Archive for the ‘middle east’ Category

Israel: I Advise General Sherman’s War Unless You Want a Replay in Years to Come

Posted: October 8, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, middle east, war
Tags: , , ,

Spock: Captain, you took a big chance.
Kirk: Did I, Mister Spock? They’ve been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five hundred years. An actual attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over permanently.

Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon 1967

Our friendly neighborhood terrorists of Hamas have launched their boldest and bloodiest attack on Israel in decades and have put icing on the cake by the targeting and kidnapping of civilians, slaughtering families and killing and kidnapping not just Israeli’s but Americans and at least one German as well.

They caught Israeli intelligence completely off guard and US intelligence completely off guard as well, but that is understandable. Apparently just as US intelligence is busy going after Catholics at mass, Parents attending school committee meetings and Trump supporters Israeli spooks were more interested in going after their Prime Minister.

According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”

These documents were part of a huge leak of Pentagon documents that Hotair has covered, but what’s more important is this move by Israel to formally declare war.

Israel’s cabinet invoked Article 40 Aleph and formally declared war against Hamas after the terrorist group launched the worst attack on the Jewish nation in 50 years.

Over 600 Israelis have been killed, more than 2000 are wounded, and 100 are confirmed to have been taken captive by Hamas since the war began.

This is, in my opinion a very good sign, all you have to do is watch the arab world cheering and even in America as Americas are killed and kidnapped people organizing to support Hamas publicly to understand that you can’t just retaliate a bit and defeat Hamas. You have to destroy them.

Israel in my opinion needs to prosecute this war without restraint, they also have to do it, I’m sorry to say, with the idea that all the people taken as hostages are expendable (If they get a chance to save some by all means do so but not at the expense of destroying Hamas.

And the only way to do so is to retake Gaza, annex is and give the people there a choice to stay or go.

Israel has left Gaza once, and did so without condition and this attack is the result. Israel must recognize that no amount of deals, or concessions or anything is going to change the attitude of either the Palestinians or the Arab world toward them. If the Arabs or Muslims around the world had a chance to slaughter the Jews they would without hesitation.

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to destroy their ability to make war. It will be messy and it will be horrible, but it will end the threat from Gaza once and for all.

They need to take to heart these words by General William Tecumseh Sherman

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. 

And those curses need to be poured out in Gaza to all those who aid abet and cheer Hamas’ actions in the same way that Sherman poured those curses on the people of Georgia and the Carolinas. What are your critics going to say that they aren’t already saying about you now? Sherman again:

 “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” The hard war was here for Georgia. “We cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

The time for mercy is after the enemy is defeated and helpless at your feet, until then the war should be fought hard until it’s won.

Until and unless Israel takes these words to heart, this cycle will repeat and they will really be responsible for the next attack that comes because it will be made possible by not destroying the ability of those who will make it when they had the chance.

A Sad Thought on a Good Story

Posted: July 15, 2023 by datechguy in middle east
Tags: ,

When I saw this headline at Don Surber’s site my first thought was: “Wow!”

Doctors RE-ATTACH ‘decapitated’ boy’s head after 12-year-old struck in horror accident.”

When I read the story and saw this part

Suleiman’s surgery was a success and he was sent home with a neck brace and is being monitored by doctors.

Dr Einav said it is impressive that he is “functionally normally” already and does not appear to have any lasting nerve damage.

The boy’s dad stayed with his son in the hospital and told medics: “I will thank you all my life for saving my dear only son. Bless you all. 

“Thanks to you he regained his life even when the odds were low and the danger was obvious.”

my second thought was: “Double Wow!”.

But then I remembered that the boy was a Palestinian and he was treated by Jewish Doctors in Israel and then remembered this story from twenty years ago:

Downstairs, before we left, the head of the hospital, an Israeli named Audrey, was showing me the children’s waiting room. I couldn’t help but notice, all around, an Arab woman with her son, an Arab family over there checking in, Arab children playing with the toys while waiting. The doctor saw the look on my face and laughed. “Oh, yes, we treat everyone.” I guess I was astonished. She just shrugged. “We’re Jews. This is how we live. It’s also for the future. They’re not going anywhere, and we’re not going anywhere. There will eventually be peace. There has to be.” When? A month? A year? A hundred years? More? She didn’t know. I had to say it. You’re incredible. You take everyone, you treat everyone, no one goes first, no one goes last, you just go in order of who needs help. That’s, like, Mother Teresa stuff. “We’re not saints, we’re just doing our jobs. It’s not easy, I admit. And it gets hard when they cheer when the bodies are brought in.” I looked at her. What did you say? She sighed. “Yes, it gets hard when they cheer.” This was one of the times during my trip when I held up my hands and said, “Stop. Wait.” I turned and walked away to breathe deeply for a minute. I wonder if they’ve restocked that mini-bar. Yeah, probably. It’s a good hotel.

And I recall that there have been no evidence presented to me that this has changed one bit and that’s when my thoughts turned sad.

Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora: Pre-Sedgwick Syndrome, Watching a Republic Die, I’ll Never Tell, Still getting it, The Old Man’s Burden

Posted: June 23, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, culture, Israel, middle east, News/opinion, under the fedora
Tags: , , , , , , ,

 The death of the maker of the Titanic Sub and those who traveled with them is not unremarkable as those with wealth have been taking large risks for centuries but when I heard that in interviews he had stated he rejected hiring experienced submariners because he didn’t want a bunch of 50 year old white guys all I could think of was General John Sedgwick saying about rebel snipers with new rifles with telescopic sights: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” just before being shot by one.

The primary difference being that Sedgwick lived long enough after he was hit to appreciate the irony of his word, reports now coming out state there was an implosion and all those aboard died instantly.

RIP

The more I see of what is happening on the national level the more I’m amazed at the country doing its level best to go along with national suicide.

Of course historically this is consistent with republics, but what a difference between reading about such things and living it.

Mind you in a generation with the left spaying their own kids that managed to survive the womb it might be moot as the future still belongs to those who show up.

There’s that Tom Hagen math again.

Yet another futile terrorist attack has taken place in Israel.

As always Israel will survive it and do their level best to go after those who helped out but in the end none of these things are going to bring down the state, nor frankly will Iran’s nuclear dreams as Israel, particularly with Biden in the White House is not going to allow itself to be destroyed to sate those who own him.

For Nearly 80 years the Arabs have dreamt of the destruction of Israel. As a supporter of Israel, I ironically see the obvious way for them to achieve those ends and have done so for a long while but it has never has and likely never will occur to them.

How you ask? That’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.

Attended my Godfather/Uncle’s wake yesterday taking a day off work for the final relative of the generation ahead of me to die. I was sitting praying my rosary as people reached the receiving line and I heard an interesting exchange as a couple greeted My uncle’s son who lead it. They had not seen them for years and marveled at their son and daughter now near 30 and asked:

“Any Grandchildren?”

“No they’re not married.” answered my cousin’s wife.

The friends noted that these days that’s not necessary and while my devout Catholic Uncle’s dead body naturally did not flinch at the exchange in my mind’s eye his soul was fist pumping that his son and daughter in law had brought up their children right.

Finally today I’ll be having lunch with some friends from work who no longer see since I’ve been transferred to another building down the road. It’s important to keep up in person contacts like this in a digital world when possible but I must confess it’s very weird in the sense that of the friends I make the vast majority are young enough to be my children and some young enough to be my grandchildren.

Sometimes this is very hard because I’m very aware of my faults and failings and grateful for the sacrament of confession to be absolved of them but when I’m with these young folks it’s incumbent on me to carry myself in such a was as to set an example rather than in the relaxed way friends can be.

That’s a sentence that is rejected by those who spent a lifetime treating their kids as friends and doing all they can to pretend they will now grow old and die, but I suspect if they worried more about setting a good example our society and republic might not be dying before our eyes.

The unintended consequences of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon

Posted: June 7, 2022 by chrisharper in middle east
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which began 40 years ago this week, created a variety of unintended consequences from the rise of militant Islam to a Shia swath from Lebanon to the Arab Gulf. 

I traveled as a reporter throughout the Arab World for many years, covering some of the worst episodes of human despair and devastation of the 20th century. But the Israeli invasion, which began with Tel Aviv’s goal of removing the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, had a devastating effect on the world.

On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces launched an invasion of Lebanon called “Operation Peace for Galilee.” About 60,000 troops and more than 800 tanks, heavily supported by aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery, and missile boats, crossed the Israel–Lebanon border. A few days later, the Israelis and their Christian allies had encircled Beirut, where my colleagues and I reported on a siege that would end nearly three months later when the PLO evacuated Lebanon for other Arab countries.

Accurate casualty figures are difficult to find, but the independent Beirut newspaper An Nahar published an estimate of deaths from hospital and police records that claimed that more than 17,000 people died, roughly half civilians.

After the PLO’s departure, Christian forces murdered between 700 and 2,000 people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in South Beirut. Israeli forces stood by as the massacre happened in September. I worked on an excellent documentary about the tragedy, “Oh, Tell the World What Happened,” for ABC News.

Although the PLO had many flaws, it was distinctly nonreligious. After the Israelis drove the PLO from Lebanon, Shia Muslims took control of the Lebanese government, creating an even more hostile force with Syria and Iran’s military and religious backing. That resulted in an attack on October 23, 1983, when 241 Marines and seamen died in a truck bombing in Beirut. The attack used Iranian funds, Syrian know-how, and Shia bombers. 

Here is the ABC 20/20 investigation I produced:

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfhAAhQ4FBg&t=2s

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgAFQYIYGpY&t=11s

The cross-border confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shia group in Lebanon, led to a war in 2006, which emboldened the Islamists. Furthermore, Hezbollah joined forces with Hamas, a Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip that continues to harass Israel today.

The Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon became a critical training ground for guerrillas and terrorists worldwide under the control of both Sunni and Shia extremists. Many foreign soldiers who fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s got some of their training in the Bekaa Valley. 

It’s rare that a decision from 40 years ago continues to create havoc, but that’s precisely what occurred when Israel decided to invade Lebanon in 1982. 

Older Entries
Newer Entries