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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Leaving aside your ignorant and useless analysis of Arab psychology...
"(1) Stop the rocket fire into Israel. (2) Stop the flow of weapons to an internationally-recognized terrorist organization. (3) Kill, capture and/or disrupt in every way possible, the leadership of that internationally-recognized terrorist organization."
You realize that in almost everyone of these goals, Israel is failing miserably through Cast Lead. Hamas is said to only have lost a quarter of their weapons caches, and they are proving nearly impossible to find by brute force. The rocket fire has ceased for the time being, but most observers agree that Hamas is waiting for Friedman's morning after the morning after to send more rockets to Israel.
Can you imagine, after all this devastation, all this murder, and international condemnation, the next day Hamas will be right back at it again. And Israel has clearly blown its wad.
Obviously, even from your own twisted viewpoint, the operation is a complete failure when measured against these goals.
Today, the NYT finally commits itself officially as an advocate of mass genocide - atleast when it concerns those of the Muslim faith.
You can practically visualize Friedman fighting through a morning yawn as he types one of the most repulsive sentence fragments ever to appear in a daily newspaper: ..."the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.
The rest of this column reads like the rantings of a homicidal maniac with deep-seeded hatred against anyone with brown skin.
Unfortunately, this kind of "thinking" isn't rare when it comes to issues involving Israel. Attend any local vigil in support of Israel within the past month and similar Friedman-like thoughts can be heard, sometimes openly offered by men of deep religious "faith."
In America, Pro-Israel literally has come to mean: Death to All Palestinians; or Arabs; or Persians; or any Muslim-lookin' person.
Even the liberals, the intellectuals and the alleged "peace activists" are guzzling the kool-aid at a record pace.
“As always when Israel needs to be defended…Alan Dershowitz speaks with great passion and personal courage.”-Elie Wiesel
No one at this time NEED condemn Hamas. They are practically ineffective at their best when firing rockets. They are obviously even more ineffective at protecting their own population....
.... That PROVES that they never did offer a threat to Israel even in the beginning and Israel knew that all along.
Incompetence in attacking your neighbor isn't a defense. Or, a
justification. One could cage a rabid dog for it's entire life, or
just put it out of it's misery. Which is more humane?
Sadly, the Palestinians aren't smart enough to disown Hamas and
insist on peace and prosperity. Which makes them as crazed as the
dog. Some people only learn the hard way.
He wants civvies killed to teach them a lesson, but wants it done accidentally on purpose so as not to leave a easily followed trial of evidence of deliberate intent from Gaza through to the Hague via Washington.
No, he wants civilian casualties, because the civilians have harbored Hamas and enabled their terrorism. The civilians are the target here, because they hold ultimate responsibility for their situation.
You said,
"...Quite relatedly, Iraq War veteran Brandon Friedman chronicles the truly disturbed warrior fantasies that are becoming increasingly common (and increasingly disturbed) on the war-cheerleading Right. The relationship between that pathology and people like Friedman is too obvious to require any elaboration."
It puzzled me why Friedman would try to articulate in the way he did any Israeli rationale for their attacks on Gaza, or Palestinians in general. You'd think he would be aware of the criticisms that would be made about some of the things he said. Like what you have said pointing out the war crimes involved. I would expect a rationale that would put Israel in the best light possible, not one that made them sound guilty of cruelty and war crimes.
You noted here that the advocates of this war have been developing fantasies as a way, perhaps, of trying to justify in their own minds some of these Israeli actions. If they are bizarre, it might be because they have to go to great lengths to come up with an explanation that explains away the war crimes, the cruelty, the terrorism...
The opponents of the war can get into their heads fantasies that try to explain why anyone would do this attack.
Mine is based on the supposition that American politicians find nothing wrong with Israeli attacks on Palestinians because they have never found anything wrong with American attacks on native Americans, the Apache, etc.
This is how it goes: Some guy comes up to the families of whomever owns the land, say it's Palestinians this week, or the Sioux last, and says, "Listen, I like your land and I want to take it. You are going to have to go. In order to encourage you, I'm going to start shooting heads. Here let's start with your brother,"...BANG. "Now, go away." After awhile there are still some left. They don't want to leave their land. The guy says, "Listen, don't you hear what I'm saying. Go away.. I'm going to shoot your sister."...BANG! "Go away."
The process involves maybe some Palestinians or Apaches trying to fight for their land, but the people who are willing to shoot folks for their possessions are bigger and are just able to cause more suffering.
This is the explanation I go to when I want to explain my country's behavior, or when I try to understand Israeli behavior. They're just copying our examples.
It's the kind of explanation that fits the facts.
I suspect Friedman's fantasies involve his thinking that the land didn't really belong to the Palestinians just like we argued the land didn't really belong to the Apaches.
They are Psychopaths.
They have no compassion, empathy, guilt, shame or humanity. They are 2 dimensional comic book villains. They are children who never grew up. They are vil incarnate. Soon there wi be more of them than there are people.
They are monsters.
The horrors they inflict upon others creates even more psychopaths.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
