Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

This blog will pay for itself.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Never A Good Sign When ‘Dachau’ Is Trending…

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Never A Good Sign When ‘Dachau’ Is Trending…

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117Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    If Israel keeps on thanking Biden, the Republicans will start treating them like they do Ukraine.

  6. 6.

    Another Scott

    @eclare: Biden.  It may look weird from being off-angle on a digital screen.

    I think that’s from the part of his speech when he tells other adversaries not to think about trying to take advantage of the situation (I suspect it was a warning to Hezbollah).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    dc

    “If I told you, I would not be able to get them home.”

    These journalists are supposed to be professionals, the comma in the above quote does important work. Without the comma, the sentence communicates something very different.

  14. 14.

    Suzanne

    All day, as I have been ruminating on this heartbreaking turn of events, and dreading the suffering that is going to come…. I have also remembered that Jared was supposed to fix it. Ralph Lauren of Arabia was supposed to make a deal.

  15. 15.

    Nukular Biskits

    Anyone else seeing this modern-day McCarthyism from their Republican congresscritters?

    https://twitter.com/SenatorWicker/status/1712212326898696294

    For those not inclined to give Twitter (sorry, I’m not going to call it that absurd new name):

    “We STILL have not heard from DOD about Pentagon official Arianne Tabatabai’s apparent links to Iran. It is outrageous that this administration is not taking Iranian influence seriously, even as Iran orchestrates a war on our ally, Israel.”

    – US Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    Just read this on CNN:

    The United States has collected specific intelligence that suggests senior Iranian government officials were caught by surprise by Saturday’s attack, according to multiple sources familiar with the intelligence.

    That’s good — one less thing.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @Nukular Biskits:

    We STILL have not heard from DOD about Pentagon official Arianne Tabatabai’s apparent links to Iran

     

    And GOP senators continue to block key appointments. So tough shit.

  20. 20.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Baud:

    Indeed.

    Not that I expect my phone calls (and social media post replies) to have any effect, but both my senators hear from me every few days about their refusal to call out their fellow GOP nihilist Tommy Tuberville.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    The US had immense international goodwill after 9/11 and Bush squandered that.  The big question for me is whether Bibi will do the same, especially if he’s on the ropes for this failure.

  23. 23.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker: “They didn’t even ask our permission first, they just did it!”

    On learning your wayward teens just stuffed the Sienna into a mall parking lot bollard.

  24. 24.

    MisterDancer

    That Israelis are feeling and expressing that Biden is on their side is the slimmest slice of sunshine in this absolute shitshow of a horrorscape.

    As much as I think Biden is a friend to Israeli, I think he also doesn’t want to see the Palestinian people trapped and hopeless as they have been for decades. Now, there’s a lot to unpack with that, yet of our realistic options of people impacting the situation? By far, Biden is the best. We’ll see what comes in the future, of course.

  25. 25.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Baud:

    Based on all I’ve read (and this was discussed in the previous thread), I think that Netanyahu royally screwed the pooch and the Israeli public won’t be in a forgiving mood after military operations are complete.

    The ONLY reason the man is in office, arguably, (besides the fractious nature of Israeli electorate forcing coalition governments) is his need to stay out of prison.

  27. 27.

    Nukular Biskits

    @MisterDancer:

    Biden’s acknowledgement of the plight of innocent Palestinians is a refreshing change, IMHO.

    Previous presidents generally avoided even acknowledging their existence or implied/outright asserted Palestinian civilians were terrorists, one and all.

  31. 31.

    ColoradoGuy

    So Iran (and the Russians) had nothing to do with it? Hmm, interesting, does that mean that Hamas has grown state-level terrorism capabilities, all on its own?

    If so, Hamas has earned itself ISIS-level terrorism status, which puts its financial and technical backers in an awkward position.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    That fuckin’ Nazi Elno has been at it. The link to the picture of Biden at Dachau is gone. Just for the record, I made a point of visiting Dachau when I was stationed in Germany. It’s a depressing place even on a sunny day.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    @Baud: Since the Saudi’s are attempting to stop the escalation, I feel like we’re in an episode of Chuck when Casey says we’re screwed.

  40. 40.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne:

    All day, as I have been ruminating on this heartbreaking turn of events, and dreading the suffering that is going to come…. I have also remembered that Jared was supposed to fix it. Ralph Lauren of Arabia was supposed to make a deal.

    Oh, he made a deal, alright. I don’t know what sort of fees he’s picking up for the management of that $2B Saudi investment money, but I’m sure they’re not down in index-fund territory.

  41. 41.

    Suzanne

    @Villago Delenda Est: So I went to Dachau in 2009. The unexpectedly weird thing about it is how there are houses built, like, right up the the edge of it. Imagine walking eight steps into your backyard, looking over your (not more than 5′ high) fence, and seeing where prisoners were executed.

    From what the tour guide said, in the late 1930s, Dachau was mostly industrial (it was a medieval town) and people weren’t living nearby.

  46. 46.

    Dopey-o

    A college friend’s father was part of a team that liberated one of the camps. Been 50 years, so I forgot which camp.

    He told me that you could tell what had happened from 5 miles away. The local populace pretended they didn’t know.

    Rhonda’s father was Jewish, he took it very personally.

  50. 50.

    MattF

    Rs simply cannot bring themselves to say anything positive about Biden. Not that they merely won’t… but they cannot. It would break something in their psyches.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @MisterDancer: Agree 100%. Having a POTUS who’s capable of empathy and humanity is a treasure at a time like this.

    @Dopey-o: My paternal grandfather’s company liberated a camp in the waning days of WW2, or at least presided over the unwinding of it as the Germans fled the allied advance. He was a mild-mannered, gentle soul, but one thing he was fierce about was making sure his children and grandchildren knew what he saw there.

  53. 53.

    Eunicecycle

    @Dopey-o: my father was at the liberation of Dachau also. He also said you could smell the stench from far away. He didn’t talk about it much; I didn’t know about his involvement until I was an adult

    ETA: and he would get very angry at Holocaust denialism.

  54. 54.

    Feathers

    I’ve been seeing people on social media saying the beheadings hadn’t been confirmed. I wonder if this will suffice.

    Good on Joe for bringing up that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but Hamas is completely and utterly wrong to commit these atrocities. Israel and the U.S. have a similar problem. Self identifying as religious countries, they have treated the ultra-religious as having higher moral worth, even when those communities have values that don’t match those of the nation as a whole.

  55. 55.

    Redshift

    Our failed major media…

    I have to disagree. Biden’s answer is good, but it is part of their job to ask if he can tell them anything about the efforts, not just to sit back and wait for whatever gets doled out.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @JPL: There were IDF soldiers flghting from the first minutes on. But they were outnumbered, because the government thought it could get away with defending the area with a thin force. It had stripped southern Israel to provide security for the settlers in the West Bank and their holiday celebrations.

    To repeat what former Knesset member Einat Wilf said on the day of the attack;

       Abandon those who live within the borders of the State of Israel and its sovereign territory, those who are entitled to the protection of state and its army, for those who jump on hills outside the borders of the state. The lack of a clear border in the West Bank and the collection of delusional messiahs who are only trying to stretch the borders are a disaster for Israel.

    @EinatWilf   [translated from Hebrew]

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    Brad DeLong points us to a thoughtful thread…

    Christopher W. Jones
    @cwjones89
    Oct 8

    As the extent of the massacre at the Music Festival of Peace becomes apparent, lots of analysts seem to have trouble understanding the decision by Hamas to embrace ISIS-style tactics.

    I think there’s a very clear brutal calculus going on here.

    […]

    Hezbollah fought the IDF to a draw in 2006.

    Hamas has been steadily increasing its military capabilities, gaining experience from every war.

    They have had over a decade and a half to prepare the ground.

    New tech such as drones and ATGMs heavily favor the defender.

    […]

    A conventional battlefield victory by Hamas inside Gaza is entirely possible.

    I don’t think the Hamas leadership would have launched yesterday’s attack if they thought otherwise.

    END

    I’ve been a little surprised why the IDF hasn’t gone in yet. Analysis like this may (or may not) be a big reason why.

    Here’s hoping that a ceasefire and exchange of prisoners happens soon.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Feathers: Theere was a vetern French war reporter who was in the media group that toured the village in question. He said it was a terrible scene but that there were no beheadings.

    This was discussed today on Middle East Eye Istanbul bureau chief Ragip Soylu’s Twitter timeline (ragipsoylu). That is a good source for recent news on this war. Middle East Eye is good also, and has more in-depth stories.

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @Another Scott: But Bret Stephens assure me that a ceasefire is pro-Hamas!

    That was followed by a demand for “an immediate cease-fire and de-escalation.” Someone should tell the New York congresswoman: To call for a cease-fire, now, is to shield the killers from consequences and deny their victims the right to effective self-defense. It is, in the language of the old left, “objectively” pro-Hamas, even as it masquerades as a call for peace.

  67. 67.

    Raven

    @Geminid: The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990,

     

    “

    In her testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, remove the incubators and leave the babies to die.

    Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British-based global NGO, which published a report about the supposed killings[3] and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that “patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait’s nurses and doctors … fled” but Iraqi troops “almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die.”[4] Amnesty International USA reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healeysubsequently accusing the Bush administration of “opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement”.[5]

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: I’m not surprised he would write such things.

    I know that Bibi and many others think that if they just hit Hamas as hard as they can, then everything will be better going forward.  History of the region tells us that that’s not the case.

    I suspect (but do not know) that Hezbollah will retaliate (or let Palestinian factions based in Lebanon retaliate) if they feel Israel is going too far.  Israel really doesn’t want a 2-front war now.

    The only way Israel is going to have peace is with a peace treaty.  Trying to smash Hamas to the extent that it is no longer a threat is doomed to failure.

    I don’t know when is the “right” time for a ceasefire.  (I appreciate the need to try to demonstrate that the IDF can strike back.)  I do know that many more innocents will die before it happens, and more will die the longer it is delayed.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    brantl

    @Geminid: And why do they have to protect the West Bank? Because Israelis are booting the Palestinians off of their own (Palestinians’) land.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Nukular Biskits: Israel will try to as best they can to wipe out Hamas and they are not going to care much about civilians who are in the way. The addition of Benny Gantz to the War Cabinet will bring an element of restraint but it probably won’t look like it.

    I think US officials pressed Netanyahu hard to accept Gantz’s offer to join a “unity government.” They respect Gantz and they do not trust or respect Netanyahu. When Gantz made the offer on Sunday Netanyahu accepted. Then he started dragging his feet.

    Yesterday, Majority Leader Schumer had a well-publicized phone call with Gantz, who is a former Defense Minister and IDF Chief of Staff. Chuck Schumer is probably Israel’s foremost ally in the US Congress, and the call was a strong message to the Prime Minister that he needed to do the right thing

    From what I’ve read, some MKs from Netanyahu’s Likud party were leaning on him hard too.

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    @Raven: Yup.

    We have to be really careful not to be manipulated by horrific war “reporting” by those who have an agenda.

    Yes, it’s bad.

    Everyone needs to try to keep their wits about them to figure out the best way forward.  We know what happens when everyone rallies around the flag to fight the sub-humans…  :-(

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Jay

    @Another Scott:

    I’ve been a little surprised why the IDF hasn’t gone in yet. Analysis like this may (or may not) be a big reason why.

    Fog of War and the last IDF Invasion of Gaza.

    The last IDF Invasion of Gaza did not go well, in the early days as Hamas bunkers they did not know about, tunnels they did not know about, caused major losses, and the IDF only prevailed buy weight and airpower, and still, it was a draw.

  75. 75.

    HumboldtBlue

    The U.S. is knee-deep in the war in Ukraine, and now another potentially enormous war in the Mideast may draw us in. At the same time, military and ambassadorial appointments have been blocked, and we don’t have a speaker of the House. Our own political crisis is undermining America’s role in the world. Susan Glasser joins Charlie Sykes.

  77. 77.

    Jay

    Hamas Attacks, Israel Bombs Gaza and Misinformation Surges Online
    October 11, 2023
    Israel
    Palestine
    Misinformation has been spreading rapidly online ever since Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7. At least 1,000 people were killed and the Islamist militant group took between 100 and 150 hostages. Israel retaliated, threatening a complete siege of Gaza and hitting the area with multiple airstrikes, killing more than 900 people.

    Alongside credible reports on the unfolding conflict, misinformation about incidents attributed to both sides have been widely circulated online. With the overwhelming amount of social media content on the conflict, it can be difficult to parse out verified information from posts that have been reused or manipulated.

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-attacks-israel-bombs-gaza-and-misinformation-surges-online/?utm_source=x

  78. 78.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Geminid:

    Israel will try to as best they can to wipe out Hamas and they are not going to care much about civilians who are in the way.

    The Israeli government/military has a long history of human rights abuses.

    The evil of their existential opponents (Hamas, in this example) is no excuse to disregard civilians.

  79. 79.

    Another Scott

    @Jay: They seemingly haven’t fully regained control inside Israel yet.  Howard Altman at TheDrive.com:

    Even as Israel said it has again sealed off the Gaza border and is restoring barriers destroyed during Hamas’s invasion on Saturday, fighting inside Israel continued Wednesday evening.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    Honus

    @HumboldtBlue: so explain to me again how one guy, Tommy Tuberville, is allowed to single handedly hobble our military, while another solitary idiot, Aqua Buddha Rand Paul, hamstrings our diplomatic corps?  And in what I would call a somewhat crucial time.

  83. 83.

    Bill Arnold

    @Jay:

    Hamas bunkers they did not know about, tunnels they did not know about,

    I expect that at least some bunker-mapping has been done with rooted smartphones..

  86. 86.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Honus: ​
      any one senator can filibuster.

    you can defeat a filibuster, but you need 60 votes and it takes several days to invoke cloture. As you know they only work around 130 days a year so they don’t want to gum up the entire calendar for processing cloture for nominees.

  87. 87.

    Noskilz

    It does sound like Hamas deliberately went with making the attacks as outrageous as possible to goad the IDF into invading Gaza.

    I’m a little concerned about what might be in store – we have seen many conflicts where urban warfare is just a complete nightmare.

  90. 90.

    Geminid

    @Roger Moore: Also, Netanyahu let political arsonists Smotrich and Ben-Gvir push him around. Smotrich is Finance Minister but was given a Deputy-like post in Gallant’s Defense Ministry. Ben-Gvir was Netanyahu’s Interior Minister. Both wrung as many concessions in favor of West Bank settlers as they could out of Netanyahu.

    In another country, Itamar Ben-Gvir would lead a gang of football hooligans. Netanyahu put him in charge of the police. He is a Kahanist, a follower of the racist Meir Kahane. As a youth, Ben-Gvir was so radical the IDF would not allow him into the Army.

    In the last war, in May of 2021, foreign media paid a lot of attention to the rocket attacks on Israel and the Israel bombing of Gaza, and not so much to the violence in mixed Arab/Israeli cities and towns. But I could tell from Israeli media that Israelis found this inter-communal violence much more alarming.

    Afterwards, the national police chief told reporters that every time he and his police succeeded in calming down a city, Itamar Ben-Gvir showed up and figuratively,  poured gasoline on the embers. He got away with it because of his immunity as a Knesset member.

  93. 93.

    SenyorDave

    @Geminid: Also, Netanyahu let political arsonists Smotrich and Ben-Gvir push him around. Smotrich is Finance Minister but was given a Deputy-like post in Gallant’s Defense Ministry. Ben-Gvir was Netanyahu’s Interior Minister.

    At this point, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are close to the norm for Likud cabinet ministers.  The Palestinians no longer exist for much of the Israelis, and that predates this massacre.  Gaza is a ghetto, and the US should have at least pretended to give a shit about the conditions there.  This is not a third world country where one part is living in marginally worse squalor than the rest of the country.  This is a wealthy country with a very high standard of living.  The “bad” Palestinians live in Gaza so they get to live in a ghetto.  The “good” Palestinians live in the West Bank, so their reward is to have their land stolen, and the occasional burnt out olive grove, courtesy of the settlers.

  94. 94.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @SiubhanDuinne: it’s funny, though I’m not sure why we have to insult Ralph Lauren like that. I don’t know that much about the guy but he’s America’s foremost fashion icon and I’m unaware of anything he’s ever done that’s bad enough that he deserves being lumped in with Jared or any of the rest of the TiFG’s crew.

  95. 95.

    Geminid

    @Nukular Biskits: This is true. But in the last war, when Gantz was the Defense Minister, the iDF dropped something like 1100 bombs on Gaza. As I remember it, they killed around 280 people. Roughly half were Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters, and the other half were civilians including children.

    That is a terrible tragedy, and I would never say that the IDF protected civilians then. But I don’t think they exactly disregarded civilians either. And I am not not going to point my finger, because I know my own country has done as bad or worse this century, in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

  98. 98.

    Roger Moore

    @Geminid:

    So what you’re saying is that Bibi defends his personal hold on power over anything else.  He’s willing to cut deals and promise anything to anyone who will keep him in power.  It still isn’t a good look.

  100. 100.

    cain

    @Feathers:

    I’ve been seeing people on social media saying the beheadings hadn’t been confirmed. I wonder if this will suffice.

    That seems dark even for Hamas.

  101. 101.

    Brachiator

    GOP nonsense…

    But what is Biden focused on? Delivering a speech on junk fees.

    They are stuck on hate mode and can’t stop themselves. The worst of their base will eat this stuff up, mainly because they shut themselves off from any alternative news sources.

    I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @SenyorDave: Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not in the Likud party. They are in Netanyahu’s National Religious coalition partner. Those 14 MKs are all much worse than the worst of the 30-some Likud MKs, in my opinion.

    Netanyahu gave Smotrich and Ben-Gvir their powerful jobs because they had him over a barrel. They knew he was desperate to form a government because of his criminal case which had dragged on for almost two years. Plus, Netanyahu is just plain power hungry.

    So Smotrich and Ben-Gvir held out right up until the deadline and got the jobs they wanted. They had the deals recorded in signed contracts because they knew Netanyahu was a liar. Everyone knew.

  103. 103.

    TriassicSands

    @Geminid:

    But doesn’t unconditional support for Israel mean support for killing Palestinian civilians including children?

    @Suzanne:

    Ralph Lauren of Arabia successfully completed total peace, but it was promptly undermined by Hunter Biden (Josef Stalin of Delaware?).

  107. 107.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: Thanks for the pointer.

    He’s right that discontiguous countries generally don’t work (with notable exceptions – Alaska/Hawaii, Kaliningrad, etc.). I’m not sure the Palestinians would go for being effectively divided up like that, though. (Yes, they have different political leadership since the Hamas/PA breakup.) Just because something makes logical sense doesn’t mean that it’s possible in the real world. Humans aren’t very logical… ;-)

    Nothing is easy.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  110. 110.

    wjca

    @TriassicSands: Hunter Biden (Josef Stalin of Delaware?)

    Nah.  Stalin was actually in power, and visibly in office.  More like Lavrenty Beria of Delaware.**  If you’re into conspiracy idiocy.

    ** If Georgia wasn’t a red state, the possibilities would be delicious.   After all, Beria, like Stalin, was from (now the Republic of) Georgia.

  111. 111.

    wjca

    @Another Scott: He’s right that discontiguous countries generally don’t work (with notable exceptions – Alaska/Hawaii, Kaliningrad, etc.).

    But all three of those can be reached by sea from the home country.  I.e. without having to pass thru another country’s territory.  No way to get from the West Bank to Gaza by sea.  So, not really exceptions.

  112. 112.

    Suzanne

    @Another Scott: There is no solution that everyone could live with right now. That’s the worst part of this: we’re going to see another bloody fight and come out of it in exactly the same position.

  114. 114.

    Jackie

    @Baud:

    If Israel keeps on thanking Biden, the Republicans will start treating them like they do Ukraine.

    Ain’t that the truth!

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