I don’t think the analogy to Egypt works, because they have a peace treaty.

We all know Israel and Saudi Arabia have a shared adversary in the form of Iran. The US wants them to normalize so they can take care of that front.

As for getting impaled on the stick, I’d say Pakistan got impaled on the stick, because its likely they were the ones hiding Bin Laden.

As for Saddam falling on the stick, that was due to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait over several reasons: a desire to reunify, oil, and Kuwait debt. That’s on top of having a history of using chemical weapons for mass murder.

And as we know, the US loves oil, but so does the world. Globalized markets want to be stable, and the US helps with that

A lot of people dont understand US foreign policy. Do not interpret my post as taking a stance.

US foreign policy is all about 3 key issues, carrot and stick diplomacy, containing China and Russia, and protecting the global market.

Carrot and stick diplomacy is using positive reinforcement to make changes in totalitarian governments.

Containing China is all about making friends with countries near China and putting a base there, along with allowing companies, military arms deals, and joint intelligence to happen in that country.

• That is why the US wants Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize. And do to that, the US turns a blind eye to tons of bullshit done by countries in the Middle East. If they were to normalize, then a solid logistics chain from Europe to the Gulf can be established, and the two countries would bolster the front there. Then the US could pivot its power projection over to Taiwan.
• The US is powerful, but its not tactically sound to manage three fronts at the same time.

If you remember how pissed off the US got when Russia put missiles in Cuba, then you can see why China and Russia will team up with everyone they can to foil this plan to contain them.

Since the world is now globalized, the US has to protect lots of boats carrying oil, chips, and food. If something fucks up, then everyone pays for it. Of course, if youre resisting western imperialism then its in your best interest to make people suffer by blowing up the boats.

Now geopolitics makes sense.

From here, then if youre an idealist, you can make an informed opinion on US foreign policy. Should the US continue its world police campaign at the expense of people suffering under its allies?

Can you achieve US foreign policy goals without suffering?

Will a reversal of US foreign policy lead to more domestic suffering in the West due to economic turmoil?

These questions should be debated and examined thoroughly.

They have an official app LOL. You have to get it from their telegram. (I wouldn’t do it tbh)

Some of the sources I wanted to sub to but could never afford it are TIME magazine and The Atlantic.

WSJ I don’t believe gives all it’s articles to Apple. Could be wrong.

I wish the NYT was still in there, but they pulled out a while back.

I think The Guardian is in there though.

Let it be noted that this is an opinion article.

Editorials and Opinion pieces do contribute to social discourse regarding news, and may be correct, but unlike their normal news, they can say whatever they want about the news from the authors they hire.

Opinion pieces allow news sources to use sensationalist and inflammatory articles to drive engagement without harming their credibility, because of that giant OPINION label.

NYT and WSJ’s editorials and opinion pieces tend to be quite left and quite right leaning respectfully, to an almost satirical level. In my opinion, the WSJ’s comment section under its editorials are much worse.

I’m not disparaging the article in any way, just saying for those that may not already know.

Al Jazeera had been live streaming and live reporting the entire thing, and there are multiple angles and phone videos from them and other sources that show the entire incident, from the rocket barrage, to the booster failure, to the hospital explosion.

The Associated Press has the complete analysis to your question, including the videos I mentioned, posted yesterday.

Alot of the videos in there were confirmed 8 hours after the incident, this is the first mainstream media outlet that put it all together.

The AP was one of the first to report what the Gaza Health Ministry said, “Israel strikes hospital, killing 500”, then edited their article 3 times in 1 hour, with new titles and recharacterizing the report as “they said” to try and cover the increasing uncertainty of the situation. Along with the casualty number dropping. Now some might say “But any death at all is bad, 50 or 500!”. That’s true, it’s still really tragic, but it’s also a 90% error, which is a disaster for journalism.

The article covers the JDAM theories, the Israel warned them, the Hamas announcing their launching rockets a little after the incident. All things that would make the situation more murky.

I admit I do sound like I’m defending Israel with this. This particular event is a flashpoint for me personally since I’m heavily invested in the state of journalism in an age where the flood of information can overwhelm news and lead to innaccuracies.

The rocket turning around video is a different video from last year.

Unfortunately I got banned from World News on lemmy.ml because posting this was “War Crime Denial” apparently.

Okay I’ll answer you. It’s wrong for Israel to cut power to civilians. It’s right for Israel to cut power to military targets.

If military targets embed their infrastructure with civilian infrastructure. Oopsies. Civilians are now military targets.

Palestinians MAYBE shouldn’t have Hamas in power if they’re going to power their military operations with civilian power. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Every world power knows that, that’s why most have pretty much gotten behind Israel, regardless of any apartheid Israel has done.

The US did the same thing when 9/11 happened. The US did the same thing in Operation Desert Storm along with other NATO countries who joined the US in operations in the middle east.

Nobody in the west complained then, and nobody’s complaining now, because Hamas did the dumb dumb.

I’m not justifying anything that Israel has done in the past. The main point of my comment is that Hamas made a really poor decision here on behalf of the Palestinians. There is absolutely no doubt.

There is no moralizing or whataboutism.

The fact of the matter is that this caused a divided Israel to unite in anger. And support for Palestine has been cut by all European nations and Australia. Palestinian sympathizers and charity leaders have been among the victims.

The question you should be asking is if you support the Palestinian people is…

What the actual hell is this bonehead decision-making by Hamas? There is no scenario of success in this endeavor unless the Western world decided to withdraw all support from Israel and give it to Hamas.

Was that going to happen? No. Hamas never tried to establish good diplomatic relations with anyone.

The world stage is a democratic club, and Hamas rejected it all. Hamas burned every single bridge with other countries no matter how many citizens of those governments complain.

Depends on who you ask, there’s 50 Senators and 221 House Representatives on the Republican party.

Despite the substantial erosion of decorem on the right, there are still some who operate with civility and reason, though they are not as vocal as they should be.

Before you respond with semi-justified cynicism, it’s not an assumption. Republicans know they’d align mostly with Democrats on Israel.

I mean it’s very politically divided, but in terms of securing Israel, most opposition leaders called 9ff protests and united behind Netanyahu since there are still Hamas militants in Israel.

Let’s not forget that the act of using civilians as shields is a warcrime in the first place to prevent this kind of situation from occurring.

If Israel tells Palestinian civilians to evacuate because there’s Hamas military targets in that building, and Hamas troops tell them no. Then they die, and Hamas can cry wolf.

It would be Israel who is following international decorem and Hamas making it difficult for any country to support them.

Just now, Austria cut off aid to the Gaza region. Is that Israel’s fault? Nope.

Hamas had good PR going and they fucked it up by escalating with brutality.

Morally, it’s a complicated situation.

Geopolitically, Israel probably has the support of most Western nations simply due to the fact that they engage in diplomacy and have proper decorem, with a government system that is a relatively modern system despite political leanings.

Additionally, Israel has a better human rights record DOMESTICALLY than Palestine and the Gaza region. It’s still dominated by religion, terrorist leaders, and its own population’s semi-justified bitterness. Freedom of expression and freedom of press is heavily restricted, just like any other Islamic religious state in the middle east.

The sole responsibility of the escalation and subsequent destabilization of the region lies with Hamas. The sole responsibility of the withdrawal of Palestinian aid from countries like Austria, lies with Hamas.

And with all the videos popping up over the treatment and killing of Israeli civilians, it’s hard for the Western world, and especially Western governments to garner the sympathy for the Palestinian people that they had 1 week ago.

Both sidesing isn’t correct, whataboutism isn’t correct, blindly supporting either side isn’t correct, supporting efforts to contain the conflict is correct. The best way to do that is to monitor Israel’s progress in containing Hamas.

We know that Hamas hides in schools and civilian buildings, using their own civilians as a shield. That’s a warcrime it itself. So it’s going to be messy as hell.

The US sent the USS Gerald Ford into the Mediterranean as a deterrent. If any country starts to try to 3rd party the conflict, oh shit oh fuck WW1 vibes. That’s how tender this situation is.

And with 1 other active conflict in the world, this is shaky ground.

On the bright side, this means that Republicans may have to stop playing hardball with Ukraine, in order to not appear hypocritical.

Most support Ukrainian support, and most Western countries need Israel as a foothold in the middle east.

I just made a comment about that, hopefully that explains the current state of affairs about it.

Guns are one of those things thats really hard to restrict. It’s a freedom that most enjoy, and some abuse. Most that own guns responsibly don’t want their guns taken away due to law changes.

This was actually the case with automatic firearms, automatic firearms were legal to buy until 1986, ironically with the support of the NRA, which is the largest gun lobby in favor of less gun control. In this ban of automatic firearms, they allowed existing owners to keep their automatics.

You can count self defense cases and crimes with those weapons on one hand, most crimes are committed with handguns.

Another argument is just banning “assault style rifles”. This is basically the blanket description of an AR-15 style rifle, that is generally the same design as an M4 carbine in the military, with it’s adjustable stock, 16 inch barrel, black color, with a comfy pistol grip, the automatic function removed, and an MLOK rail for attachments like lights, lasers, or sights.

The reason that this description is silly, is because a normal semi-auto hunting rifle is functionally the exact same as an “assault rifle”. It has magazines and you can fire it rapidly buy pushing the trigger rapidly. You could ductape lights and lasers to it. Gun manufacturers could simply sell the same gun without the “tactical” features which are convenient for all users, and it would change nothing about crime.

Additionally, if there’s a huge gun buyback and all gun owners turn in their guns because the second amendment has been repealed, criminals are not going to turn in their guns, and it would leave many defenseless.

Often times, guns are necessary for those living in rural areas, because there is a great number of threats from wildlife in rural areas, from Alligators, to Mountain Lions, to Grizzly Bears and Brown Bears and Black Bears. Hunting is required to control the ecosystems of large game and small game. Additionally, many hunters opt to use the “tactical assault style rifles” due to their modularity. (Not always, many still use bolt action rifles, when it’s for sport).

Nobody in America actually has a problem with responsible gun ownership. The disagreements between states go down to magazine sizes, barrel sizes, concealed carry laws, concealed carry permits, etc.

Yes school shootings are a problem, with some troubled person shooting up a school with an “Assault style rifle”. But the fact of the matter is that it makes up an extremely small minority of gun crime.

The only difference between the US and Switzerland for example, is the fact that we are allowed to use the weapons in self defense versus animals or human assailants in our homes or in public. The other difference is the process to obtain firearms.

The last reason you will see resistance against gun control comes from the left. Gun control was originally pushed by conservative Republicans in the mid 20th century as a response to the Black Panther movement, civil rights group that operated as a militia and open carried rifles around town.

There’s an argument that gun control would be systemically racist agenda, because it would restrict gun control only to those with the money and time and clean records to complete the checks to complete a purchase of a firearm. It would leave minority groups less armed compared to conservative white males.

Weapons are inherently a check against violence in this way. Similar to how the world uses the fact that it can destroy each other as leverage for mutual and relative peace.

As for being able to relate this to someone from Europe who has never handled firearms or can’t understand the need for them, or people stubborn about them, I can relate as someone who never felt the need to own a weapon until recently. It’s quite similar to the freedom a motor vehicle gives you. You get used to the autonomy and independence that a vehicle gives you. Being able to take apart the machine, customize it, optimize it, make it yours and express yourself through that construction.

I’m not trying to draw a false equivalency, but it’s the closest one I can portray.

I hope this answered your question!

:3

Self defense laws are pretty weird in Europe. I am spoiled on our second amendment laws, so let my bias be noted.

However, some guy can break into your house and if you defend yourself with a bat or knife, the laws there from what I hear (this isn’t fact, I could be mistaken) can get you in trouble with the law. I remember reading that somewhere.

Sure it’s like that in the US too but there are many protections for those who clearly have acted in self defense.

That’s all it is, a looming creep that’s a very loud minority. The car-centric infrastructure is quite tragic, to be sure. And the cost of healthcare is a problem. But again, there are enough benefits to staying that outweigh the cost of moving.

I don’t know their circumstance. But for me, as someone who was formerly doom and gloom about some of these things. Some things that helped me was getting fit and volunteering.

After that, you could join the national guard, who will allow you to finish your degree, and you’ll immediately have job security.

People complain about the nation as a whole without taking the time to see what’s specifically wrong with their community and doing their part for the collective good of society.

Hi! I’m sure you have a lot of feelings about the US and maybe you have a specific situation that’s causing you troubles.

However, I’d recommend looking at other places in the country before looking at other places.

Moving is a huge expense, and if you lurk all the time on reddit or lemmy. You may start thinking that things are terrible, because you become emotionally invested in the outcome of a collective you can’t control.

In terms of other countries, the UK is going through the aftermath of Brexit, Italy is about to elect a controversial figure, France has some questionable anti-encryption policies under it’s belt. Another commenter mentioned Canadas downsides.

Looking at Asian countries like Japan and Korea, they are generally homogenous countries, and it takes much more work as a foreigner to make headway socially, with Japan moreso than Korea, to be fair. Compared to the USA, there is nary a country as diverse.

In the USA, there are many many places that can give you relative peace. Investing in local communities is much healthier than looking at huge national controversies, because usually local problems affect you more directly.

If you have the funds and resources and job security and drive to learn the language, I would say take a look at Switzerland. They’re relatively stable, neutral, and it’s a beautiful place there. I’d say it’s still quite homogenous though.

This isn’t meant to dissuade you from moving, but as someone who went through a period of depression due to the state of the country and it’s affect on my life, and has now found reasons to support the US wholeheartedly despite it’s problems, definitely look at quieter places in the USA, like some beach towns or mountainous towns in New Mexico.