I don't know.
I was in a mood last night, had a bit too much to drink, and shouldn't have mouthed off the way I did. My point isn't to diminish the gravity of the situation. It's a horrific nightmare. At the same time, I think the human capacity for depravity is only outmatched by our creativity. There are, I believe, no limits to the suffering we can inflict on each other. That's why I bristle a bit at statements that there's no scenario that could be worse than the one we're in, because (I believe) that sentiment counterintuitively makes people manufacture even worse scenarios in their minds and start down the path of thinking that, well, relative to this other imaginary outcome, what's happening isn't as bad.
But clearly, it's very bad. We don't have to affix any superlatives to it to agree on that point.
The Israel problem must be reckoned with. But I'm not confident that history will look kindly on us if, having withdrawn our support from an ally to whom we made a promise, their adversaries eliminate them. History may not look kindly on us no matter what we do at this point.
I think there are likely hundreds of factors at play for why the US is on this path. I don't think that a lust for genocide is among them, personally. What I would like to believe is that this is a situation in which people with more strategic vision than me have concluded that there are no 'good' choices now that do not result in outcomes that are even worse. Worse for whom, and worse how? Valid questions.
I'm not a game theorist, or a Middle East policy expert. I just want to be clear that my thoughts about why my country's leaders are continuing to let this happen are not an attempt to justify it, but to understand it.
