Saturday's terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas militants represent the worst crisis between Israelis and Palestinians in more than two decades. But rather than offering constructive policy alternatives, Republican presidential candidates have settled on an intellectually bankrupt strategy of blaming the Biden administration for everything. The finger-pointing is particularly rich given the way that the Trump administration obliterated longstanding American policy in the region, handed a series of pinless policy grenades to President Biden and then took cover.
The inability to broker a final settlement between Israel and Palestine is an American foreign policy failure that spans at least six administrations stretching back to the 1980s. But it was the last two Republican presidents who departed dramatically from the international "land for peace" consensus that was supposed to result in a Palestinian state. Former President George W. Bush, despite occasional rhetoric supporting Palestinian statehood, walked back America's commitment to widely shared interpretations of UN Security Council Resolution 242 by signing off on Israel retaining large settlement blocs in the West Bank, demanding that Palestinians usher in a functioning democracy before peace was possible and then washing his hands of the matter when he didn't like the election results. His world-historically disastrous war of choice in Iraq did more to bolster Iranian authoritarians than any other single event since the country's revolution in 1979.
But it was former President Donald Trump who did far more catastrophic damage. Trump greenlit the needlessly provocative move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, part of which is located in territory the United Nations considered unlawfully occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. The move abandoned another longstanding American negotiating position---that Jerusalem would ultimately be a shared capital between two national people.
Warned that moving the embassy would result in blowback down the line, the Trump administration and its allies mostly gloated about how clever they were. When Palestine did not immediately erupt into chaos, they concluded that the maneuver would have no repercussions. Not only that, but Trump then recognized the permanent Israeli annexation of the occupied Golan Heights and invalidated a 1978 State Department ruling that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were unlawful.
Instead, the Trump administration gave the Israeli government carte blanche not only to expand existing settlements but to grant even isolated encampments anywhere in the West Bank legitimacy and sovereignty. The Trump administration's subservience to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his maximalist government was so complete that polling suggested Israel would have given the former president his largest margin over Biden if it were a U.S. state.
To make matters worse, the Trump team followed through on its promise to torch the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran Deal. Not even the Trump officials responsible for this gratuitous act of diplomatic sabotage could identify any reason for it, other than that they wanted to. The move not only led predictably to the resumption of Iranian nuclear activities but also to the election of an ultra-hardline government in Tehran that redoubled its destructive meddling in regional affairs, including providing cash, training and weapons to Hamas militants.
The Biden administration did little to reverse any of these Trump disasters, even picking up the baton of helping Israel conclude separate peace agreements with Arab states rather than encouraging a resumption of talks with Palestinians. Biden has refused to follow through on reopening the consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians. And ultimately, the administration's severe political risk aversion has insulated it neither from disingenuous Republican attacks nor Palestinian frustration with the status quo.
Nevertheless, claiming that the president is responsible for the horrific Hamas attacks inside of Israel is preposterous, like poking a hornet's nest, running away and then blaming the sucker who comes along next and gets stung. The Trump administration did everything it possibly could to encourage and legitimize Palestinian violence against Israelis, and Republicans have little standing to point fingers at Biden for it. Worse still are false and disgusting charges by charlatans like Vivek Ramaswamy and Trump himself that the Biden administration "funded Hamas," a zombie lie that will surely be repeated thousands of times between now and next November no matter how many articles are publishing debunking it.
Biden must not allow this tragedy to suck the United States back into its previous, heavy-handed military posture in the region, or to encourage Israeli military strikes on Iranian nuclear installations in retaliation for Tehran's role in the attacks. The administration should instead use this terrible moment as an opportunity to advance a new vision of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, one that doesn't rely on what are by now dead-letter proposals for statehood that lack anything approaching majority support in Israel or Palestine.
David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.
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Trump gave up any pretense that America is allowed to have it's own interests that aren't subservient to Israel's. Mr. America First made massive concessions on every issue in exchange for nothing. Like the Golan Heights recognition pretty well destroys any credibility the USA has when it talks about upholding a "rules based order" against China.
None of these concessions have done any good for Israel either. They just made Netanyahu and the settlers stronger, the people who pulled 80% of the IDF into the West Bank.
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How do you know? It's not like the US government releases transcripts of private phone calls
tween heads of state.
Whatever was promised may
released by FOIA requests in a book read by a dozen people 30 years from now.
Let's look at some historic examples of this pattern!
With the shit the Obama administration pulled with GITMO and torturing civilians, you'd think liberals would
frothing at the mouth after reading A Question of Torture.. But they didn't 
cause it's the United States of Amnesia. Even during realtime events with the US attack on Libya, his supporters celebrated the "humanitarian intervention" in favor of the Islamic extremists who were peacefully protesting people to death. They really don't care, but people love inflammatory articles like OP's 
cause it makes them feel righteous.
Unrelated to geopolitics, Throw Them All Out is another fun book where the author painstakingly records financial investments by politicians and the specific bills they enacted. We've had politicians sitting on the committee which would approve or reject a pharmaceutical while the very same politicians were betting on that company's stock price. The author, Peter Schweizer, was barred from any public hearings for feedback
cause he named names.
"Rules-based order" has never existed in the history of geopolitics. Remember how the losers of WW2 were treated? Germans disproportionately got the heavy end of the stick compared to their Italian and Japanese equivalents. We also had American politicians and generals approving strategic bombing campaigns which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. As far as "international law" goes, they would
labeled as war criminals. No repercussions followed. Same goes for Obama, the UK, and France with bombing the shit out of Libya, directly aiding "freedom fighters," and fostering a civil war that still hasn't played out. No repercussions 
cause there is no rules-based order.
Even within the same country, the laws are not upheld equally. Remember when Robert Mueller testified to Congress about Iraq's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that never really existed? For his excellent work in lying to the American people, he also led the Russiagate investigation.
There is no "rules-based order" or international law among nations
cause there is no world government that can monopolize this function. The rulings will always 
favored by the strong 
cause that is the way of government. Now shut up, pay your taxes, and vote! 
P.S. I love you, Redactor.
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Bay
I'm called Redactor because reading the most boring FOIA material is my hobby.
Wait, Obama sent those guys to Gitmo???
This is reverse Real Raw News.
The irony here. I remember
when Gen. Taguba was assigned by the Army to eradicate torture. He goes to the White House and some sniveling civilian asks "was it torture or just abuse" and he says "they shoved stuff up people's asses". He immediately had his office literally moved into the basement like Fox Mulder.
I can't read this because it's true and it would just make me seethe too much.
This has a specific meaning as used today in diplomacy. You can't just do insane shit like China declaring that parts of the Philippines and Vietnam belong to them because they feel like it. Israel claiming the Golan is similar if not worse.
Literally never happened in any way shape or form. Ask me some time though about Old Man Redactor watching the B-52s go into Laos.
Oh yeah, and for roasting Germans, my family mighty have had a little to do with that. Sorry not sorry
No because that never happened Mueller was head of the FBI later which does counterintelligence inside America. I guess you're referring to George Tenet or Colin Powell.
Luv you 22222 bb.
Your general conclusions are right, but try to be more vague about precise details when you're arguing with with old boomers who remember it. My dad has destroyed me so many times in arguments when I think I got him.
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You should read that book, A Question of Torture. It's great. It never hits the hard evidence on Obama signing onto the program, but the paper trails leads close to him. I'd mark it off as another incident of "culpable deniability." At the very least, he was aware of it and could've shut it down, but he didn't which is
. Back to that point, the invasion of Libya should've had all the anti-Iraq War libs crying for his abdication, but they didn't because they're ideologues who really don't care.
I get it. I know they say it as if it means something, but it doesn't. It's like a religious mantra, such as giving it up to God or some other nonsense. China's been getting the rough end of the stick because they don't have enough heavy hitters on the geopolitical scene to back them, and they were too belligerent (not enough carrot). That's all. It's "might makes right" within a world of anarchy, but soft power also helps. Like I said, "rules-based order" is essentially about symbolism and well-meaning words, which will always lack consistency and legal accountability. Consider "insane shit" like invading and bombing Libya. It was totes cool at the time. NATO said so, and again soft power helps, as does propaganda within the powerful nations.
Bro, you don't remember that???
The FBI not only handles counter-intelligence (domestically) but also deals with foreign concerns which may or may not involve domestic concerns.
From mild stuff such as investigating airplane hijackings or crashes to well anything they think may lead to a potential attack on the US, they also operate on foreign soil. Usually within US embassies.
Here's the FBI on WMD. It's a cute article that shows the FBI being involved in more than the domestic side of things. It's just an example.
Here's wikipedia:
Mueller lied.
Sure, you can say he "exaggerated the seriousness of this potential threat" or "was cautiously alarmed about the potentially massive fat pile of destructive shit that Iraq could've landed onto US soil," but you'd be bullpooping yourself. He lied, and he was rewarded for it. He's a team player, which is why they put him on the Russiagate nonsense and which was oddly pushed and pushed by him even though nothing concrete kept coming up. He's a Grade A producer of Pure American Bullshit, and his superiors will reward him again for it.
When I watched that live, I was laughing. It was insane.
Colin Powell or George Tenet had another great moment of showing the American people and the world where the WMDs were:
That's pretty much why I stopped researching about this years ago.
No amount of reason can compete against the billions of dollars spent on propaganda, government force, government gibs, and worst of all: voters. Sure, the ones before me clued me onto all of this, but overall it doesn't change anything.
Anyway, you should do the sneedful, and read some books by Robert Higgs. Crisis and Leviathan is a fun book into 1900s America. Chris Coyne's Doing Bad by Doing Good is another fun one about overall government incompetence on the international level and fundamentally why it fails.
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Delusional wingcuckery. The program ended during the Bush administration. It was always controversial within CIA and after the Abu Ghuraib shit came out, all the interest was in covering it up. Iirc Obama grudgingly allowed the coverup because foreigners would whine if they saw Khalid Sheikh Mohammed getting 1/100 of what he deserved.
The torture program was really pretty well blown back then. A lot of the details came out about how the CIA didn't actually have that capability so they had to go to the SERE school to recruit them to unironically torture people.
I'm pretty sure that there's always been rules about just taking over islands belonging to another country (The Philippines) because you feel like it.
Neighbor there's like 50 countries in the world that had casus belli against Gadhaffi including the USA, half of Europe, all of Africa, and the Philippines. Oh yeah, and especially Lebanon, where he killed one of the few people who could have ended the war. Millions are dead because of him. You can criticize the details but the guy was gonna get r*ped to death no matter what.
The FBI does exactly what you said in foreign countries except it doesn't have its own networks of agents running around. They don't have the capability to do foreign intelligence and if they tried the CIA would go to Congress and get them shut down. The last fricking thing you need in intelligence is your agent working for another part of your own government.
Obviously the FBI's information came from CIA.
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!chuds !nooticers, look upon my gigantic longpost and
.
tl;dr US government is full of shit and so is international law but people don't care because they forget and they love and have faith in government.
Also, OP has a good post for once.
@lnternetCustodian
Palestinian lives matter
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I'm not reading
either this or that post lol
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I know you would
@ByoBOOmbs because you're a lovable cute twink!
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This is why we need Stalinism.
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the difference? Germans are white Europeans. White people are always disproportionately punished for their crimes, even by their own white brethren.
Dont
a cynic. One day everything will reveal its perfection
trans lives matter
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