no fan of Hussein, and they had gone in in late 2002 and announced they found nothing. It was not the case that we didnt know there were no WMDs. It was the case that Bush and cronies could construct a logic how there might be anyway to get what they always wanted to do.
Good to see Condaleeza Rice speaking, an intelligent and thoughtful woman.
A little off topic, but I just read daily wire article about American universities supporting Hamas. My city is home to what is considered “the most antisemitic campus in the USA”; SF State. I wonder if the pro-Palestinian support is connected to Equity DEI “sympathy for brown people” + censorship that silences the pro-Israel voices.
I think you’re on to something. When color is one’s primary moral metric, it can get one into some uncomfortable moral situations. That many are oblivious to this, speaks to their ignorance or hatefulness.
Hmmm. In thinking about your comment something occurred to me. I’m going to take this even more off topic.
It appears to me that progressives adhere to a set of ‘truths’. One being, roughly put, light skinned people oppress darker skinned people. That is not a principle. It’s not a moral rubric that can help one navigate through grey areas. It’s boolean: light skin = oppressors; dark skin = oppressed.
Once you buy into the ‘truth’ you have to do mental gymnastics when confronted with things like 10/7. In my opinion, it can lead one to become the very thing they profess to hate.