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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3767 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Israel is winning on the ground but losing everywhere else

Eh. We nuked an Iranian airliner in 1988. News for a few weeks, then nobody cared. The Russians nuked a US airliner in 1983. News for a few weeks, then nobody cared. The Russians plugged another US airliner in 1978 and that shit didn't even get mentioned in 1983.

People give far less of a fuck than you think. Expressing outrage permits disinterested parties from having to actually do something about the problem.

PROTIP: Sanctions don't matter until they've been in place for years. We've had sanctions against Cuba for 50 years now. We've had sanctions against Iran for 30. Iraq was under heavy sanction at the time of our invasion. And, just as an aside, we didn't even halt grain sales to the USSR after they shot down a plane carrying a standing Congressman.





user-inactivated  ·  3767 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The sanctions don't matter, per se, (though they could if we had slightly more balls) but they're costing Russia capital now. It's real money. Does Putin mind? Not much, but someone does. And it's going to force Russia into an unfavorable position in negotiations with China. It's real stuff, even if like you say the PR battle doesn't seem to matter at the moment. Putin has intra-Russian media sewn up anyway.

kleinbl00  ·  3767 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I still think you're overestimating it. The Crimea is a big, expensive boondoggle for Russia. That was readily evident to anyone with a basic understanding of geopolitics. However, the Falklands were a big, expensive boondoggle for Argentina and the UK and both parties eagerly engaged. For Galtieri, it was a distraction from the pigfuck he'd made of the economy. For Thatcher, it was a distraction from the pigfuck she'd made out of the employment situation. Putin didn't take Crimea because it was a money-making venture, he took it because it gave him a nationalist flag to wave and distract people from domestic issues.

Isolation never hurts leaders. Take a look at North Korea. As far as China, China don't give a fuck about the European side of things and besides, they trade a lot more with Kazakhstan than they do with Russia. Gives them a proxy where anything Russia does doesn't matter.

None of which has much to say about Israel, whose primary trade partner is the United States, and whose primary exports are weapons bits and cut diamonds.

You're talking about an economy in which Israel is the clean end of Lord of War and Blood Diamond respectively. A few dead brown kids aren't gonna nudge that an inch.

user-inactivated  ·  3767 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Isolation never hurts leaders. Take a look at North Korea.

North Korea doesn't have an economy. Russia does, but it's shrinking and we stuck sanctions on all the banks (except the big one, since god forbid we actually suffer a bit to make them suffer). As I said, Putin's sitting just fine. But there have to be some Russian financiers and CEOs getting worried.

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It really may not matter to Israel. They get what weapons they need from us anyway, and are continuing to do so. Crazy hypothetical for fun: Israel continues to piss the world off so much that the bad/good Gaza polls of the American people swing even farther toward Palestine. At what point does the 2016 election have a (small) anti-Israel component to it? Would that seriously cost that candidate too much money to even consider it?

b_b  ·  3767 days ago  ·  link  ·  

No. It will be Hillary Clinton vs. whomever Sheldon Adelson finances. Israel will not suffer.