Icarus27k

I hope these doubts about a ground invasion are true. It'll be a quiet victory of the U.S.'s ability to calm Israel down so they don't do something self destructive.

I think it started when Mark Grayson, who is supposed to be our everyman protagonist, called someone "retarded". I don't know who Mark is supposed to represent but I don't like whoever it is.

I have had a visceral negative reaction to Invincible since like issue number 30-something. Just the writing irked me.

Why is my social media feed filled with people talking about Omni-Man and Homelander? Like "who would win in a fight?" discourse. People are way too impressed by these mediocre characters.

People's opinions: The genocidal regime has killed thousands of people. My thoughts: Uh... both Israel and Palestine are genocidal regimes that have killed thousands of people. Which side are you accusing?

Now I think Hezbollah WILL get involved. I hope I'm wrong and they chicken out. As tough as they are, Hezbollah is no match for the IDF. They will be mauled and a bunch of places in Lebanon will be attacked by Israel. That is, I'm now working on the assumption Hezbollah will stupidly try the fight Israel. If it doesn't happen, I'll be relieved.

I suspect the U.S. is behind the scenes putting some restraint on Israel. That's probably why a ground invasion hasn't happened yet. I also assume there is somebody telling Israel they may lack capability to achieve their aims and therefore those aims should change.

The only way I see this ending is a bipartisan consensus Speaker. Democrats and moderate Republicans voting for someone. Good news: it will empower Democrats for the next year or so, depending on the details of the deal. I heard the name Doug Jones, former U.S. senator, suggested as a candidate. We could do a lot worse than him.

I keep thinking through worst case scenarios for the Middle East, and I keep coming to the conclusion: "We've already done that. How is this any different?" The Middle East has seen so many wars and atrocities, I'm having a hard time figuring out how this is worse or different. What? Will the USA get involved in a war? Oh yep, we've already done that. Several times. We Americans have even perfected the "limited intervention", where we are tired of fighting wars so we only get involved a little. Think of Libya in 2011 or Syria in 2013. Will Iran start firing missiles at Israel? Yep, Saddam Hussein used to do that. And the Palestinians fire unguided missiles into Israel all the time.

If this were 2005, Dick Cheney would probably be like, "Hell yes, the USA is going to invade and occupy Lebanon" and the majority of Americans might agree with him.

Just to clarify, Israel will be incapable of occupying all of Gaza and destroying all of Hamas. It's just not possible. A long-lasting occupation will strain Israel's resources and take those resources away from other threatening areas like the West Bank and the north of the country. Hamas will re-emerge in the future whenever Israel decides to leave. Also, the Israeli public isn't having a moment of rallying around the Netanyahu government. They are actually very skeptical of his actions leading up to Hamas' massacre and his war plans going forward.

As of February of this year, the U.S. intelligence community considered a war between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah to be unlikely. This was due to a diplomatic breakthrough in 2022 where Israel and Lebanon settled a long-running dispute over maritime borders. That doesn't mean peaceful though. Israel and Hezbollah have an understanding of "mutual deterrence".

I'm increasingly believing the GOP is done as a viable national party. Almost a decade of Trump as your party leader will do that.

Democrats must help.

The best I read and understood it is that Hezbollah and the Israeli government have an unwritten understanding of rules of engagement. They regularly attack each other even in normal times. The exchange Reuters reported is one of their normal exchanges. However today another incident came up that turned out to be a false alarm. Israel thought there was UAVs flying into Israel from Lebanon. They sounded sirens throughout northern Israel, scrambled jets and fired flares into southern Lebanon. But there were no UAVs. And Twitter started running it with it and blasted for an hour that Hezbollah had entered the war.

How it started: Hezbollah has invaded northern Israel. 90 minutes later:

This encapsulates well what Twitter is like now.

For the record, there is video on social media of a pro-ISRAEL rally in NYC where rallygoers are saying genocidal things like "Kill all Palestinians" They seem to think there is a two-sideism here.