Kristol Blue Extrapolation

a necessary corrective action on Israel's part, I believe (with a few caveats)

longer Joe Klein -- its okay for Israel to slaughter hundreds of Palestinians because a few Palestinians lob some pretty harmless rockets into empty fields in Israeli territory --- but because I know this is morally indefensible, I'll say "with a few caveats".

this was poltically motivated, pre-medidated slaughter by Israel. Israel has the technology to pinpoint where rockets have been launched from in REAL TIME, and respond to those attacks immediately and with minimal necessary force. Instead, Israel decided to bomb heavily populated civilian areas -- including police stations -- with the aim of creating a complete breakdown in public order in Gaza.

that isn't a necessary corrective -- its genocide.

reposted from K-Teezies thread
.
Check out this report from the Army War College. I repeat the US ARMY WAR COLLEGE.
.
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/abstract.cfm?q=894
.

Israel steadfastly rejected diplomacy and truce offers by HAMAS for 8 months in 2008, despite an earlier truce that held for several years. By the spring of 2008, continued rejection of a truce was politically risky as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert teetered on the edge of indictment by his own party and finally had to announce his resignation in the summer. In fact, on his way out the door, Olmert announced a peace plan that ignores HAMAS and many demands of the Palestinian Authority as a whole ever since Oslo. If the plan was merely to create a sense of Olmert's legacy, it is not altogether clear why it offered so little compromise.

.
snip
.

HAMAS emerged as the chief rival to the secularist-nationalist framework of Fatah, the dominant member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). This occurred as Palestinians rebelled against the worsening conditions they experienced following the Oslo Peace Accords. HAMAS' political and strategic development has been both ignored and misreported in Israeli and Western sources which villainizes the group, much as the PLO was once characterized as an anti-Semitic terrorist group. Relatively few detailed treatments in English counter the media blitz that reduces HAMAS to its early, now defunct, 1988 charter.

.
snip
.

Negotiating solely with the weaker Palestinian party--Fatah--cannot deliver the security Israel requires. This may lead Israel to reconquer the Gaza strip and continue engaging in "preemptive deterrence" or attacks on other states in the region in the longer term.
.
The underlying strategies of Israel and HAMAS appear mutually exclusive and did not, prior to the summer of 2008, offer much hope of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict. Yet each side is still capable of revising its desired endstate and of necessary concessions to establish and preserve a long-term truce, or even a longer-term peace.

.
This was released Dec 23 2008. I wonder why this isn't getting much media play.

War is often a necessary tool of diplomacy, my friend. The USA has used it many times and will continue to do so in the future. Israel is in the right in its invasion of Gaza and is doing its utmost to target only Hamas and to spare civilians. Israel does not have a magic wand to win this war without casualties. You can limit yourself to watching old cartoons, if that is all you can tolerate with regard to war.

Thank you for pushing back against this mendacious garbage, Mr. Klein. If only a few more of your colleagues showed more of your insight to what really afflicts us as well as your courage to confront our domestic enemies.
.
If you happen to see Mr. Kristol or any of his neocon cohorts, please tell him that one of your readers suggested that he abandon his US citizenship and move to to the country he loves above all others - I'm sure that the Lukidniks will find a place for him. To this country they are all traitors.

Fascinating:

Qassams are primitive missiles lacking any guidance system. Building one is "child's play," Abdul says: One of the team welds the rocket casings together from metal pipes, while another fills the warhead with up to three kilograms of TNT. Abdul's specialty is the last step: the rocket propulsion. He and his mates brew up the fuel out of a mixture of glucose, fertilizer and a few other chemicals, which is used to fire the rockets at distances of up to nine kilometers. Right at the end, he inserts the detonator cap, which makes the missile explode on impact. They hide the finished rockets in depots, which the launch commandos can then freely avail themselves of. Abdul only fires them himself when he has made some tiny improvements to a proven model. "Then I want to see how it flies." [Link]

Hard to imagine you could ever put a complete stop to this kind of small-ball aggression.0

Heck, Joe, I've known from the start (and commented here last week) that this attack on Gaza was really an attempt by Israel (on behalf of the Cheney-Kristol neocons) at goading Iran into doing something stupid that would eventually force Obama's hand.

Now that the ploy has failed (largely because Iran finds Gazans just as useful as martyrs as it finds Hamas useful as a tool) Kristol must resort to calling for an attack on Iran on general principles.

And you still have no concept of how bad this unnecessary -- yes, UNnecessary, and in the long run, counterproductive -- attack is making Israel look around the world, and how it is decreasing Israel's stock among the American populace, despite the corporatist press' (you included) insistence upon parroting Israel's dishonest line and hiding innocent hundreds of Gazan victims from our view.

It's going to end up costing Isreal American military aid.

Again I'm torn between the cavalier way Joe Klein discusses issues of life and death, searching for the 'reasonable' approach to carnage and the fact that he's pushing back against people who are considerably more evil who are actually advocating for unreasonable levels of death and destruction.

In one sense, I'm grateful to Joe (especially in light of some of the fire he's drawn) but I still think that many of the core assumptions that guide his thinking are horribly wrong.

I've always been fascinated by the way in which critics of Hamas (or whomever is being demonized) complain about how "inaccurate" their rockets are.... I mean, I'm quite confident that Hamas would be delighted to have highly sophisticated weapons available to them with which they could pinpoint (and reach) Israeli military targets -- but no one seems to be offering them the option to attack Israel in the way they would "approve" of.

I oppose the Israeli attacks, but even more I just haven't understood them. I've been searching for a non-hysterical explanation, and I think the excerpt below is probably it. This doesn't change my strong opposition, but I think it's an accurate take:

The point I was trying to make is that those, like myself, who initially questioned the logic of a military intervention were overlooking the fact that while it probably will not eliminate Hamas, and definitely will not eliminate Palestinian militancy, it might just degrade Hamas' infrastructure and its command and control capacity, as well create a physical buffer zone in the north of Gaza, that for a limited time will significantly reduce the shelling of Southern Israel. It will also force Hamas to include the possibility of a massive disproportionate response in its future thinking. And those two goals, if achieved, qualify as an improved security environment, and by the IDF's definition of its goals, a successful operation. [Link]

Don't point your right and wrong arguments at me. I'm just trying to understand the parties so I can guess what negotiated settlements might look like.

Since Israel requires American military aid, for a commentor to suggest withholding such aid implies that the commentor wishes to see Israel eliminated by its enemies. Antisemitism is bad for America.

danielev99
.
What do the palestinians require?
.
You do realize that Arabs are semites too right?
.
Idjut

The genocide of the palestinains has only strenghted iran's position in the region. unlike the other arab stated who continue to stand back and keep quiet while their fellow arabs are killed, Iran has been outspoken against this and has even called for action against israel. while i don't agree with other nations getting involved in more fighting,iran has even called for using oil as a means of leverage against the western nation who are backing israel.this tough talk is being heard by all the people in the region. this only gives iran another reason to seek nuclear weapons. and lets not kid ourselves, but israel will not and cannot take on iran by itself. israel has proven it is not the military "superpower" that it like to think of itself. they have spent all their time fighting rag tag street gangs like Hezbullah and hammas. fighting a nation like iran one on one would break israel's back not to mention set of a chain of events that would have affects world wide. whether its shia militas in iraq or Hezbullah on the northern israeli border. it would be a mess for everyone.

"Antisemitism" is a word that means, essentially, hatred of Jews. That Arabs are semites(?) is another idea altogether.

Fortunatly hatred of Jews bears no relationship to one's feelings concerning selling tools of destruction. The fact that 'aid' to Israel gets recycled right back to American arms manufacturers is one of the reasons that Peace is so difficult to achieve. There's way too much cash to be made encouraging conflict.

Since Israel requires American military aid, for a commentor to suggest withholding such aid implies that the commentor wishes to see Israel eliminated by its enemies.

Since "A" requires "B", for a commenter to suggest withholding "A" implies the commenter wishes to see "A" eliminated. Insert you own "A's" and "B's" as needed. Mine: A = "I" / B = "Supermodels"

"In one sense, I'm grateful to Joe (especially in light of some of the fire he's drawn) but I still think that many of the core assumptions that guide his thinking are horribly wrong."
.
Well, nobody's perfect. And most of his peers are absolutely atrocious.

Indeed we must take immediate action to make up for poor pourmecoffee's devastating lack of supermodels. Failure to do so could spread instability throughout his entire region!

@Paul - Here here! I messed up the equation a little (should be withholding "B"), but thank you for your support, and by supermodel, of course, I mean wife. I misspelled wife.

I want to repost this for effect.
.

Israel steadfastly rejected diplomacy and truce offers by HAMAS for 8 months in 2008, despite an earlier truce that held for several years

.
Thats not from Al Jazeera, thats from our very own Army War College. You know the one every journalist was quoting from a couple of weeks ago when they released their "Known Uknowns" report about the problems facing Obama? The same one that correctly predicted the problems with going to war in Iraq? Is that not the exact OPPOSITE of what we have been hearing for over a week from our elected officials and the media?

Economics and war are related, for sure. We kill to eat, too. There is a place to draw the line in war and food production. We may not agree on where that line is.

danielev99 compares the residents of Gaza to cattle and yet has the audacity to complain about somebody elses racism/antisemetism.
.
I can see where this is going clear as day.

Recourse to false claims of "antisemitism" is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Especially when I said that Israel's dissembling slaughter "is going to end up costing [Israel] American military aid," not that I want Israel wiped off the map.

Among non-Religious-Righters (who really only support Israel insofar as its existence may help to hasten the return of Jesus, who will then -- according to their insane theology -- condemn to the eternal fires of Hell any Jew who refuses to convert to Christianity) Israel is overplaying its sympathy card. Like our Abu Ghraib/torture policies in Iraq, Israel's Gaza slaughter is making terrorists faster than they can kill them; and unfortunately, those terrorists lump us in with Israel, because we are picking up the tab.

Especially given our present financial crisis, this play doesn't have many years left in it.

We can't get past the way facts are selected to make an argument. I understand Israel's need for security. But its use of border closings flies in the face of the agreement reacehd between Israel and Hamas. I know that the picture of dead and wounded children is absolutely horrible and Israel must know that this is going to happen. But I am sure Hamas uses this for its propaganda value. One of the dishonest aspects of Israel's policy is the way it allows illegal settlements to flourish thereby making it impossible for even the accommodating Abbas to work with them. Sorry: the rampant dishonesty of both sides is there if you want to see it. It seems as if the Israelis want to foster a Holocaust in Gaza City. The pictures of dead children laid out in shrouds is doing the rounds of Arab tv. We may shrug at this, but the Arabs are not.

The islamist terrorist attack America and Israel simply because they think they can win. Tom seems to think so, too. I do not.

"We may not agree on where that line is."
.
The line is recklessly killing and injuring non-combatants you cretin.