J.D. Vance sometimes talks like a non-interventionist, but most of his foreign policy positions don’t match his rhetoric. The other day, he was talking about foreign conflicts and he said, “Sometimes, it is just none of our business and we ought to stay out of it.” That is a reasonable and defensible position, and I agree with it, but that can’t be squared with Vance’s own support for the war in Gaza and his calls for Israel to “finish the job.” If ever there were a time for the U.S. to “stay out of it,” it is when a U.S. client is waging a monstrous war that kills tens of thousands of civilians while they also create a man-made famine.
U.S. weapons and support have been essential to Israel’s military campaign, so it’s not as if we can pretend that the U.S. hasn’t enabled the horrors in Gaza. The only involvement that the U.S. should have here is to use its leverage to press for a lasting ceasefire and to stop the slaughter and starvation. Instead Vance wants to “let them prosecute this war the way they see fit.” Well, this is how the Israeli government has chosen to prosecute the war, according to the account of two American surgeons that went to Gaza to help treat victims of the war:
We started seeing a series of children, preteens mostly, who’d been shot in the head. They’d go on to slowly die, only to be replaced by new victims who’d also been shot in the head, and who would also go on to slowly die. Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing inside when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.
One of the surgeons, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, also spoke to CBS News this week about what he had seen:
And the civilian casualties, he said, are almost exclusively children. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week… missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.”
“You’re saying that children in Gaza are being shot by snipers?” asked Smith.
“Definitively,” said Dr. Perlmutter.
The U.S. should have no part in such atrocities. Vance believes otherwise.
Supporting this war is profoundly wrong and it is harmful to American interests. It is exactly the sort of war that a principled non-interventionist would denounce and fight to end. Vance doesn’t do that. He has no problem with it and thinks the only problem with Biden’s policy is that it doesn’t provide Israel with enough support. He makes all the same excuses for the Israeli government’s war crimes and crimes against humanity that you would expect to hear from the most zealous hardliners.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Like I've said all along, anyone who thinks Trump and Vance are going to change anything about US foreign policy is delusional. No President and even less so no Vice President (possible exception: Dick Cheney) will ever sway the course of US foreign policy against the wishes of the people who MADE them President and Vice-President.
There are no "independent" Presidents and Vice-Presidents. Get a clue.
Provided no one has any Epstein videos on Trump, and I don’t believe they do, he won’t care about loyalty. However, Kushner might have some deal that rewards him. Alternatively, Trump might be threatened with impeachment again should he cross Israel.
Like other politicians of the Duopoly Parties, JD Vance speaks from both sides of his mouth, he contradicts himself. He said sometimes we should stay out of a conflict, he wants endless, needless aid to Israel to "finish the job" of genocide.
The US should not stay out of the conflict in Gaza like some people say, it should switch sides and help the Gazans suffering from the war and genocide.
Oh my, can you imagine helping such people? We’d have to acknowledge what we’ve done to them. No one can bear those pictures and videos, and they’re just the tip. It’s worse than any horror movie. It’s up there with the Cambodian genocide.
They all are hypocrites and liars. They have no morals or ethics and are cowards.
Republicans and Democrats in congress looking to cut spending and targeting every social programs that serve American people but not dare to cut the huge subsidies handed to foreign countries and to finance Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.
When Vance is talking like that before the elections, obviously, he expect majority of Americans will support him. If Vance is right, it is really awful.
It’s not about winning an election. This is about convincing “conservatives” to support Israel.
You don’t look at the whole picture on many things. An election isn’t just an election. A war isn’t only a war. It doesn’t always matter who wins, whether it be war or an election. Winning is often not most important anyway. Elites run everything; the masses just get tricked. Tricking white Americans is important, and no group on Earth is dumber.
You are misunderstanding many things.
Well, of course. But I’m often right regardless. I knew those vaccines were dangerous. Russians and Neocons were arguing over who had the best. I knew they were all harmful.
Little people can laugh at how our leaders are fools. Big Pharma made a fool out of most of the world, though not China it seems.
In other words, continue this: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/gaza-hospitals-surgeons-00167697
It can’t be said enough: Evangelicals worship Satan and will burn in Hell if Christianity is the truth. They’re willing to kill children to get into Heaven. They care only for themselves, not for what is right.
Tell me you don’t know what “evangelical” means without telling me you don’t know what “evangelical” means.
One who believes Christ died to ensure Christians serve Israel. I’m joking, but I don’t really care to learn about them. They read the Bible directly, without structured guidance, and get tricked as a result. The Schofield Bible was one of the key tricks at one point, with its commentary. And I’ve been made aware over the years how there can be some few translation issues.
I’m sick of it. I’d rather hear about how holy the Parsi are or the Brahmin or Greek paganism from the Romans.
I’ve never heard anything so horrible as, “We must destroy the children of Amalek.” It’s like that guy from Indiana Jones ripping a still-beating heart out. Nothing I’ve experienced compares, and I sometimes talk with Christians since then who tell me about Israel and God’s people. It makes my skin crawl.
And I do get, very well, that it might soon be Israelis facing real persecution. But that doesn’t justify what’s going on. They have gone fully crazy. I’m not a sociopath. I don’t want anyone harmed. I don’t want the US involved, because I do recognise that it’s a complicated situation which others better understand. I’ve seen too many examples at this site of Americans jumping in to save the world and wrecking it as a result. I just want out.
“Evangelical” implies nothing either way about support for Israel.
The central tenets of “evangelical” Christianity are:
1) Being “saved” by being “born again” (i.e. repenting of sin in prayer to the father with the son as intercessor, and getting baptized); and
2) Proselytizing to convince others to do likewise.
Everything else (including which version of the Bible is most “correct” and how to interpret its various teachings) differs from one “evangelical” denomination to another.
In recent years, support for Israel among “evangelical Christians” has started to wane, especially in the black church community and among the younger demographic regardless of race.
Still going strong with Boomers and Gen X though. Every EVC I know (they're in my family, my classmates, my whole neighborhood in GA, and see them on social media in droves) think this way on Israel. Maybe it's waning in the Black community, no, probably. And devout ME Christians probably aren't on board. I used to work with one, if that means anything. :-)
Evangelicals dont know those features you are referring to.They know though that : I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse him. Baby killing is no exception .
There are many millions of evangelicals with varying beliefs … and they know their own beliefs better than you do.
Lots of people know everything about issues that you don’t know anything about. It matters if they know what is relevant to the issue at hand. No, they don’t know, and when they do, they don’t connect the inconsistency between the expressed belief and practices, or between belief and impacts.
”Let there be Peace on Earth and let it begin with me…With every step I take, a Peace for eternity! With God as the father, Christ as the son and Mary as the Mother, there will be Peace for Everyone, regardless of faiths, as their hearts and words must be true!”
“ Tens of thousands killed “ I didn’t know that, in my humble view it is “tens of thousands murdered”.
Murder inc. Baby killing organzation ,even the drug lords of Colombia did not engage into it.