Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Is Getting the Deal More Important Than the End Results?
The following is somewhat related to the post “You Can’t Negotiate with Barbarians” by @susanquinn, except with focus here on what the push for a “deal” between Hamas and Israel says about United States politicians.
In her interview with Dana Bash, Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized multiple times that her top priority in the war between Israel and. Hamas is to get a “ceasefire deal.” Vice President Harris and President Biden have both, on many occasions, pushed the importance of a “ceasefire deal.” I heard they were pushing the idea again even after Hamas had killed several hostages a few days ago.
Does it matter what the “deal” includes? Does it matter what the “deal” accomplishes? Does it matter whether the parties are both likely to comply with the terms of the deal? That the emphasis is always on getting to “the deal” and never on the after-deal practical results leads me to suspect that just getting a deal (any deal?) is the important matter, regardless of whether the Middle East and the world become less violent, or whether there are fewer deaths.
It reminds me of the Obama administration’s obsession with “getting a deal” with Iran. It has seemed to me President Obama was more interested in bragging that he got a deal with Iran than in what results the deal actually achieved, or even whether Iran actually became less of a threat to world peace.
Yes, former president Trump can also be criticized for at times seeming to emphasize the deal process more than the practical results. Although the results of the Middle East deals during his presidential administration actually appear to have accomplished peaceful results.
We all know from our experiences buying cars that the party most desperate to get to a deal is going to concede more and get less than the party less obsessed with getting an immediate deal. The prospective buyer who must have that particular car in that color and with those exact features, and have it today, is going to get less of a deal than the prospective buyer who is more flexible, or willing to wait or even forgo a new car altogether. The car salesman who has several prospective buyers lined up for a particular car in the middle of the month is less likely to make concessions than is the salesman who’s been trying to sell the car for months and has no other prospects on the line, or who on the last day of the month is one sale away from hitting his quota to qualify for a big bonus.
Longer term, if there’s a low probability the other party to the deal will actually comply with the terms of the deal, what is the point of doing it at all? During my career as a corporate lawyer, I reminded my clients many times that if they didn’t trust the other party in a proposed business deal to do what he says he’ll do because the other party has broken prior commitments, a new written contract will do little to make compliance more likely. At least not by itself, without some pretty heavy mechanism of enforcement.
The Biden-Harris presidential administration seems so fixated on “getting a deal” between Israel and Hamas that they seem unconcerned about whether the likely end result will be a more peaceful world with fewer deaths and sustainable peace.
Published in Foreign Policy
I saw the Reagan movie yesterday. There was a man who knew how to walk away from a “deal” to great effect.
They couldn’t care less.
You’re right, FST. They are concerned with getting the deal and want to get it before November. It’s clear that they couldn’t care less whether the deal makes sense, whether the parties will comply or if good outcomes result.
Just get the deal.
For most people, getting a cease fire in which there is an actual ceasefire where people stop killing each other would be more important than a ceasefire “deal.” And a pause in the killing is usually considered the means to another end, not an end in itself.
Actually – I think do care: they want Israel to fail and to be defeated and to surrender and submit before elimination. I believe they know a deal (so called) can only be detrimental to Israel and Jews everywhere just by having given in and thereby weakening their standing and resolve. They do not want a healthy successful Israel and a defeated Hamas or Islam. I think they are focused on moving Israel to a position of inevitable defeat.
Exactly. Celebrating that you got a cease-fire deal with Hamas is like celebrating that you rented an apartment to a known deadbeat.
People needed to see more Battlestar Galactica. The original.
In the Middle East, “ceasefire” means “rearm/reload.”
A good example is the determination of several of our recent Administrations to “get a deal” with Iran, knowing fully that Iran would not keep their agreements and would soon be coming back for more concessions. But for our negotiators, “getting a deal” meant success. Remember the pallets of cash the Obama handed over for nothing in return?
Well, he did get the Nobel Prize in advance.
Kind of like the Oslo process. Where the process itself became the end rather than a means to an end.
I think that your claims about the JCPOA are completely incorrect. There were multiple reports by the IAEA confirming Iran’s compliance with the agreement prior to the decision by President Trump to pull out of the agreement.
The “pallets of cash,” as I understand it, represented the return of Iranian money that we had seized at the time of the Iranian revolution. It was their money, which we had been holding for about 35 years — like the lawless robbers and pirates that we are, principally at the behest of the Neocons.
I think that you’ve been believing another set of Neocon lies. They lie relentlessly and shamelessly, I think.
Personally, I think that Israel is well on the path to destruction. It’s hard for me to feel too bad about this, as I think that it’s richly deserved by such a lawless, murderous, terroristic state.
I don’t like seeing large numbers of people suffer, though. So I’d like to see a way for the Israeli state to survive somehow.
The Israelis have been brutally savage and oppressive toward the Palestinians, in the land that the Israelis conquered, occupied, and largely ethnically cleansed, for about 75 years now. Over the past couple decades, they regularly engaged in terror bombing, usually in Gaza, killing around 1,000-2,000 Palestinians each time. They called it “mowing the lawn.”
There was plenty of violence and terror, back and forth. The Israelis were the initial instigators, if we want to track it backwards. Prior to October 7, the general kill ratio was around 30:1, and as far as I could tell from UN figures, the Israelis killed a much higher proportion of civilians than the Palestinians.
Since October 7, the Israelis have raised their savagery to a new level, probably slaughtering around 40,000 Palestinians, including roughly 15,000-17,000 children and around 12,000 women. They openly attempted to starve the entire population of over 2 million. International pressure has forced them to back down from the worst of this.
I understand that most of you here, at Ricochet, are strongly on the side of Israel. I used to think the same thing. Frankly, I have learned that I was misled by a completely false narrative about the history of Israel. For decades, I refused to read or listen to the truth, dismissing honesty as “anti-Semitism.”
Most of the world is not so deceived. The pro-Israeli domination of the media and politics that we see in the US is almost unique, though it exists to a lesser extent in parts of western Europe.
Even so, the truth is getting through to Americans, and polls are showing that most Americans don’t support the Israeli war on Gaza. Republicans are the exception to this. (Here’s the latest Gallup poll that I’ve seen.)
Netanyahu’s approval in the US is negative 10%. As recently as 2019, it was positive 13% (the latest poll before December 2023).
Without US support, Israel would be in a world of trouble. Israel’s actions have caused it to lose the support of the American people. It still has the support of most of the political establishment, which may well alienate many voters as much as it alienates me.
It was absolutely shameful that our Congress gave over 50 standing ovations to a genocidal mass-murdering terrorist war criminal like the despicable Netanyahu. Disgusting.
I do realize that in all likelihood, 99% of you completely disagree with me about this. Understand, though, that I am far from alone in my views. These views are simply suppressed in our country, and even so, they are quite widespread. They are even more widespread in the rest of the world.
So what is the point of this rant?
The main point is that, as I stated at the outset, I’d prefer not to see the Israeli people face a catastrophe. They are driving themselves into such a catastrophe, and our country is helping them on the road to their own destruction.
This is the reason that I’d like to see a deal.
The Harris-Biden push for a cease-fire has all of the virtues of the US withdrawl from Afghanistan.