Wednesday, January 21, 2009

What a waste...

Israel pulls out of Gaza. After killing 1,200 people, of which less than a dozen were criminals responsible for firing rockets at Israel, Israel declares victory and goes home.

Hamas declares victory. As if having over 1,100 innocent people killed because of the actions of a few hundred Hamas criminals were a victory. But I suppose it is a victory, if you're a Hamas criminal -- Israel killed a lot of school teachers and postmen and street cops and random women, children, and U.N. workers, but hardly any Hamas criminals responsible for firing rockets at Israel.

In actuality, of course, this was all a stunt for internal Israeli political purposes to enhance or degrade the electoral chances of one party or another, and had nothing to do with Hamas criminals, so pretty much everybody can declare victory here. The Israelis involved got their electoral chances improved, Hamas's criminals are still running around free in the Gaza strip, and oh, don't mind those 1,100 innocent people whose bodies are lying all around, they don't matter anyhow, do they? The War Nerd predicted that the Israelis would stop before Inauguration Day, and was right. Again. Alas.

-- Badtux the "What's the point?" Penguin

9 comments:

  1. I think the Israelis did what they wanted to do... stir up the hornet's nest. I'm sure as a result, Hamas is going to see an increase in membership. More hot heads taking shots at innocent Israels.

    In turn, the Israels will use that as a pretext for another invasion and to get more foreign support.

    Gotta keep the cycle continuing, you know.

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  2. Exactly. And just ignore those dead bodies, the teachers and traffic cops and librarians and women and children and such. They're just the little people, ordinary folks who just want to go about their daily lives in peace. They don't count.

    - Badtux the Cynical Penguin

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  3. There are records of people killing other people as far back as when Cain slew Able . It has yet to change anything for the good . It's now the 21rst century as we all know . Don't you think the human race could have come up with a better way to settle disagreements by now ?
    a confused w3ski

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  4. w3ski, you should ask a Carthagian about whether violence can solve a problem.

    Oh wait, you can't. Because killing all the Carthagians was Rome's solution to the "Carthage Problem". And the beginning of the Roman Empire.

    The Romans certainly thought killing people could change something for the good. And it did -- for them. Too bad it required genocide. Which is what would be required if the Israelis *really* wanted to solve their "Palestinian problem". Which is why this business of killing a few thousand Pals here and there is such a waste -- it accomplishes nothing, and makes the Israelis look like savage idiots.

    - Badtux the Cynical Penguin

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  5. I finally give up. Next time this government, or the IDF, want my support, the Syrians or the Iranians had better invade.

    Also, if I read the political map correctly - which i used to do for a living - then Barak is fading fast, and Livni ceases to exist. The Friday morning polls are likely to show that, and ironically the winner will be Netanyahu - and the evn worse scumbag, Liberman.

    Say, BadTux, do you people still accept political refugee? I had to mask my phone number following a few death threats resulting from my articles...

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  6. Oh, and a final comment - the Romans didn't exterminate the Carthaginians. There were plenty of them left around for the city to be rebuilt by Julius Caesar a century after its destruction, and it was a major metropolis in the late imperial period, many people still speaking the old language.

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  7. Thanks for the link to War Nerd, which reminded me that Exile still exists in some form. I recall that they had some trouble with Putin's thugs and really WERE exiled. I didn't see any trace of the guy who did the comically over-the-top anti-American rants, though. What was his handle, Vlad Kalashnikov? That камрад usually made me laugh so hard that snot would blow out my nose.

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  8. Well, Yossi, I gotta say that you're in the same position as those poor shlubs running away from the death squads in El Salvador during our little adventures down there during Ronnie Ray-Gun's administration. If your home nation is a U.S. "ally" (just ask the dead sailors on the USS Liberty about that, or the dead airmen over Lebanon in 1982, dead because Israel refused to share info about the Syrian SAM installations), then your government can literally kill nuns or engage in ethnic cleansing (like in Iraq right now) and it's not sufficient reason for political asylum. Now, if you were *Iranian*...

    As for the Carthagians, there were Carthagians scattered all over the Mediterranean basin other than in Carthage itself so exterminating Carthage didn't exterminate Carthagians and you're right, most of the Carthagians were hauled off as slaves, not exterminated. Completely destroyed the small farmers of Italy, they got displaced by huge slave-owning plantations. But the Romans *did* solve their Carthage problem, in that typical brutal Roman way that they later applied to their Israelite problem..
    .

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  9. "What a waste" is the perfect title for that war.

    *sigh*

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