The poll found 50% of Democrats approve of how Biden has navigated the conflict while 46% disapprove — and the two groups diverge substantially in their views of U.S. support for Israel. Biden’s support on the issue among Democrats is down slightly from August, as an AP-NORC poll conducted then found that 57% of Democrats approved of his handling of the conflict and 40% disapproved.
I have a very strong don’t blow up kids policy, that doesn’t care what religion or political party you subscribe to or even race. If you do blow up kids, we feel strongly that you should just fuck right off and we should do whatever we can to stop those killing kids.
“The terrorists are using schools as shields though!”
Guess you shouldn’t use artillery strikes and bombing runs then.
“The terrorists are using schools as shields though!”
“Oh damn that’s a genius strategy. Better just give up every military advantage I have and send in my soldiers to be ambushed.”
Is it still called an ambush if you know they are there?
Nope, by definition isn’t.
Still more dangerous for the IDF and less vengeance-effective than just raining death on thousands of civilians on the off-chance that you might also kill a handful of terrorists that Hamas can easily replace.
Yes, and that touches on the core problem, unequal regard for human lives.
Yeah, to quote Rashida Tlaib from right before they censured her for speaking truth to power:
So what did you do to stop the US killing kids in Iraq and Afghanistan?
An estimated civilian death toll in the hundreds of thousands, and millions displaced.
What are your plans to prevent or oppose the mass deportation of millions of those Afghan refugees as just announced by Pakistan?
There’s just a bit of morbid irony in anyone from the US acting like they are on a high moral horse here when their own country has exported an order of magnitude more harm around the world largely to crickets within the country, particularly in comparison to the opposition to something like the Vietnam war.
The US is still currently active in its bombing and involvement in Syria. Thousands of civilians killed by coalition forces, hundreds of thousands fled the country as a result of the conflict. Have you even done anything about that one?
It’s just wild when civilians in the US get riled up by the foreign policy conflict of the week, take their sides typically along partisan lines, and pat themselves on the back for taking their stand. “We’ll hold our politicians accountable.” Meanwhile the actual joint military and intelligence branches have their hands in a half dozen conflicts around the world and are directly responsible for much greater harm that’s just far less publicized in Western media because of press relations forged in the wake of Vietnam, and stories like this don’t get picked up past the investigative groups researching them.
The US routinely blows up kids and has a long history of refusing to submit itself to international courts.
But no, Americans don’t focus on changing the policy and scope of their own government’s actions (the thing they in theory have greater influence over). They just get worked up over the actions of other governments allied with the US - and then either are upset about funding Ukraine if Republican or upset about funding Israel if Democrat. At least this week. I’m sure in a few months we’ll have moved on to a new Kony 2012 people are “very upset about and not going to forget about until something is done.”
(Seriously, the idea the current events will have any real impact on an election a year from now is laughable.)
I’d even be willing to bet at least 95% of all the Americans complaining about foreign governments bombing things couldn’t even point on a map to all the places that their own government has bombed children in just the past decade.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in “what about…?”) denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation. From a logical and argumentative point of view it is considered a variant of the tu-quoque pattern (Latin ‘you too’, term for a counter-accusation), which is a subtype of the ad-hominem argument.[1][2][3][4]
The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified. Common accusations include double standards, and hypocrisy, but it can also be used to relativize criticism of one’s own viewpoints or behaviors. (A: “Long-term unemployment often means poverty in Germany.” B: “And what about the starving in Africa and Asia?”).[5] Related manipulation and propaganda techniques in the sense of rhetorical evasion of the topic are the change of topic and false balance (bothsidesism).[6]
Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair, and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighborhood.[7] Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism.[citation needed]
Both whataboutism and the accusation of it are forms of strategic framing and have a framing effect.[8]
So you are qualified to discount anyone related to a subject, that you don’t have any access to their research or the education to know about it? I certainly don’t, so I just listen to what they say and not attack them or who they are related to.