Dateline Middle East:
JERUSALEM (CNN) — Militants fired six rockets into southern Israel and exchanged gunfire with troops in northern Gaza Sunday, hours after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in the Palestinian territory, an Israeli spokesman said.
The Qassam rockets were fired into Sderot at 9 a.m. — seven hours after Israel’s cease-fire went into effect. The rockets did not injure anyone, and Israeli aircrafts destroyed the rocket launcher soon afterward, an Israeli military spokesman said.
And Olmert says, “we reserve right to renew Gaza op if attacks don’t stop”. At “war” again? No problem. Let’s arrange another ceasefire. It’s called the Peace Process. And this is the way it’s going to be for the rest of your life.
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The Woodrow Wilson Quarterly has a long piece about Robots At War. It raises interesting points about how much “choice” we can delegate to automata. The key problem is that lethal machinery can make irreversible mistakes without a man in the loop. The catch is that we may actually make more mistakes with a man in the loop.
At another level the article raises the question of whether humanity — or at least one side of a conflict — ought to be allowed to conduct war without casualties. It quotes General Robert E. Lee’s cautionary observation that “it is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become fond of it.” The implication is that the ability to conduct warfare de luxe will make countries like the United States too aggressive. It is the sheer power of America that is cited as the reason to cut it down to size. An America powerful enough to wage war entirely with automata, some will argue, is an America that does not morally deserve to exist.
It may be that the advent of practical battlefield robotics will make it harder, rather than easier for the more technologically advanced country to strike back. It is already being argued — in the case of Israel at least — that because it’s weapons are so much more effective than Hamas’ that it should just sit there and take it.
Maybe the 21st century version of Robert E. Lee’s adage is that “it is well that peace process is so unatainable or people might actually think we don’t want it.” Maybe there is no difference in diplomacy between leaving a man in the loop and removing him altogether. Who can tell the difference? One day we might just solve all international conflicts problem by forswearing robots and giving politicians dueling pistols in a room 20 paces wide. That would be both a vote for robotic warfare while simultaneously keeping men in the loop.
Living as I do in Doha, Qatar, I was right next door (literally) to Emergency Summit held here over the weekend. Al Jazeera International covered the event live and provided simultaneous English translations of all of the speeches including those given by Ahmedinejad, Khaled Mishaal, Bashir Assad, and several others. No speaker gave so much as one inch of rhetorical ground and from their words alone I concluded that nothing of consequence will be given up on the battle ground either. There may be a pause in the hostilities, but there won’t be any end to the fighting- not if the words I heard are to be believed.
I think we’ve already delegated many important aspects of our lives to systems whose workings we don’t fully understand. Automated counterbattery systems, missile defense. Why even the doctrine of MAD itself rested guaranteeing that retaliation would be automatic, and therefore certain. We depend on the decisions computers make in flight control systems, SCADA and lest we forget, the financial system as well as in things we don’t think about, like medical imaging. We rely on the belief that the scanner isn’t going to fry us when we lie under the beam.
In many cases we are willing to settle for oversight, rathern an real-time control, in our relationship to automata. The problem I think, is that we ourselves are often irrational and build this instability both into the real time controls and the oversight. Even as our machinery gets more powerful our critical faculties seem to shrink. Gaza is a case in point. It’s madness, but the insanity isn’t in the machine, it’s in the politics.
Gaza Peace Plan
1. Kill all military age males
2. Sell women and children to Saudis
3. Repopulate with Ethiopian Jews and Christians
Gaza Peace Plan 1. Kill all military age males…
I don’t think that’s licit or permissible. But sometimes I think that when the possible but imperfect outcome is made unattainable, not the perfect but the irrational is the alternative.
The interesting thing about all of this conflict is the evolution of perceptions.
If one breaks it down into a sort of flow chart, one might come up with the following:
1:
1a) Jews don’t deserve a national homeland.
OR
1b) Jews deserve a national homeland but should not be able to defend it.
OR
1c) Jews deserve a national homeland with secure borders.
2:
2a) World chooses 1c.
2b) Arabs choose 1a and attack Jewish homeland and/or wage propaganda campaign against Israel and/or wage economic campaign against Israel and/or wage terror campaign against Israel and/or wage terror campaign against Jews world-wide.
2c) World chooses 1a or 1b (essentially the same thing).
3:
3a) Arabs lose badly and suffer major catastrophe (Nakba).
3b) Arabs lose badly and/or continue to lose in their ongoing campaigns against Israel.
4:
4a) No sympathy and support for Arabs.
4b) Some international sympathy and support for Arabs because of the suffering that has been caused by their campaigns against Israel.
4c) Major international sympathy and support for Arabs because of the suffering that has been caused by their campaigns against Israel
5. Return to 1, until 2c.
6. End.
Forgot to mention that Israel’s borders increasingly get smaller (because of the demands and perceived needs to make peace with one’s neighbors and to take Palestinian suffering and national aspirations into account), and the rocket/missile range and weapons grade used by Israel’s neighbors increases.
So that with each iteration the noose around Israel tightens just a little bit more.
Inexorably. Until….
Gaza Peace Plan 1. Kill all military age males…
…when the possible but imperfect outcome is made unattainable, not the perfect but the irrational is the alternative.
When you are faced with an enemy who considers it perfectly licit and permissible to exterminate you, your family and all of your fellow countrymen, then the standard of what is licit and permissible must be grounded in reality and subject to re-evaluation.
Moreover, when one is finally willing, or even simply compelled by events to face that reality, and the distinctions and choices between perfect vs. imperfect alternatives and outcomes mean the difference between survival or death, then the choice to kill those who fully intend and are already attempting to kill you can be said to be many things, e.g. “disproportionate”, “uncivilized” or even “immoral”, but it is not irrational.
““war” again? No problem. Let’s arrange another ceasefire. It’s called the Peace Process.”
On Windows – Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Happy birthday Bobby Lee.
This calling a unilateral ceasefire at the height of the battle follows a pattern in the western way of war since WWII. These wars are conducted without a clear intent or plan for achieving victory, and consequently they seem to drag on for years. Some have argued that the persistence of this pattern in the west indicates that this way of war is beneficial to someone; it is not beneficial to the soldiers who fight, or to the citizens of the country that fights, who quickly become demoralized by the seeming futility of it. That leaves the politicians – it must be beneficial to the politicians who “lead” in these wars. The surmise is that the political calculation is based on several factors unique to the west:
1) Democratic governments answering to a fickle or divided electorate
2) A pacifist or pacifist-leaning electorate (the left and center-left)
3) A casualty-averse electorate (includes not only the left, center-left, but also some of the right)
4) High dollar cost of modern conventional warfare
5) Lack of an existential threat
The political leadership must be seen to be doing something, but does not want to:
A) Spend too much money
B) Divert money from “social” programs
C) Risk high casualties and alienate the right wing from whose population the soldiers are recruited
D) Risk high civilian casualties and alienate the left, for whom there is no distinction between citizens of one country and another.
That leaves a kind of indecisive “spoiling war”.
I suppose a lot of this follows from (5) above. If the Israelis really felt that their entire population was directly and imminently threatened by Hamas, they would not be playing around with unilateral cease fires.
just keep killing hamas. if they keep firing rockets, hit them three times as hard. break them. this is a beautiful opportunity.
A wandering nation – Israel – was given instruction, by their God, Yahuweh, to occupy this land and kill every man, woman and child (the ancestors to modern-day ”Palestinians’). It was an absolute command they did not carry out. These pagans were throwing their children into fire as a sacrifice to their pagan god.
Since my birthday happens to fall on 02/02, I might be a little prejudiced, but Ground Hog Day, the movie is one of my favorites. Yeah, it’s pretty much the story of my life. But, I believe, it is the story of all humankind. We enter into life with self-serving attitudes, and it is only after life beats the tar out of us – precisely because of the mindset we inherit – only after we become helpless ‘casualties of our own rebelliousness do we realize that we can’t do it alone. We need guidance. We need recognition of higher authority.
Some respond.
10. HV: – …I suppose a lot of this follows from (5) above. If the Israelis really felt that their entire population was directly and imminently threatened by Hamas, they would not be playing around with unilateral cease fires.
Excellent exposition of the existential trap in which the Israelis and the West find themselves. The problem, of course, is their insistence on basing their actions on how they “feel” instead of actually thinking logically.
The Israelis, and the West, have a cultural disease where, much like diseases such as colon or pancreatic cancer, the patient rarely “feels” there’s a problem until it’s too late…
“to occupy this land and kill every man, woman and child”
The original “Peace Process”.
May I tell a war story?
I had only been at Pleiku Artillery Hill less than a month when the compound came under mortar attack. A wild flurry of mortar shells hit outside the perimeter and in some empty spaces inside the wire, near the end of the compound. Our counter battery artillery immediately returned fire, which I observed impacting in an empty area some distance from the compound. The dust settled, quiet returned and the damage report came back, no damage and no casualties. This seemed to be the norm. Once a month, near the end of the month, a wildly ineffective mortar attack with equally ineffective counter battery fire would occur. Since, at the time, I was not involved with the firing batteries, I kept my own counsel and went about my business.
Several months of this and the time came for the base commander to rotate back to the States. His replacement was a stracked away type, come to bring order. After experiencing the monthly exchange, he brought together the artillery officers responsible for base defense and demanded to know what was going on. The operations officer (S3 for the military minded) explained that we appeared to be fighting with the least motivated and most ineffective Viet Cong mortar crew in existence, and that it was deemed not sporting or prudent to try to kill them. The base commander came unglued, hollering that this was war and in the future anyone firing at the base would suffer the consequences. Of course, by now, you know where this is heading. The monthly barrage of mortar fire was answered by highly accurate counter fire guided by counter mortar radar (Q4 for the military minded). The mortar attacks stopped.
A couple months went by of relative quiet and then one night, the mortar rounds came again. This time they took out a fuel dump and a helicopter. From then on, it was war.
Those who wish to draw a somewhat risky parable from this may do so.
Here’s what Israel could do, but they won’t: Use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and HUMINT to surveil Gaza and create a database of every house the “militants” enter, exit, or launch rockets from. For every round that is fired into Israel, whether it misses or not, one of these houses is flattened and struck off the list. Israel can even call the house and let the occupants leave if they want to.
Hamas shoots these rockets to create fear in the minds of Israeli citizens of random death from above. The Israeli response doesn’t even have to be life-for-life, but it has to be consistently one house for every rocket. It has to be as implacable as the pain you get from beating your head against a brick wall. If Hamas wants to fire 7,000 rockets in 2009, the people of Gaza will be less 7,000 houses. And every house that allows Hamas to shelter their troops or become a missile platform is guaranteed to be added to the list. Give the voters something to think about in the next election.
to occupy this land and kill every man, woman and child (the ancestors to modern-day ”Palestinians’). It was an absolute command they did not carry out. These pagans were throwing their children into fire as a sacrifice to their pagan god.
All for the kids.
Wretchard,
It is too heartbreaking to think that the “Great Game” is being played on us. Or, for that matter, that we can do nothing about it. I may have become cynical in my last half (What? Me?), but there seems to be no other explanation.
There is the Great Game going on, and we are not privy to the rules, only to the consequences of their game. It has always been so.
programmer
I was at Pleiku Engineer Hill when a 105 round from Artillery Hill, fired in response to a contemporaneous VC mortar attack no less, made Swiss cheese of my tent. No harm no foul. I can’t prove it, but I swear I could hear Charlie drop the first round in the tube and was in my hole before it hit (that’s how I tell the story anyway).
BC is like old home week. Yesterday we had the Mang Yang Pass. I spent several months just down the road from Mang Yang at Blackhawk Firebase and spent many an hour stomping around the pass. I still have a fragment of a monument to the French troops that was situated at the base of the pass that was carelessly machine gunned by some tanker.
I generally like the posts on Wretchard’s blogs and like his perspective and that of his readers. Having gotten that out of the way I think you are all missing something very important that is happening.
First, for all the “peace process” talk, Hamas is not a party to an agreement with Israel, the U.S. or even the U.N.
Second, there are, however, agreements about what to do about Hamas. Because Israel alone making declarations about tunnels and the like cannot alone even influence “international law”, Israel and the U.S. have entered into agreements about arms smuggling to Hamas. The idea of this is not that the U.S., the E.U. or anyone else other than Israel does anything about the smiggling, but that an arms embargo and Israel’s right to enforce are explicitly raised to an international principle that Israel can act upon at any time. Diplomatic assets are assets too.
Third, progress is made, but in this sort of assymetric war it never looks like what progress in a previous era looked like. It’s hard to remember, but Israel did defeat terrorism on the West Bank militarily and diplomatically. Terrorism from there has fallen dramatically and in 2004 Sharon and Bush had exchanges of diplomatic letters (which do mean something in customary international law) that state conclusions about Israel’s security interests, what parts of the West Bank are annexed to Israel and what are not etc). If a civilized country cannot find a party to negotiate with, it can negotiate with other civilized parties about uncivilized parties. Today, the West Bank is long out of the headlines. Even if something noteworthy happens there or from there tomorrow, I predict it that it will have no lasting impact on Israel or those who care about the war on terror.
With these things, still not all is rosy. Iran’s nuclear project remains unsolved. By the above standards the 2006 Lebanon War was an abject failure.
But just because European and Islamic world hypocrisy remain unchanged, we should not be blind to positive developments. And a perceptive writer like Wretchard should be open to what progress and victory look like under changed conditions. Figuring out what these things are in every new age, and not just by the terms of a recently bygone age, is part of what history is about.
ItI,
That is complete, utter doublespeak. Do you think that we live under a “new paradigm”? Or do you work for the U.N. or the State Department?
Well said, Dan.
We, the West, are reacting to “the Great Game,” when we should be initiating one of our own.
This is why Operation Iraqi Freedom was sooooo important. For at least six years, America was in control of her own game. The “Great Game’s” constraints, like John Kerry’s “Global Test,” and DeVillepin’s “Oil for Food Program” were ignored and our Chess pieces roamed triumphantly across the game-board.
But, with OIF’s detractors running the US government now, it’s hard to expect that America’s forward-leaning game will continue – and easy to predict that Gulliver will fall back asleep, allowing the lilliputians to tie him down all over again.
“Is this the beginning or the end of the next/last rocket barrage?”
Dan, we’re on the same side. Seriously.
It helps to have military and diplomatic assets working together. You know what a diplomatic asset is without a military asset: a meaningless piece of paper. A military asset without a diplomatic asset is the constant [underserved] pressure that that Israel and the U.S. are often under where nothing ever seems resolved. Both together mean having your interests, being able to protect them, and having the serious parties of the world just shut up about it.
If you accept these premises, the only questions are what kind of assets can be had in this era.
I would like to see jihadi ideology go the way of Communism in eastern Europe. But as long as this conflict is somewhere in between jihadi WMDs with the Three Conjectures and total abandonment of the ideology, we have to figure out what victory looks like, which is a problem that every era dealt with where there were two warring parties and one lost without having been completely annihiliated. Incremental gains should not be the enemy of total gains. (Just as incremental gains should not be the occasion for the victor, if a victor we like, to relax and forget the larger fight.)
The solution to this crisis is fairly easy: Relocate the United Nations from New York to Sderot. We would be happy to get rid of them, and they might find incentive to actually work the problem. Once that’s done, they can move on to a third home in Zimbabwe . . . .
I think at this time it may be in the IDF’s interests to not pursue Hamas holed up in Gaza City or other urban areas in the Strip. Unless they feel confident that they want and can sustain the kinds of hand to hand that was seen in the last days of the PLO Refugee camp in Lebanon not so long ago, or in the bowels of Fallujah. The trouble here is that the international reaction (retribution?) to the purposeful hunting and killing of the jackass may be worse than the universal good gained in eliminating such a stupid and stubborn critter.
What else is to be done with the beast? Turn him out to pasture and hope he doesn’t do anything really suicidal in our vicinity. It is a long time proposition to change the behaviors of a people so given to submission as the Palestinians are, to include a vision of self that is not so crippled by self pity and self loathing.
Doug, you’re onto something there.
If the UN is the world’s “Healer,” then it makes sense to rotate its headquarters to the globe’s festering theatres.
I mean, what use is a white-blood cell if it’s not at the site of infection? Currently its offices and officials are blithely out of harm’s way, unaccountable for the “healing” decrees it issues, and entirely unconcerned about the likelihood that it is exacerbating, not remedying, global conflicts.
I’m not a doctor, but I play one online, and your suggestion makes perfect sense to me.
Israel, is as in the past, helping us out by grappling with some knotty problems we don’t face yet.
In this case the problem is: how should one react to incoming missiles launched by a bunch of errant young men from a third world city if they are inaccurate?
This is really the only difference from 9/11: that in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah the missiles are, for now, inaccurate.
Our response to 9/11 has shown so far that going after the terrorist leaders and soldiers and simultaneously knocking over one or two of their state sponsors appears to work against this sort of threat. Israel is try to determine whether the first measures can be made to work on their own, basically because the tools available to them allow them to destroy a terror sponsoring regime only by going nuclear.
In the future, whether successful or not, our current diplomatic and military policies will be seen as one long effort by the West to find ways not to use nuclear weapons against terror sponsoring states.
Who knows? Maybe this effort will in the end be seen as quixotic, misconceived and a waste of resources and lives. Maybe nuclear weapons will have to be used to end this sort of conflict once but only once, as worked in the case of superpower conflicts since WWII.
Even terror-sponsoring regimes are not stupid, they just as things stand believe themselves exempt from effective retaliation. They will be, until the day they are not. They are truly like children playing with an unexploded bomb.
Brainwashed suicide Islamist warriors are automata too.
The “Peter Boston peace plan” was the normal way of war during antiquity, and was practiced repeatedly by various Greek powers, Rome, and I think just about every other ancient state, including the Jewish commonwealth.
When you consider the carnage of the Great War, as well, it seems that the Great Powers were following a similar plan, although not explicitly, and they didn’t carry it out completely.
ItI is right. The “peace process” noose was indeed tightening around Israel, but now there is a noose around the Palestinians as well. Operative Defensive Wall was launched after hundreds of Israeli deaths to suicide bombers, with the population of Israel’s largest cities feeling targeted daily. Operation Cast Lead was launched after a handful of fatalities. Will the next operation be launched after hard intelligence of smuggling? The threshhold is getting lower, and “the world” seems fine with it. (For all the rabid rioters crying “war crimes”, the mainstream Anglophone media is presenting a lot more context and nuance and explaining why the mosques were legitimate military targets etc.).
Why does diplomacy matter, you might ask? (As several of you have). Perception shapes reality, this should not be news. Israel’s deterrence is its foes’ perception that it will act. The fewer the diplomatic penalties on Israel, the higher the perception that it will respond more quickly and harshly to the next violation. Consider, too, that part of the reason that 1701 was so toothless was because Israel seemed to be floundering in Lebanon (emphasis on the “seeming” – major infowar failure on both the home front and the int’l front, which was mostly remedied this time around), and the major powers didn’t feel they could push for a stronger mechanism (e.g. one that demanded the return of Israel’s kidnapped soldiers as a condition to the ceasefire). A “stronger” resolution gives Israel more legitimacy in enforcing the terms of the ceasefire, which creates more of a compliance incentive on the other side. It is also good to see Hamas beginning to be isolated diplomatically within the Arab League, as its rift with Egypt and Saudi is made public.
Mind you, a statement that diplomacy matters is not at all a denigration of the effectiveness of military force, merely a neo-Clausewitzian view that the different battlegrounds – ground, air, sea, media, diplomacy, finance/resources – are linked, they influence each other, and to maximize your success you need to engage all levels simultaneously. (Naval blockade halts shipments of ground-to-air missiles to enable your air force freedom of action to support ground troops so you can send in infantry with low casualties on your part, rather than use artillery which is less precise and creates more collateral damage and more negative media stories that… They are all linked)
I would guess that the majority of the Israeli infantry, mechanized troops, airmen, what have you, are at least passingly familiar with the history of their country, even the part that goes back to Moses leading the Jews out of Eqypt +3000 years ago.
I think part of their training and indoctrination involves them visiting Masada.
And they probably are also pretty aware of more recent history, that of “Die Endlosung” of the Third Reich aimed at European Jews.
Many of the people of the World only see the strife of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a constant source of pyschic irritation, always some kind of monstrous news to annoy our peace of mind. Of course, a “Final Solution” to most people is not what they wish, but they think there has to be some Grand Bargain that can be negotiated to solve this festering problem.
And the Islamic Arab sees all this land as theirs, and they are doing as the Prophet wills; making all submit to Islam, either peacibly or by the point of the sword. To them it matters not.
The point being, this is the psycholigical terrain that is the ground over which the information war is being fought, which, in the long run, might be more important than this punitive action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
If the World sees Israel as an entity or nation that deserves to exist, then there can be continuing support for their surivival , regardless of the outcome of the pinprick missile strikes inflicted by Hamas, however grotesque they seem to us. If the Israelis do something so profoundly , unsymetrically punitive (like killing all military age males in Gaza), the World may recoil from this and reflexively allow the Arabs to respond with something even more grotesque. That may be the parable that can be drawn from Programmer’s story of his life at a fire base in Pleiku province. If the Israelis do something too effective or efficient to stop this sort of thing, the rest of the World may react in extremely negative and unpredictable ways (which could be part of what the Islamic-Arab world is trying to provoke, with their own version of Psy-Ops warfare). Because when you get right down to it, a lot of people in the world are pretty much moral squishes, and just want the bad things to go away.
The hard thing for the Israelis is the knowledge that “it can happen again”, that thing that was foresworn “Never Again!”. Pinprick retribution, or as the more civilized would say “proportional response” simply legitimizes the status quo of low level warfare, forever. One Helluva depressingly, demoralizing, bad way to live.
As a corollary to what Bobby Lee said, perhaps in this instance you could say,”If only the war was more terrible, perhaps they would come to hate it and stop.”
I’m sorry, maybe I was a bit short in my discussion… Obviously there needs to be a diplomatic end-piece. The confusion that I think many people have is when it comes to play. Hence, Wretchard’s post.
(Wretchard, I apologize in advance for speaking for you – especially if I’m incorrect in my assumptions)
Michael Gray,
This is the dance that must be danced since the unleashing of the bomb and the decision in the west that war is never a good thing. Do you think that as long a the bomb was not a factor total war was an option, but with the bomb in play, we will all be dancing this way. Assuming of course that Irani leaders are not nor are Pakistani extremists the sort of crazy fools who actually believe that martyrdom jazz. Or would punch it just in spite.
Wade,
Possibly, possibly. But, for all we know their fissile material is a dud. Another variable.
I’m of the opinion that we should rename “Russian Roulette” to Isreali Roulette. They have used the premise, with all of the madness associated with the act.
Programmer’s story kind of brings to mind the plot of “The Zap Gun” by Philip K Dick.
From Wikipedia:”This novel is set in a then-future 2004. There is still a (theoretical) Cold War between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. At the elite governmental level, however, both ‘sides’ have secretly come to an agreement. They have decided that, instead of continuing the ecologically and economically crippling nuclear and conventional arms race, they will pretend to be constantly developing new weapons, which are then “plowshared”. This means that these items are transformed into novel but baroque consumer products. “
Have not had time to read all of this and must go to work now. BUT: My initial impression is that Olmert agreed to a well-thought out invasion only because he has to face Netanyahu at the polls shortly.
Having burnished his image, or so he thinks,
he now takes counsel of his fears and threatens to sabotage things. UGH!
enigama: Did catch one thing in passing.
The correct term where I come from is “Marse Robert”>
I was clicking through the channels yesterday and caught the end of a History Channel piece on the Battle of New Orleans. I believe they said that the British experienced 2,000 casualties in this one battle. Today we take extraordinary measures to insure that we keep our losses to an absolute minimum because many in our society are not willing to pay any price for our continued existence. They would rather we be slaves to communism or islam or any other oppressor than to fight. As a child I remember singing Rule Brittainia and the line about never being slaves. It takes a hard and bloody effort to stay free and we loose if we don’t fight. Looks like a majority in our country have already given up.
“Gaza Peace Plan 1. Kill all military age males…”
OK, so Wretchard won’t let us kill all the military age Palestinian males. What would that be, any way: about 13 through 50?
So scoop ‘em all up and deport them.
SEveral years ago, a bunch of the little darlings got themselves cornered by the Israeli’s, and went to ground in a church in Jerusalem (I think it was). There was a weeks long stand-off while the Palestinians used this historic church to hide out, eat, drink and shit in, and food and water was smuggled in to them by friendly neighborhood Arabs. I think they were also holding some monks hostage, as is their wont and need for human shields.
The end of the seige came when it was agreed that in exchange for not shooting the Palestinians on sight, the Israeli’s would allow them to be distributed around the world to start new lives in other countries where it would be harder for them to shoot at Jews. A couple here, a couple there — not enough to cause trouble in their new country, but enough to defuse the situation.
And so it was done, the Church was evacuated, no Palestians were killed on that day, the Jews could feel safe, and the terrorists were VERY unhappy when interviewed later that no one was paying attention to them any more.
I have no doubt that most of those Palestinians have managed to make it back to their own peaceful hellhole of Gaza, where they can resume starving to death and shooting at Jews.
But what would happen if instead of going in to kill every military-aged male in Gaza, Israel simply started scooping them up and shipping them off Somewhere Else? Twenty to Greenland, 15 to Saskatoon Saskatchewan, a dozen to Fairbanks, Alaska, 20 to the Amazon basin, 10 to Antarctica, 10 to the Falklands, etc. Send them someplace where (1) it would be hard to make a living unless you worked at it, (2) there would be no Muslim support system, (3) bullets would be a rariety, and (4) it would be hard to get back to the Middle East.
We relocate grizzly bears who are not welcome in our civilized backyards. Surely relocating a maddened Hamas terrorist would be equally humane.
Wretchard:
Only if you allow the wrong taboos to control your actions. Viewed through the proper lens (“Query: Do my children deserve to grow up free from rocket attacks and suicide bombers?”) the technological advances return to being multipliers, not handcuffs.
Some may think it selfish of the Israelis to only consider their own children, but it necessary that if Israel is to treat Hamas as an ethical and moral equal that they defer to Hamas’ responsibility to care for their children and to choose their course accordingly. Hamas has done so, and Israel need only respond with respect towards the choices another adult has made. Respect; not restraint.
programmer:
Yeah. Either leave Charlie alone or kill him. Don’t wound him and then give him time to heal and plot revenge. The Israelis should consider your story carefully.
The trouble with Treaties and other agreements between State actors is that they rarely, if ever, have provisions in them as to what will happen if one of the parties fails to live up to their side of the bargain. As a modest proposal, I think the Israelis should publicly announce a schedule of destruction for Gaza. For example, stage one might be an operation whereby all telecommunication infrastructure was targeted and destroyed within X number of days, stage two would be the destruction of X, Y, and Z, and so on. All the Palestinians have to do to keep these events from happening is to ensure that no rockets or mortars are fired into Israel. If they fail to do this, stage one happens. At its conclusion, there is a unilateral ceasefire which the Palestinians can break by firing more projectiles, at which point stage two of the destruction commences, and so on.
It will be difficult for the Palestinians to say that the response is disproportionate when they knew beforehand what it would be and when invoking it was purely at their discretion.
I just digested Dennis Prager’s recent show about the problems experienced in the Minnesota recount.
Turns out our reliance on automata like ballot scanners and their copier-functions has enabled, not disabled, the kinds of fraud that illicit ballot-eering relies on.
Whether it was on his mind as he posted or not, I think this paradox fits perfectly into Wretchard’s post above. Automation is, indeed, a double-edged sword.
Could be, a return to the old punch-card -type ballots, or the SAT-type filled circles, will be a step forward. It could be insightful to see which party of the two opposes this retrogressive idea: the party most wedded to automata may be the most corrupt.
The decsions to fight or not fight, and the definition of what military actions are or are not acceptable, remain in human hands, however. The real problem, if you don’t mind my saying so, Wretchard, appears to be due not to automated responses as such, but rather to the attempts by many liberals in the West to cripple Western war-making, for whaever reasons.
I notice that the attempts to make war harmless for Muslims seems limited to the US and Israel only. (See ref: Russia in Grozny, Syria in Hama, India in Kashmir, etc ad naseum). Which brings me to the conclusion that all those criticizing Israel are either Muslums engaged in a holy war per the demands of the Koran, where all methods are perfectly fine for use against infidels, OR, they are trans-national liberals who believe their lives would be easier if Israel ceased to exist, OR they are misguided fools who believe there are seperate and unequal standards of conduct for Western states and everyone else.
“proportional response”
I wonder what is a proportional response to a beligerant that has repeatedly spit in your eye? Knocking his teeth out comes to mind.
I think the Israelis needed to calm matters down before the inauguratation and world wide hysteria threatened to condemn them for the umteenth time. The Iranians have warned Hamas that if they negotiate for peace they will lose their funding. The Israelis have failed to flush out Hamas into open combat. Maybe waiting them out will work
Hmmmm….
What if they gave a cease fire and no one came?
Wait a minute, that IS the Mideast Peace Process!
TCobb, BTW, I recall that the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt do have “default” provisions that state that if Egypt breaches then Israel takes a major chunk of the Sinai back.
..The ceasefire is a wise tactical move by Israel. It enables them to restock, rest and best of all, it acts as an irresistable lure for Hamas to restock and expose fresh targets to Israels overhead cameras. Israeli forces can reposition for the next round of fighting with less risk, since much of Hamas will in fact honor ceasefire. Those Hamas forces that don’t do so act to renew Israeli justification and to impeach Hamas allies and supporting foreign governments.
..It’s a win-win for the Israelis and won’t help Hamas tactically or strategically. Expect to see it used again next time Israeli forces need a timeout.
Wretchard:
Another great topic for discussion, and some damn fine comments above. Most recommendations for a “Middle East Solution”, though seem to fall at the extremes: remove the Palestinians either by killing them or relocating them, or at the other end of the spectrum, do away with Israel (by pushing them into the sea if you’re Iran, or sending them to Ireland if you’re some UN members).
I suppose extreme solutions come out of extreme (and random) violence, which seems to be the norm in the Middle East. The problem for statesmen is that extreme solutions are generally unacceptable to large segments of the world community, to Judeo-Christian morality, and perhaps even to the future. Hitler’s “Final Solution”, for example, sowed the seeds of the whirlwind we reap right now.
So the task is to find a middle path that is acceptable to both sides. And a good part of the problem in the Middle East is that both parties want other players to find that solution, hence the call for the U.S. or the UN to solve their problem.
No middle path is readily apparent, and no outside party can convince the belligerents that it is in their best interest to end the war, especially with Iran and other third parties supplying arms and money.
So a different tack is obviously called for and I cannot think of a better collection of intellects to discover it. This, then, is your challenge Belmont Clubbers: think outside the box on the Middle East Peace Process (maybe the very words “peace process” are too much inside the box) and come up with the middle path that will appeal to Israelis who think they have found their homeland and Palestinians who think they have lost theirs.
F
With regards to “F” and other comments above:
I think, having observed this from afar for most of my life, that for a “Mid-East Peace Process” to work, you have to reach an un-imaginable level of approval from the Arab side, or else get them to advance to popular, consensual politics. Because whenever some small faction is opposed, intramural violence breaks out, until the majority is motivated to pick of the sword again and repeat the hostilities previously suppressed by “treaty”.
The success of Egypt in living up the “Camp David Accords” has a lot to do with the fact that they are a pretty efficient tyranny, and effectively police the Muslim Brotherhood and other militant organizations within Egypt that would love to start up the war with Israel again.
If you believe Michael Totten’s descriptions, a majority of the Lebanese would also like to “make peace” on some level with Israel, but as things presently stand in Lebanon (and Syria) and the presence of Hezbollah, that probably isn’t going to happen tomorrow, next week or next year.
It is therefore, in my humble opinion, not possible to create a climate for a consensual peace agreement between all parties, because most (most? all!) of the Arab parties do not have consensual governments (democracy?) that the citizens respect and place enough trust and faith in to allow such an agreement to take place.
We are stuck in the endless Groundhog Day of strife because there is not enough political incentive for any government on the Arab side to make such an agreement. See how that worked out for Anwar Sadat?
Iraq was to be a start, but that nascent democracy can still be reversed by the forces on the ground in the Middle East and by the politically stupid and malevolent in this country, some of whom are in high positions in the government and the academy.
#39 NahnCee
We relocate grizzly bears who are not welcome in our civilized backyards. Surely relocating a maddened Hamas terrorist would be equally humane.
As a resident of the county here in Colorado where they drop off all of the bears in the state being so relocated, and for that matter having had the grown son of a former neighbor attacked,killed, and eaten by one of those bears some years ago; I have to note that the standard policy is to only give ONE break to a bear. If it acts out in human territory again, it is killed without mercy.
A similar policy for HAMAS would be an improvement over what obtains now.
I also have to note that there is NO place where Islamist terrorists cannot operate, and in the West, anywhere they are they will find defenders in the form of the political parties of the Left. Kind of like spreading the contagion.
#41 Tcobb
I would that it were so. It would be effective enough however, that the Obama Administration’s Susan Powers would at that point get her wish and US troops would be introduced to protect HAMAS. However, I still do not see the sense of Israel furnishing power, and other public utilities, to Gaza. The answer may be to create a total blockade everywhere Gaza touches Israeli territory, and at sea as far as weapons are concerned. If their “Arab brothers” want to take up the burden of feeding and furnishing public utilities to them, so be it. If they don’t, then the survival of those whose votes and support enable attacks on Israeli civilians will be in the hands of their Diety. Inshallah.
Subotai Bahadur
Israel has taken out all the hot easy targets it can…
With the exception of the bunkers under the 2 main hospitals in the gaza strip..
The “unilateral” ceasefire will allow Israel to paint an updated electronic map of the strip..
I bet israel has embedded undercover spotters that are updating israeli databases as we speak.
I would not be surprised to learn that fatah (and others that are on the israeli payroll) are also updating the database with intel….
Israel is united about not allowing Hamas to fire rockets at will…
Hamas is united in not stopping the war on Israel….
However few things have changed…
Israel has proven that Hamas hides underground and uses kids and women as shields…
The best laid traps of hamas have been proven to be ineffective…
Israel has shown it’s mettle and has shown those that can look past the bullshit press coverage an army that is more exact and precise than any in the world.
Israel also has shown it will not be stopped by human shields, will not be stopped by the cynical use of mosques, UN school and more..
a new reset button has been set…..
This battle may be over but the war aint…
Iran lost this round…
and now the world will focus on the Obama admin and the Iranian nuke issue…
“If it acts out in human territory again, it is killed without mercy.”
Exactly. If a Hamas terrorist tried the same sort of bullshit in Saskatoon as he does in Gaza, he *would* be summarily killed without mercy. That’s what we have SWAT teams for and they’re usually pretty effective at the “without mercy” part. And Israel wouldn’t have done it, so there, Arab Street.
# 52 NahnCee
Did Saskatoon, Saskatchewan secede from Canada while I was not looking? It is so bad in Canada that Ontario Province has enshrined Sharia law as part of their legal code [family law for Muslims]. Criticism of anything Muslim, including terrorist acts, is subject to extra-legal proceedings by the absurdly Orwellian-named “Canadian Human Rights Commission” that can impose massive civil penalties without judicial appeal. Canadian cops are not exactly known for ability or willingness to use firearms. Indeed, their border guards are ordered to flee if threatened.
Their prisons at Medium Security or below are kindergartens. [I know a bit about Corrections Canada as I once investigated working for them.] Their Correctional staff are crippled by Political Correctness, and indeed for the last several years they have restricted hiring to only politically correct minority classes. I do, however, like the fact that their first response for prison problems that get out of hand is the military.
I also note that they are already a haven for Jihadi’s. Quebec is allowed its own immigration policy. Jihadi’s from amongst the French Muslim “unidentified youth” that make the Zones Urbaine Sensibiles no-go areas for French police get instant immigration and Canadian passports as immigrants without screenings, because they are coming to Quebec from France.
Finally, the only terrorist we have physically caught in the act entering this country came from Canada. He was driving a car full of unstable nitro based explosives and rode the ferry from Victoria, BC to Port Angeles, Washington. The Border Patrol caught the car in the screening area in Port Angeles. Having ridden that ferry, and knowing the magnitude of the bump at the ramps loading and unloading, it is a bloody miracle that the SS COHO was not blown up. I’ve met people involve in that bust.
I probably should have put a [sarc] tag on part of my #50 above. Sorry. Short of Antarctica only in Middle Eastern clothes; there is no safe place for these predators to be allowed to live. Even there and then, I would be watching out for penguins with bombs strapped to them coming to McMurdo Sound.
Subotai Bahadur
ref: Subotai B’s comments on grizzlies…
While a grizzly was killed in 1979 in Colorado, belying the common belief that they had been completely extinct in that state for a half-century, there have been no other sightings since then and the present position of the Colorado state wildlife agency is that grizzlies are indeed extinct in Colorado. So not very likely that bad actor grizzlies are routinely dropped off in Subo’s neighborhood, or that his neighbor’s son was killed and eaten by a grizzly, unless that had happened in Alaska or in Canada. Black bears, however, are common, and might sometimes be relocated (once only?) by the Colorado Division of Wildlife agency. While potentially dangerous, black bears are not to my knowledge known to prey on live humans.
Back on topic, ref. NanhnCee’s idea of distributing pesky military-age males from Gaza a dozen or so at a time to Fairbanks and Saskatoon… is this assuming that they were previously issued immigrant visas and that everything is kosher on that, so to speak?
@Nahncee and Subotai,
“I also have to note that there is NO place where Islamist terrorists cannot operate”
I suggest we try Mars.
If we took the UN budget and spent it on rockets. We as a league of nations could afford to send them to another planet.
#54 Hanoi Paris Hilton
I stand corrected as to it being a grizzly. I overlooked it in NahnCee’s post and was just reading “bear”. I was reacting to the idea of relocation.
The bear involved was a black bear. It had been released in Western Fremont County. My former neighbor’s son lived in a trailer on his land there. The bear broke in, killed him, and ate part of the body. His father used to live near me years ago in Chaffee County on the south side of Mount Princeton.
The point, however, was that relocation of terrorists in lieu of killing them is not a viable solution. I apologise for hasty reading and pasting.
Subotai Bahadur
1. I just like saying “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan”.
2. I’m trying to remember how countries were convinced to allow those Palestinians holed up in the church to relocate into them. Maybe a hefty bribe in these troubled financial times would make it more palatable for a place like Iceland to take in a few poor little misunderstood Palestinians — unless they’ve already got their fill of their own homegrown misunderstood Muslims.
3. It probably wouldn’t work because no one wants to help Israel out that much. And everyone’s afraid of the Palestinians, apparently.
4. Why couldn’t Israel just take a big old helicopter in the middle of a moonless night and strap parachutes to the bad guys and dump them out? Rendition on the cheap. The places I’m talking about relocating them to would probably not have a lot of defensive radar installations to prevent it. Take a bunch of them to the same places as we take bad grizzly bears and let ‘em fight it out mano-a-grizzly.
(Wouldn’t it be fun if Israel started importing mean American grizzly bears and letting them loose in Gaza? Give the Palestinians something besides a Jew to shoot at, while perfecting their rock-throwing techniques.)
I consider myself a conservative, and I have great sympathy for Israel (and even the Palestinians, who have been sold out by their leadership and Arab brothers times past counting–I exclude from tender feelings Hamas and Hezbollah, of course). The situation angers and sickens me too.
But the talk about mass murder and ethnic clensing would warm Attila’s heart. We are just venting, right?
Best,
Richard
#57 NahnCee
[grin]
Just gotta say it.
1) “Why waste good parachutes?”
2) Given the difficulty they have operating simple push button detonators on bomb belts; what are the odds that they will master a ripcord, let alone a PLF?
[/grin]
Subotai Bahadur
Re: Post #18 and #22
The “Great Game” that we in the US (and to some extent other Western-style countries) are playing is one of our own design. I describe it thus:
Develop mastery over matter and energy, so that you don’t need the resources of polities that are antithetical to your own.
In short, do away with the need for energy imported from the Middle East. Accomplish that, and their funds dry up. Stand back for a couple decades while the monarchs try to pacify their people, and some fail.
Oh, and don’t be quick to rescue them from the folly of their ways.
2 #56
Ontario formally passes law to prohibit sharia
Updated Tue. Feb. 14 2006 11:30 PM ET
Canadian Press
TORONTO — Ontario has formally passed legislation to prohibit the use of religious tribunals to settle family law disputes such as custody and divorce.
Let the women of Gaza work in Israel. Better yet let the women who have children work. Pay them with electronic Israeli shekels. Let them shop on the internet from Israeli stores. Deliver their purchases to the crossings(free delivery).
Build up their sense of worth. See if they buy food or bullets. Make sure they vote.Don’t allow the men to purchase anything with the money the Gazan women earn.
Give this peace plan a chance. Shopping brings out the best in every society. The key is to let the moms bring home the goods.If the men are too twisted or cowered to stand up then its time to bring on coupons and discount shoe houses.
Soon this crazy political-religious cabal known as Hamas will be relegated to the cable news talk shows where it belongs. The trash bin of history is covered with the dust of irrelevancy.
Hanoi Paris and Subotai: The late Jeff Cooper did some revisionism on bears back in the l990s. Turns out that black bears were the ones likely to consider human beings as food. This was contrary to the popular notion that they were cute and cuddly.
And that grizzlys and polar bears were wanton aggressors.
In talking about the “Palestinian Problem”,
it may well be that the best solution would be for Israel to thoroughly invade and then occupy Gaza, etc. Teach them how to be good dhimmis to the Jews.
After some 35 to 40 years of being Judacized, civilized and uplifted, Palestinians might have some capabilities for self-government.
They sure do not have it now and that is what enables Hamas, etc.
The Angel of the Lord said to her, Go back to your mistress and [humbly] submit to her control.
Also the Angel of the Lord said to her, I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be numbered for multitude.
And the Angel of the Lord continued, See now, you are with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Ishmael [God hears], because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your affliction.
And he [Ishmael] will be as a wild ass among men; his hand will be against every man and every man’s hand against him, and he will live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen.
Thanks to Jerry Pournelle, there seems to be one area in which Israel needs to clean up their act pronto.
There is a price-gouging fuel monopoly over Gaza and no Israeli government seems able to do a darned thing about it. Too many Israelis and friends are getting greased off of it.
This very real, and severe, Irritant makes it next to impossible to make book with those Palestinians who would like better than what they have.
This would seem to be a good place for some financial/diplomatic intervention and brokering. One side stops giving aid and comfort to the mad rocketeers and the other side stops the ripoff. Might produce some results.
There’s a reason – besides goods to bring back home- that the ancients would exterminate every man in a city they had conquered, and selling the women and children into slavery after the raping and pillaging subsided. Some would even go to the point of salting the fields so that nothing would grow- “Wont have to deal with THOSE guys again”. Alas, “final solutions” have been around a long time.
Religion of Peace- Oh, Please!
Dave:
Excuse me, but interior Palestinians act the way they do principally because they have been trained to act that way by Jews. (Exterior Palestinians act the way they do because they have trained to act that way by Arabs.)
It is often forgotten that the occupied territories were quiet until around 1987. That’s about twenty years. What went wrong? The problem is that Israeli political cohesion vanished in the 1980′s after the war in Lebanon. Lefties and Righties wound up with a big shouting match, especially after Israel wound up in a nasty war against Hezbollah. What Israelis didn’t realize is that Palestinians were watching.
It’s a no-brainer that when a father and mother regularly get into shouting matches, the children act out. And guess what? Palestinian children acted out. That’s how the intifada started, with children throwing stones.
When an occupying power lacks internal social cohesion while also lacking a political consensus to back the occupation, it makes sense to start an uprising.
If you count from 1987, Hamas hasn’t done badly when it has rolled the dice against Israel. It sometimes loses, but it also sometimes wins. And every single time some faction fights Israel, that faction gains attention from the Arab media. Palestinians get to bask in the spotlight, knowing that they are perceived throughout the world to be the most important people in the entire universe merely because they are fighting Jews.
Someone who sees the world as Hamas does sees children as expendable. He sees soldiers as expendable. However, he does not see the media spotlight as expendable. The media spotlight cannot be replaced. So, if you deprive Hamas of media attention, they gain an incentive to start behaving. Remember, there are some children who will act out to get attention even when there is a certainty of getting the negative attention of getting spanked. And when there is uncertainty analogous to spinning the roulette wheel, misbehavior becomes just as addictive as gambling.
The most effective means to stop terrorism in the long run is listen to people who don’t use terrorism to give their grievances voice and to refuse to listen to people who do use terrorism to give their grievances voice. It is critically important to put terrorists and the causes they give voice to at the back of the grievance queue and put grievances that use civilized expression to the front of the grievance queue.
“If it bleeds, it leads” among newspaper headlines. However, statesmen ought to listen to the truly oppressed before they listen to the screechers. A true statesman rewards those who refrain from using bombs to punctuate their complaints long before they reward those who do.
Wretchard that was exactly my point. Sensible measures to restore deterrence and create rational, society-wide fear in Muslim peoples by Israel AND the West are not permitted.
Thus, the erosion of Western military dominance until the ultimate equalizer, nukes, obliterates Israel, and several Western Cities. At that point it becomes sheer survival and the desire of the feminized, feminine elite to surrender to the dominating power of Islam will find itself at brutal civil war with the masculine desire for survival. IMHO the outcome will be pretty brutal, both internally and externally for those who will get it in the neck in a brute struggle for survival. We won’t be talking millions but hundreds of millions dead as the West has no limits on brutality in a sheer struggle for survival.
Let’s be honest, we all know that women’s groups in the West ALL (along with nearly every young woman in the West) oppose Israel’s existence, and that of the West, and back Islamists. Even though they would ostensibly lose from such a setback and Israel has far more rights for women, including topless beaches, abortion, voting rights, no chadors/burquas, polygamy, etc. Yet young women en-masse support Hamas and Islamists. Why?
The conventional perception is that they are “too stupid to realize their own self-interest.” I don’t think that’s the case, rather they have a different conception, desiring a dominating male force where traditional feminine ways of being “pretty” is enough to wield power like a princess behind the throne.
Israel is constrained because half it’s population would rather really surrender/submit to dominating male Islamist forces, as echoed in the West. The tragedy is that Western Women have lost their desire to be independent and free and instead seek the most dominating male forces to surrender to. If you want to know what is wrong, deeply wrong, with the West including Israel you need only look at it’s women who sympathize openly with oppressive male dominators like the Islamists.
It’s not the political leaders, they merely reflect demographic reality. It’s not a Marxist conspiracy, the prominence of debased, Volk-Marxists are only the result of a huge shift in female sentiment and desires. It’s women themselves. Who form the demographic support for the “Peace Process” and “Peace Movements” and the various Democratic efforts by Pelosi (naturally) to have “War Crimes Trials” for Republicans regarding Iraq. Obama of course got single women’s votes 70-29.
It’s not robots. It’s women. This change is also recent. Around 1965-68, and growing.
Anyone can reality check my assertion — go onto female friendly/dominated forums that are non-political and see the anti-Israeli, anti-American sentiment there, along with worship of the Jihadis. The sentiments you see expressed should disabuse you of any illusions.
But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.
But the talk about mass murder and ethnic clensing would warm Attila’s heart. We are just venting, right?
I think the “kill them all” talk shows how weak the West has become. We are reduced to hoping that terrorists push the West over the edge so that a final showdown is compelled. But why? Because the problem is the West’s own indecisiveness; its inability to use the practical means at hand to solve a problem with the appropriate and necessary amount of force. And since Western politics can’t solve the paralysis, those who are in despair are often tempted to hope that the bad guys break the impasse for us. It gets to the point where a subconscious hope that a nuclear 9/11 occurs emerges.
This is terrible; and even more terrible because it may actually happen that way. But I think it is dangerous to hope that events will compel decisions we are too timid to make. Because events have a way of acquiring a life of their own. What is necessary, I think, is for the Western publics to put their foot down and demand rational behavior from their elites. Not murderous behavior, but rational behavior.
18. DanM:
There is the Great Game going on, and we are not privy to the rules, only to the consequences of their game. It has always been so.
//////////
The economics of the great game–if you want to call it that — is oil and US oil dependency. OPEC has been draining production so as enable oil prices to shoot skyward when the world economy turns around in a year or two. This will have the effect of skimming off the industrialized world’s capital base/tax base etc. The US response is Obama’s promise to double US renewable production from 10% of total US energy output to 20% of US energy output in three years. Most of that doubling will come from biofuels. That’s huge growth. It might be enough –if accompanied by fuel conservation to get extra capacity.
I blog about that in more detail here.
The second part of the great game is being played out in Europe and in the US. This is ideological. While Moslems and western sodomite elites/communists have no love for each other their interests coincide in defeating religious christians and jews and thus the judeao/christian basis of western civilization. You could see this played out in public in the first year or two after 9/11 when communists and jihadistas would demonstrate together in Europe and the USA–and the sodomite media would look on approvingly.
I don’t know how this will play out. But in the past the Moslems have shown themselves to be an old empire religion. We are currently in the process of transitioning from old empire to new empire.
That is the 21st century will have some truely stunning technological changes that will be beyond meteorite worshipers ken. Their power is not really built on very good theology but rather on oil and population.
Well said Wretchard. The flip side of Secular Millenarism is secular armageddonism.
Remember the Morgenthau Plan to virtually eliminate the population of Germany?
REmember Jake Smith saying to kill all Filipino males over the age of 10?
I can remember folks advocating a global nuclear holocaust because that was the only way the communists could ever be stopped.
I am not too worried about the sort of polemics we see from the regulars on this thread. Just a little venting of frustrations is all.
I am MUCH more concerned about those who insist the war is a disaster, that the economy is totally broken, that socialism now reigns supreme, and on and on and on.
Whereas our guys are wishing for a magic bullet, those others seek to purge this world of all sin by declaring utter defeat.
Gordon R. Dickson, another of my favorites,
explored this in his science fiction. No matter how bleak things might look at any given moment, there would always be those whose faith was unshakeable, those whose minds could not accept the notion of inevitability, and those incapable of submission. He called these, in order, Friendlies, Exotics, and the Dorsai. Belmont Club has its share of all, especially the latter.
The Palestinians occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. This was a deliberate effort to distract Israel at the start of Defensive Shield. In 1967 both Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir meant to annex Bethlehem but it didn’t happen, apparently due to some clerical error.
The arguments that Israel is in a stronger position going forward due to a lowered threshold of action seems like wishful thinking. The reality is that with BHO coming to power Israel faces a possibly existential threat. The key threats facing Israel start in Iran and then run through Damascus to Lebanon and Gaza. In addition they are under attack through the assault on diaspora communities and the alliance of media, academic and political figures with their enemies. The key weak points in Iran are in the refined energy storage and transportation systems and power distribution nodes. The weak link in Iran’s proxy strategy is in Damascus. Israel should be planning a 1967 decapitating attack on Damascus that would bring Lebanon back into play. If their intelligence indicates that the Iranian nuclear weapons are approaching reality then will have to strike, probably 30 or more sites. Finally the Mossad should be dispatching teams to defend threatened jewish communities and extract retribution from those who motivated either by anti-Semitism or fear are supporting the forces that killed Theo van Gogh and Danny Pearl.
While I would hate to see a member of the Belmont Club at risk I do regret the loss of an opportunity to eliminate a target rich environment at Doha.
#48 F:
Hamas explicitly states that it’s goal is the destruction of Israel. Understandably, Israel rejects this. Fatah has the same goal, they are just more willing to lie and hold truces while they resupply and reload.
Zero-sum. There is no middle ground to find. People keep offering the Palestinians a state, but they don’t want a state. They want Israel gone. Ugly reality, all the real solutions either involve the destruction of Israel or of those Palestinians who wish Israel’s destruction. A terrorist Diaspora is an attempt to find a third choice that will actually work.
“But the talk about mass murder and ethnic clensing would warm Attila’s heart.”
Moorton — Well, at least in your morally superior tut-tutting you had sense enough to avoid Godwin’s Law.
I notice, however, that you don’t proffer any alternatives.
Dear NahnCee,
I don’t believe in moral superiority. I do believe that human beings are ingenious enough and violent enough to exterminate themselves. The cockroaches will inherit the earth.
Frankly,
Richard Moorton
Over at Debka.com they wrote that the Gaza War outcome was determined in its first four minutes. Can’t figure out how to post the link but it’s worth a look.
In The Industry,
You’re right. The article is worth a look and more. I’ve pasted it in below:
Gaza war’s outcome determined in first 4 minutes
January 19, 2009, 9:12 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Israel air force demolished two key Hamas war systems in the first 4 minutes of its massive offensive on Gaza Saturday morning, Dec. 27, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. The bombers destroyed six mosques in Gaza City which held the terrorists’ biggest weapons arsenals and scores of “beehives” containing launchers primed for the simultaneous, automatic release of hundreds of powerful rockets against Israeli cities.
These launchers were rigged for precision-targeting in Israeli town centers. They were operated by a unit of 300 special Hamas operatives trained for their mission at a Syrian military bases under the instruction of Hizballah rocket specialists.
The aerial offensive knocked out 80 percent of the rockets Hamas had prepared to launch and saved Israel’s southern cities. The Palestinian Islamists were left only with inferior projectiles. Therefore, 98 percent of the hundreds of missiles they managed to fire in the 22-day war missed their targets and exploded in open ground.
Answering questions about the extreme destruction wrought in Gaza and the high number of casualties – more than 1,300 – Israel commanders described combat conditions as the most complicated they had ever faced: Every second apartment building was booby-trapped and every third building concealed arms caches. Weapons were concealed under children’s beds and in basements. Inside of fighting out in the open, Hamas gunmen by and large avoided engaging Israeli troops, relying on these death traps.
Monday, Jan. 19, the second day of the ceasefire, the second-echelon of the Hamas leadership emerged from their fortified bunkers after three weeks underground, claiming they had vanquished the Israeli enemy. The top leaders remained invisible. The homeless people picking their way through the rubble for their broken possessions were not exactly welcoming.
Best,
Richard