BearGoggles, I respectfully disagree that because Israelis don't see themselves as colonialists it's irrelevant to asset as such or that it asserts that Israelis can't even be victims since they're colonialists, but that's fine.
If you assert that there can never be peace while Hamas is in charge, that co-existing with Hamas is no longer an option, then I must say I'm a bit baffled that you don't support getting rid of Netanyahu and think that I just irrationally hate the guy. As a 49ers fan, I think it's perfectly rational to hate a loud-mouth who spent his formative years in a Philadelphia suburb! Have you seen the average Eagles fan?
But all jokes aside, Netanyahu and his current ultra far-right Orthodox extremist governing coalition are awful for peace, awful for their historic support of Hamas, and awful for their inflammatory policies. Why would you support a Prime Minister who has tried to repeatedly propp up Hamas, and has said as much?
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas," the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. "This is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."It takes two to tango and to negotiate for peace, and purposefully and deliberately splitting the Palestinians between Fatah and Hamas, supporting Hamas, and then using Hamas' extremism as the reason why a two-state solution will never work has proven to be a horrific, horrific strategic mis-calculation.
I'm not sure how you are optimistic that whatever comes next after Hamas will be less extreme or what historic precedent that is based off of, but gee I hope you're right.
That being said, here we are, day 18 I think of ceaseless bombing in Gaza, likely 6,000 minimum dead, tens of thousands of more injured, and hundreds of thousands displaced, and just today, Israel suffered the worst barrage of missile strikes of the conflict.
So clearly this strategy of carpet bombing and collectively punishing civilians isn't working. Hamas is saying it has 30,000 to 40,000 fighters ready to engage, I've heard figures that there are hundreds if not thousands of miles of subterranean tunnels, and that they have months of food. The water is still off, aid is hardly trickling in, people are starving, hospitals are out of fuel, and American naval and land forces are under siege in Iraq, Syria, and the Red Sea.
So carpet bombing civilians isn't destroying Hamas. Escalating the war into Gaza will prove incredibly bloody, and will lead to further escalation, as militant groups aligned with Iran say they will escalate further if Israel does. Hostages are still alive! Elderly hostages were just released yesterday and spoke of their relatively humane treatment following their hellish abduction.
So I don't see Hamas getting removed any time soon without a serious tactical change.
You also allude to needing to reign in Iran and Qatar. Who needs to reign them in? Us? If the objective is to reign them in diplomatically, we've kinda pivoted our entire diplomatic focus to southeast Asia with to Indo-Pacific Strategy, where our diplomatic focus is on strengthening the ties of India, Japan, Australia with us to check China's growing regional and global power. We have essentially abandoned a role in leadership of diplomacy in the middle east and Iran and Russia are more than happy to rush in and fill that void. We couldn't even get a meeting with Jordan when Biden went to the region! The more the indiscriminate civilian massacres continue in Gaza, the more horrified the entire world and Middle East become, and the more they start to blame the US as enabled of this atrocity. Even countries like Saudi Arabia that has similar strategic aims as us, they seek to continue the global order status quo, use Israel as a useful bulwark against Iran, can't meet with us openly since there's such public disgust for our current 'brand' of freedom and democracy right now. And they are cozying up further to Iran who helped extricate them for the mess they got into in Yemen, and enjoying popularity in the Muslim world right now which is a valuable currency they don't want to flush down the toilet, especially when they rightly see the power vacuum we've left, and view themselves as the rightful regional ascendant power rather than Iran.
So if we can't lead diplomatically in the region to reign in Iran, can we do it militarily?
We spent six months preparing for the war on Iraq, amassing troops, establishing supply lines, aligning a 'global coalition'.
We maxed out with 176,000 coalition troops on the ground at the peak, having committed over 584,000 coalition troops, of which 466,000 were Americans throughout the duration of the war. We had a staging ground in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE and enjoyed a politically isolated Iraq, and support from local military groups to the north in Iraqi Kurdistan. We had six aircraft carrier battle groups deployed in the Middle East and 1,200 aircraft, and flew aircraft from 30 different bases. We had a clear objective, albeit a stupid one in hindsight of removing WMDs that were never found, 'liberating Iraq' and creating a democracy, which we never achieved. As of 2008, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government estimated the cost of the War in Iraq at $3,000,000,000,000 - $3 trillion dollars. Who knows what we've spent in the region since then!
And all of this was to destroy the Iraqi army, isolated, acting without regional allies, and in a relatively flat country.
Now we have a few thousand troops scattered, we have directly or at minimum indirectly through our presence created, funded, or inspired countless local militia groups, some funded by the US, many funded by Iran. We have been funding a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine for years, and we have already stretched our military thin with twenty years of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. Meanwhile Iran has created incredibly strong diplomatic ties and strong militias that orbit around Tehran one way or another - either ideologically, through funding, or through common objectives. The Houthis in Yemen are rearing to join in the fray against the US. The Iranian territory in mountainous and easily defensible, oh, and Iran is a nuclear power supported by Russia, a nuclear power. After Israel bombed civilian airports in Syria for fear of Iran resupplying Hezbollah using them, the Russians rolled out the red carpet for Iran to begin using the Russian air base in western Syria.
And now we've spend untold billions in Ukraine, and are mostly worried about China, where we have most of our current naval forces deployed to keep China in check around Taiwan. Any further pivot away from southeast Asian threatens Biden and the US main strategic imperative of the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Maybe we can move a few more carrier groups over and put sailors in harm's way of Iran proxy militias and completely cede Taiwan to China.
So to summarize, Hamas is militarily as strong as they were when this bombing began. In order to get rid of Hamas, it will require a greater escalation, which will push us closer into a regional war with Iran's proxy armies. We have no diplomatic ground to stand on in the region. We aren't nearly prepared for such a war with Iran, we don't have clear strategic objectives, and the area is much more aligned against us militarily and diplomatically then it was in 2003, when we had to spend an incredible amount of resources with meticulous planning and global support to topple a much weaken opponent.
Even if I fully agreed with every single thing you said, that Hamas MUST go no matter the cost, that Iran needs to be reined in, I literally just don't see the pathway for that given the current regional dynamics other than wishful thinking.
