- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
Coming under fire from the left for the glaring contradiction of providing military assistance to a state that is perpetrating an active genocide, AOC issued a statement claiming her vote was about protecting civilians. AOC’s statement is absolute crap. The Iron Dome is not used for defending, it’s used to facilitate constant attacks. In an article for Jewish Currents titled “Iron Dome Is Not a Defensive System,” Dylan Saba explains:
“‘In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
The Iron Dome isn’t for protecting civilians, it’s for protecting the Israeli regime from deterrence. We see this in the comfort the regime displays in waging constant military violence on its neighbors knowing they can’t retaliate. That’s why Israel cut a ceasefire deal with Iran so fast.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
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Thank you for this
People who say you should criticize AOC less because there are way worse members of congress act like she’s just passively sitting there being a mediocre lawmaker. She’s not. She’s actively anchoring the leftmost edge of the Overton window of US politics to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and genocide. She’s actively stopping American politics from moving any further left than the nightmare we see before us.
Leftists shouldn’t hate AOC less than the politicians to her right, they should hate her much more. It isn’t Mike Johnson’s responsibility to move the US government to the left, and it’s not Nancy Pelosi’s job. It’s hers. That’s what she was elected to do. That’s what she framed the goals of her entire political career as being. And she’s taking her stand firmly bracing against any leftward movement from America’s genocidal, warmongering, unjust, exploitative, tyrannical status quo.
And this, libs, is why we focus so much of our ire at AOC and Bernie.
This is the whole ‘don’t vote for anyone other than Trump because they’re not hard enough against Trump’s agenda’ BS propaganda. Because the leftish person isn’t left enough for you doesn’t mean they’re worse than the person on the right. Media going after AOC right now is a concerted effort to smear the name of a leading young and powerful leftist. No one is going to be perfect, but hot damn is it easy to see how much these people frighten the establishment. The smear campaigns are on over drive for her and the new guy in NYC, Mamdani.
Stop vilifying the person who is leaps and bounds better than their contenders… just because they’re not perfect.
Don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t oppose genocide.
Palestine is the ultimate litmus test.
If the politician is willing to murder Palestinians for votes, they don’t care about you either.
unbelievable that it needs to be said,
do not vote for anyone who supports a genocide. Amd if you do, you will have to admit proudly that you support genocide, no buts, not if.
They should be able to look at a starving Palestinian baby amputee and tell them that it was worth it.
just because they’re not perfect.
Genocide apologist
@NJSpradlin @geneva_convenience
The liberal Americans with your fucked up definition of “left” and “too-left” or “far-left” who can’t ever see the difference between right or wrong and always NEED to choose the lesser evil because 90% of the time you have to choose between 2 evils only to think about what is good for you personally.
1(2)
Yeah, genocide is bad …but have you seen the CHEETO!!!
Fuck off.
Fuck off
Meh, look at op. They’ve spammed this crap everywhere.
It’ll be OK though because their conscience will be clear while the genocide rages harder and a shit ton else gets worse because no one passed their purity test.
And progressives wonder why they can’t ever get shit done. Exhibit a.
It’s incredibly easy to do, too. All you have to do is cast across the length and breadth of every single thing any particular leftist person has ever done, pick the one that can be interpreted the worst, and spin it up into the entirety of their being.
Putin killed a million Russian soldiers and God knows how many Ukrainians, bombed a bunch of cities on purpose, and all the rest of it? Well… it’s complicated. Let’s make sure we look at the whole picture. Here, I’ve got a pamphlet.
AOC voted against one doomed amendment from Marjorie Taylor Greene which was (to all appearances) actually accidentally a good idea because it was defunding Israel, and then had a pretty unconvincing explanation as to why? Literal genocider. Fuck her forever, she’s the enemy now and nothing else matters.
@NJSpradlin @geneva_convenience
2(2)It is a disgust and sad mindset that made me more and more convince that you DESERVE Trump, he is the best of America for the world, a naked version of what US was, is and always will be towards the rest of the word.
Unfortunately for you, he is practicing the very very light version of CIA backed US foreign policy on YOU and for what you guys are angry and upset.
Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.
Get the Stalin apology form.
The thing that really gets my goat is that there was no way the MTG bill/amendment defunding the Iron Dome was gonna pass. If AOC was truly cynical she would have voted for it, instead her politics explicitly lead her to vote against it.
I used to just think her advisors are kinda dumb or she just didn’t have great instincts. That statement was so disgusting, just an awful snake.
Yep. She’s terrible. If she was ever good, that’s long over.If you have not understood this until today, you may have been living under a rock.
We don’t sell our souls wholesale, but by degrees.
fuck “Israeli” “civilians” anyway, they’re all settler-conscripts. Let a million warheads strike their cities and make them howl
she was just doing what the unions told her to do
In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
100% correct, and this has been a well understood concept in the world of missile defence since the ABM treaty signed between the Soviet Union and United States in 1972, a limit on both sides ballistic missile defence capabilities at the time. There is no such thing as a purely defensive weapon.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
Iron Dome/Tamir doesn’t defend against ballistic missiles.
Israel does have a defensse system that does shoot down medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) with a relatively high rate of success, which has been in development since the 1980s in a joint partnership with the US (the Arrow system), it’s why we only saw dozens of direct impacts from hundreds of ballistic missiles fired, and why Israel attacked in the first place. That, and Iran’s MRBMs weren’t accurate enough to existentially threaten Israel’s military and nuclear sites, and the Israeli military and political wing was prepared/made the calculation that Iran bombing Israeli cities was worth it in exchange for Israel getting to bomb Iran. There have been additions to the system (from the United States, and Israel repositioning defence systems internally) since the Iranian Operation True Promise II of October 2024, where a large percentage of Iranian MRBMs directly impacted. The impacts we saw this year were a lot more devastating because a MRBM has a much larger warhead and impacts at much higher speeds than Hamas or Hezbollah rockets.
The joint US-Israeli integrated Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system used to defend Israel from Iranian MRBMs consisted of:
SM-3 Block IB interceptors fired from US Navy AEGIS missile destroyers in the Mediterranean, and Israeli Arrow 3 interceptors fired from within Israel itself, for the exo atmospheric layer of defence (outside of the earth’s atmosphere, over 100km in altitude and at ranges exceeding 2000km, parts of SM-3 interceptors ended up landing in Iran itself).
The endo-exo-atmospheric layer (intercepting both inside and outside of the earth’s atmosphere) consisted of US THAAD batteries/fire units located in Israel itself, operating between altitudes of 40-150km.
The endo-atmospheric layer of defence consisted of Israeli Arrow 2 interceptors operating between 8-50km altitude, and David’s Sling/Stunner interceptors that operate up to 15km altitude for last second point defence. Iron Dome/Tamir was responsible for shooting down balls of debris from intercepts, and shooting down any one way attack drones that made it to Israel. At most, there is footage of Iron Dome maybe being used to intercept one MRBM as a last ditch effort.
Boys doing laps today trying to sow division in the US
Would be less division without you showing up in every thread to defend genocide.
Coming under fire from the left for the glaring contradiction of providing military assistance to a state that is perpetrating an active genocide
she voted no on the full munitions bill, which included the iron dome “defenses”
She explicitly said she wanted to give Israel iron dome missiles on Twitter
?
she voted no on the full munitions bill, which included the iron dome “defenses”
honestly i’m having trouble having serious conversations with people about this because they refuse to recognize or grapple with the fact that she voted no on the full munitions bill, which included the iron dome “defenses”
the only thing that makes sense to me is that she’s playing politics and doesn’t want MTG’s amendment to be used against her - which is strange given that she ultimately voted no on the entire munitions bill
What did Ilhan Omar and Rashifa Tlaib vote yes on and AOC no?
yep, exactly
granted they all voted no in the end, but why did AOC play games on the MTG amendment just to vote no on everything?
Because she supports sending taxpayer money to Israel so they can buy weapons. She explicitly said that.
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Weird way to say you support Adolf Hitler.
“I participate in genocide, you didn’t clean your room today, we are the same”
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Not being unable to singlehandedly dismantle a genocidal system is in no way comparable to materially supporting the genocide.
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the self-defense of a population
Zionists are by definition the aggressors in this conflict and have been since 1948. They do not have a right to self defense. Supporting them is like sending weapons to Germany after it invaded Poland and claiming that they’re for “self defense” against antifascist partisans.
“By almost entirely negating the ability of militant groups in Gaza to respond to Israel’s incursions, the purportedly defensive Iron Dome allows Israel to strike without fear of repercussion. And because the cost is so low when measured in Israeli casualties, Israel can wage perpetual war without suffering domestic political consequences, and is under negligible pressure to pursue diplomacy with the Palestinians. ‘In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
Genocide apologist
False premise.
I don’t think not providing arms to a genocidal state to enable it to attack its neighbours and avoid retaliation for its genocide counts as the bar for “perfection”
I ask for not actively participating in the modern Holocaust.
