So, I see a lot of leftists claiming to see parallels between 9/11 and the current Israel thing. Most specifically in the responses. I can kind of see the argument. Western nations were attacks in both situations, the outrage after the attacks was huge, and then the media and the government just went on a huge frenzy of bloodlust afterwards.
A lot of leftists think Israel is making the same mistakes we made after 9/11. I can understand some of these criticisms, yes, israel is trying to manipulate the media and create a consensus around their war that no one can reasonably disagree with or be criticized, and yes, Israel's response may be disproportionately large. But at the same time, this is not 9/11, and the circumstances are different, and as someone who is more liberal and not leftist on foreign policy, I see a lot of nuances here. And those nuances are why I treat the situations as different.
First of all, the intent of the terrorists. Yes, George W. Bush back in the day did the THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM AND WAY OF LIFE thing in order to drum up support for his wars. He framed them as wars about freedom. How we're liberating these countries from dictators and radical islamists who hate their way of life.
But...as I got older and the war dragged on, and I learned about OBL and his real intentions in college, I kinda realized, no, this is just a dude who really hated the US and Russia and didn't want us interfering with the islamic world. He committed his attacks against the US because we put bases in "Islamic holy land" in Saudi Arabia during the gulf war and he resented our presence. So he went on this crazy crusade against us, reliving his glory days in the 80s as a rebel fighter against a great power (he was in Afghanistan in the 80s fighting the soviet union).
So...okay, like, there was this whole moral lesson involving the war on terror that seemed to be "hey, you guys caused this stuff by intervening in this part of the world, maybe you should intervene less" and as such, I became far less interventionist in the middle east and global south, opting to instead defend my country's allies against other great powers and the like, rather than believing, like Bush and the neocons, that we have to invade countries and do nation building and be stuck there for decades and blah blah blah.
Which brings me to the second HUGE difference I can tell between the Israel situation and 9/11. And that is a matter of scale. The United states ended up committing its forces to invading, and then occupying countries for YEARS afterward. We went in with no exit plan. We went in in this gung ho show of force, believing we were gonna go in, kick butt, topple governments, give them democracy, kill bin laden, and then move on.
What happened? We went in, we toppled the taliban, we created an interim government, and then we got bogged down in occupying Afghanistan for YEARS.
Same with Iraq. Except that was worse. Bush told us there were weapons of mass destruction there, and that hussein was in league with al qaeda. Neither was true. We found no WMDs, and there was no link to al qaeda. Bush just decided to invade iraq because...idk...revenge for the gulf war? wanting to finish daddy's legacy? Oil? Who knows.
And then we were stuck there. We were stuck there for years. And the violence continued. Bush had that mission accomplished moment on the aircraft carrier, but honestly, we broke the country, now we had to fix it.
And it didn't work. Years dragged on, and between Bush's tax cuts, and these fricking unnecessary wars, our budget deficits went through the roof. And we doubled the national debt for no good reason at all. And we kept hearing about troops dying in attacks. Every day, more bombings. Just random suicide bombings, roadside bombings. We were losing troops to attrition. AMERICAN troops.
And Bush kept wanting to send more and more. Not gonna lie, I was in my early adult years during the troop surges and the idea of a draft scared the everloving crap out of me at the time. I was literally afraid he was gonna drop the all volunteer military and draft people as fodder for his stupid unnecessary war.
And while in his first term, he had massive popularity, it TANKED in his second. Because the war dragged on that long. If the world operated like Bush and the neocons acted like it did, where this was a war for freedom against people who hate our way of life, and that we were gonna come in and be greeted as liberators, and we would give them a government and leave and blah blah blah, that would be great. If bush wrapped this up by 2004-2005, he would've been a hero.
But as the years went on, and we didnt have a clear goal for being there, and we were sending more troops in, and people were dying, and the national debt was piling up, and it turned out that bush lied to get us into it, then, well, as it turned out, no, we ended up going in the more "left wing" direction.
Like, by 2008, most of us wanted out Obama promised to end Iraq, and McCain was talking about doubling down and being there for a hundred years, and yeah, it's no wonder he won. Even conservatives were getting war weary by 2008. It's a huge reason the tea party became a thing. A lot of conservatives were looking at bush just piling up the national debt and didn't like that. And a lot of conservatives shifted from being neocons to being more isolationist, kinda like ron paul at the time or like donald trump. I really did have a ron paul phase in that 2008-2010 era in part because of this.
And honestly? That's why Iraq and Afghanistan were considered failures. Because we went in under false pretenses, and we spent years trying to occupy countries and "nation build" without any exit plan at all, and no matter how long we stayed there, nothing was gonna get better. So when we left Iraq, ISIS took over, and hell we JUST left Afghanistan under Biden and who's back, the Taliban. What a waste of time, lives, and human resources those wars were.
Like, I know leftists really like to overplay their hand for why people opposed Iraq and Afghanistan, and act like OMG intervention is always bad and civilians died and Bush is a war criminal who should be tried at the hague, and blah blah blah, but that was always just a handful of vocal extremists. Most people in the democratic coalition to get out of the wars did so simply because...the wars werent working. As I said, I think if Bush was able to get in, establish a quick regime change, and get out, and that his justifications for getting into the war didnt turn out to be lies, I feel like Bush would've gone down in history as a hero, rather than the second most disgraced republican president in my lifetime (topped only by the Donald). But, the problem with Bush is that the world just didnt work that way. No, Al Qaeda didnt attack us because they hated our freedom, they attacked us because they hated our interventionism. No, Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have ties to Al Qaeda. Time and time again, it was revealed Bush got us in under false pretenses, and then was unable to deliver on his promises, because you cant just....rebuild a country in America's image after destroying it. And quite frankly, I don't think the citizens of iraq and afghanistan really had a western value system that valued democracy where they were willing to fight and protect it. So we did all the work, and the second we left their governments collapsed. We can't tell the middle east how to live. And it's not worth the effort trying to colonize the region in order to reform them in our image. In some ways, the true lesson of 9/11 and the wars that came afterward were that reality is complicated, and our interventions in the world are often negative.
This doesn't mean that everything about America is bad. Nor does it mean we arent in my opinion the lesser evil of the world. Much of the world does exist in America's image, and a lot of them love our values. Bush just miscalculated in thinking that we could export those values to the middle east.
As such, those wars were just a massive waste of time, lives, and money on every level.
Now, in regards to Israel. I see their situation as much different.
First of all, Hamas literally IS that radical islamic group that hates Israel and their way of life. As I said, Hamas has genocidal intent toward Israel. Plain and simple. They do hate the Jews, they do hate their freedoms, their values, their government, everything. They wanna eradicate them so they can have their own state their instead.
So...basically they are literally fighting against the actual enemy that Bush merely TOLD us that we were fighting, but were wrong about.
I think that matters. Even if the nation building aspect of post war Iraq and Afghanistan were as hard as it was, if we were literally eradicating a hotbed of radical terrorists wishing to overthrow the US government and enforce radical Islam on everyone, well, I think that support for the war would've remained relatively high.
And second....Gaza is MUCH smaller than Afghanistan and Iraq. We were trying to occupy large territories, often with inhospitable terrain. I know some people joking referred to the president of afghanistan as "the mayor of kabul", because the american backed government only existed in kabul and in the rural parts of afghanistan were basically too difficult to enforce any order at all. So tribals just did whatever they wanted anyway, and then you had the taliban and al qaeda living in caves and blah blah blah. And yeah.
The gaza strip...is tiny. It's extremely tiny. I mean I looked at a map of where the terrorist attack was and found out at some points the strip is only 3 miles wide. And it's only 25 miles long from end to end.
So....3-6 miles wide, 25 long, it's like...idk....125 square miles?
It's literally like the size of myrtle beach and its suburbs. That's crazy to me. This entire area is TINY. And occupying it would be FAR easier than occupying the vast deserts of iraq and mountains of afghanistan. And it's mostly built up. It's like NYC in a way in terms of its density.
So basically they're just...doing the equivalent of occupying NYC once they take it over. Or what's left of it after they bomb gaza to the ground.
And could Israel potentially establish a more moderate government there? Sure. And it would probably work a lot better than it would when the US took over iraq and afghanistan. The logistical challenges are just far less.
The fact is, if Israel plays its cards right, in the eyes of its own people at least, Netanyahu could go down a hero here. he could be the guy who disposed of hamas and put gaza on a better path.
Now, WILL that happen? It's very possible it won't. Obviously the mass bombings will create resentment among the Palestinian population. And it's possible the cycle of terror will continue. And it's possible Israel has no real interest in peace, and wants a villain like hamas to continue to exist in order to perpetuate their existing right wing security state.
So, they can very much screw this up. Not because victory isnt possible, but because their idea of victory looks much different than it would for me. They could be doing this to do some ethnic cleansing under the guise of a war, as this will put a serious dent in Gaza's civilian population. They could be doing this in order to just allow another villain to rise up and keep the cycle of violence going. Maybe Israel doesnt really wanna "win." Because if they win that means they get voted out of office and they moderate as a country. Who knows. I know a lot of people are questioning their intentions. i don't think these questions are illegitimate. I dont really trust israel myself to be honest.
All I know is, I feel like Hamas literally is the enemy george w bush told us al qaeda was, and I do think that the only way we're ever gonna deescalate this situation is if israel gets in there and takes care of them. What they do from there is up to them. And if that mess up, well, as far as I'm concerned, that's all on them.
And yeah. I just wanted to explain how the israeli situation differs from 9/11, and what actually caused people in the US to turn against the war here. It wasn't out of "leftism" or some hand wringing over civilian casualties over there, or believing bush is a "war criminal", those were always the most obnoxious and alienating far leftists and their deranged point of view.
No, most people turned against the war on terror because we went in under false pretenses, and we had no exit plan. We werent able to accomplish anything in practice, and meanwhile we kept sending americans in to die, and the bills kept piling up, and a broad consensus from across the political spectrum kinda realized we had no real exit plan here and the sooner we left, the better.
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