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  • I've come to the conclusion from this thread and others that liberals either don't believe or can't comprehend that leftists consider Palestinians to be actual human beings whose lives are inherently valuable. The way they see it, we're whiny children throwing a fit because we were refused a puppy. I keep seeing people talk about opposition to genocide as "an individual want" or "being upset that you got bread instead of a cake," and so on, characterizing us as selfishly prioritizing our individual preferences, because in their minds it's just about us feeling bad when we see dying Palestinians, and not about the Palestinians themselves.

    Opposition to genocide is a hard red line and a fundamental moral principle. It's not a want, it's not a preference, it is a demand which is absolutely non-negotiable.

    I'm never going to be convinced to vote for Biden, but if you actually care about convincing leftists, then you're shooting yourself in the foot by trivializing the issue. Of course, the most effective way to convince an opponent of genocide to support a politician would be to get the politician to stop supporting genocide, but if you choose to focus you efforts on getting leftists to stop opposing genocide instead, I can't stop you.

    • trivializing the issue.

      How about we flip this around and talk about trivializing the issue of having a Trump-led slide into fascism and any attempt at leftist organising getting you thrown into a camp... while Palestinians are still getting bombed because Israel certainly doesn't need the US's help to produce arms. Mabye that's an evil enough evil to convince you that the lesser evil is, indeed, the lesser one.

    • A protest vote won't save Gaza. It will allow the war in russia to expand and get more innocents killed though. I do wish people wouldn't trivialize the second Ukrainian genocide they're risking.

      • In two years of the Russian invasion the UN gives a confirmed minimum of 10.700 killed Civilians and 20.000 wounded by the End of February 2024. Ukraine reports another 11.000 missing and 28.000 captive by Nov/Dec 2023.

        So even extrapolating that till may, for a two year period we are nowhere near close to the killing of Civilians by Israel in Gaza within just 7 months. Russias invasion of Ukraine is illegal, it is appalling and it is a grave injustice with Millions of people suffering. But in terms of murder of Civilians it is hardly comparable. Especially when considering that Ukraine has a population of about 34 Million whereas Gaza has a population of about 2 Million.

        • So even extrapolating that till may, for a two year period we are nowhere near close to the killing of Civilians by Israel in Gaza within just 7 months. Russias invasion of Ukraine is illegal, it is appalling and it is a grave injustice with Millions of people suffering. But in terms of murder of Civilians it is hardly comparable.

          You know why? Play a game like Armored Brigade which imagines a cold war gone hot scenario in eastern Europe (Fulda Gap or feinting going for the Fulda Gap) where nuclear war somehow doesn't erupt and end civilization (which it would in all likelihood making the entire wargame of Armored Brigade a weird fucked up memorial to the last people on earth) and full on armored warfare has begun with entire armored divisions committed to catastrophically quick and deadly warfare.

          Everything happens fast, mistakes come in the form of universe ending mass rocket artillery strikes or precision Close Air Support or a "tactical support missile" ATACMS missile that hunts down a critical piece of air defense equipment that thought it was hiding tens of miles from the reach of artillery near the front. Two Main Battle Tanks can obliterate an entire field of 60 armored personnel carriers loaded with heavily armored troops in a matter of minutes from a kilometer away from a fold in a hilltop.

          This kind of war is brutal and awful, with weapons having become so powerful and decisive in order to penetrate thick armor or catch impossibly fast jets, that human bodies almost instantly become thrown to pieces when they get anywhere nearby them even if they aren't the target. A lot of Hollywood explosion fx in movies is really stupid and unrealistic but have you ever seen footage of a tank turret getting launched hundreds of feet straight up into the air by the incredible build up of pressure from a High Explosive Anti Tank shell or missile turning the inside of a tank into such a pressure cooker that it shears straight off from the rest of the hull like a wine cork?

          Still, this kind of war is about the movement of strategically valuable resources and military equipment, the goal isn't to put a bullet in every single one of your enemies troops. The goal is to punch through their lines where they aren't expecting it using armored divisions and then develop the breach in the lines into a deep thrust into enemy territory. Armored units race to exploit the temporary confusion in the enemies intelligence and move at high speed to critical junctures in transportation infrastructure (cities with rail line convergences, important bridges) far behind where the enemy thinks the front line is, and if the geometry of the offensive is right and is in sync with quickly adapting supply lines than massive numbers of enemy troops can be decisively removed from relevance from the broader war without excessive sacrifices of friendly troops to accomplish the attrition (and thus not require killing all of the enemy troops to destroy their army).

          This is the polar opposite of the brutal pointlessness of WW1, not in terms of ethics but in terms of literal military strategy towards achieving political aims (winning a war and removing your enemies military from the political picture as a force).

          You see when this happens and a large amount of a military is encircled, fighting doesn't automatically stop, but it really isn't in the best interests for either the vulnerable encircled army to shed needless lives in aimless attacks at the enemies flanking force or for the vulnerable sections of the encircling army to risk starting a fight on two sides (the encircled enemies side and the enemy side). Both sides have every incentive to fight as hard as they possibly can in that moment, but the risk and consequences of choosing the wrong time and place to do so limits the willingness of higherups in military to just grind whole sections of their troops into meat. Thus a complex interaction of maneuver warfare plays out that isn't not willing to carelessly toss away human lives but at least it isn't actively invested either way in how many humans do or don't die to accomplish a strategic goal (so long as it doesn't undermine the strategic goal...).

          See the point of this entire post is that Israel basically started from this position with the Palestinians except Palestine is a city not an army and so people just live there and mostly don't want to hurt anybody just go about their lives. When Israel successfully "encircled" these violent Palestinians for trying to be a city when the land was rightfully owned by rightwing jewish colonial settlers (another lame rip off of MAGA heads echoed somewhere else in the world) instead of negotiating peace terms and ending a period of symmetrical war with two armies that both had air support, tanks, armored divisions and complex logistics support networks capable of supplying a MOVING army with consistent weapons and supplies Israel decided to just start randomly killing innocent Palestinians one by one, for various different bullshit reasons.

          This is not a war. Palestinians dying en masse (what, 80,000 dead by now probably? who knows? Israel killed all the journalists or threatened them enough for them to stop checking the numbers) is not a means to an end for the IDF in winning this Not War.

          Killing Palestinians en mass IS THE POINT. THE GENOCIDE IS THE POINT

          This is just Murderers killing helpless people who already control their victims access to food, electricity, internet, housing, their loved ones who only live nearby past a purposefully byzantine checkpoint.....

          Also FUCK Russia and its brutal war on Ukraine too, please if anyone comes into this reply and starts claiming "but Russia is still bad" like yes of course Russia is committing an awful act. I don't know who the hell not living in Russia thinks the invasion of Ukraine is ok that doesn't directly profit from it but they are an idiot if they do.

      • What exactly is the game plan for Ukraine anyway? It seems to be headed for a stalemate along their current borders. If that happens, how long will the US need to keep funding them? 10 years? 20?

        The war in Ukraine is tragic but it doesn't fit the classification a genocide, and regardless, I'm not going to vote for one genocide to stop another. As I said, genocide is a hard red line that I will never support, even if you put a gun to my head.

    • You’re the one shooting yourself in the foot, you just don’t want to be cognizant of it, so you rationalize it away.

      There is no version of the trolley problem that absolves you of guilt for sabotaging leftist causes if you don’t vote for Biden.

      You’re a child throwing a tantrum.

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