Summary
Former CIA Director Leon Panetta warned that Trump’s return to the White House could embolden Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, giving him a “blank check” in the Middle East and increasing the risk of war with Iran.
Panetta expressed concern that Trump would support Netanyahu’s aggressive stance against Iran without restraint, potentially worsening regional instability.
Panetta also predicted Trump might allow Russia to retain parts of Ukraine if he returns to office, though he doubted Trump’s negotiation skills.
He criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy, suggesting Trump would be inclined to “capitulate” to authoritarian leaders, which may not sit well with some Republicans.
I would hedge my bets for now. Alternative scenario: The Saudis throw another party for Trump, make some business deals in exchange for reigning in Israel. The House of Al Saud of course doesn’t care about Palestinians but their people do and a party and some business is a low price to pay to be celebrated by your subjects.
When it comes to Russia, Trump may realise that Putin way overplayed his hand, but that’s balanced by animosity towards Zelensky. OTOH, I mean, business deals. Don’t underestimate Ukraine when it comes to being smooth operators. They can sell NASA/SpaceX rocket engines made from Russian war reparations titanium.
Thing is: Trump is highly neurotic and thus, while not necessarily predictable, highly manipulatable if you know what you’re doing. Only have to blow the right smoke up his ass.
I heard the “but there won’t be any of these wars once Trump is back” argument several times.
I would usually revel in watching the walls come down around someone’s stupid opinions, but in this case, we as a country have to suffer for it.
Really shows how stupid and gullible the American electorate is. War is a classic “Wag the Dog” tactic.
No no guys, Harris was the one that supports the Palestinian genocide, not Trump!
Fucking idiot tankies.
Bud, they both support it. The difference is that Republicans don’t pretend to care about stuff like this.
Trump voters: “Trump is the most peaceful president ever. We need to bring the defence spending to Ukraine home. America first”.
Trump is elected and inevitably drags the US into yet another war in in the Middle East
Trump voters: Pikachu face
Nah. Just kidding about that last part. It was all just empty rhetoric to justify the grift and looting all the way down as the country burns to the ground in the background.
Don’t forget that if we pull funding from Ukraine, the proxy war with Russia will potentially morph into the most peaceful war between Russia and our allies.
Trump is very isolationist. I’d be quite surprised if he committed to any conflict directly. Funding Israel to fight for him however…
I find it odd when someone says Trump is this or Trump is that as if he’s consistent on anything. His absurd narcissism is the only consistent thing about him. You can bet your ass he would drag us into a war if it would stroke his ego in some way.
That is what makes him so uniquely dangerous. He has no ideology to speak of. His focus shifts back and forth so often that trying to predict exactly what he’s going to do is impossible. You can say with certainty that he won’t be motivated by any sort of desire for the public good but that’s about as specific as you can get until he starts doing something.
Seriously, it’s amazing that more people don’t understand that Trump does only what Trump thinks will benefit Trump, even if it’s just benefiting the ego.
Take your bow single-issue voters and protest voters. We tried to warn you.
You did this.
Yeah but GeNoCIdE JoE, etc.
Nah the DNC did this by abandoning their principles and base in a failed attempt to appease conservatives and some foreign government.
Arguing that people should just support, fund, and arm human slaughter, and likening it to something basic like marijuana legalization or taxes, all so you can win a contest is fucking insane coming from the supposed left, but it really just shows how far to the right the party has gone.
You did this.
This is exactly what I was saying months ago. And it’s absolutely going to happen now. The entire region is going to plunge into chaotic war, and Putin couldn’t be happier.
Congratulations, idealists. You definitely stopped the genocide by refusing to vote for Harris and urging others to do likewise. A+ job.
“They” weren’t persons holding “real” opinions, I’m afraid. Just as the russians calling for “russophobia” 2 months prior to the special genocidal operation
I truly cannot grasp how uninformed one has to be to claim to be for Palestinians but think helping Trump’s odds was strategically better. Such profound ignorance is on par with maga, themselves.
On another note I want absolutely nothing to do with Mehdi Hasan. I supported him for quite some time but he got tunnel vision to such a degree he ended up thinking completely irrationally and contributing to the problem. He’s venturing into Jill Stein territory for me.
Oh he’ll help end the genocide alright. You can’t genocide a people that’s already wiped off the planet.
ukraine is gonna get ‘helped’ similarly. putin will have a free pass once the u.s. aid stops. i don’t think the other nato countries or the e.u. can cover that, especially long-term.
Y’all are thinking pretty small, Putin won’t just have a free pass about us aid, Putin has a pass to our entire structure. Their military might be shit but their Intel apparatus is not at all.
I hope as soon as US aid stops, they launch everything they have at major Russian cities.
right? they’re holding back for conditional western aid. as soon as the aid ends those conditions mean nothing.
Why would this be different from right now? If they could feasibly end the war they way, they absolutely would, and id absolutely condone it.
I think the EU will change. If Ukraine falls, territory grabs from Poland, Finland and Hungary are next. Those are actually EU constituents.
Hungary will not leave the EU btw. Orbán’s days are numbered, what with the Tisza overflowing.
I’m expecting mega stupid bullshit like Trump lifting sanctions in exchange for Russia standing down so Trump can send American planes over and show the world we have the biggest and best bombs, while his megadonors line up for Russian contracts and celebrate
Stoppig the genocide… Who started it?
Israel. What’s your point?
Cool so Trump won’t be responsible for stopping the genocide either. Everything falls on Israel.
No shit. That has nothing to do with this discussion.
Why did you bring up the genocide if you do not believe the American president has any responsibility for it? Biden has funded 70% of the cost of the genocide.
Gosh I don’t know, maybe because a huge number of people decided to allow in a rapist fascist dictator who is going to conduct his own two genocides domestically, thinking their protest vote or their protest abstention would totally teach the Democrats a lesson regarding Israel?
Have you spent the week in a cave?
What did you do to stop the genocide?
Then he will be held to the same account Harris was.
What are you even talking about? Harris is the Vice President. Exactly what do you think her job responsibilities and powers are?
She said she would not have changed a single decision that was made during the Biden administration. Biden said that she was in 100% agreement with every decision made. Which means she agreed to the current conditions
I really hope you find solace in the idea that Harris and Trump would be equally bad for the world as Trump throws America into the garbage and tries to take the planet with it.
Do you have any idea how much CO2 biden’s proxy wars have dumped into the atmosphere? How many chip manufacturers were given environmental exemptions for chip manufacturing? The actions from Democrats mirror the actions from Republicans. The only difference is that Republicans say all of those things out loud
Again, I hope you find solace in the idea that Trump and Harris are exactly the same when things get really awful. I’m sure you’ll feel much better about yourself not voting for her.
Block him, Squid. He’s doing this in every thread and you need to put this energy towards more important things.
I find solace in not allowing the continued rightward march of Democrats. Liberals are 100% to blame for our current conditions for never holding their own people accountable. At their current pace the DNC will be on par with people like McConnell in a few years.
Dude, you really need to just move on from Biden and Kamala. They lost and aren’t going to be in office much longer. Trump is the threat.
Tell us you don’t know what a VP does without telling us you don’t know what a VP does.
Okay my man look at the margins. The anti-genocide people could’ve all voted and it wouldn’t have flipped a single state outside of Michigan. And the thing is: Harris lost before Michigan even finished counting. So yeah, you’re barking up the wrong tree here.
The fact that the person representing the choice to act is also giving a WTF, dude face is hilarious.
The anti-genocide people could’ve all voted and it wouldn’t have flipped a single state outside of Michigan.
See, if you’d said the anti-genocide people who protest voted could’ve all voted for Harris, you might’ve had a point.
But turnout in this election for the Democratic candidate was significantly decreased, and an uncertain number of those were anti-genocide.
Abstaining gave Trump the presidency. Abstaining for what reason varies, but Gaza was clearly an issue for some to stay home.
This is one of the excuses they are giving rather than accept any culpability whatsoever. “Even if we voted for Harris, Trump would still have won.”
Culpability for what? Nothing is forcing Biden and Harris to support such atrocities. Nothing forced them to abandon the left and the working class and cater to the right at every opportunity. If you want to point fingers, why don’t you start with the actual candidate leading the campaign, who consciously made all these decisions, and the party leaders backing her?
Was 2016 not enough of a wakeup call? Was the near loss in 2020 not a wakeup call? Here we are in 2024, repeating the same old song and dance, and people are still digging their heels in thinking that moving further and further right is a winning strategy for the Democrats and it’s everyone else’s fault when it doesn’t work again and again and again.
Maybe the party leadership will finally pull their heads out of their asses after this, but I won’t hold my breath. They’ll probably pick someone like Joe Manchin to run in 2028 and then wonder where it all went wrong once again when he loses to someone like Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis.
This not to mention down-ballot congressional races.
Gave them everything they fucking wanted. This country is cooked.
Abstaining gave Trump the presidency. Abstaining for what reason varies, but Gaza was clearly an issue for some to stay home.
Yes, and I’m saying that Gaza wasn’t an issue for enough people to matter. Harris needed Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to win, and while I can see pro-Palestinian votes swinging Michigan I simply doubt there were enough of them in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to matter. If you think otherwise, then you have more faith in the American people than me I guess.
The outcome of the election doesn’t change the fact that 18% of voters wasted their vote on a Russian plant.
In the end it didn’t matter but it does matter that they knew the election was close and their protest vote could’ve very well been the deciding factor. They decided to make the statement despite the risk of having someone much worse winning. Now, go plead your cause to Trump.
There is no way for you, or anyone, to know how many people abstained from voting over any one issue, 🤡
Please give me the numbers of these in every swing state along with how they were determined.
At some point some people were even saying Harris is worse than the same. For your sanity, I only hope you don’t have family in the Middle East.
Rashida Tlaib’s district is a prime example of this, she kept her seat by a wide margin while Dems lost the state. They decided to ignore their voter base and suffered the consequences.
It’s pretty normal for people not to vote for someone genociding their family. It’s her fault, not the voters. The same way Democrats threw away the votes of the left and Palestinians because they didn’t care if they were being genocided is the same logic the right uses to vote for Trump for the economy despite all the damage he’ll do to women and other minorities. You’re all equally selfish and you don’t have the moral high ground when you’re supporting a genocide and quieting any dissent on it. People tried to say this could lose her the election, but nothing can be the politicians fault, of course, just the voters.
Anyway, turns out it wasn’t the genocide anyway. She lost Michigan because of it probably but it didn’t matter anywhere else, and she lost the election before it was even added. You can add up all the third party votes and it didn’t amount to shit. It was the economy. It always is. People in fucking rural Pennsylvania haven’t been reading hexbear posts or whatever. They just didn’t buy what she was selling.
Or course, if it was the genocide, that just proves what the left was saying all along: she’s got to do better on this issue or she can lose the election, and she’d rather lose than not do a genocide. Turned out she probably would’ve lost either way but still, hopefully the next Democrat candidate will do better, or we can supplant the party with a new one that can run an actual campaign. You can keep doing the bullying thing, but it didn’t work this election, or in 2016, and it won’t work next election either. Stop trying to convince the voters to care about what you want them to care about, and telling them not to care about what you don’t care about, and time to meet them where they are.
We didn’t get the Bell Riots but maybe we’ll get a WWIII.
Still have my fingers crossed for Irish Reunification this year.
lol within a year or 2024?
I havent heard a peep a… oh its a star trek thing gotcha
Maybe Trek was just a few years off on the Bell Riots
I mean… there can’t be an ongoing genocide if they are all dead taps temple
(God I hate this planet now…)
Here’s the other side that was “just as bad.”
For everyone not aware, given everything else that’s going on—yes, that’s world war
Oh my goodness, those free Palestine protests are really going to step up in the U.S. !
Just kidding, they’re done, mission accomplished. They were never about Gaza, just about disenfranchising Democrats as part of social engineering to ensure a Trump win.
Let me ask you this, dear concerned protesters: Who was the protest leadership? I don’t mean the local organizer. Who was directing the protests at the national level? I sure as shit don’t know.
Common decency and morality, maybe?
Fee Palestine protests aren’t new.
“Common decency and morality” just got a vindictive, hateful pos elected. The Gaza protest emphasis on Biden or Harris but never, NEVER on the Republican lead Congress that votes on foreign aid is rather telling.
ML are like “oh, maybe Joe wasn’t so bad”
Haha, nah, they never cared about genocide.
No leftist thinks “Joe wasn’t that bad”. On his watch Israel has killed an estimated almost 200,000 people (using more accurate figures by the Lancet and people on the wrong since their health center basically can’t count anymore since they don’t have the infrastructure), started their initiation of the general’s plan starving out Northern Gaza, made everyone but a doctor flee the last hospital in Northern Gaza, start taking over West Bank, killed a record number of journalists in any conflict ever, kill the people they were negotiating with multiple times, and let them start a war with Lebanon and Iran. Oh and also sent backup to Yemen and put troops in Israel to protect them from retribution since apparently Israel is the only country allowed to defend themselves. Trump will do the same thing, but just talk about it more. It’ll be tough for him to reach those heights, even if he sends more troops in, it’ll just be continuing the logical next step of what Biden was doing.
It’s gonna get rough(er) in Gaza
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