Daily Archives: January 18, 2009

Say Good Night, Dick

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Dick

So, what are your reflections on these last eight horrible years, as our wreck of a country struggles to emerge from the dark machinations of these malicious sociopaths? My view is along the lines of Jim Kunstler‘s:

To me, GWB will remain the perfect representative of his time, place, and culture. During his years in Washington, America became a nation of clowns posturing in cowboy hats, bethinking ourselves righteous agents of Jesus in a Las Vegas of the spirit, where wishing was enough to get something for nothing, where “mistakes were made,” but everybody was excused from the consequences of bad choices. The break from that mentality will be very severe, and we may look back in twelve months and wonder how we ever fell for the whole package. The answering of that question will occupy historians for ages to come.

Kunstler’s take doesn’t begin to capture the horror I felt, of living through these last eight years, of watching much of the country go mad. Like waking up one day in a coast-to-coast version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I remember the shock of seeing nearly everyone around me lose their minds, believing in ever more stupid things announced from on high. What was truly frightening was envisioning the trajectory of where this national insanity could take us. Didn’t we have a Constitution or something to protect us from this, or a media that would finally come forward and tell us what was really going on? The whole experience taught me how fragile the achievements of American civilization really are, and how easily and silently they can be lost (and in some cases are still lost). Fortunately the force of this madness eventually peaked, but not without huge, debilitating costs, that have yet to be fully reckoned.

But enough of my own dark memories, what are yours? What are your plans for January 20th?

My brother and I are getting together to commemorate a number of things: the New Year (belatedly), the new administration of course, and our departed mother’s birthday (Jan 20). She was a life-long New Deal Democrat and would’ve been pleased with Obama.

Cease Fire in Gaza

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Israel voted last night to begin a unilateral cease fire in Gaza, although exactly when the cease fire will begin is unclear. My guess is that it will be some time before Tuesday.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed his nation last night and declared that “we have reached all the goals of the war, and beyond.” Hamas is not expected to stop fighting, so exactly what the goals were is not clear. Although maybe it is. The Talking Dog wrote two weeks ago,

IMHO, Israel’s government has, for its own domestic political purposes (how widely reported here is it that an Israeli general election is scheduled for February 10, 2009?) decided to “get tough on Hamas,” which, of course, has certainly been trying to provoke something like this for as long as it has controlled Gaza. And so, much will be blown up, many will be killed or wounded, and at some point (presumably before January 20th), “military objectives will have been achieved,” and, well… “calm” will be restored, which, of course, is the same utterly psychotic “status quo”

The Israeli army will remain in place, Olmert said, and will respond with force if Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel. However, Israel expects Hamas will engage in a “new flurry of rocket launches.” And, one suspects, Hamas will continue to find ways to fire rockets into Israel no matter how many troops Israel deploys. Trying to control a group like Hamas with force is like trying to smash mercury with a hammer.

The Talking Dog says today,

And so one must ask just what those goals were… now that there are over 1,200 Gazans (and 13 Israelis)dead (and thousands of Gazans wounded)… one must ask again when among the dead are three daughters and a niece of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose house came under Israeli fire… Abuelaish, a peace activist, is one of the few Gazans permitted to regularly cross to the Israeli side to work as a physician on both sides of the Israel/Gaza border.

Congratulations, geniuses. One of the few Palestinians of any stature who genuinely believes in the prospects for peaceful coexistence, and you’ve gone ahead and targeted his house, and killed three of his daughters. Way to go.

What Israel has accomplished is increase sympathy for Hamas, which will accrue resources and recruits in Hamas’s favor, resulting in turn in more Isaeli deaths in the future. The death spiral continues. As the Dog says, no one is suggesting that Israel passively accept rockets being launched into its territory. But there’s reacting, and there’s responding. There’s stupid fighting, and smart fighting. Israel chose “stupid.” And the same lame-brains who love the Iraq War are cheering them on.

Via Juan Cole, John J. Mearsheimer writes in The American Conservative that with “victories” like this, Israel doesn’t need defeats. In a nutshell, Mearsheimer says what Israel really wants is a permanent ethnic Apartheid, which if achieved likely will doom Israel.

See also Bob Ostertag, “A Better Source for News on Gaza.”