Yeah, not defending anything on the merits. But there is the perennial temptation that your own preferences are the obvious political winner. It was largely a no-win scenario politically, the only question is what hypothetical policy hurts least, and I'm skeptical of anybody confident about that. - ThreadSky

andycraig.bsky.social • 15 days ago

Yeah, not defending anything on the merits. But there is the perennial temptation that your own preferences are the obvious political winner. It was largely a no-win scenario politically, the only question is what hypothetical policy hurts least, and I'm skeptical of anybody confident about that.

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diplomatofnight.com•15 days ago

Yeah on purely electoral level I've no qualms with anyone saying they don't know what the most optimal policy would have been to wrangle his coalition. I certainly don't. On an actual policy level, and certainly on a moral level, Biden was and can really only be seen as having greenlit destruction.

diplomatofnight.com•15 days ago

And I think he did so with basically no qualms. I do take issue with those who say he secretly wanted to do something and could not. This is wishcasting. I recognize no one is saying that here though.

jortscity.bsky.social•15 days ago

The most generous wishcasting I'd do for him would be that he was misled & lied to by Netanyahu & Blinken - but that's only bc we've seen reporting on their dishonesty and I've not seen such that directly indicated that Biden was saying one thing public & opposite in private... We also know that...

jortscity.bsky.social•15 days ago

... We also know that Biden's, like Trump's, news intake was pretty curated other than him watching Morning Joe. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of negotiating details were withheld from him.

Again, this is the **most generous, most optimistic wishcasting case**.

jortscity.bsky.social•15 days ago

Like, when it came to sanctioning the ministers referenced above, who knows if Blinken gave him a printout that excluded all the damning details? Is a guy like Biden going to pull up Google and look those guys up?

tft.io•15 days ago

His regrets are between him and his confessor. If there was stuff he knew he should do and didn’t, that’s enough for the judgement of history.

andycraig.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yeah, I don't think it was that, either. Hard to know what he truly believed on the merits but I do think he was coming from a general background of being pro-Israel his entire career and was probably incapable of updating his priors on that.

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