I have a new paper in @SurvivalEditors on the US intervention in Syria, and why it made the human rights situation worse. This thread explains how American involvement exacerbated and prolonged human suffering. 1/n tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
There's a story interventionists tell. They say the US got involved in Iraq and Libya, and the situation turned out bad. But the US "did nothing" in Syria, therefore inaction can have costs too. 2/n
This is a rewriting of history to cover up a terrible record. The US sanctioned the Syrian regime, tried to destroy its economy, and put $1.5 billion into arming and training rebels. In no way is this "doing nothing," even if it's less than what regime change advocates wanted 3/n
The idea behind this was that Assad is a bad guy, and so anything that hurts Assad must be good for the Syrian people. In reality, research on mass killing indicates that countries engage in atrocities when they are desperate and feeling threatened. 4/n
Dictatorship is common, but mass killing is rare. What distinguishes the dictatorships that commit widescale atrocities from the majority that don't? The main factor is the degree of threat a state faces, which is why civil war is the greatest predictor of mass killing. 5/n
Moreover, sanctions make a country poorer, which means it has to rely on the most crude methods to put down threats to its power. Hillary had a theory that sanctions would eventually cripple the regime so much it would be unable to commit atrocities, but this is folly. 6/n
Looking at the history of the Assad regime, and neighboring Iraq under Saddam, shows this to be the case. These governments have been most vicious when they have been most threatened. 7/n
In 2011, Obama declared "Assad must go," at a time when there were only about 2,000 deaths. Since then, more Syrians died in the years of the heaviest American involvement than during any other time. As Russia became more involved and the US role dwindled, deaths went down. 8/n
If your concern is human rights, the US should have done exactly the opposite of what it did. This means engaging in dialogue, avoiding sanctions, and communicating to the regime that it was not seeking a new govt. 9/n
Today, the pro-interventionist crowd is still seeking regime change. Their unwillingness to recognize they do not have the ability to impose new governments in places where a state already exists prolongs suffering. See my debate with Charles Lister the other day. 10/n
Their dreams of regime change are more absurd than they were in 2011. Now, the Assad regime has the military support of Iran and Russia, and is not nearly as threatened as it was in 2012 or 2013. It did not liquidate itself then, and it won't do so now. 11/n
This paper is important both for setting the record straight, and because Syria is used by interventionists such as Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton as an example of what happens when the US doesn't become involved. They are wrong, and we should learn from their mistakes. 12/n
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The selection of JD Vance can be seen as a triumph for the Tech Right. I explain where they came from and what makes them different from others in the GOP. They're socially liberal, anti-egalitarian, and ultimately for dynamism and progress. 🧵 richardhanania.com/p/understandin…
Ironically, there is a group of leftists who saw this coming. They came up with the acronym TESCREAL, which is so ugly that it's actually catchy. The leftists paying the most attention knew that tech elites were different from other elites in academia and journalism.
If you believe in technology and progress, it's going to put you in conflict with the ruling class if it doesn't believe in those things. In most societies that may be religious authorities. In the modern West, it is wokes, driven by an egalitarian vision that discounts progress
The time Israel sent a commando team into downtown Beirut that assassinated three high-ranking members of the PLO and got out. The team was led by Ehud Barak.
Westerners hate Israel because it fills them with a sense of inferiority by showing that heroism is still possible.
Stop and read about the Entebbe Raid, after a plane was hijacked and taken to Uganda. The Israelis secretly flew a team from Suez to Uganda, slaughtered the Palestinian terrorists, their German allies, and Idi Amin’s soldiers, bringing almost all of the hostages home alive.
What were the Palestinians doing during this time? They had their own version of heroism. They were blowing up synagogues, killing random Jews all over the world, massacring flight crews, and getting the Gulf Arabs to pay them ransom money.
Fascinating analysis of the trendiness of baby names.
Since the 1960s, the endings of names rise and fall together, especially for boys. The fates of Mason, Jackson, Grayson, etc are all linked.
What names sound good to parents depends on subtle signals they’re not aware of.
This is associated with the decline of traditional names. The lesson here is people really feel the need to conform on a very deep subconscious level! If they don’t conform to tradition, they’ll look for arbitrary signs of trendiness.
But you don’t want to conform too much. So names that are too common get scratched off the list, while you need to pick a name for a boy or girl that sounds right in the current year.
Why not beginnings of names then? Makes the choice too conscious?
Time Magazine in 1958: Blacks are 10% of the population in 1,551 cities but commit 60% of violent crime. Northern mayors consider this their biggest problem and are afraid to talk about it. Black leaders blame racist law enforcement.
Black problems didn’t start with LBJ.
Time in 1958: NAACP tries to get people not to talk about black crime. Many whites are uncomfortable about the subject, and newspapers go out of their way not to mention a crime suspect’s race.
Time: Many blame poverty, but poor immigrants don’t commit crime like blacks do.
Change a few words around and this whole thing could’ve been written today. The media wouldn’t publish it of course but nothing has changed in 66 years!
Since October 7, many of us have been asking how we can be better allies to Israel.
I explain that what Israel needs is not better PR, or "hasbara," but pushback on narratives that are hostile to civilization itself, which Israel represents. richardhanania.com/p/article-in-t…
Israel doesn't have an "optics" problem because the rest of the world hated Israel before this war, and one can see this in the obsessive focus on its flaws compared to everything else in global politics. The problem is with Israel's existence.
There are three pillars of anti-Israel hate
1) Anti-western sentiment 2) Third worldism 3) Classic antisemitism
Unfortunately for Israel, it's the one place where all these ideological orientations converge.