@John No one says the job is easy. The Israel/Palestine conflict is old and intractible, but Oct 7 and Gaza are new events. Israel is perpetrating a conflict more brutal in character than anything Western powers have supported or engaged in since Indochina, and the US has chosen to own that. I’m on your side here. I will vote for Biden and encourage others to. I favor sustaining and reforming Pax Americana rather than overthrowing it. 1/

@John But this is a moment when the global security order is severely challenged, when sustaining a normative consensus in favor of the US-led order against temptations offered by emerging, resentful new contenders is essential. You can draw all the moral distinctions you think appropriate. I’ll agree with some of them. But the case Biden had begun to make, that the US is “back” as a force for order worthy of the world’s respect has been eviscerated by these new events and the US response. 2/

@John That’s not a normative claim. It’s a descriptive claim. Perhaps it is mistaken. I have been known to be. But I think events in Israel / Palestine and this administration’s effective endorsement of them have rendered restoring near consensus to the order that has kept a broad peace since the Cold War, and really since WWII, much, much more challenging than it had been on October 6. /fin