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**APRIL 19, 2024**
On the Prospect website
Judges Are Letting Trump Run Amok In and Around Court
Here's how they can stop him. BY HASSAN ALI KANU
After Ten-Year Battle, a Younger Generation Leads the Way at Volkswagen
The UAW has high hopes for success in organizing the non-union plant
in Tennessee, as a first step to campaigns across the South. BY MIKE ELK
Where Does Medicare Go From Here: Profit-Driven Chaos or
Patient-Centered Community?
After covering the Medicare privatization crisis for over two years,
an investigative reporter takes a step back and examines what's at
stake. BY MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Biden's Gaza Quagmire: Worse Than
Vietnam
There's still time for the U.S. to reverse course on Israel
policy-but barely. Will Biden do it?
For my generation, the Vietnam War was the catastrophe that destroyed
our hopes for a decent America. Vietnam wrecked the most expansive
domestic program since the New Deal, LBJ's Great Society. Vietnam
splintered the New Deal coalition, divided the kids from the hard hats,
and ushered in a Republican era that undermined civil rights and began
the "Southern strategy" of using racism to convert the Dixiecrat Solid
South into a Republican Solid South. The defection of the white working
class from the Democrats began a long and winding road that led to
Donald Trump.
If anything, Biden's quagmire is worse. And so are the consequences.
Like Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden was a pleasant surprise for progressives.
His speech to the Steelworkers
Wednesday was the most pro-union speech by a U.S. president
I've ever heard,
outdoing even FDR. Like Johnson, Biden has pursued a stunningly
progressive series of economic policies. Unlike Johnson, who had a
working majority in Congress that rivaled Roosevelt's, Biden has done
it with fumes.
Like Johnson's Vietnam blunder, Biden's Gaza war could well cost him
re-election. In 1968, the consequences were "only" the election of
Richard Nixon. In 2024, the election of Donald Trump would cost America
our democracy, quite possibly forever.
And if you unpack the details, it gets worse. Israel's annihilation of
civilian Gaza is unmistakably Biden's war, every bit as much as
Vietnam was LBJ's war. As Nick Kristof wrote
in
**The New York Times**, "when an American-made aircraft drops an
American-made bomb on an American aid group in an American-supported
war, how can that not come back to Biden?"
But at least the Vietnam War was entirely LBJ's, with the South
Vietnamese regime in the role of American puppets. Johnson and his
generals called the shots, with their own illusions and their own
strategic mistakes, and finally, when it was too late, decided to
de-escalate.
By contrast, Bibi Netanyahu is no puppet. Bibi, like Pinocchio, is
determined to be a Real Boy, and Bibi is Pinocchio in more ways than one
(this is a reference to lying, not to Jewish noses). If anything, Biden
has willingly become Bibi's puppet.
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So Biden has the worst of both worlds. His fingerprints are all over a
war that has killed upward of 30,000 civilians, but he has no control
over how the war is conducted.
This is Biden's fault, not Bibi's. He could be conditioning aid far
more explicitly. He keeps tiptoeing up to the edge of that posture and
then backing off.
And it gets still worse. Like Vietnam, Israel's behavior is dividing
Democrats and playing havoc with civil liberties. Among the knock-on
effects with echoes of Vietnam are protests that include civil
disobedience, with police invading campuses. Unlike Vietnam, we have an
increase in antisemitism, with far-right Republicans in the bizarre and
purely opportunistic role of Defenders of the Jews (who, the
Republicans' evangelical base believes, are worth defending only
pending their descent to eternal Hell with the coming of the Rapture).
Like my generation recoiling from Vietnam, large numbers of American
young people see the Gaza disgrace as a colonialist war, with crimes
against humanity. Notwithstanding the greater threat of Trump, many have
vowed never to vote for Biden, as we once foolishly vowed never to vote
for LBJ or even for Hubert Humphrey. In one more awful echo, as in 1968
there will be protests and civil disobedience at the unfortunately
located Chicago Democratic National Convention, upstaging and wrecking
what should be a Biden unity event.
Meanwhile, back in the Middle East, there is a very narrow window for
some kind of provisional settlement. Israel's provocation of Iran,
bombing its embassy complex in Damascus, in turn led to Iran's missile
and drone attack on Israel, which did no damage. Israel's retaliatory
raid today on a military target in Iran was surprisingly restrained.
For the moment, both sides can claim vindication, with no immediate need
for further escalation. American diplomats are now pushing a regional
deal
that includes much closer three-way ties between Israel, Saudi Arabia,
and the U.S.
But this proposed deal is pure carrot. To get Netanyahu to take him
seriously, Biden needs to wield a much bigger stick. Time is running
out, both in terms of the risk of a wider war and in terms of whether
Biden can ever regain the trust of America's young to win re-election.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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