Trump encouraged "promoting a culture that cherishes innocent life" in his speech against abortion.

@Imsleepy Probably true, but how can anyone claim to care about innocent life when they're waging nine separate offensive wars against countries that haven't attacked them? Or facilitating two genocides?

@Imsleepy In fairness to Trump, he's only had a couple of years to build his body count.

@BlueMetalChick He’s not known to make much sense 😄, but I think we’d be in those conflicts no matter who the president was or their values on innocent life. The US is greedy and maybe slightly over ambitious. Trump cares about himself the most, no doubt.

@Keraunos That was the most backhanded compliment I've seen in years.

@Keraunos True, it could get much worse, especially if he is re-elected, which is probable. I’m not defending trump himself, but the “burden” of being a leader during war.

@Imsleepy Most establishment politicians would be continuing those wars, yes. A true progressive or even a paleoconservative would be deescalating and withdrawing, as would a libertarian, but those people seldom get a shot at presidency.

@Imsleepy The problem in this scenario is that being a leader during war at the moment is much more questionable than in times past considering that we're in nine wars and we started all of them by invading other countries even though they didn't do anything to us. The one conflict that has an asterisk next to it is Afghanistan. It's somewhat understandable that we went there to find Bin Laden. But we did a horrible job of it, and regardless, he's dead now. We got him. What the fuck are we still doing there.

@Imsleepy As you already suggested, foreign policy probably isn't going to change no matter who's in office.

@BlueMetalChick I think the question to ask about more principled candidates is would they be able to get much done for the better even if they're elected? Hell, Trump was an "outsider" only in the most nominal sense of the word, and the rest of Washington won't even let him bring our relations with Russia back to a place of sanity, which appears to have been one of the only positive things the man sincerely hoped to accomplish.

@BlueMetalChick We went to war in Afghanistan because of an airline security breach. It’s no more “understandable” than any of the other 8 wars.

I know Yemen is one of the genocides we’re funding; what’s the other one?

@Keraunos Our relations with Russia were just fine; they weren’t improved by electing a failed businessman who is in hock to Russian banks to the tune of $600 million and who admires dictators and looks to Putin as a role model.

@LeopoldBloom The part about Russian banks makes sense, but please tell me you're not a believer in the "Trump is Putin's puppet" thing.

@LeopoldBloom Palestine is the other one, by the way.

@BlueMetalChick Interesting “genocide” when Gaza has one of the highest birth rates in the world.

Since the Hamas Charter calls for the death of every Jew in the world, aren’t they guilty of genocide? Or intentions only count if Jews are doing the killing?

@LeopoldBloom Hamas does not represent the whole of Palestine, and even if they did, the desire to commit a genocide does not count as doing it. Iran would probably like to kill everyone in America but they aren't doing it. Would you then say they're guilty of ethnic cleansing?

Israeli lawmakers like Ayalet Shaked have said "we need to kill Palestinian mothers to prevent them from giving birth to any more little snakes." I dunno how someone can be more clear about what they're intending to do. Unlike Hamas, Israel has the means to do that, and they're doing it right now.

My opinion on this might be different were it not for the illegal occupation. If Israel was Israel and Palestine was Palestine, and the latter routinely provoked the former, who then responded by killing a bunch of people, I wouldn't approve of it but I wouldn't be outraged. It's the fact that Israel is continually taking more and more Palestinian land and forcing the people into a smaller and smaller portion of the Gaza that determines how I feel. I mean, what do they expect they're all just going to willingly fuck off and die?

@BlueMetalChick Ayelet Shaked, Naftali Bennet, and Avigdor Lieberman don't represent all Israelis, either, any more than Trump represents all Americans.

I oppose the occupation and the way the IDF treats Palestinians, but calling it "genocide" is just as absurd as anti-abortion fanatics calling abortion "murder." It's deliberate misuse of a word for its emotional effect, and doesn't count as an argument; it only signals what side you're on.

That being said, I wish we had an administration that would show some leadership in this area and push Israel toward solving this problem, which would be better for them in the long run as it would for the Palestinians. The Two-State solution is dead; Palestine isn't economically viable, and the West Bank and Gaza want nothing to do with each other. Possibly some form of federation as proposed by President Rivlin would give each group the autonomy they desire, but they have to stop shooting at each other first. I hope you would agree that Palestinian violence is as counter-productive as it would be for the remaining Lakota to bomb New York City because they want to make the Pine Ridge reservation larger.

By the way, it's not apt to compare Palestinians with Native Americans, since the ancestors of most modern Palestinians migrated there from other countries, same as most of the Jews there did in comparatively recent times.

@LeopoldBloom I do not claim that those people represent the opinions and beliefs of the Israeli people. They are, however, people who decide what Israel as a government and a nation does, just as how Trump does with America. Even though you and I oppose him, his actions are what America does on a world stage.

It is by no means a misuse of the word "genocide." The state of Israel has declared that all people of Palestinian ethnicity are their enemy and that Israel is not at war with the country of Palestine but at war with the Palestinian race. Those lawmakers you named have explicitly stated that their goals do not include targeted strikes or attempts to identify and eradicate terrorists and insurgents, which means that what they DO intend to do is indiscriminately kill people in another country. What would you call that if not genocide?

I by no stretch of the imagination support, encourage, condone, or excuse Palestinian aggression or acts of violence carried out against Israel. Like I said, I would be much harsher on them if it weren't for the occupation. But I'm a war refugee from Yemen; I know what it's like to be unfathomably impoverished and living in a dirt poor fucked up nation that's being attacked and bombed indiscriminately by a larger, wealthier, better equipped nation. When you feel as if you're going to be killed no matter what you do, your reaction is to resort to violence. The UN won't recognize Palestine as a state and insists that they are just people illegally living on Israeli land. Hamas, as despicable as they are, have even made statements that they would entertain the idea of returning to the 1968 borders.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't American Indians originally come across the Bering Strait from Asia?

@BlueMetalChick I'll admit that there are elements in both the Israeli government and in Hamas that want to obliterate the other side, however, neither one is having any success at achieving that goal. So "intentions" should apply to both sides, or neither. I would reserve "genocide" for policies that are actually carried out, not just "intentions." And yes, I'm aware of your background, so your position is understandable. But the situation in the Occupied Territories is only superficially similar to that in Yemen.

You are correct that Native Americans crossed the Bering land bridge at various times over the last 20,000 to 6,000 years, when the Ice Age lowered the sea levels. They're still the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas, as far as we know. I only brought that up to defuse the common view that the Palestinians are the original inhabitants of that area, while Israeli Jews are recent invaders. What's more important is where people live now, rather than dwelling on past offenses. Israeli citizens (of which 25% aren't even Jewish) are just as entitled to live on their land in safety and autonomy as are Palestinians. Blaming the Israelis for the situation just because they're better at protecting themselves is nothing more than sympathy for the underdog.

I support a solution that would achieve safety and autonomy for everyone, and so far, Rivlin's federation idea looks the most promising. The U.S. needs to take more of a lead in this, but so do the surrounding Arab countries and Iran, who have been exploiting the Palestinian tragedy for far too long, for their own selfish reasons.

Many Americans are not aware that Israel has been building closer relations with China for decades, in anticipation of the U.S. eventually losing its status as the preeminent world superpower, as well as concerns that a far-left or far-right U.S. government might decide to sever ties with them. Anyone who thinks the Chinese will have any concern whatsoever for the Palestinians is delusional.

@LeopoldBloom [quote]I'll admit that there are elements in both the Israeli government and in Hamas that want to obliterate the other side, however, neither one is having any success at achieving that goal.[/quote]
Israel's succeeding pretty damn good at it right now. Since September of 2000, there have been a confirmed 10,105 Palestinians killed by Israeli military in comparison to 1,260 confirmed dead Israelis. In the year 2014 alone, 2,285 Palestinians were killed to just 84 Israelis. And keep in mind, almost every death on the Israeli side have been soldiers, while a significant portion of Palestinian deaths have been civilians killed by untargeted airstrikes and bombings, including a group of children who were [i]intentionally[/i] killed by a drone while swimming on a beach. The drone even missed its first shot and the controllers made the decision to turn it around for a second pass. All of the victims were under the age of 13.

Not to mention that two American teenagers of Palestinian ethnicity who were in the Gaza to see family were killed, one beaten to death and the other lit on fire.

[quote]Blaming the Israelis for the situation just because they're better at protecting themselves is nothing more than sympathy for the underdog.[/quote]
Defending oneself does not include occupying land from someone else, nor does it include the purposeful murder of civilians. Were this a war between armies, I'd feel different. If Palestine had an actual military, or even a volunteer militia or something, and they were fighting the IDF, my opinion would be different. But that is not the reality of the situation and you know it.

[quote]The U.S. needs to take more of a lead in this[/quote]
The United States is so beholden to Israel that there is actual domestic legislation that punishes people who denounce Israel's actions. I wish I were lying but I'm not. Pro-Palestinian activist groups or student groups can legally be punished by law, as can businesses for this matter. America is selling weapons to Israel that have been illegal since World War One. That's not taking a lead.