From the UK, and since the Republican party is so far detached from mainstream British politics I find it really interesting. I have so many questions, but I'll just ask the one:
Why do so many Republicans (and a lot of Americans) believe its wrong to send money/weapons to Ukraine but happy to do so for Israel? Seems inconsistent. Is it all really about religion?
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Personally republican, do not think weapons should be sent to either
Why do you think many are so pro-Israel
There’s a lot of reasons, strategic interest, their religious values, counterterrorism efforts, historical alliances
Pre-tribulation (rapture) eschatology was only ever a thing in denominations that ultimately originated in America
As we are a bi party nation state, each party has many nuances within. There are loony fringes, like Kamala, centrists, like Donald and war hawks, like Pompeo. Support for Israel mainly comes from fear of AIPAC $$$$$. Lots and lots and lots of money for single issues.
This is very true
Israel is a US foothold in the middle east and strange US Christian (not catholic) beliefs. With oil independence and politically breaking away from the rest of the major oil producers in the middle east, the US finds itself with little to no allies in the region. Increased support to Israel bolsters an ally and pushes back/counters Russian/Chinese/Iranian influence and power in the region. US support of Israel comes down to geopolitical positioning.
Another reason why conservatives are so big on Israel is because there is a belief that the return of Jesus will not happen until Jews reclaim their homeland. It is a strange belief by Christian Americans. https://apnews.com/article/evangelical-christians-israel-volunteer-trip…
"80% of evangelical Christians believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ's return and more than 50% of Evangelical Christians believed that they support Israel because it is important for fulfilling the prophecy"
So much for division of church and state
Division of church and state is more there isn’t the church running the country. Everyone is influenced by their beliefs and US is mostly Christian.
But would say the biggest reason is historically allies and lots of republicans are Christians and are very sympathetic towards Israel.
Not as much dog in the fight with Ukraine IMO and don’t think people want it turning into a semi-proxy war.
There is ONE answer only: AIPAC money and influence.
This is larger than AIPAC
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christians_United_for_Israel
Honestly because until Russia invaded Ukraine 99% of people in America had zero fucking idea it was a real place. Also, until Russia invaded Ukraine it was widely known in policy circles that Ukraine is the most corrupt place on earth.
People disagreeing with you meanwhile
Granted they take the perspective that the non-US interests were the corrupt ones, as the corporate media typically does.
Of course. The "4th estate" is nothing more than government propaganda these days. Where people make the mistake is thinking that it is propaganda for elected only. In reality it is mostly propaganda for entrenched government interests, or the deep state.
You do realize that the Republican party isn't a monolith and is the only of the 2 parties with significant membership that has expressed they want the US funding neither Israel nor Ukraine right?
Israel has one of the most powerful lobbyist groups in the country and has significant influence over both parties. For decades though they've held a particularly strong hold within the Neocons (Neoconservatives; think Bush/Cheney/Romney-types, very hawkish but also supportive of big govt) and it was at their beckoning we launched offensives into countries like Iraq after 9/11. In fact it was Netanyahu who proposed the idea of the domino effect in the Middle East which was a cornerstone of the original reasoning behind "bringing democracy" to the region - the idea that once one "falls" that the rest would follow suit and we would see a liberal democratic wave sweep over the area (obviously this didn't happen). There's also the facts that 1) the US was instrumental in the creation of Israel itself, 2) it being one of our most critical intelligence allies, especially in the Middle East, for over 50 years, and 3) very believable assertions by some that there's a large blackmail ring involved with Israeli intelligence and members of the US political elite. Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell's father had deep connections to the Mossad and Israeli heads of state + the Royal Family in the UK. Jeffrey Epstein's entire island adventure setup and his mansion in NY were both wired to the gills for collecting footage of powerful public figure (a la Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and many others) in compromising positions, and he also had known connections to "intelligence" (it was never made clear who). So US allegiance to Israel is likely a mix of longtime obligation, critical partnership, and potential corruption/threat to the political establishment. There are also definitely elements of the hardcore religious Christian base that will support Israel to the ends of the earth because the Muslims are seen as evil, and unfortunately they're all ears when Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran does something to Israel but have selective blindness when Israel does horrific shit to the Palestinians. It's been this messy since Israel's inception sadly.
Ukraine has none of that. It was just a slush fund for military industrial complex money laundering and became more internationally prominent under the Obama-admin after the US supported a coup of their democratically elected government in 2014 (not unlike what we had decades of practice doing in South America during the 20th century). It's a war that could've had a negotiated peace almost 2 years ago at this point but the US, spearheaded by the Democrat party and supported by establishment Republicans, has intentionally kept the war going because 1) it's the direction they were already pushing towards under the Neocons and Obama admin which Biden is just a continuance of, 2) they treat Russia as though it remains the same threat as the Soviets were during the 70s and 80s, and 3) the aforementioned Neocons have waned in power against the populist Right, so their military industrial complex supporters have basically embraced the Democrats and turned them into the new party for war. Notice how Lockheed Martin and Boeing as suddenly so focused on DEI and other ridiculous shit like that, because they realized it's a cheat code for half the American public to get them to stop paying attention to them dropping bombs on kids. And it's easier to be against this one because unlike with Israel bombing this shit out of Arabs, there's an actual existential risk of retaliation from Russia because they have more nukes than even the US. For that reason alone we should not be backing them into a corner over a fight with some country half a world a way that's not even part of the EU or NATO. The idea Russia is going to rebuild the Soviet Union is laughable, they want access to the Black Sea and to keep open their only warm water port for international trade + are freaking out about us putting missiles in Ukraine the exact same way the US did when Soviets put them in Cuba.
Both wars are bad. Neither of them deserves our funding or involvement in any capacity beyond trying to help negotiate a peace.
any good books, news sources, documentaries, etc. that you'd recommend to stay informed? thx for your explanation btw - very eye-opening
This is so based.
Wow the mods deleted my comment almost instantly??? Was it the mention of Epstein? I certainly wasn't painting either side in any of the conflicts in a positive light.
for some reason I was able to read your comment, I don't think it warrants deletion
WallStreetOasis.com not sure what rule he broke above
to the OP I tend to vote repubilcan originally bc they had more libertarian leanings, now more for economic reasons and my own serious misgivings with democrats vis a vis race relations/DEI & social welfare programs, but I am staunchly anti-interventionalist and wish we weren't sending money to those countries. it sickens me that we're spending money we don't have on weapons that are used to eradicate a population. say what you will about hamas, the deaths of the innocent are appalling.
in my smooth brain I look at it like this - if you give someone something and you find out they're misusing it, you don't give them more and then say "be better this time," you cut them the fuck off. israel murdering children and bombing catholic & orthodox churches with our weapons? come the fuck on
plus, being a fiscal conservative, I'd rather not spend more money abroad when we have our own issues here, pols on both sides are just rent seeking leeches who love war for their own benefit and it ends up being a transfer of assets from US taxpayers to defense contractors and I'd be willing to bet our naive interventionalism doesn't decrease death, which should be the goal of any foreign policy in a conflict zone
As a Libertarian, do you still consider GOP a libertarian party? With regard to things like Roe v Wade & some of the other stuff which Project 2025 is connected to?
They brought it back but after editing a typo + adding some context to a point it got deleted again. I think I know what the problem is, it's probably auto-mod reacting to 1 particular word used to describe Epstein's Island. If they put it back I can remove that...
100% agreed on the Libertarian anti-interventionalist stance. We shouldn't be funding either of these conflicts. I have to wonder at what point of completely outrageous behavior do we stop considering Israel an ally in this particular situation vs a liability? It's almost an exact foil of how the US lost its mind after 9/11 and decided to invade countries that had nothing to do with it, subsequently spoiling any good will we had from the tragedy by killing over a million civilians and destroying cities and infrastructure throughout Iraq/Afghanistan.
Your comment was dogshit and false ❤️, but I also have no idea why it was deleted. Automod running wild again.
my guess is it likely had a block word like "pedo"... I'll ask devs
That is my guess as well and I can understand why automod would be sensitive to that. I can just remove the word, Epstein's island is reference enough for people to get the gist of the point. Thanks Patrick.
Because historically, neoconservatives (Reagan, Thatcher, Bush’s) have wanted to conquest the Middle East but leave Europe alone because it’s a little “too close to home” culturally. That sentiment still exists for the blind allegiance to anyone who’s on “our side” in the Middle East, in order to be able to enforce the petrodollar system the neoconservatives created/established. There are also connections via Judaism bc of the connection of Judao/Christian values. But as a borderline republican, I don’t support sending money to either (or any nation), especially if my great grandkids are going to be footing the bill.
And in my very young and uninformed opinion (Re: intern), anyone who disagrees with me on that is causing direct harm to their family members, because unless they plan on renouncing their citizenship & moving somewhere else, their great grandkids will have to pay for these debts we run up today.
Thanks intern, now go pick up my dry cleaning
🫡
I’m a reluctant Republican for economic reasons. Would prefer something different but working with what we got ...
anyways I don’t think we should be giving much money to either nation. It’s something that transcends party and is more a momentum thing with politicians. They’re giving money to THEIR friends, not yours. It’s like a GP doing a deal for himself and not the LPs. Kind of irritating honestly. I wouldn’t mind as much if they were honest about the rationale for the flows of $$
I understand fiscal responsibility but the US has a moral duty to defend itself, its interests, allies, and the western world. Russian aggression will not be tolerated and unfortunately the duty to rise to defend what the western world considers "good" falls to us. The entire identity of our nation is based on liberty and being a bastion of freedom and democracy.
We have a moral reason to do that IF the allies are pulling their own weight. That is the issue that most Americans actually have. These "allies" outside of a very small number don't pull their weight at all. Take Germany for example, they were fine to coast on the momentum created by the US in the post WW2 order and basically cut their defense spending to zero. We had multiple leaders in Germany outright demanding that all defense spending be cut before Russia invaded Ukraine. If these fucks weren't so selfish and hell bent on controlling all of Europe, this isn't just Germany in this context, you wouldn't have so many pissed off Americans. Now to add insult to injury the Europeans are waging open war on US tech companies through regulations. They are attempting to steal the profits of US companies under the bullshit guise that they are "protecting competition". The only issue is that Europeans are too stupid to build their own companies to actually compete so instead they resort to theft.
I honestly say fuck 'em. If Putin wants to take over all of Europe, let them deal with it on their own. Payback is a bitch.
Israel has great ties with US. there are twice as many Jews living in US as in Israel. a lot of powerful men in US are Jewish. so it makes sense that US wants to help their brothers and sisters fight a islamic terrorist group Hamas, especially after their kidnappings during that music festival, which included kidnappings of a bunch of US citizens.
on the other hand, Ukraine has nothing to do with US. Ukraine never did anything for US, there are no ties. and Ukraine vs Russia war is a domestic dispute between neighbors who used to be one country throughout the whole history of Russia (Kiev Rus, USSR, etc.). why get involved and fund the war so that it drags along longer and more people die?
So Jewish nepotism and tribal loyalty. Got it!
Yeah. But also people understand that Hamas is a problem and we need to fight it.
Russia may be a problem as well, but we can't fight it without turning the world into WWIII and eventually nuclear war that will end us all. So it may be better to just let them take some Ukrainian land and let Ukrainians from those territories who don't wanna live there immigrate as refugees to US. A lot of Ukrainians and Russians moved to US since the start of the war btw. I used to only occasionally heard Russian speech here and there, but since the start of the war I hear it a lot.
I’m on the same side as you but still think this is a terrible low level completely uncomplex take
people love to complicate things to sound smart. in reality a lot of things have very simple reasons behind them.
but its the truth lol. a lot of america's elite is jewish=support for Israel lol
Personally, I don’t think the US should be sending money outside its borders to ANY country. None of our “allies” invest in their military like we do, so we are essentially footing the bill. If I were in charge, every country would have to pay an annual fee in order to get protection. Politicians on both sides only want to keep giving countries stuff because it fills their pockets and it’s disgusting.
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