Unfortunately that's not the message it sends.
The message that it sends to our allies is that we are not steadfast. We pick and choose who to support and when based on popular sentiment rather than law and treaties. It suggest that we'll reneg on the contracts we've signed when it no longer suits us. It breaks trust.
The message that it sends to our enemies is that we're weak. We will give into popular support which is something that our enemies can exploit, spinning their mission in a way that is attractive to our society, and undermining our society's support of our own government.
It really depends on how it's done. Breaking trust with someone who doesn't deserve trust is generally a positive thing.
However, there is an argument that the majority of world governments are so corrupt that almost none of them will see acting ethically as a good thing. Because they will just get scared that maybe the US will push back against their ******** next. Certainly the military industrial complex in general is staggeringly corrupt.
Are you better off in an allied group of corrupt cowards who all have each other's backs than striking out to create a more just and moral world order? Probably, it's certainly safer in the short term. But it means that stuff like Gaza will continue to happen.
As for the enemies thinking that the US is weak, no enemy that you should be actually worried about thinks the US is weak militarily. But there is definite disruption within the US at the moment that means that actual decision making can be difficult. The US is very split right now, and none of the leaders are charismatic, intelligent and decisive enough to be able to overcome that. That is something that can be taken advantage of.
Were the US able to take a clear stance on something divisive like Israel/Gaza, I think that would make enemies view the US as stronger no matter what the actual decision was. A US that can make strong, quick, effective decisions on key issues is more of a threat to any enemy than one that waffles, even if sometimes those decisions are "we are not getting involved in this, you're on your own".
This is happening in real time with Gaza, as Hamas has effectively used propaganda to make children in America worry more about the Palestinian cause and completely forget that Hamas is a human-shielded terrorist organization.
Sure, but the response to a bunch of terrorists that hide behind a human shield is not to just kill the human shield. That's what they want you to do, because they know the only card they have to play is somehow convincing the world that you're a bigger monster than they are.
Honestly, it's working. Israel is credibly a greater threat to the general world order than Hamas. Hamas could kill some Israelis, but that was about the limit of their reach. They had no real goals outside of sovereignty and land that had been contested since the day Israel was created. Anyone who was not Israel had nothing really to fear from Hamas.
Israel is demonstrating that it can systematically cleanse entire sections of land given a suitable "excuse", and every state on Israel's borders and all their allies are thinking about what that potentially means for them. Israel has not been shy about it's expansionist policies in the past. Hamas couldn't start WW3, but Israel might if they thought they could get away with it. This is why proportionality of response is important.
While these attitudes don't necessarily help their cause, what it does is sew chaos within our country and undermine the fabric of our society. That ties in perfectly with the overarching goals of terrorism, which is why we can't submit to such things. All the extremist pro-palestinians in America are playing right into the hands of terrorism and it's embarrasing. But I guess I shouldn't expect anything less because most of them weren't even alive the last time we got a taste of the good stuff.
Let's be honest, the post-9/11 "response" to terrorism did not overall prove to be highly successful. An eye for
an eye I'm going to kill you, your family, and your dog turned out to just create massive destablised states that were then even more susceptible to extremists and required massive intervention to get them back to anywhere near the sort of predictable low-level threat that they were before.
Arguably a lot of that stuff wasn't really about terrorism and was just opportunistic, but that sort of applies to Israel and Gaza as well.
Terrorism is ****ed, but it doesn't come out of nowhere. Organised terror groups generally have some sort of legitimate dissatisfaction at their core or they wouldn't be so popular. Attacking that and undermining their reason for existence has generally been more successful than direct violence, and where direct violence is required it has proven far more effective to have small operations with very defined goals and durations.
But it's less exciting on the news and it's less satisfying to a society that is generally bloodthirsty but has almost no first hand experience with war or it's aftermath. Everyone knows deep down that the US is incredibly interventionist and will stick it's two cents into anything and everything even to it's own detriment. And it's own citizens get mad when it doesn't.
