Yes. That’s a question that has been raised by the US department of state that we might see an answer to in our life times of we’re lucky.

I was mostly using unverified in lacking sources and people not going through and verifying their sources before just blindly believing them. Which seems to happen a lot.

People see Biden did something and don’t look into why Biden did the thing he did then start calling him every because he did the thing he did without understanding why he did it. It’s a vicious circular loop that I’ve seen with pretty much every president we’ve had since I can remember.

Biden seems to be pretty conscious about remaining within the bounds of law so there’s a good chance there’s generally some obscure treaty or other random grouping of legal documents that when all bundled together cause the reaction we see. I like to look up what those are because I find it interesting but I can guarantee the bulk of people in this thread do not.

We’re not bound to sell weapons but we’re bound to provide aid by a combination of Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (1952) which I can’t find the text of from my phone… Need to wait till I’m near a computer to try again and Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (1991) which I linked elsewhere in the thread.

https://www.dsca.mil/programs/excess-defense-articles-eda Does explicitly allow the sale of arms to a list of nations from my understanding. This is a huge rabbit hole of laws and then exceptions to laws.

whether I personally agree any of this is right is a different story here

The ways to remedy a bilateral defense agreement depending on the actual agreement (I’m having trouble finding any of the us-isreal ones… So I’m just making assumptions here) usually boil down to supplying military aid or providing military defense.

Essentially the us must deploy supplies or a defense force. I’ll keep digging for the actual text of one of these treaties but it might take a bit because the US state departments site is actually just really badly organized.

Summary of our obligations from the state department https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/

The two that apply here are that arms can be dispersed with only congressional notification and that we’re have multiple bilateral defense agreements with them.

Hamas issued an attack on Israel which triggered the bilateral defense agreements and one way to remedy would be to deploy supplies to the region with congressional notification.

Just imagine the damage to the region if we took bilateral defense to it’s logical conclusion and dispatched actual military aid.

This is not Biden “going around Congress”. This is Congress explicitly granting permission in advance to do it as long as they are notified.

(Worth noting I’ve never looked this deeply into this before so I’m learning about this clown fiesta as well. It goes pretty deep…)

That’s only a subsection of our obligations. Two paragraphs up are what I was actually talking about. We have multiple bilateral defense agreements with them which essentially boils down to an attack on me must me treated as an attack on you.

Ah you are correct. They are a non-nato ally as they are out of geographical scope.

https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/#:~:text=Israel has been designated as,relationship with the United States.

This world be applicable though.

It’s the NATO agreement. https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/stock_publications/20120822_nato_treaty_en_light_2009.pdf

Article 5 is the one that got invoked by the Hamas attack

As stated in another thread, at this point Biden has done enough to cover against any legal retaliation however, and 100% command a withdrawal of US support as Israel has actually been using the supplies to commit war crimes

The best way to think of it is that the presidents power is roughly bellcurved relative to how much Congress is in alignment with them. If Congress is completely out of alignment with them they have very little power because congress can pass a vote on what he vetos or issue a stop on any executive action he takes. If Congress is slightly in alignment or out of alignment he becomes able to singlehandedly stop laws and executive actions aren’t likely to get overruled and will have up go under judicial review. If Congress is completely in alignment with him, he doesn’t need to use his veto powers or executive actions and if he does they likely won’t be contested anyway but we’re generally better off with Congress passing a law.

Cool, sounds good to me. Thanks again, I was finding myself eagerly anticipating your responses because I was definitely learning some new things about why people dislike his handling of the Gaza genocides. You’ve made some really good points. I think he’s made a good enough case at this point that NATO is no longer applicable in the case of genocide. At least with to protect him from retaliation if he did command a stop of US support to a NATO ally.

There’s no congressional approval needed as he is driven by treaty to provide arms, if anything he is compelled by Congress to send arms as long as Israel is at war as a US ally due to NATO.

He’s trying to make the argument that Israel committing genocide with those arms is reason to withdraw support, unfortunately the US government moves at a glacial pace on it’s best day to the point that the US military is actually somehow faster. Given the number of Democrats that do support Israel, its entirely realistic that he could get successfully impeached if he failed to comply.

Anyway… Thanks for the civil debate but work is starting so I need to go, I’ll read your next message bit I probably won’t have time to reply.

He actually is in the case that the initial arms shipment was sent, Israel was attacked by Hamas and he had to respond by sending aid. He has gone on record stating that the current war crimes Israel has been committing raise question of the legality of providing further support.

Obviously still remains to be seen if anything will actually come of that though. Words are cheap.

I see, so essentially they would state that it was in defense of the United States because it is was onshore and is there’s nothing Congress could do about it.

That’s actually really horrifying if someone like trump takes the presidency given his current threats…

Biden is legally obligated by treaty to provide Israel with arms. Not doing so would give those maniacs in the house actual reason to impeach

Biden is legally obligated by treaty to provide Israel with arms. Not doing so would give those maniacs in the house actual reason to impeach

Only with clearance from Congress though. I actually did not realize that Israel’s president did not serve as cic.

That’s actually sorta that joke, the US president is roughly as capable of commiting genocide as the president of Israel.

As for misspelling his name… Thanks Google? I’ll fix it.

Which the joke was probably not well delivered as it would probably have flown over that other guys head anyway…

Current president of Israel

I can’t disagree with the age argument, these dinosaurs need to step aside and let the world change.

I do want to know what exactly Biden has genocided. The two groups in this world who are driving genocides are Putin’s and Netanyahu’s regimes. Biden has no control over them, and the only group that could enact a foreign policy to do anything here in the US is Congress. So if anyone is complicit in that, it’s our “Currently Genocidal by Inaction Congress.”

I get it though, doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue.

[Edit: a poster below pointed out that my joke was bad and I should feel bad. ]

Camilla was a poor choice at vp no matter how you swing it given the current progressive opinion on police.

Not just the media, but perhaps worse, unverified strangers on the Internet though social media. The biggest thing that pisses me off is every time I the lesser of two evils argument spouted of paired with Biden’s handing of something that 100% should fall in the domain of Congress to solve. So may things that historically have been attributed to the President were ultimately created and decided on by Congress and the public attributes way more power to the President than they actually have because of it.

If we want actual support to Gaza we need to push our congressional members to provide that support. Which is laughable because congress can’t even pass a bill that had bipartisan support because half of one floor bends knee to the will of a private citizen. Biden keeps having to overreach his office with executive orders and policies that aren’t backed by law and as such are highly transient and subject to constitutional review allowing them too be thrown out, as well as peace time commander-in-chief powers to do things like supply airdrops or back door old equipment sales to their other countries to affected groups.

The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is that unlike Ukraine, have does not have a unified Palestinian force that the US can safely supply arms to (HAMAS has actively proven that they are not the good guys) and that we’re legally obligated to supply arms to Israel, which we are not to Russia. Biden can only sit loudly at Israel stating that genocide is bad threaten that this could lead to a withdrawal of US support, but he can’t actually withdraw US support. Congress needs to provide a bill for him to sign that does that.

On a side note… I’m fairly convinced that a good chunk of the rhetoric spouted to not vote for Biden likely originated from foreign sources to plant the Idea in people’s minds and get them to repeat it everywhere because on the surface it feels right. The vote any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump rhetoric probably exists for similar reasons, mostly to help reinforce the thought that both sides are the same because it’s quite easily proven not true and likely increases the odds that someone it’s used to convince to vote for Biden ultimately ends up either withholding their vote in protest or voting for someone else out of spite.