As usual...

Glenn ignores the part about hamas shooting rockets into Israel.

And he continues to show that no response is acceptable short of total capitulation on our part. Krauthammer doesn't suggest military action. He suggests cutting their supplies so they can't shoot rockets.

You're a one trick pony glenn.

-- tiberius

[Read tiberius's other letters]

Hey, Mr. Pony Man, here's the part with "hamas shooting rockets into Israel":

With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will tolerate no more rocket fire -- that the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around missiles and launchers.

If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. {Krauthammer}

You'd be surprised how a large number of larger-than-walnut brained readers would thus conclude that Krauthammer's recommendation have something to do with "hamas shooting rockets into Israel".

You don't understand that Glenn is focusing on the particular policy Krauthammer recommends to (not) deal with those rockets.

But then, why should you? Everyone involved, from Israeli hawks to right wing nuts in the U.S. already understand that no degree of punishment or suffering among the Palestinian population itself would deter a terrorist group from obtaining its own resources and launching self-made rockets.

Heck, even if you completely cut the Palestinians off of gas, electricity, food, water, everything but air, until they were dying by the thousands each day, you know very well that terrorist syndicates would continue operatin.

That's because the point is not to stop the rockets, not to save or protect Israel, or to make Israeli citizens safer, but to make the Palestinians suffer, because that's always the point, no matter what happens, no matter whether Israelis are being attacked or are not being attacked, nor matter whether a truce is holding or is not holding. The answer is, of course, always to consistently make life worse for the ordinary Palestinians.

At least Krauthammer is on the edge of admitting that, only one step behind a Podhoretz.

I said it yesterday and I'll say it again.... all this drama would stop in an instant if Islamic militants would accept Israel and each other.

Wow, that, that is like, soooooo insightful.

Hell, come to think of it, I bet the entire Palestinian problem with Israel would have been done away with years ago had they just upped and fled to Jordan or somewhere, you know, and just dealt with whatever. I wonder why the Israelis never thought of just telling the Palestinians to stop all their messing around?

Using this stunning new "It Would Sure Be Nice" approach to foreign policy, we may consider asking Iraqi insurgents to stop attacking U.S. forces. If all Iraqi insurgents would just stop attacking people, both their neighbors and the U.S. occupation forces, this whole thing would have been solved. We should definitely consider telling them our new insight.

You know, come to think of it, this whole Global Warming thing would just fade away as an issue if everyone would just stop using fossil fuels. I don't see why people make such a big deal of it. Why is it that some people keep driving cars and big companies keep using fossil fuels? They should stop, and then we'd all be good.

And the partisan wrangling in this country which we're all tired of would finally be over if all Republicans would just retire from office and agree not to run any more. I don't see why they don't.

Shooter - Then, they will have to die.

Are you sure you don't want to encourage the Palestinians to demonstrate something other than terminal belligerence? Israel has been in existence for some 60 years now, it isn't going away. One can choose between life and death. Maybe it's time to choose life for a change.

No, of course not. There's no need to encourage anyone to do anything. In fact, there's no need to understand anything, or know anything, or figure anything out, because you already know how you'd like things to be, and what you would like certain peoples to do.

Why don't you outline it? Why don't you outline your approach to, erm, "encourage the Palestinians to demonstrate something other than terminal belligerence"?

Krauthammer has proposed one method. True, it may not have any impact toward the goals you just stated, but he has proposed a method. So far he has not mentioned shutting off all water, nor has anyone mentioned a way of removing all the air.

That might work. Should I recommend that?

Is your proposed method of "encouragement" of a civilian population the same as Krauthammer's? Different?

And if there's no need to temper any moral declarations with any attempt at a reasoned inquiry into what things do and do not tend to work, why can't I simply demand that the Palestinians give up and go away, by screaming into a drinking glass in the back yard? Wouldn't that work?

Or I could threaten to kill all the puppies in the world unless Palestinian armed groups stopped attacking Israelis. Would that work?

Or do calculations of what might or might not work even matter? Why not view it as a student's laboratory experiment. Try shutting off the gas, and then the electricity, and then sewers and water supplies to the Palestinians, in their tiny walled enclaves, and simply record what happens.

After all, You've Got To Do Something, and since right wingers love idiotic solutions which make situations worse but at least have the merit of Doing Something, why not?