"Soon enough the Americans will tell the Israelis to stop."
What makes you so sure? Especially as the Israeli tail has such influence over the American dog.
Anyway, it is obvious that Hezbollah doesn't want to join the fight. Soon they may not have a choice, as Israeli hotheads will demand that the West Bank be settled, sonto speak, once a…
"Soon enough the Americans will tell the Israelis to stop."
What makes you so sure? Especially as the Israeli tail has such influence over the American dog.
Anyway, it is obvious that Hezbollah doesn't want to join the fight. Soon they may not have a choice, as Israeli hotheads will demand that the West Bank be settled, sonto speak, once and for all.
The Gilets Jaunes failed because they failed to take into account V.I. Lenin's teachings on power and how it is taken. I am not a Marxist-Leninist, but Lenin understood some things clearly and without sentiment.
I tend to agree but I'm also wondering what incentive there is to stop. Bibi is finished electorally after this so who cares if they Handmaid's Tale him in a color revolution? America also isn't going to remove its ships
This isn't to say they won't, I believe they will, I am just wondering what it is that would actually make them stop if the operation doesn't have massive Israeli casualties
The latter is bound to result in a regional intervention. The former just sets up another repeat X years down the road. All in all, I expect the former.
You are correct Sir, anything less than the destruction of Gaza , er sorry HAMAS will be a repeat, indeed victory for HAMAS by merely surviving.
Finishing the job means outcry, and possibly regional intervention- here I must quibble.
What regional intervention?
???
Israel is a nuclear power, also a powerful conventional military when not asleep, and has large foreign reserves of $200B on a $500B GDP. Who can intervene?
And they don’t want to intervene.
The other Arabs despise the Palestinians.
If it goes off the lead story and slow grind in background then it happens and people have already lost interest. We’ll be 3 hyped crises along and HAMAS a footnote in a year.
Keeping in mind the 2024 election is nearly upon us !!
not too mention the fine Turkish drone industry may have a partner, then there’s the client state of Azerbaijan that just used a lot of Israeli drones to gobble up part of Armenia (of sorts).
Col Macgregor has a fine mind but ...no... and if it happens it’s madness to no effect but a breach with Israel and the USA.
Turkey can’t march to Israel except through Syria, that leaves air/naval cosmetic gestures.
Any Turkish serious intervention would have the more long-sighted crowd in Tehran contemplating how best to prop up Israel.
Since the Bronze Age Western Asia has been contested by the power controlling Anatolia and the power controlling the Iranian plateau. Seeing Turkey consolidate a leading position in the Levant is not what Tehran wants. Religion is one thing but enduring realities another.
McGregor didn't spell it out, but it's implied the Turks would rumble through Syria. As if Erdogan wants to revive the Ottoman empire despite being a member of NATO.
I suppose Hez may jump in if things go south too far in Gaza. Nasrullah has said that they will if Hamas is in danger of going under. Impossible to assess from the outside how Hamas is faring. 2 opposing narratives (as usual...cf. the Ukraine war). "The other Arabs despise the Palestinians" is a meme, but I haven't seen any supporting evidence.
War imposes risks. Rhetorical co-belligerency impresses the ladies and the young which is more than enough for the regional governments. No sane party risks real injury (let alone defeat) for allies as unreliable and as treacherous as the Palestinians. The lessons learnt from Palestinian behaviour in Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait remain relevant.
Also the prospect of a future Palestinian state emboldened by any perceived successes by Hamas secretly horrifies the region. Cairo, Amman, Damascus can all live with Netanyahu...they are not in a hurry to find out how they'd fare with a genuinely independent Palestinian state of any kind.
Gaza had the opportunity to be the Singapore of the Eastern Mediterranean...they chose Resistance Inc. instead. A people who make choices like that are simply not worth sacrificing for.
They don’t need the bennies. Most of the Bennies go to US weapons contractors, like Raytheon for Iron Dome* interceptors. Egypt needs the bennies, Saudi needs Uncle Sam, Israel only needs not to be rogue nation. Moving slowly it can, while keeping Israeli casualties down, always an issue.
* Had Uncle Sam not made Israel give up the strategic depth (distance) in Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank they wouldn’t need Iron Dome.
Israel is a stick we beat cheap oil out of the Arabs with, the Palestinians are a stick the Arabs use to beat the Jews.
As we don’t need the oil anymore, we’re not stuck in the Middle East. We have the option to leave and ... we were with the Abraham accords getting closer.
The world has changed with fracking combined with our disgust at our own 🇺🇸Imperialism.
We’re 🇺🇸 contracting. The Palestinians are a leftover legacy account from the Cold War.
They mean nothing to us, and refuse to let peace happen even when defeated.
"The Palestinians are a leftover legacy account from the Cold War."
You got it in one. The national security state was bedded down in time to play games over partition in 1948 and, in a sense, they played them very well indeed.
The US did not drive the Brits out of the Middle East entirely, but since Suez Westminster has been loyal to a fault.
The US managed to keep Israel from joining the Soviet bloc (perhaps with help from false intelligence fed to Stalin via Philby...just a suspicion I have concerning the reach of Allen Dulles).
The US limited Soviet gains in the Middle East to Egypt under Nasser and Syria, Iraq and Libya. The US kept both Turkey and Greece within NATO.
Above all else Washington used its relationship with the Sa'udis and Iranians to establish the petrodollar...a goose that has been laying golden eggs ever since. And I have not even mentioned the arms market...
Uncle Sam has done very well in the Middle East over all. The rubble of Gaza distresses some, but the trust funds of the radicals will do well enough from fracking regardless of all else. Whatever self-disgust Americans might feel over imperialism should be savoured by the blue-haired cohort alone. The only essential item of business now is securing well-being at home and that will require dismantling the Resistance Inc. franchises in North America and managing immigration with a degree of realism.
I never said that the US Zionist lobby was discrete. It is anything but. I was making a point about lobbyists in general. I should have made myself clearer.
I have had experience dealing with professional lobbyists and it is a wilderness of mirrors. Few lobbyists have much influence and only a tiny number have power. Most are go-betweens rather than players, many are grifters, crisis actors paid to play a role. But everyone talks the industry up. The bullshitting is indescribable. The lobbyists who have something akin to power are the ones who represent multinationals or oligarchs with serious Deep State connections. They are very discrete.
It depends who the client is. Peak-level players like multinationals can use the prospect of eventual enrichment to secure compliance. The prospect of risking future opportunities or being shut out of the right networks horrifies politicians. The demonstration effect of a former colleague or a rival getting a plum position is more than enough to secure attention or a degree of compliance.
Bribes are for chumps. But loans on super-favourable terms (especially if made to a relative) are not bribes. Property traded at concessional rates. Book deals are great...publishers can sell an entire run to a single customer without having to publicise the identity of the customer. Internships for the children.
Reputation is often enough. A friend once sat next to a lobbyist (the principal in a company with which I had dealt) on a long train trip and listened in on a conversation the lobbyist was having with a junior politician who later became very senior indeed. He was giving the youngster orders. The lobbyist could do this because he was working for a truly global player and the lobbyist is himself the protege of an apex-level oligarch whose goodwill is greatly valued.
No surprises there. Self-funded retirees (the ones who really count) are highly motivated to defend their patch, always vote and hold grudges. Wise politicians pay careful attention to older constituents.
Militarily, Israel does need constant re-supply to wage this level of warfare. So the US could force a stand-down. I cannot imagine Blinken doing so, however, and Biden is an aw shucks gladhandler. Didn't have iti n him even before senility
I think not. Not strong enough to tell Israel to lay down and die, moreover this “end the war” means only the Israelis ceasefire and HAMAS/Gaza/Palestinians do not. That’s not ending the war.
Israel only needs America to not making it a rogue nation (sanctions).
Israel does not need the $3B , nor even the $14B that is going to Raytheon for Iron Dome interceptors- it only needs the damn Iron Dome because America made it surrender lands around it that are used to launch missiles. When Israel had Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon that land wasn’t used to launch missiles.
Ending the war means the destruction of one or the other.
That's as far back as I can remember. Told Israeli PM Begin he wanted the shelling to stop - and it did. Israel is a rottweiler that Uncle Sam has on a leash, but is always slow to pull the dog off when it's mauling someone.
That's not how the world sees it. Israel is given more latitude to commit war crimes with American weapons. A dog owner is responsible for their dog's actions. America is complicit.
Definition: A wasting asset is one that declines in value over time.
At this time and this can and probably will change over time, at this point in time the asset is already wasted away in military terms.
There's no way for Joe Biden or the Regime in DC to reverse the wasting of the military assets, nor rebuild in less than a decade military industrial capacity.
THEY cannot do this, although it absolutely CAN be done and very rapidly.
1. Military: The system has LOST us and will not get us back. As I've been saying for years it's the same people, same families over generations and we've been betrayed, abused and sold out too much for too long ; WE OUT.
We aren't easily replaced, and certainly these wretches can't do it.
2. Industrial capacity: under the present system what we need now, what we've needed since 2022 wiped out our munitions stocks and our allies stocks - DOD is a 6 year bottleneck of bureaucracy. 2 years to identify requirements, 2 years to fund, 2 years to contract. Here, and he even has podcasts for those too lazy to read.... https://acquisitiontalk.com/
"It currently it takes two years to approve a requirement, two years to find funding, and two years to get a company on contract. "
The real life industry is already roaring back to America in a Tidal Wave.
Getting it through DC a completely different matter.
We've been coasting on Reagan/Cold War equipment and stockpiles for so long, the replacement equipment ...uh.... see Littoral Combat Ship or the STRYKER vehicle... and we spend trifles on actual munitions.
The chief business matter for the 'Big 5" defense contractors is not being bankrupted by DOD's internal gyrations and Congress disrupting funding *every single year* to include all of the Global War on Terror.
This is a wasted asset. You ain't got people and you ain't got ammo.
"Soon enough the Americans will tell the Israelis to stop."
What makes you so sure? Especially as the Israeli tail has such influence over the American dog.
Anyway, it is obvious that Hezbollah doesn't want to join the fight. Soon they may not have a choice, as Israeli hotheads will demand that the West Bank be settled, sonto speak, once and for all.
The Gilets Jaunes failed because they failed to take into account V.I. Lenin's teachings on power and how it is taken. I am not a Marxist-Leninist, but Lenin understood some things clearly and without sentiment.
America has told Israel to stop in the past. It's what's expected.
I tend to agree but I'm also wondering what incentive there is to stop. Bibi is finished electorally after this so who cares if they Handmaid's Tale him in a color revolution? America also isn't going to remove its ships
This isn't to say they won't, I believe they will, I am just wondering what it is that would actually make them stop if the operation doesn't have massive Israeli casualties
What sort of victory is Bibi looking for?
Defeating Hamas, ethnic cleansing, genocide?
The latter is bound to result in a regional intervention. The former just sets up another repeat X years down the road. All in all, I expect the former.
"What sort of victory is Bibi looking for?
Defeating Hamas, ethnic cleansing, genocide?"
You are getting warmer.
He wants a stay out of prison card?
You are correct Sir, anything less than the destruction of Gaza , er sorry HAMAS will be a repeat, indeed victory for HAMAS by merely surviving.
Finishing the job means outcry, and possibly regional intervention- here I must quibble.
What regional intervention?
???
Israel is a nuclear power, also a powerful conventional military when not asleep, and has large foreign reserves of $200B on a $500B GDP. Who can intervene?
And they don’t want to intervene.
The other Arabs despise the Palestinians.
If it goes off the lead story and slow grind in background then it happens and people have already lost interest. We’ll be 3 hyped crises along and HAMAS a footnote in a year.
Keeping in mind the 2024 election is nearly upon us !!
Gaz - who? Hummus? What?
Who?
Colonel McGregor is talking about intervention from Turkey. But who knows when it comes to Erdogan...
Turkey says, Turkey can’t do except cosmetic...
not too mention the fine Turkish drone industry may have a partner, then there’s the client state of Azerbaijan that just used a lot of Israeli drones to gobble up part of Armenia (of sorts).
Col Macgregor has a fine mind but ...no... and if it happens it’s madness to no effect but a breach with Israel and the USA.
Turkey can’t march to Israel except through Syria, that leaves air/naval cosmetic gestures.
Add; I don’t think that’s anything but pablum for the masses.
Any Turkish serious intervention would have the more long-sighted crowd in Tehran contemplating how best to prop up Israel.
Since the Bronze Age Western Asia has been contested by the power controlling Anatolia and the power controlling the Iranian plateau. Seeing Turkey consolidate a leading position in the Levant is not what Tehran wants. Religion is one thing but enduring realities another.
McGregor didn't spell it out, but it's implied the Turks would rumble through Syria. As if Erdogan wants to revive the Ottoman empire despite being a member of NATO.
I suppose Hez may jump in if things go south too far in Gaza. Nasrullah has said that they will if Hamas is in danger of going under. Impossible to assess from the outside how Hamas is faring. 2 opposing narratives (as usual...cf. the Ukraine war). "The other Arabs despise the Palestinians" is a meme, but I haven't seen any supporting evidence.
War imposes risks. Rhetorical co-belligerency impresses the ladies and the young which is more than enough for the regional governments. No sane party risks real injury (let alone defeat) for allies as unreliable and as treacherous as the Palestinians. The lessons learnt from Palestinian behaviour in Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait remain relevant.
Also the prospect of a future Palestinian state emboldened by any perceived successes by Hamas secretly horrifies the region. Cairo, Amman, Damascus can all live with Netanyahu...they are not in a hurry to find out how they'd fare with a genuinely independent Palestinian state of any kind.
Gaza had the opportunity to be the Singapore of the Eastern Mediterranean...they chose Resistance Inc. instead. A people who make choices like that are simply not worth sacrificing for.
And does Israel stop? And when Israel ignores its benefactor, do the bennies stop?
They don’t need the bennies. Most of the Bennies go to US weapons contractors, like Raytheon for Iron Dome* interceptors. Egypt needs the bennies, Saudi needs Uncle Sam, Israel only needs not to be rogue nation. Moving slowly it can, while keeping Israeli casualties down, always an issue.
* Had Uncle Sam not made Israel give up the strategic depth (distance) in Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank they wouldn’t need Iron Dome.
Israel is a stick we beat cheap oil out of the Arabs with, the Palestinians are a stick the Arabs use to beat the Jews.
As we don’t need the oil anymore, we’re not stuck in the Middle East. We have the option to leave and ... we were with the Abraham accords getting closer.
The world has changed with fracking combined with our disgust at our own 🇺🇸Imperialism.
We’re 🇺🇸 contracting. The Palestinians are a leftover legacy account from the Cold War.
They mean nothing to us, and refuse to let peace happen even when defeated.
So be it.
"The Palestinians are a leftover legacy account from the Cold War."
You got it in one. The national security state was bedded down in time to play games over partition in 1948 and, in a sense, they played them very well indeed.
The US did not drive the Brits out of the Middle East entirely, but since Suez Westminster has been loyal to a fault.
The US managed to keep Israel from joining the Soviet bloc (perhaps with help from false intelligence fed to Stalin via Philby...just a suspicion I have concerning the reach of Allen Dulles).
The US limited Soviet gains in the Middle East to Egypt under Nasser and Syria, Iraq and Libya. The US kept both Turkey and Greece within NATO.
Above all else Washington used its relationship with the Sa'udis and Iranians to establish the petrodollar...a goose that has been laying golden eggs ever since. And I have not even mentioned the arms market...
Uncle Sam has done very well in the Middle East over all. The rubble of Gaza distresses some, but the trust funds of the radicals will do well enough from fracking regardless of all else. Whatever self-disgust Americans might feel over imperialism should be savoured by the blue-haired cohort alone. The only essential item of business now is securing well-being at home and that will require dismantling the Resistance Inc. franchises in North America and managing immigration with a degree of realism.
The Zionist lobby never ignores Congress. So the benefactor/ally is very forgiving.
Actually publicity in DC is a sign of weakness not strength.
But you’re correct in this case.
Power is discrete. Publicity is for the merely ambitious who confuse the entertainment industry for the real world.
How can a lobby be discrete when politicians are crowing their support for Zionism every chance they get?
I never said that the US Zionist lobby was discrete. It is anything but. I was making a point about lobbyists in general. I should have made myself clearer.
I have had experience dealing with professional lobbyists and it is a wilderness of mirrors. Few lobbyists have much influence and only a tiny number have power. Most are go-betweens rather than players, many are grifters, crisis actors paid to play a role. But everyone talks the industry up. The bullshitting is indescribable. The lobbyists who have something akin to power are the ones who represent multinationals or oligarchs with serious Deep State connections. They are very discrete.
When it comes to lobbying, what are the mechanisms? Money, under-aged girls, death threats?
It depends who the client is. Peak-level players like multinationals can use the prospect of eventual enrichment to secure compliance. The prospect of risking future opportunities or being shut out of the right networks horrifies politicians. The demonstration effect of a former colleague or a rival getting a plum position is more than enough to secure attention or a degree of compliance.
Bribes are for chumps. But loans on super-favourable terms (especially if made to a relative) are not bribes. Property traded at concessional rates. Book deals are great...publishers can sell an entire run to a single customer without having to publicise the identity of the customer. Internships for the children.
Reputation is often enough. A friend once sat next to a lobbyist (the principal in a company with which I had dealt) on a long train trip and listened in on a conversation the lobbyist was having with a junior politician who later became very senior indeed. He was giving the youngster orders. The lobbyist could do this because he was working for a truly global player and the lobbyist is himself the protege of an apex-level oligarch whose goodwill is greatly valued.
The number one lobby in America is the AARP. American Association of Retired Persons.
Really? Unless they're independently wealthy, seniors are treated like crap.
No surprises there. Self-funded retirees (the ones who really count) are highly motivated to defend their patch, always vote and hold grudges. Wise politicians pay careful attention to older constituents.
Militarily, Israel does need constant re-supply to wage this level of warfare. So the US could force a stand-down. I cannot imagine Blinken doing so, however, and Biden is an aw shucks gladhandler. Didn't have iti n him even before senility
Biden could end the war with a phone call. Doing so, however, would require standing up to the Israel Lobby.
Can he? Is he strong enough?
I think not. Not strong enough to tell Israel to lay down and die, moreover this “end the war” means only the Israelis ceasefire and HAMAS/Gaza/Palestinians do not. That’s not ending the war.
Israel only needs America to not making it a rogue nation (sanctions).
Israel does not need the $3B , nor even the $14B that is going to Raytheon for Iron Dome interceptors- it only needs the damn Iron Dome because America made it surrender lands around it that are used to launch missiles. When Israel had Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon that land wasn’t used to launch missiles.
Ending the war means the destruction of one or the other.
Even if it were true that Israel doesn't need the $3B, the US provides Israel a great deal more than direct monetary support.
Of course Biden isn't strong enough. Moreover, he doesn't want to.
When, since Reagan? Fact is, Biden doesn't want any of this. The US is completely on its back foot.
That's as far back as I can remember. Told Israeli PM Begin he wanted the shelling to stop - and it did. Israel is a rottweiler that Uncle Sam has on a leash, but is always slow to pull the dog off when it's mauling someone.
No one in DC holds any leashes foreign or domestic, with the exception of the wretched Western European leaders.
They certainly don’t hold the leashes on Israel.
That's not how the world sees it. Israel is given more latitude to commit war crimes with American weapons. A dog owner is responsible for their dog's actions. America is complicit.
What makes me so sure? History, the statements of Israeli politicians, officials, and analysts, and common sense.
Considering that American power is a wasting asset, the Israelis will use it while it still has a shelf life.
American power is not a "wasting asset".
It is in decline, in particular, relative to that of China.
Definition: A wasting asset is one that declines in value over time.
At this time and this can and probably will change over time, at this point in time the asset is already wasted away in military terms.
There's no way for Joe Biden or the Regime in DC to reverse the wasting of the military assets, nor rebuild in less than a decade military industrial capacity.
THEY cannot do this, although it absolutely CAN be done and very rapidly.
1. Military: The system has LOST us and will not get us back. As I've been saying for years it's the same people, same families over generations and we've been betrayed, abused and sold out too much for too long ; WE OUT.
We aren't easily replaced, and certainly these wretches can't do it.
2. Industrial capacity: under the present system what we need now, what we've needed since 2022 wiped out our munitions stocks and our allies stocks - DOD is a 6 year bottleneck of bureaucracy. 2 years to identify requirements, 2 years to fund, 2 years to contract. Here, and he even has podcasts for those too lazy to read.... https://acquisitiontalk.com/
"It currently it takes two years to approve a requirement, two years to find funding, and two years to get a company on contract. "
The real life industry is already roaring back to America in a Tidal Wave.
Getting it through DC a completely different matter.
We've been coasting on Reagan/Cold War equipment and stockpiles for so long, the replacement equipment ...uh.... see Littoral Combat Ship or the STRYKER vehicle... and we spend trifles on actual munitions.
The chief business matter for the 'Big 5" defense contractors is not being bankrupted by DOD's internal gyrations and Congress disrupting funding *every single year* to include all of the Global War on Terror.
This is a wasted asset. You ain't got people and you ain't got ammo.
"No Honey, you ain't got shit."
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxOsDFDnolZ6clm2z-rkthCFSk5WLZpLlF?si=Q3hM7tCvWV0QBiTQ