Israel, Hamas, etc

[Oscar_Kipling]

Having worked with a couple of government departments over the years the levels of waste are terrifying. During my school days my school did very well out of a government laboratory that had a tendency to throw away scientific equipment that was apparently perfectly serviceable but they bought too much. It was a matter of fortune that one of the staff in the lab had connections to the school or it would have literally gone in the trash. One might wonder why they bought so much more than they needed, or why they couldn't keep things that were expendable (glassware etc) but apparently that's not how it worked. It had to be thrown away.

Later on I worked for a company providing contract services to a government department and the amount of money we soaked up from them because they had to spend it on something, anything, was remarkable. For good measure we'd soak up a load of money they apparently had to spend in a hurry to do a pilot study, then once the pilot was done we had a basis for doing further work that cost them more.

It's entirely possible that there are checks and balances now that didn't exist then. But given the common theme is government I highly doubt it, and given how much extra the government spends now compared to then I find it hard to believe that they suddenly learned to do things efficiently. It's easy to spend someone else's money.

Well, yep if all of that went down just as you've described here, then it certainly sounds like a textbook example of government waste. I should point out that that did not clarify anything about the humanitarian aid waste from the 80's that you were referencing. I guess the difficulty I'm having is that while you have plenty of experiences, and what I presume are circumstances of African aid mishandling that you remember reading about from the 80's...but what I'm not getting is any impression that you have done anything to find out if things are still the same as the things you remember. I understand your skepticism, of course, no person in their right mind doubts government waste here in the US, but why not make some effort to find out what exactly is going down with humanitarian aid today, how it actually works and how that compares to the 80's situation...and if the 80's were actually as you remember them? 

Not so much an assertion that money was handed directly to Hamas although given the general lack of checks and balances I've experienced from what I've seen of government spending it wouldn't surprise me at all if our end of the arrangement is little more complex than "give lots of money" and the other end of the arrangement was that a non-trivial portion of that money ended up misused. Which leads on to....

Implications\assertions, tomato\potato lets call the whole thing a notion based on a lack of trust in the aid efficacy of our government, the UN and international aid organizations based on your assessment of your personal experiences and the news and such that you have consumed over the years. Still, would I be off base in asserting that you are happy to claim that the problem in the 80's was that there were no checks and balances, and that this same lack of checks and balances exist today, without actually doing anything to verify that that was and still continues to be that state of affairs?

I mean, when I imagine something simple like how aid workers might have been able to communicate the conditions on the ground in the 80's, it is quite different than it is now...I imagine. Like, in 1986, what means were there to communicate with other aid teams in the area or with HQ? If you were set upon child soldiers or whatever, cutting off communication could have looked quite a bit different, perhaps simpler in the 80's...I mean, these are just the sorts of things that stir my imagination. I also wonder if aid organizations not only took advantage of the, well, advantages of living in 2024, but learned anything themselves in the intervening decades. The government may think waste is yummy, but who are these weirdos who actually put on a reflective vest and a hardhat (i'm imagining that's what aid workers wear, because its fun) and get airdropped directly onto people's goat farms (also I imagine that is how they arrive because, fun) to actually organize and deploy the actual aid...Have they made a single change in how they operate since the 80's? It seems like it would be in their best interest to do so, that is if they are actually there because they actually want to provide aid, and not secretly just want to help the enemy keep doing enemy stuff. These are the sorts of things I might investigate if I were so inclined, but that is just me I suppose. Like how does aid even work? Well, anyway I'm just thinking out loud.

If you have a notional government that has the usual governmental responsibilities for looking after the people, any money given to them to help look after the people frees up other money to buy guns. It's a somewhat crude analogy but if you think of the rather stereotyped welfare leech (the kind who can't afford food for their kids but can afford cigarettes and alcohol), giving them money so they can feed their kids is great in theory - nobody wants to see innocent children starve - but it doesn't help much if that money ends up being spent on more cigarettes and more alcohol. You can mix-and-match any financially irresponsible person - I've known people who couldn't afford to fix their roof but could afford to buy a brand new car, people who couldn't afford $100 to learn a new skill but could go through a $50 case of beer literally every week, people who couldn't afford to settle their outstanding bills but could afford endless junk food and so on.

Hmm. I um, so what exactly is it that you are asserting here? Like are you saying that humanitarian aid lacked checks and balances in the 80's and that made aid a bad even counterproductive endeavor back then, and today in 2024 the exact same lack of checks and balances that were the fundamental flaw in our aid operations still exist unchanged since the 80's? I find it informative that you chose the classic 80's welfare cheat as your touchstone. I believe some wiseguy once said "the frauds and cheats will always be with us, because there aren't any checks and balances in place. H.R -230.7.2 B". Okay, that was a little bit of waggery, but it is one thing to say that we are being absolutely negligent in our humanitarian aid efforts and have made no moves to rectify this negligence in the last 4 decades, and something else entirely to concede that humanitarian aid is intrinsically susceptible to fraud and misuse. I can give you the latter, but the former just seems to be a things you're saying because...well, how else to put this....the 80's seem to have damaged your faith in humanity...or at least humanitarian aid.    So, I ask again, what is it that you have seen in, idk, this century regarding humanitarian aid operations that makes you so sure that at least in this regard we are still living in the 80's? have you even checked?
 

There are advantages and disadvantages to most situations. It's just that some disadvantages involve making it easier for enemies to shoot at allies.

Well, I mean, yeah, when you say it like that it exposes my point as shallow and obvious. I hope that it has been clear that I do recognize and grant that humanitarian aid is not something that you do when you are absolutely prioritizing your direct military goals, because it will in all likelihood provide some support or respite to the enemy. There are no checks and balances that would entirely eliminate this risk. It is a thing you, or we choose to do, not because it is easy, or even because it is hard, but because we consider it a greater moral imperative both because of and in spite of the predictable peril.

... which leads into another issue, when trying to get aid into politically unstable areas. If you airdrop it you can drop it more or less where it's needed, but then people complain that either it lands too near and causes harm, or lands too far and they can't get to it. If you take it in some other way (trucks, trains etc) it's vulnerable to being raided by local warlords or even the national armed forces if they are short on supplies. Which goes right back to the issue of whether there's any point sending food for the people if it's going to end up feeding the warring factions so the battle can go on longer and cause more humanitarian suffering.

Well, if you were expecting me to pretend that there were easy solutions, then I'm sorry to disappoint. My point about airdrops is simply that they are not always employed effectively. What you've done here is describe a situation where there is going to be some negative consequence to any action taken, which is realistic and much like in our personal lives it is frequently decided by asking which if any of these consequences am I willing to live with? If I'm just hip shooting here, I'd be perfectly willing to take the heat for smooshing up some guy's barn or whatever if it meant getting medical supplies to the local hospital or whatever. Again, if that guy is pissed at me about it, he has every right to be, I broke his barn.

You are a good Christian man, I'm sure you've helped people that were not appreciative in the moment, but later saw that you were doing them a solid. I'm sure you've helped people that still resent you for sticking your nose in their business. If you've done it enough times I'm sure you've made an attempt or 2 at help and it turned out that you were more hinderance than help for one reason or another. Perhaps you learned some things from those situations, maybe you became more careful, maybe took more or different steps in evaluating who you help or how you help, maybe you took some classes or whatever...but did it stop you from helping at all? would I be correct if I found some guy that didn't like the way tango 'helped' him in 1984(or some earlier period in your Christian walk), and apply any in all mistakes that you made back then as the reason you absolutely cannot be trusted today? I mean you may be exactly the same, but would it make sense for me not to verify? This too is a crude analogy, because humanitarian aid isn't just one guy, it is systems of people, technologies, philosophies and legal structures...I know folks round these parts like to keep it simple, but it is imo complex.

[Fenris]

I'm not accusing you of tokenizing your own people of course, I'm just saying it's the kind of racist sleight of hand that I've found myself buying into;

You've meandered all over the place without addressing what I said.

There is antisemitism on both the left and right. But the left pretends it's only on the right, even though religiously observant Jews who are easily identifiable and far more likely to be victims vote right.

I might not disagree with you on every point here if we were to get specific, but past discussions have me reticent to accept that we would assess every case in the same way. For instance I'm harder on Israel than I am on Hamas in the sense that I have actual expectations of Israel, where I do not expect to find enough compatible values with Hamas for such expectations to be particularly meaningful to discuss usually. I have found that you don't take too kindly to that attitude.

Gee, why wouldn't I take kindly to that attitude?

The individuals I named above don't hold Israel to a "higher standard". They accuse Israel of committing the very crimes that Hamas does, all while ignoring what Hamas does. This bothers me. It should bother everyone.

Sadly the Jews are like the duct tape of racism, who's at the heart of this weird far-right conspiracy? But also Who's pulling the strings of this far left conspiracy? Like how is it possible that diametrically opposed ideologies could all lead back to the Jews?

I dunno, because racists can be anywhere on the political spectrum?

[Fenris]

But, okay regime change in Iran, how does that happen,

I'll tell you how it doesn't happen. You don't issue a ten billion dollar sanctions waiver every six months, even after Iran funded the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

what is the character of the regime they're changing to, and what effect do you expect that to have permanently? I'm not asking you for a detailed analysis or anything, neither of us are experts here, I'm speaking very broad strokes here, I just want an idea of what you think would broadly go down in the best case scenario...what does that all look like.

The Iranian people are pro west, pro democracy, and I believe, pro Israel. If the government run by the Islamic fundamentalists were to collapse, I believe that the elections held afterwards would produce a vibrant and free society that will be a benefit the whole world.

[Oscar_Kipling]

You've meandered all over the place without addressing what I said.

There is antisemitism on both the left and right. But the left pretends it's only on the right, even though religiously observant Jews who are easily identifiable and far more likely to be victims vote right.

And many on the right will pretend that its only on the left. I took your example about religiously observant Jews voting right was an explicit assertion that the right doesn't have an antisemitism problem. I pointed out that that was a poor proof and something that some people use to tokenize both of our peoples while simultaneously harboring hatred or at least apathy toward them.


If you are saying that there are anti-Semitism problems on both the right and the left then I wholeheartedly agree with you, but it seemed to me that you were attempting to dismiss the existence of a antisemitism problem on the right by pointing to the voting patterns of visibly Jewish people. If that isn't what you were doing then, okay, but I do not know what it is that you were actually trying to get across to me. Its not as bad on the right?

Gee, why wouldn't I take kindly to that attitude?

The individuals I named above don't hold Israel to a "higher standard". They accuse Israel of committing the very crimes that Hamas does, all while ignoring what Hamas does. This bothers me. It should bother everyone.

I might accuse Israel of committing crimes too, or at the very least I might argue that there are cases of gross maltreatment of the Palestinian people (I'm not an international crime doctor). I have criticisms of Israel, and I do not disagree with every criticism from the people you've listed. Do I and anyone else have to preface any criticism with "before I start Hamas is the worst"? That is rhetorical, I know you don't want anything so silly, but I genuinely don't know how I can criticize Israel without upsetting you. Is the opinion that Israel (as a country, not down to a man or anything) has wronged the Palestinian people in any way without it being considered anti-Semitic or even anti-Israel by you? If that is a possibility then I can attempt to put some margins around my statements so that we can actually talk about this without causing the usual animus between us, if you can tell me what you need.

I dunno, because racists can be anywhere on the political spectrum?

We are in agreement that racism crosses isles far more easily and frequently than our government does. This does make me wonder then, what was your point about religiously observant Jew votes meant to imply or assert about racism/antisemitism on the right?

[tango]

Well, yep if all of that went down just as you've described here, then it certainly sounds like a textbook example of government waste. I should point out that that did not clarify anything about the humanitarian aid waste from the 80's that you were referencing. I guess the difficulty I'm having is that while you have plenty of experiences, and what I presume are circumstances of African aid mishandling that you remember reading about from the 80's...but what I'm not getting is any impression that you have done anything to find out if things are still the same as the things you remember. I understand your skepticism, of course, no person in their right mind doubts government waste here in the US, but why not make some effort to find out what exactly is going down with humanitarian aid today, how it actually works and how that compares to the 80's situation...and if the 80's were actually as you remember them? 

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. I've seen government waste firsthand, I've seen evidence of government waste just about everywhere I've seen government, but you seem to be asking me to seek out evidence of government waste?

Implications\assertions, tomato\potato lets call the whole thing a notion based on a lack of trust in the aid efficacy of our government, the UN and international aid organizations based on your assessment of your personal experiences and the news and such that you have consumed over the years. Still, would I be off base in asserting that you are happy to claim that the problem in the 80's was that there were no checks and balances, and that this same lack of checks and balances exist today, without actually doing anything to verify that that was and still continues to be that state of affairs?

If you're asking whether I've got some inside view to the workings of government to verify that things are no better now then I'll openly say I don't. What I do see is that we pay ever-more in tax and get ever less in useful spending from government, so it's pretty easy to see that overall governments are getting more wasteful. Given government waste is observable just about everywhere government can be observed it would be remarkable if foreign aid were some shining bastion of efficiency and targeting in the midst of a quagmire of ever-rising waste. But if you're asserting that it's possible, I suppose it is. It just doesn't seem very likely.

I mean, when I imagine something simple like how aid workers might have been able to communicate the conditions on the ground in the 80's, it is quite different than it is now...I imagine. Like, in 1986, what means were there to communicate with other aid teams in the area or with HQ? If you were set upon child soldiers or whatever, cutting off communication could have looked quite a bit different, perhaps simpler in the 80's...I mean, these are just the sorts of things that stir my imagination. I also wonder if aid organizations not only took advantage of the, well, advantages of living in 2024, but learned anything themselves in the intervening decades. The government may think waste is yummy, but who are these weirdos who actually put on a reflective vest and a hardhat (i'm imagining that's what aid workers wear, because its fun) and get airdropped directly onto people's goat farms (also I imagine that is how they arrive because, fun) to actually organize and deploy the actual aid...Have they made a single change in how they operate since the 80's? It seems like it would be in their best interest to do so, that is if they are actually there because they actually want to provide aid, and not secretly just want to help the enemy keep doing enemy stuff. These are the sorts of things I might investigate if I were so inclined, but that is just me I suppose. Like how does aid even work? Well, anyway I'm just thinking out loud.

Aid seems to take many forms. Some of it is about feeding starving people. Some of it is about a tax write off. I remember (yes, I know, we're back to memories) back in the 1980s when for some reason national governments felt that they had to offer aid to starving African nations, and ended up paying import duties to be allowed to ship the food to the starving people. But when private individuals got involved they didn't play that game and simply offered the aid to a different country.

And of course some of it seems to be about offering money to countries who then appoint well connected individuals to the boards of particular companies and pay them remarkably high salaries for apparently not doing very much at all, which naturally wouldn't have anything to do with turning public money into private profit. Because, you know, foreign oil and gas companies frequently hire those who have no experience with oil and gas and don't speak the language. Happens all the time.

Hmm. I um, so what exactly is it that you are asserting here? Like are you saying that humanitarian aid lacked checks and balances in the 80's and that made aid a bad even counterproductive endeavor back then, and today in 2024 the exact same lack of checks and balances that were the fundamental flaw in our aid operations still exist unchanged since the 80's? I find it informative that you chose the classic 80's welfare cheat as your touchstone. I believe some wiseguy once said "the frauds and cheats will always be with us, because there aren't any checks and balances in place. H.R -230.7.2 B". Okay, that was a little bit of waggery, but it is one thing to say that we are being absolutely negligent in our humanitarian aid efforts and have made no moves to rectify this negligence in the last 4 decades, and something else entirely to concede that humanitarian aid is intrinsically susceptible to fraud and misuse. I can give you the latter, but the former just seems to be a things you're saying because...well, how else to put this....the 80's seem to have damaged your faith in humanity...or at least humanitarian aid.    So, I ask again, what is it that you have seen in, idk, this century regarding humanitarian aid operations that makes you so sure that at least in this regard we are still living in the 80's? have you even checked?

Do you believe government is any more efficient now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago? On what basis would you argue that government has reduced waste? Are there fewer welfare cheats now than then, when more benefits are available? Is there less waste in government departments than there was then? If you want to believe that then go ahead, but I'd love to know why government spending keeps rising and we, the longsuffering serfs who fund it all, get ever less for our taxes.
 

Well, I mean, yeah, when you say it like that it exposes my point as shallow and obvious. I hope that it has been clear that I do recognize and grant that humanitarian aid is not something that you do when you are absolutely prioritizing your direct military goals, because it will in all likelihood provide some support or respite to the enemy. There are no checks and balances that would entirely eliminate this risk. It is a thing you, or we choose to do, not because it is easy, or even because it is hard, but because we consider it a greater moral imperative both because of and in spite of the predictable peril.

... and it makes sense to be very deliberate in targeting aid to make sure we're not providing comfort to our own enemies in a war zone, no? In a war zone if you feed and arm your enemy during the war it just makes it more likely the war will drag on longer, resulting in more civilian suffering.

Well, if you were expecting me to pretend that there were easy solutions, then I'm sorry to disappoint. My point about airdrops is simply that they are not always employed effectively. What you've done here is describe a situation where there is going to be some negative consequence to any action taken, which is realistic and much like in our personal lives it is frequently decided by asking which if any of these consequences am I willing to live with? If I'm just hip shooting here, I'd be perfectly willing to take the heat for smooshing up some guy's barn or whatever if it meant getting medical supplies to the local hospital or whatever. Again, if that guy is pissed at me about it, he has every right to be, I broke his barn.

Sooner or later it comes back to a simple question of whether people want help or not. We've got two different concepts here, one is general help to a nation that is suffering famine/crop failure/other disaster that causes widespread suffering while the other is a war zone in which we want to reduce civilian suffering but don't want to support the enemy. It's really hard to work with people who expect to dictate what aid is delivered, where it's dropped off and how it's dropped, especially when no combination of the above ends up working for them.

You are a good Christian man, I'm sure you've helped people that were not appreciative in the moment, but later saw that you were doing them a solid. I'm sure you've helped people that still resent you for sticking your nose in their business. If you've done it enough times I'm sure you've made an attempt or 2 at help and it turned out that you were more hinderance than help for one reason or another. Perhaps you learned some things from those situations, maybe you became more careful, maybe took more or different steps in evaluating who you help or how you help, maybe you took some classes or whatever...but did it stop you from helping at all? would I be correct if I found some guy that didn't like the way tango 'helped' him in 1984(or some earlier period in your Christian walk), and apply any in all mistakes that you made back then as the reason you absolutely cannot be trusted today? I mean you may be exactly the same, but would it make sense for me not to verify? This too is a crude analogy, because humanitarian aid isn't just one guy, it is systems of people, technologies, philosophies and legal structures...I know folks round these parts like to keep it simple, but it is imo complex.

I'm not sure quite what you're saying here but I'll take a shot at addressing it.

If I try to help someone who gets resentful about it then sooner or later I'll stop helping them. If I try to help and get ignored I'll stop helping. I won't necessarily try to stop helping other people.

If I tried to help someone and ended up doing more harm than good maybe I'd learn from that. If I gave a drug addict some money so he could pay his utility bills and not be left without power and water, and he decided to buy drugs and overdosed, maybe I'd be more careful handing out cash to addicts in the future. But flip the situation around, if I had persuaded you to give me money so I could help the addicts, and you found out that a recurring theme was that I gave money to an addict who used it to buy more drugs and died of an overdose, at what point would you stop handing me money to continue with my failed mission?

The difference with government is that we don't have the option to stop handing them money to continue with their failed missions.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I'll tell you how it doesn't happen. You don't issue a ten billion dollar sanctions waiver every six months, even after Iran funded the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

Okay. Fair dinkum.

I feel that last time we spoke on this issue, you were pretty adamant that destroying Hamas in Israel could be effective and could be accomplished without involving any other powers/ organizations /governments in the region. Have you evolved on this issue? Is the solution now, in your mind to wipe out Hamas in Israel and regime change in Iran? Is that the full extent of it, and do you expect any knock on effects or potentially other parties getting involved? I may be misremembering your position, if so I'm sorry, but either way some clarity on what you think today.   

The Iranian people are pro west, pro democracy, and I believe, pro Israel. If the government run by the Islamic fundamentalists were to collapse, I believe that the elections held afterwards would produce a vibrant and free society that will be a benefit the whole world.

Right on, so, does this involve a military occupation or something? Like okay, the way you've presented it it seems like you think that the IDF can just do this, but that the US or maybe NATO is holding them back from this thing they can totally do and will definitely work.

Like yes, if the regime collapsed in Iran, and the people were able to hold elections and they voted in non-fundamentalist or god forbid even a secular government in then that could be nice, but why do you think that is a thing that the IDF could just do if it weren't for the US or whatever? or do you think that? can you just elaborate, please?

[Fenris]

I feel that last time we spoke on this issue, you were pretty adamant that destroying Hamas in Israel could be effective and could be accomplished without involving any other powers/ organizations /governments in the region. Have you evolved on this issue?

I said "destroying Hamas in Gaza", not Israe. And it's well on its way to completion. Regime change in Iran is beyond Israel's capabilities, and realistically, it should be a mission adopted by the free world. Alas, they would rather break bread with the religious fundamentalists running that country than work on ousting them from power.

Right on, so, does this involve a military occupation or something?

It involves at a minimum applying political and economic pressure. Which is not happening.

Like yes, if the regime collapsed in Iran, and the people were able to hold elections and they voted in non-fundamentalist or god forbid even a secular government in then that could be nice, but why do you think that is a thing that the IDF could just do if it weren't for the US or whatever? or do you think that? can you just elaborate, please?

I have no idea why you think I said anything like this. I never did. This is one of those time when you just run your keyboard and send out a stream of consciousness rather than well formed ideas.

Israel is a very small country, with 9.5 million citizens. Iran has 88 million citizens.
Israel is 8,550 sq miles, Iran is 636,372 sq miles.


Iran is a menace not just to Israel but to the middle east and the free world. It would be nice if some country in the rest of the world took care of trouble, for a change.

[tango]

Iran is a menace not just to Israel but to the middle east and the free world. It would be nice if some country in the rest of the world took care of trouble, for a change.

I hear the Taliban came into possession of some fairly advanced weaponry in the last few years. Maybe they could do it.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. I've seen government waste firsthand, I've seen evidence of government waste just about everywhere I've seen government, but you seem to be asking me to seek out evidence of government waste?

I was asking you specifically about what failures of checks and balances you are aware of or referring to regarding Aid in Gaza during the current conflict. I mean, I get the impression that you have no examples and  you  distrust the government to make sufficient efforts to mitigate fraud, theft and waste and you feel no need to verify any specific claims about what is currently happening because you believe that fundamentally the government is broken so any and all efforts made by it are doomed to fail?

If you're asking whether I've got some inside view to the workings of government to verify that things are no better now then I'll openly say I don't. What I do see is that we pay ever-more in tax and get ever less in useful spending from government, so it's pretty easy to see that overall governments are getting more wasteful. Given government waste is observable just about everywhere government can be observed it would be remarkable if foreign aid were some shining bastion of efficiency and targeting in the midst of a quagmire of ever-rising waste. But if you're asserting that it's possible, I suppose it is. It just doesn't seem very likely.

No, not an inside view. I'm asking if you have made any efforts to specifically discover what issues were faced in delivering aid to African nations in the 80's and what the causes of those failures were? Then have you made any efforts to discover how aid is done in 2024 and what issues they face today, and how they fail? Then have you made any attempt to compare and contrast that information to determine if in fact a failure of checks and balances is an accurate description of the failures and if there has been no meaningful change in the last 40 years. For me this would be the bare minimum that I would need to have any confidence in an assertion like yours (not saying I wouldn't argue without it, but that is just me bickering for sport)

Aid seems to take many forms. Some of it is about feeding starving people. Some of it is about a tax write off. I remember (yes, I know, we're back to memories) back in the 1980s when for some reason national governments felt that they had to offer aid to starving African nations, and ended up paying import duties to be allowed to ship the food to the starving people. But when private individuals got involved they didn't play that game and simply offered the aid to a different country.

And of course some of it seems to be about offering money to countries who then appoint well connected individuals to the boards of particular companies and pay them remarkably high salaries for apparently not doing very much at all, which naturally wouldn't have anything to do with turning public money into private profit. Because, you know, foreign oil and gas companies frequently hire those who have no experience with oil and gas and don't speak the language. Happens all the time.

I think that is a good point, there are many forms of aid and unfortunately many forms of fraud and profligacy. This specifically is not a point of conflict for us, I more or less wanted to know if the entire basis of your assertion was...well all the stuff you put forth, or if you had some current examples of failures and if you could connect them with all the stuff about the 80's in a manner that supported your assertion outside of what you've asserted about nothing having changed. It boils down to the question of whether or not you did any investigation at all, and if so what?

Do you believe government is any more efficient now than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago? On what basis would you argue that government has reduced waste? Are there fewer welfare cheats now than then, when more benefits are available? Is there less waste in government departments than there was then? If you want to believe that then go ahead, but I'd love to know why government spending keeps rising and we, the longsuffering serfs who fund it all, get ever less for our taxes.

Yes in some ways it is, sometimes. The DMV now, vs the DMV when I was a teenager first getting my license is like night and day....or at least night and dawn. There are probably way's that you could measure it that would give you any answer you want, are we talking waste per dollar, waste as a fraction of GDP, waste adjusted for inflation...and so on. Though you won't catch me arguing that the government is overall more efficient than it was in 198X, because like, yeah probably not. I think the issue here is that I'm asking you about something specific, and your example is general. I thought that you were making a specific claim, but i'm beginning to believe that you don't actually care about any specific claim, you just kind of think the government stinks (I don't blame you, but it isn't what I'm doing).....

buuuuuut, This response took so long because I did a lot of research to talk about welfare, but ultimately I decided that writing 20 pages about why I believe that you are at times blatantly wrong, and at times mischaracterizing the state of affairs might not be something that you were actually interested in engaging with. Can you honestly say you want to invest time in having the actual conversation/debate?...or do you already know that the state of welfare...or the welfare state is precisely how and what you think it is? Its fine if you want to keep it to the stuff you saw in the 80's, what you read in passing , and who you saw do some petty fraud at the grocery store...but i'm not interested in that, your personal expirience is unassailable, at least by me it is. There is no evidence that I could access that will change what you remember happening, all I can do is talk about what is proven, what is studied, what statistical information has been collected. I grew up on welfare for years, I could talk about the overwhelming number of honest welfare recipients that I knew, but honestly what does that do, You know there are honest people, and I know there are frauds.... I'd like to talk about the the giant of welfare, not either of our personal impressions of it.

... and it makes sense to be very deliberate in targeting aid to make sure we're not providing comfort to our own enemies in a war zone, no? In a war zone if you feed and arm your enemy during the war it just makes it more likely the war will drag on longer, resulting in more civilian suffering.
 

to me this is a specific claim, this whole discussion could be boiled down to this:

Tango: Aid in Palestine today is not deliberately targeted in such a way as to prevent providing aid to Hamas.

Me: Why do you say that?

Tango: Because that's what happened in the 80's

Me: Are you sure?

Tango: Yes, I personally saw the government throw away a perfectly good Erlenmeyer flasks and a whole vacuum distillation apparatus.

Me: But how do you know that nothing has changed with humanitarian aid.

Tango: Because the government is involved.

Again, I'm being absurd, but I really don't believe that we are trying to get at the same thing.

If you feel made fun of by this, its not my intention, but a genuine distillation of my impression of your position, so I'm not going to insult you are myself with an apology either. Instead of taking it personally if that is how you are feeling, please elucidate the nuance of your position that I'm missing.

Sooner or later it comes back to a simple question of whether people want help or not. We've got two different concepts here, one is general help to a nation that is suffering famine/crop failure/other disaster that causes widespread suffering while the other is a war zone in which we want to reduce civilian suffering but don't want to support the enemy. It's really hard to work with people who expect to dictate what aid is delivered, where it's dropped off and how it's dropped, especially when no combination of the above ends up working for them.

so, we're agreeing?

I'm not sure quite what you're saying here but I'll take a shot at addressing it.

If I try to help someone who gets resentful about it then sooner or later I'll stop helping them. If I try to help and get ignored I'll stop helping. I won't necessarily try to stop helping other people.

If I tried to help someone and ended up doing more harm than good maybe I'd learn from that. If I gave a drug addict some money so he could pay his utility bills and not be left without power and water, and he decided to buy drugs and overdosed, maybe I'd be more careful handing out cash to addicts in the future. But flip the situation around, if I had persuaded you to give me money so I could help the addicts, and you found out that a recurring theme was that I gave money to an addict who used it to buy more drugs and died of an overdose, at what point would you stop handing me money to continue with my failed mission?

The difference with government is that we don't have the option to stop handing them money to continue with their failed missions.

I think we understood each other here. I was just attempting to get you to think about your failures and successes and your own growth, and why it would not be fair to you to claim that mistakes you made in humanitarian endeavors are reflective of your current ability.

Overall, My only point of contention is in the idea that the humanitarian aid in Palestine is a hopeless and failed mission. Your only rationale for that seems to be that 'they' have failed before, so you see no reason why it would be any different without pointing to any specific failures.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I said "destroying Hamas in Gaza", not Israe. And it's well on its way to completion. Regime change in Iran is beyond Israel's capabilities, and realistically, it should be a mission adopted by the free world. Alas, they would rather break bread with the religious fundamentalists running that country than work on ousting them from power.

I suppose, but do you believe that this is some kind of long term solution and that this project to destroy Hamas in Gaza carries with it a significant chance of bringing in other regional powers, particularly Islamic. I mean, again I may be misremembering, but I felt like my position was that it is essentially a Sisyphean task as not only will the measures taken to 'eliminate' Hamas generate new radicals or those susceptible to radicalization, but that the surrounding powers will likely involve themselves in myriad ways making the eradication at best a temporary relocation/rebuilding phase...That is if Israel's plans essentially end at eradicating Hamas and does not address the underlying issues (at least the ones that are within their purview to effect). So, do you currently disagree with any of that?

Right on, so, does this involve a military occupation or something?

It involves at a minimum applying political and economic pressure. Which is not happening.

Like yes, if the regime collapsed in Iran, and the people were able to hold elections and they voted in non-fundamentalist or god forbid even a secular government in then that could be nice, but why do you think that is a thing that the IDF could just do if it weren't for the US or whatever? or do you think that? can you just elaborate, please?

I have no idea why you think I said anything like this. I never did. This is one of those time when you just run your keyboard and send out a stream of consciousness rather than well formed ideas.

Ah, yes. I wrote a thing that wasn't clear and articulate. thank you for pointing that out to me I will try to be more clear.

Israel is a very small country, with 9.5 million citizens. Iran has 88 million citizens.
Israel is 8,550 sq miles, Iran is 636,372 sq miles.


Iran is a menace not just to Israel but to the middle east and the free world. It would be nice if some country in the rest of the world took care of trouble, for a change.

Okay, I got the impression that you were saying that the US or NATO or whoever was holding back Israel from doing this because a few posts ago you wrote:

This assumes that it's America's problem to fix. Why not let the IDF just have at it?

The only real, permanent fix, is regime change in Iran.

So hopefully you can see how I got confused and thought that you believed that the IDF could affect a regime change in Iran.
For the sake of clarity , could you please lay out what 'problem' the IDF can 'have at' that will not involve the US and require nothing of us? I'm genuinely befuddled.

[Fenris]

I suppose, but do you believe that this is some kind of long term solution and that this project to destroy Hamas in Gaza carries with it a significant chance of bringing in other regional powers, particularly Islamic.

Do these regional powers have a name?

Are they already involved?

That is if Israel's plans essentially end at eradicating Hamas and does not address the underlying issues

What underlying issues?

For the sake of clarity , could you please lay out what 'problem' the IDF can 'have at' that will not involve the US and require nothing of us? I'm genuinely befuddled.

The "have at it" was specifically about Israel destroying Hamas.

It isn't Israel's job to affect regime change in Iran, nor should it be. There's no reason why the US, EU, and American allies around the world can't collapse the Mullah regime in Iran, probably without even firing a shot.

[tango]

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. I've seen government waste firsthand, I've seen evidence of government waste just about everywhere I've seen government, but you seem to be asking me to seek out evidence of government waste?

I was asking you specifically about what failures of checks and balances you are aware of or referring to regarding Aid in Gaza during the current conflict. I mean, I get the impression that you have no examples and  you  distrust the government to make sufficient efforts to mitigate fraud, theft and waste and you feel no need to verify any specific claims about what is currently happening because you believe that fundamentally the government is broken so any and all efforts made by it are doomed to fail?

I have no specifics about Gaza, I thought I'd made that clear. I do have experience of government waste (the specifics of the wasted equipment was just one such example - there are many more), and I see the trend in government to be that anything they do costs more and delivers less, so I have no reason to assume that things are better now than they were before. Maybe some specific forms of waste are reduced but I think we can be confident that other forms of waste will have appeared.

No, not an inside view. I'm asking if you have made any efforts to specifically discover what issues were faced in delivering aid to African nations in the 80's and what the causes of those failures were? Then have you made any efforts to discover how aid is done in 2024 and what issues they face today, and how they fail? Then have you made any attempt to compare and contrast that information to determine if in fact a failure of checks and balances is an accurate description of the failures and if there has been no meaningful change in the last 40 years. For me this would be the bare minimum that I would need to have any confidence in an assertion like yours (not saying I wouldn't argue without it, but that is just me bickering for sport)

The issues faced in the 80s are sufficiently long ago now I haven't felt any need to explore in any further detail. I don't know I'd even call it a failure of checks and balances because that would imply the existence of a desire for checks and balances. A part of government waste, in my experience at least, stems from a sense that the government must do something about a situation even when all it achieves is enablement.

I think that is a good point, there are many forms of aid and unfortunately many forms of fraud and profligacy. This specifically is not a point of conflict for us, I more or less wanted to know if the entire basis of your assertion was...well all the stuff you put forth, or if you had some current examples of failures and if you could connect them with all the stuff about the 80's in a manner that supported your assertion outside of what you've asserted about nothing having changed. It boils down to the question of whether or not you did any investigation at all, and if so what?

If I had a shred of faith that government now was even remotely better than government then I'd be more inclined to consider it. Generic observations lead me to conclude that government is usually the least efficient way to accomplish anything (even when government does actually accomplish anything useful).

Observations aside, when a nominal government (such as Hamas) has conflicting requirements, namely the problem that they want lots of guns and bombs to harass the pesky Joos across the border and the irritation that the Gazan people have this silly idea that they might like to, you know, eat some stuff and not die of starvation, they have to figure a balance. There is only so much money so they use some to buy guns and some to buy food. If a friendly government comes along and gives them some food for free, it frees up money to buy more guns.

Yes in some ways it is, sometimes. The DMV now, vs the DMV when I was a teenager first getting my license is like night and day....or at least night and dawn. There are probably way's that you could measure it that would give you any answer you want, are we talking waste per dollar, waste as a fraction of GDP, waste adjusted for inflation...and so on. Though you won't catch me arguing that the government is overall more efficient than it was in 198X, because like, yeah probably not. I think the issue here is that I'm asking you about something specific, and your example is general. I thought that you were making a specific claim, but i'm beginning to believe that you don't actually care about any specific claim, you just kind of think the government stinks (I don't blame you, but it isn't what I'm doing).....

Measuring waste is an inherently difficult thing to do because the people responsible for it are unlikely to cooperate with measuring it. There's also the question of how much waste is acceptable because the simple reality is that a degree of wastage is inevitable. I'll wager that most people would admit they don't necessarily eat every single piece of food they buy, or spend every single dollar efficiently, or always achieve the best possible interest rate on their savings/loans/whatever. But where we might be forgiven for overlooking a bank account paying 4.85% interest while our money is parked earning a mere 4.75%, we might be inclined to ask questions if our savings were left to languish in an account earning 0.02%. 

buuuuuut, This response took so long because I did a lot of research to talk about welfare, but ultimately I decided that writing 20 pages about why I believe that you are at times blatantly wrong, and at times mischaracterizing the state of affairs might not be something that you were actually interested in engaging with. Can you honestly say you want to invest time in having the actual conversation/debate?...or do you already know that the state of welfare...or the welfare state is precisely how and what you think it is? Its fine if you want to keep it to the stuff you saw in the 80's, what you read in passing , and who you saw do some petty fraud at the grocery store...but i'm not interested in that, your personal expirience is unassailable, at least by me it is. There is no evidence that I could access that will change what you remember happening, all I can do is talk about what is proven, what is studied, what statistical information has been collected. I grew up on welfare for years, I could talk about the overwhelming number of honest welfare recipients that I knew, but honestly what does that do, You know there are honest people, and I know there are frauds.... I'd like to talk about the the giant of welfare, not either of our personal impressions of it.

Welfare is just an example of an area of government waste rather than the primary focus. I had some experience of the welfare state several years ago before I got myself into employment and it was an utter farce. My experience is that people who were trying to find work were endlessly bothered while the people fiddling the system were largely ignored. As you say there are people who are honest and genuinely trying to improve themselves, there are people who are defrauding the system, there are people who are held down by the system, and there are people who find the system provides an adequate lifestyle compared to what they might earn by working. But this isn't so much about the welfare state.

... and it makes sense to be very deliberate in targeting aid to make sure we're not providing comfort to our own enemies in a war zone, no? In a war zone if you feed and arm your enemy during the war it just makes it more likely the war will drag on longer, resulting in more civilian suffering.
 

to me this is a specific claim, this whole discussion could be boiled down to this:

Tango: Aid in Palestine today is not deliberately targeted in such a way as to prevent providing aid to Hamas.

Me: Why do you say that?

Tango: Because that's what happened in the 80's

Me: Are you sure?

Tango: Yes, I personally saw the government throw away a perfectly good Erlenmeyer flasks and a whole vacuum distillation apparatus.

Me: But how do you know that nothing has changed with humanitarian aid.

Tango: Because the government is involved.

Again, I'm being absurd, but I really don't believe that we are trying to get at the same thing.

If you feel made fun of by this, its not my intention, but a genuine distillation of my impression of your position, so I'm not going to insult you are myself with an apology either. Instead of taking it personally if that is how you are feeling, please elucidate the nuance of your position that I'm missing.

I think I covered this above with the section about budget line items for guns and food. Yes, that's a hideous oversimplification but if you want guns and you want food, someone giving you food means you have more money for guns. So even if we're not throwing fistfuls of C-notes out of helicopters over Gaza, it makes sense to check that food is going to civilians that need food and not to terrorists who managed to feed themselves with foreign aid and can now afford a shiny new RPG, no?

I think we understood each other here. I was just attempting to get you to think about your failures and successes and your own growth, and why it would not be fair to you to claim that mistakes you made in humanitarian endeavors are reflective of your current ability.

Overall, My only point of contention is in the idea that the humanitarian aid in Palestine is a hopeless and failed mission. Your only rationale for that seems to be that 'they' have failed before, so you see no reason why it would be any different without pointing to any specific failures.

The mistakes I made in the 1990s aren't necessarily indicative of where I am now, as long as I learned from the mistakes. The crucial thing is learning from mistakes. Does government learn from mistakes? If I refuse to learn from the mistakes I made 30 years ago and continue to make them today then the mistakes I made in the 1990s are indicative of where I am now.

[Oscar_Kipling]

Do these regional powers have a name?

Are they already involved?

I mean, my original contention-- as I recall it-- was that 'they' were always involved to one degree or another, but obviously Iran is more blatant these last few months...but I mean to me its not like Iran was like some big secret or some big surprise before. 

But, to my question, again as I remember it, it seemed that you were asserting that wiping out Hamas was a thing that could be done without much if any consideration given to any of the other possible contributions that I mention in my post. Do I have you wrong? what are your thoughts?

What underlying issues?

Mainly I'd say the treatment of Palestine and Palestinians. Even if we just consider the change of status quo that will be the result after this war ends (if it ends in a way where this is even relevant) What Israel does will be critical, just wiping out Hamas in Gaza (again not a thing that makes a whole lot of sense as stated) isn't going to address the grievances of the Palestinian people and is as I said, tantamount to cutting the grass.

The "have at it" was specifically about Israel destroying Hamas.

It isn't Israel's job to affect regime change in Iran, nor should it be. There's no reason why the US, EU, and American allies around the world can't collapse the Mullah regime in Iran, probably without even firing a shot.

I've never toppled a regime outside of video games, but I've read about it, particularly relevant here is America's coup happy 50's. If there is one thing I would say about it, it is that the only thing more difficult than doing a successful coup/forced regime change, is getting the pieces to fall where you want them to in a way that benefits you in the long term. Many folks will argue that the first time the US toppled an Iranian regime it worked for a bit and then either directly or circuitously led to the Islamic resolution that led and fed right on into where we are today. Of course the coup wasn't the only thing, but I think it provides some context for the way I view your suggestion of regime change. That is also not to say that the hands off (somewhat deluded) approach that was taken with say 'Arab Spring' was a better way to handle it, it wasn't. I should say that the kind of influence that the west wanted to wield in 'Arab spring' wasn't possible, precisely because of the deep seated mistrust of the US/the west that was--if not engendered--solidified in the 50's coup. I think that Arab spring highlights something else too, social media and the way propaganda can be wielded with a reach and efficacy that was not available during the golden age of America's regime toppling career.

I think those points are important, because I believe that if there is even the whiff of western influences steering the destiny of Iran, not only will there be organic revulsion at that prospect, but I believe that there can be an effective propaganda campaign that can steer a regime change in a direction that is hostile to people and ideas that would facilitate the goals of the west; And that is just considering a failure mode where an engineered collapse is stable enough for those things to even matter. In my opinion it is entirely possible that it sets off a chain of events that leads to an even larger, more deadly, more untenable conflict over an even broader area involving even more interests.


Next, I have to push back on what appears to me to be your idea that Israel could somehow be emancipated from the restraining forces of the west to eliminate Hamas in Palestine without greater repercussions in the region that would directly or indirectly impact American interests. What I mean to say is that it is not unreasonable for America to postulate that if we let Israel 'have at it' that those actions might force our hand to intervene because other radical Islamic forces and/or governments will involve themselves and escalate the conflict. Even if we pretend that Israel itself is not directly relevant to American interests (it is), It matters what Israel does in this war.

Likewise attempting to somehow untether actions that the US and allies would make to change regimes in Iran from Israel is unreasonable. Israel would be critical to the success of any such operation, in expertise, in intelligence information, and in resources. Moreover it would make no sense that Israel would not want to be directly involved and have the ability to very meaningfully effect any such plan at essentially every level is not reasonable. Even if I gave you that Israel has no responsibility (they do), I cannot give you that they would not accept or take responsibility in something that so directly affects them. I don't know that it is anyone's job per se, but even if Israel isn't the construction manager, they are definitely a foreman on the job site.     

So from my standpoint it seems that you are still trying to compartmentalize things that are obviously interrelated and contingent. Perhaps, Iran's regime could be toppled without a shot fired, perhaps...but it doesn't make sense from any direction to pretend that Israel wouldn't be a major pet of that. Even with Israel's involvement I wouldn't give and engineered regime change any sort of guarantee in the short term or in the long term

I hope that clarifies my thoughts somewhat. and I hope you take the time to clarify your thoughts to me.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I'm not sure what you're asking for here. I've seen government waste firsthand, I've seen evidence of government waste just about everywhere I've seen government, but you seem to be asking me to seek out evidence of government waste?

I was asking you specifically about what failures of checks and balances you are aware of or referring to regarding Aid in Gaza during the current conflict. I mean, I get the impression that you have no examples and  you  distrust the government to make sufficient efforts to mitigate fraud, theft and waste and you feel no need to verify any specific claims about what is currently happening because you believe that fundamentally the government is broken so any and all efforts made by it are doomed to fail?

I have no specifics about Gaza, I thought I'd made that clear. I do have experience of government waste (the specifics of the wasted equipment was just one such example - there are many more), and I see the trend in government to be that anything they do costs more and delivers less, so I have no reason to assume that things are better now than they were before. Maybe some specific forms of waste are reduced but I think we can be confident that other forms of waste will have appeared.

No, not an inside view. I'm asking if you have made any efforts to specifically discover what issues were faced in delivering aid to African nations in the 80's and what the causes of those failures were? Then have you made any efforts to discover how aid is done in 2024 and what issues they face today, and how they fail? Then have you made any attempt to compare and contrast that information to determine if in fact a failure of checks and balances is an accurate description of the failures and if there has been no meaningful change in the last 40 years. For me this would be the bare minimum that I would need to have any confidence in an assertion like yours (not saying I wouldn't argue without it, but that is just me bickering for sport)

The issues faced in the 80s are sufficiently long ago now I haven't felt any need to explore in any further detail. I don't know I'd even call it a failure of checks and balances because that would imply the existence of a desire for checks and balances. A part of government waste, in my experience at least, stems from a sense that the government must do something about a situation even when all it achieves is enablement.

I think that is a good point, there are many forms of aid and unfortunately many forms of fraud and profligacy. This specifically is not a point of conflict for us, I more or less wanted to know if the entire basis of your assertion was...well all the stuff you put forth, or if you had some current examples of failures and if you could connect them with all the stuff about the 80's in a manner that supported your assertion outside of what you've asserted about nothing having changed. It boils down to the question of whether or not you did any investigation at all, and if so what?

If I had a shred of faith that government now was even remotely better than government then I'd be more inclined to consider it. Generic observations lead me to conclude that government is usually the least efficient way to accomplish anything (even when government does actually accomplish anything useful).

Observations aside, when a nominal government (such as Hamas) has conflicting requirements, namely the problem that they want lots of guns and bombs to harass the pesky Joos across the border and the irritation that the Gazan people have this silly idea that they might like to, you know, eat some stuff and not die of starvation, they have to figure a balance. There is only so much money so they use some to buy guns and some to buy food. If a friendly government comes along and gives them some food for free, it frees up money to buy more guns.

Yes in some ways it is, sometimes. The DMV now, vs the DMV when I was a teenager first getting my license is like night and day....or at least night and dawn. There are probably way's that you could measure it that would give you any answer you want, are we talking waste per dollar, waste as a fraction of GDP, waste adjusted for inflation...and so on. Though you won't catch me arguing that the government is overall more efficient than it was in 198X, because like, yeah probably not. I think the issue here is that I'm asking you about something specific, and your example is general. I thought that you were making a specific claim, but i'm beginning to believe that you don't actually care about any specific claim, you just kind of think the government stinks (I don't blame you, but it isn't what I'm doing).....

Measuring waste is an inherently difficult thing to do because the people responsible for it are unlikely to cooperate with measuring it. There's also the question of how much waste is acceptable because the simple reality is that a degree of wastage is inevitable. I'll wager that most people would admit they don't necessarily eat every single piece of food they buy, or spend every single dollar efficiently, or always achieve the best possible interest rate on their savings/loans/whatever. But where we might be forgiven for overlooking a bank account paying 4.85% interest while our money is parked earning a mere 4.75%, we might be inclined to ask questions if our savings were left to languish in an account earning 0.02%. 

buuuuuut, This response took so long because I did a lot of research to talk about welfare, but ultimately I decided that writing 20 pages about why I believe that you are at times blatantly wrong, and at times mischaracterizing the state of affairs might not be something that you were actually interested in engaging with. Can you honestly say you want to invest time in having the actual conversation/debate?...or do you already know that the state of welfare...or the welfare state is precisely how and what you think it is? Its fine if you want to keep it to the stuff you saw in the 80's, what you read in passing , and who you saw do some petty fraud at the grocery store...but i'm not interested in that, your personal expirience is unassailable, at least by me it is. There is no evidence that I could access that will change what you remember happening, all I can do is talk about what is proven, what is studied, what statistical information has been collected. I grew up on welfare for years, I could talk about the overwhelming number of honest welfare recipients that I knew, but honestly what does that do, You know there are honest people, and I know there are frauds.... I'd like to talk about the the giant of welfare, not either of our personal impressions of it.

Welfare is just an example of an area of government waste rather than the primary focus. I had some experience of the welfare state several years ago before I got myself into employment and it was an utter farce. My experience is that people who were trying to find work were endlessly bothered while the people fiddling the system were largely ignored. As you say there are people who are honest and genuinely trying to improve themselves, there are people who are defrauding the system, there are people who are held down by the system, and there are people who find the system provides an adequate lifestyle compared to what they might earn by working. But this isn't so much about the welfare state.

... and it makes sense to be very deliberate in targeting aid to make sure we're not providing comfort to our own enemies in a war zone, no? In a war zone if you feed and arm your enemy during the war it just makes it more likely the war will drag on longer, resulting in more civilian suffering.
 

to me this is a specific claim, this whole discussion could be boiled down to this:

Tango: Aid in Palestine today is not deliberately targeted in such a way as to prevent providing aid to Hamas.

Me: Why do you say that?

Tango: Because that's what happened in the 80's

Me: Are you sure?

Tango: Yes, I personally saw the government throw away a perfectly good Erlenmeyer flasks and a whole vacuum distillation apparatus.

Me: But how do you know that nothing has changed with humanitarian aid.

Tango: Because the government is involved.

Again, I'm being absurd, but I really don't believe that we are trying to get at the same thing.

If you feel made fun of by this, its not my intention, but a genuine distillation of my impression of your position, so I'm not going to insult you are myself with an apology either. Instead of taking it personally if that is how you are feeling, please elucidate the nuance of your position that I'm missing.

I think I covered this above with the section about budget line items for guns and food. Yes, that's a hideous oversimplification but if you want guns and you want food, someone giving you food means you have more money for guns. So even if we're not throwing fistfuls of C-notes out of helicopters over Gaza, it makes sense to check that food is going to civilians that need food and not to terrorists who managed to feed themselves with foreign aid and can now afford a shiny new RPG, no?

I think we understood each other here. I was just attempting to get you to think about your failures and successes and your own growth, and why it would not be fair to you to claim that mistakes you made in humanitarian endeavors are reflective of your current ability.

Overall, My only point of contention is in the idea that the humanitarian aid in Palestine is a hopeless and failed mission. Your only rationale for that seems to be that 'they' have failed before, so you see no reason why it would be any different without pointing to any specific failures.

The mistakes I made in the 1990s aren't necessarily indicative of where I am now, as long as I learned from the mistakes. The crucial thing is learning from mistakes. Does government learn from mistakes? If I refuse to learn from the mistakes I made 30 years ago and continue to make them today then the mistakes I made in the 1990s are indicative of where I am now.

Nah Tango, you've been clear, I just sometimes--haha, who am I kidding?-- I just always read between the lines when I should just read the lines. That is on me not you because I've had enough of these conversations to know that there is no more to this. Thanks for you time brother.

[RabbiKnife]

OK, mister... Who are you and what have you done with our "Oscar."...