The Palestine Trap
I’m pretty sure everyone by now knows what’s getting ready to happen in Palestine. If you don’t- what rock are you living under, and can I come for a bit? Seriously, things are going pear shaped at the rapid rate and everyone- left and right- are letting their emotions take over and drive their decisions.
What Hamas did was horrible. Terrible. Evil. But the response that Israel is getting ready to execute could make matters far, far worse. I get that Israeli’s and Jews feel that their very existence is under threat and that me- an American living in the middle of snow-where- can’t fully grasp what that must feel like. I also subscribe to the Heinlein school of international diplomacy wherein if one of your citizens is kidnapped or captured you get them back with all available means. However, to do that you need two things to make that work. First, it must be a known quantity that this will be the case if one of your people is captured. Second, you must have the overwhelming force required to make such an event not just possible, but highly likely, to succeed.
Currently neither of those pre-requisites are actually in anyone’s back pocket. Least of all the United States.
The moment Joe fucked the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he gave up the first point as we let not only allies, but dual nationals in Afghanistan to deal with the Taliban onslaught on their own. We- as a nation- forsook our oaths to our people in that moment and it was our current president who led that charge. He doesn’t have the footing to say now that “we will get our people out.” Sending forces to do such a thing, even if they could make it happen, doesn’t hold the weight that it should. We are in a world where it is a good thing to a terrorist to take an American hostage. It should be that when the terrorist realizes they have an American, they drop them off someplace safe, and point them toward the nearest American embassy because to do otherwise is a very bad idea.
The second item isn’t met due to the current “wokeification” of our military. No longer do we- as a nation- feel that “coming home with your shield or on it” is a good thing. We don’t hold the machismo of the warrior in the esteem that we used to. As a result, our military has suffered. Recruitment is down. Retention is down. Overall performance- if the Bon Homme Richard is any indication- is down. The US military isn’t what it used to be and the rest of the world is waking up to that fact. We are being seen as a paper Tiger being fed pseudo-food in the form of a devalued currency that is about to lose the respect it had for close to a hundred years.
Currently, America is back footed. And what’s worse, it’s not back footed by enemy action- though they are doing their best- we’ve been back footed by an inept administration and a deep state hell bent on turning this nation into the exact opposite of what it is meant to be. A nation of the people, for the people, and by the people. We are divided and at each others throat, and suffering the infestation of a Marxist cultural revolution that is gutting us like a fish from the inside.
This isn’t to say that we’re well and truly fucked- we’re not… Yet. But if we keep pushing for more and more war, we will be. No nation can survive on military force alone. In the end, a nation that tries to muscle their way about will be overcome by some other force, generally to the great detriment of the people of that nation. Unfortunately for the world, our nation has set itself up in such a way that if we fall, others will fall as well as the “big bads” we’ve kept in check suddenly find the freedom to act as they wish in the power vacuum that will suddenly exist.
And like the proverbial icing on the cake, we have elements on both sides residing and pushing for conflict within our own borders. There are elected officials and media pushing for war- and I remember the last time that happened. It very much effected my life.
We are primed to walk right off the cliff to our own demise if we keep moving forward with this war drumming. We all need to take a step back, take a really deep fucking breath, and think about what the ramifications of our actions are going to be if we decide to jump. We don’t have a golden parachute anymore. And there are a lot of us who are not willing to make that jump.
No one should want to make that jump.
A lot of bad happened this week. A lot of innocent people died. Children, women, the elderly. Soldiers.
Welcome to history. It’s starting to rhyme.
Perhaps we should work toward stopping the old rythms of the past, and for once- not retaliate with force.
I still have to flesh out what that looks like to me, and how I think this should be tackled. I’m just a guy posting into the ether listening to myself shout. Yet, I know there’s a better way. We just have to be willing to search it out.