When an enemy is defeated, they don’t rise. Germany. Japan. When the victors aren’t serious (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...) there are neither victors nor vanquished. And the violence continues. Why did Churchill and FDR demand unconditional surrender in 1945? Because they didn’t in 1918.
You’re apparently not aware of the effect the Treaty of Versailles had on Germany & its people. The “seriousness” of the British & French in punishing Germany in 1919 led directly to Hitler’s rise and WWII. That’s why post-WWII the U.S. dictated the peace and implemented the Marshall Plan.
I agree with this. However I don't think it applies here.
Isreals hand has been forced. To accept this barbarism is to invite and encourage more.
Extermination of the jews is the driving force of their radical religion.
It will happen again regardless of Isreals response. Isreal can only hope to increase the time and severity of the "moral" crusade between episodes.
As far as WW2. Yup it quite possibly it could've been prevented had the mistakes the victors made post surrender not happened.
The difference here is the barbarians are commanded to carry out these atrocities. It measures their holiness.
They will never view their actions as cruel because their fundamental belief is anything less than extermination of the jews falls short of the glory of their god.
Whereas eventually, the German people were ashamed of the atrocities committed against the jews.
These fanatics will never be ashamed of their cruelty; because cruelty is the point.
The ideology of the Nazis was defeated. The ideology of these barbarians can never be "defeated". The cruelty is righteous to them; it pleases their god.
The treaty of Versailles was punitive, but nobody stopped Hitler and the Nazis before they powered up a giant war machine. Hitler should have been put out of his misery long before WW2 started. The Nazis were a crazy death cult whose grandiose plans never made sense except in the context of everybody rolling over for them. You have to stamp out the death cult.
No one amongst the Allies wanted to believe that Hitler meant what he said to the German people. The losses of WWI were SO great that ppl put blinders on until the blitzkrieg on Poland forced the truth on them. Keep in mind that both France and Britain essentially lost an entire generation. Denying reality is different from rolling over.
It’s difficult to assess in advance the domestic traction a nut job politician will get and what his end objectives truly are. If the Holocaust had not happened, how many today would believe such a thing would be possible? Not many. That is both good and bad. Good b/c man is hopeful, and bad b/c man is pollyannish.
Not saying the Holocaust wasn't/isn't the chief case study for many when it comes to the horrors humanity can unleash, but it seems to me that even if it had not happened, from the Armenian Genocide to the Killing Fields to the Holodomor, there is (tragically) no shortage of similar atrocities that should teach people today that these things are very, very possible. Now, whether or not they do/would I grant is open to discussion, especially regarding how well they are (or are not) being taught in many places.
Not really. It was humiliating, but despite the propaganda not actually punitive, and what punitive measures it did have the allies didn't have to will to enforce. Thus the allies ended up with the worst of both worlds.
The NAZIs, like the USSR, both rose as a result of the US getting involved and turning yet another Franco-Prussian war that would’ve had a negotiated peace into the Long War, 1914-1945; or until 1991 as the ruse of the USSR created the Cold War.
America is not England, France nor Germany. So - It’s more like England committed (secretly) to France in 1907 via Lord Grey, then the English dragged us 🇺🇸 in. The February revolution against the Tsar happened before we declared war (at French instigation).
The October revolution was the German Counter to the French (Lenin).
Wilson desperately wanted to avoid America getting into WW1, he wept the night Congress declared war.
FDR did not arm until the war began, the 🇺🇸Army was an absurd 139,000 men. He didn’t accept battle until France fell in May 1940. “This time we’re not leaving.”
It would have been wiser to leave us out of it, it was folly not to let us leave. Just now we were leaving the Middle East, HAMAS has decided we’ll stay. Iran has a part in us staying too...
As far as the Master plan to exhaust us by war etc... did anyone look at the US Geological survey or our agricultural data?
As far as our industry being abroad... they were... they largely still are... but are returning in a tidal wave. We’re the one country on earth that CAN be Autarky should we need, all it takes is for us to put the nation above money; and we have before. It seems we will again.
Indeed we are... led by the very Captains of 🇺🇸 Industry.
If you’re reading arrogance here, you’re wrong. It’s venom.
You 🌍 really should have left us alone, especially this time.
We’ll sort out our internal problems here 🇺🇸 probably with 🩸 blood.
Agree. You should read The Accidental Superpower. Zeihan makes those points and more, backed up by history, demographics, geography and resource availability.
You can also argue that we were too lenient on Germany after the war. The victors let debts slide, failed to enforce treaty terms and did not demand the unconditional surrender of Germany. VDH made this case ...
Bringing out VDH on an historical military matter is truly bringing the heat! I agree with his analysis and the unstated reason – it was the “Progressive era” and the Allies couldn’t wait to abandon the battlefield. Treaties are not “self-executing.” There was no conceptual equivalent to the
Open Skies Treaty (1989-2021) by which to monitor Germany’s compliance.
No. It’s not. The only important thing is victory. You’re trying to infuse western conceits into a non-Western world. And THAT, more than anything else, is why this nonsense from various terrorists persists.
100% agree. But remember: Properly done, the most violent period of a war is the moment before the enemy surrenders. The last 3 times the U.S. pursued this principle were Berlin, Tokyo, and the 2001 defeat of the Taliban. Alas, we abandoned it in #3 as soon as the Taliban fled the battlefield.
Yes, that's why the US is putting 4 carrier groups into the picture: the most violent period is just before the US goes down. [Odds are the winners are going to give it a face-saving out rather than calling it surrender.]
Tell me more about that defeat of the Taliban, when they fled the field?
Apparently you’re not old enough to remember B-52s carpet-bombing the Taliban in open country and them fleeing into the Hindu Kush. You’ve also not served in the military – a “defeat” is tactical not strategic. Lee defeated various Union generals in different battles, but it was ultimately he who surrendered. The U.S. has never fought a war through to victory with an enemy who refuses to surrender, mainly because that requires annihilation, something modern “men” find distasteful.
The Russians have a stable peace in Kalingrad to this day, formerly East Prussia.
The Germans don’t get to complain about harsh peace terms.
The Americans initially did the Morgenthau plan, that and kept the Germans hungry but not starving the first winter. The Marshall plan was to rearm Germany and our occupied zones on the sly by feeding them first, instead of garrisoning millions against the Soviets, and it worked. What the Russians did in Kalingrad would have worked too, but we needed the Germans instead of our troops.
Then there’s Ireland.
Then there’s Carthage.
Then there’s the trail of tears...
Not to mention Versailles was a sideshow at the time of Hitler coming to power.
Not to mention Versailles’s defects were more 1-2 years of uncertainty all over the defeated lands while Wilson and the Americans conducted a full academic review of the countries - who in uncertainty descended into chaos, separatism, revolution, wars. The chaos in Germany wasn’t debts, it was uncertainty. The chaos also happened all over the defeated lands of Russia, Austria, and Turkey- Greece was at war in Turkey for 2 years after the armistice- Russia at war, Russia invading Poland, the Baltics and Finland aflame -
Uncertainty and no government while American academics conducted their review.
This isn’t utterly different than Reconstruction in the South- which initially dissolved State governments and didn’t replace them, prompting the rise of chaos, vigilantism, the Klan, and had Sherman rearming the Confederate soldiers already marching home (unarmed) to restore order.
1) “The Marshall plan was to rearm Germany and our occupied zones…” – Do you have any backup for this assertion? My own research yields nothing. Are you aware that most of the aid went to Allied nations? The UK received 3 times the aid as did Germany.
2) “Then there’s Ireland.” What do you mean?
3) “Not to mention Versailles was a sideshow at the time of Hitler coming to power.” Not true.
Hitler did not become Chancellor until 1933. Until then he was a noisy activist without office or power.
4) “…Versailles’s defects were more 1-2 years of uncertainty all over the defeated lands while Wilson and the Americans conducted a full academic review of the countries.” – Not true.
Wilson’s “14 Points” analysis was commissioned in 1917 and completed before the German government sent a message on Oct 5, 1918 requesting an armistice based on the 14 Points. The Armistice was signed on Nov 11, 1918. The Paris Peace Conference commenced on Jan 18, 1919 and ended June 28, with the Treaty effective Jan 10, 1920. The German government was well aware of the direction of the negotiations and didn’t have to wait until Jan 1920 (or even June 1919) to find out.
5) “Reconstruction in the South- which initially dissolved State governments and didn’t replace them…” – Absolutely untrue.
The state governments were not “dissolved.” Reconstruction laws required those governments to take certain actions to be re-admitted to the Union. The Confederacy was under martial law based on war powers, but the State governments continued to exist.
6) Since the State governments WANTED slavery, how did their supposed dissolution prompt “the rise of chaos, vigilantism, the Klan?”
7) “Sherman rearming the Confederate soldiers already marching home” – Again, do you have any backup for this assertion? My own research yields nothing.
John- I don’t have time to reconstruct my research, aka reading history.
All my points I’ll stand by.
However Sherman: Solder Realist Patriot by BHL Hart may yield some info, and the source for Versailles (and Ireland in part) can be found by a critical as opposed to credulous reading of Churchill “ The World Crisis.”
Nope. Completely wrong. The serious post-treaty financial & other penalties occurred because it was felt Germany could pay them. Why? Cuz they weren’t wiped out, but instead had a conditional surrender. You’re putting the cart before the horse.
The reparations were imposed as an integral part of the peace – not separately. “It was felt…” How dispassionate you sound. Are you a Liberal? “Feelings” have no place in war and peace negotiations.
BTW, did ANYONE ask the Germans what they “felt” about affordability? The reparations crushed Germany, which was Clemenceau and Lloyd George’s objective. They wished to achieve economically what their armies had failed to achieve militarily.
I can remember during the days of the War on Terror, many critics, analysts and military leaders were saying that, "we're creating terrorists faster than we can kill them". this was a concept that seemed self evident at the time but, as you pointed out, didn't seem to come true (thankfully?).
to a larger point tho, what happened to the War on Terror? it seemed to almost evaporate overnight once Trump took office. what happened? did the regime find a new target for hate in Trump? it's obvious that the tools that were created to fight the War on Terror were quickly turned around to focus on the American population.
to my knowledge, no writer has written about this phenomenon.
Israel was able to obtain a (very) cold peace with Egypt and Jordan after their 1967 and 1973 wars, which only supports your thesis.
The issue here is that Gaza might be more like Libya, where a nasty vacuum was created when Gaddafi was overthrown. Is there an infrastructure and civil government to take over from Hamas, or even the incompetent and corrupt Palestinian Authority? Probably not.
Also, Germany and Japan were thoroughly defeated by the end of WWII, with no one egging them on at that point. Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and many other places will keep on pushing the Palestinians and supporting them. Hopefully they don’t get directly involved because that puts it a lot closer to WWIII- but either way it makes it a much tougher calculus. You might defeat Hamas, but not all their backers.
I think Niall Ferguson correctly described Israel as being in a Zugzwang- it can’t do nothing, but anything it does might also be quite bad.
The VAST preponderance of the money Hamas & Hezbollah receive comes from Iran. Cut Iran’s money off via a blockade, and the temperature goes down in Gaza & Lebanon.
Qatar is a conduit, not the source. Yes, Israel created Hamas to have as a perpetual enemy, but Hamas is responsible for its own actions. I doubt very much the Israelis disclosed (to the Palestinians) their role in recruiting initial members. The Israelis’ hands are not clean, but Hamas’ are caked with filth.
So you’re saying the Israelis encouraged (thru intentional inaction) the medieval deaths 1400 of its faithful so that the IDF could go on to destroy the world?
I submit that this isn't Israel's play here w Gaza. From what I've read, they aren't looking to *defeat* the Palestinians in Gaza, they are aiming to eradicate them. Their ideal end state is to create so much carnage and destruction that the Gazans will be refugees in Egypt or wherever or they will simply cease to be. Gaza is becoming a Nagasaki hellscape that will be bulldozed and resettled by Israelis as if Gaza never existed. Israel has no intention of allowing any Palestinians to exist in Gaza to be supported or trained to fight.
You're not wrong, but I'm not sure the situation applies in Israel for a few reasons.
Total war entails systematic eradication of the enemy's fighting force and command structure. Airstrikes aren't this. They're random and, although extremely destructive, not a reliable way to castrate the enemy completely. Leave behind a few enemy fighters and they'll be the ones deciding what narrative the next generation hears. It can be a prelude but I think 30+ years of trying this in the middle east shows it's not a complete strategy.
Israel's enemy is not contained to Gaza. Wiping out Palestinian terrorism or resistance or whatever you want to call it doesn't end there, because most of the rest of the Islamic/Islamist world is on the same page with them. Again, the past 30 years tells us that is not a trivial task and Israel is not up to it.
Last, you have to be willing to either walk away and establish firm boundaries or else conquer and subsume after the war is complete. The latter is what America essentially did to Japan, Germany and South Korea. Very little other than window dressing remains of their pre-occupation culture. These countries all look like American states now, more than they look like who they were before. There is hardly a trace of Prussian left in any German, and Korea and Japan politically and culturally were similarly refashioned in the image of a western liberal democracy.
Jewish identity is inherently exclusive and not interested in integration. We tried to make Americans out of Arabs and Persians and failed because we didn't complete the job; but Israel would never try to make Jews out of them. The last time Jews conquered and integrated people they were still called Hebrews.
And firm boundaries clearly didn't work either, because that's what they did after the last several wars they had with their neighbors, and here we have their neighbors covertly or overtly supporting Hamas.
If you look at the places in history where total war has succeeded, it's because they completed the job and followed through in the aftermath. If you look at where America has failed to do this in the Middle East, we did a half-ass job and made a pork project out of the follow-up.
Agree 100%. But I say America’s military half-assedness started right after WWII. Right around the time assholes like Robert McNamara started migrating to D.C.
and also we are talking about Muslims, many though not all, believe that eradicating the Jews - all of them - is what their faith tells them to do. "the rock will cry out, there is a jew behind me, come kill him" or something like that.
That is THE critical point in this mess. The surrounding muslim countries have been delighted to use the Palistinians as a political weapon from the get-go. If there was any ‘love for your borther’ they would have accepted them inside their own borders.
Interestingly they have another religious doctrine that allowed them to co-exist with Christians and Jews under an Islamic state - jizya, in which non-Muslim citizens were permitted residency and protection without harassment in exchange for increased taxes.
So it's not necessarily the case that genocide is their only religious option. But as long as they exist in a non-Islamic country, they are compelled to attempt to convert it by any means necessary.
The big difference between Islam and Christianity in terms of their evangelical doctrines is muslims are permitted deception and violence to make this happen. Not that Christians always avoid deception and violence... but one could argue that they're not supposed to be doing that, whereas it's hard to argue that muslims are not.
So true, deception is a core tenet of Mohammad's teaching. So, does that make you wonder about the honesty of any Muslim? I don't mean to be skeptical, but since it is in the Koran what are we to believe?
I think it depends. As I understand it they are not permitted to lie about just any old thing to non-believers. Only in service of preserving their faith. So you don't have to worry about doing business with them, not any more than any other people. They have honor and take contracts and oaths at least as seriously as Christians do, if not more so (the same can't be said for everyone). But if you're trying to convert them to your religion or rule of law I think it's reasonable to wonder whether it really worked.
I expect this is true, unfortunately. I think what makes the Palestinian/Israeli conflict such a problem is that it is a pre-modern religious war, closer to Europe's 30 Years War than WW1 or WW2. It isn't so much a question of who rules whom or territorial control, but one of Palestinians (and others in the region) desiring to eradicate the Israelis. That sort of conflict changes the dynamics of the politics; consider that in WW2 Japan didn't want to remove all the Chinese from the conquered lands, but rather rule them, so total extermination was off the table.
My guess is that the only way to "solve" this problem is a pre-modern one: push the Palestinians as a people out of the contested areas and into e.g. Egypt and Jordan, making their behavior the responsibility of those states, states who might not want to risk further war with Israel. I put solve in scare quotes because this isn't a great solution, either. It does, however, end the Palestinian state question and allow Israel to set up hard borders with states that it can negotiate with on a more serious modern level. If rockets come from Egypt into Israel the response to "Stop these attacks or else we are at war and we will bomb you" is less likely to be "Good, go for it," from Egypt than it is from Hamas or the PLA or whomever runs things at the moment.
Again, this is unfortunate, but this is how wars between peoples were fought in pre modern times, and this seems a decidedly pre modern conflict. It's a war between peoples, not a war between states.
If surrounding countries were willing to take in palestinians that might work out. In spite of outcries against "ethnic cleansing", which would be loud and frequent. And those wouldn't be without merit. It's never nice to confiscate people's property and force them to relocate. But neither is blowing them up and reducing their cities to rubble.
Like I keep saying there are no good answers here. But this one is irrelevant unless/until Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and/or Lebanon can be convinced to take in millions of refugees.
Well, it is relevant in so far as it is possibly the only thing that will work, short of one side wiping out the other. I assume that in part the local Arab nations don't want to admit Palestinians because they don't want to be responsible for them. Which, well, fair enough, although if that is the case is would be nice if they would at least say that is the case.
That's the thing though, there aren't "good" answers, because it is an inherently bad situation we all find repugnant. That's why most people's moved away from those sorts of wars in modernity: we lost the desire to eradicate our neighbors in favor of a live and let live sort of approach. Pre-modern wars very often did follow the pattern of "If they won't stop raiding us we are going to go in, burn everything to the ground, and kill everyone who doesn't run fast enough until it stops." It is ugly and horrible, but it was the only way to stop the problem of one side not seeing the other as human, thus putting the other side in the realm of things to be exploited or killed without sanction.
I think the powers that be prefer non-solutions because it sells more bombs and justifies more tyranny. Which sounds glib but how the hell else am I suppose to interpret it?
Yea, if I had to guess, and it is just a guess based on what I have casually seen the past 30-40 years, the local Arab states would slightly prefer Israel not exist, or if it does exist that it serve as a boogeyman or scape goat. Those states care not a whit for the Palestinians except as a political tool, neither wanting them in their countries nor caring that they settle down and become prosperous outside their country; from their perspective they see the Palestinians as a sometimes convenient pretense for things, but sure as hell don't want them in their country. In other words the situation is a convenient problem that is outside their borders and can be leveraged politically now and again, and otherwise ignored. They don't want to be responsible for the Palestinian's actions.
For the rest of the world outside the Mid East, we don't like to see people exterminated and expect everyone to act like us in a vague "We don't pick killing fights with our neighbors." We no longer have any experience living next to peoples that just want us dead or gone in a strong way, so we can neither quite grasp the motives of the Palestinians and their leaders, nor the situation the Israelis are in. (I sometimes wonder if e.g. Bosnians and Serbs might sympathize a bit more, and with which side.) Some leaders want to leverage that for selling more arms, some to posture as "the good guys", some to simply use as a fun source of embarrassment to political opponents. At the same time, no political leader wants to say simply "Look, you guys need to fight it out until one side gives up or ceases to exist" because by modern standards that sounds horrible. By pre-modern standards, that seems to be the only thing that works.
Why just Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon? How many Palestinians would you be willing to take into your neighborhood?
Or would you be more comfortable taking in a bunch of genocidal Israelis? You can listen to any number of those in the MSM. Do you want them for neighbor?
Because they are adjacent to Israel. And no, I wouldn't want either of them if I had my choice, but I also don't send either group money and weapons in support of their plight... At least, not personally. IRL we do not get to pick what our governments do in our names or who they decide to open the borders to. We just put up with it.
Jordan DID take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank after the 1967 war. In 1970 they expelled most of them because they were such a problem. Egypt does not want the Gazans for the same reason - they are too destabilizing. I suspect - I don't know - that the Palestinians by their behavior are now so toxic that nobody wants them.
Palestinians have the same status among other arabs (who often don't view palestinians as "real" arabs) as gypsies had in Europe a century or two ago.
This I know from living 25 years in Sweden's most "multicultural" city of Malmö, where at most 35% of the population is swedish.
Oftentimes, swedish teachers such as I had to play the role of UN Blue Berets in class when children of various MENA-heritage would try to beat the tar out of each other over some slight or other.
Children born in Sweden, by parents born in Sweden. That's the problem with all the MENA-peoples: they do not adapt, they do not integrate and they do not assimiliate.
All they do is exploit their host-nation, and establish enclaves ruled by a clan chief in conjunction with a preacher, and use indiscriminate violence against all slights and threats according to their own moral system.
Essentially, they are 7th century humans, and it's no wonder the other arab peoples despise them, as the "palestinians" behave the same no matter where they go and no matter how they are treated.
So, a bunch of displaced-by-force minorities didn't fit in. Shocker. Plenty of other Palestinians have been successful and peaceful, especially in the US. Maybe too much socialism in Sweden.
The palestinians who came here and has come here since the 1970s have been shown every courtesy, have been given every option, and have been encouraged to try and fit in while retaining their culture - it's even written in our constitutional laws that migrants have an unalienable right to retain their own culture.
A migrant family of two adults and three minors would, after having received temp. right of residence, be given an apartment of at least 2 rooms (that's excluding kitchen and bathroom), with all appliances and would be allowed to live there rent-free (on welfare, which means working swedes pay their rent via taxes), have their power-bill paid via welfare, have free daycare and school for the children, free courses in swedish, the right to free-of-charge interpreters, the right to full health care and dental and preferential treatment at the unemployment office.
You don't know the first thing about us here, and how we've been bending over backwards for 50 years to help migrants feel welcome.
so the US and europe drives the UN to wedge israel into existence; then subsequently ignores the UN pointing out the genocidal apartheid that israel is perpetrating on those whose land they took.
unsurprising that the master race - err, chosen people - eventually become the hate that has chased them from every corner of the world. which kinda suggests that the OP, valid as it may be in the situations considered, is missing critical distinctions that make this circumstance unique. elsewhere in this thread others have pointed out this is a dispute among peoples, not states.
Also, the dispute is among peoples regarding territory, not religion. Funny how a bunch of so-called conservatives are mute about property rights when it comes to Palestinians. As if someone's house doesn't belong to them because they don't belong to an officially-recognized-by-the-West state called Palestine. Might makes right, history is full of conquered people and territory, possession is 9/10 of the law, are all valid points. Looks like Israel is ready to drop the facade and abandon the moral high ground to face that reality.
The next generation is already taught to hate Israel and Jews so it really doesn't matter what Israel does, they will be fighting for their existence until the people of Gaza love their kids more than they hate Israel and Jews.
The crazy thing is, Israel is being accused of "genocide" and treating Gazans the way hitler treated the Jews. If that were even remotely true it would have been Israel starting all the wars that have happened there and not every other muslim country or enclave.
I have a pretty harsh view of it but I have yet to have anyone actually prove it isn't reality. That view is that if it takes the death of 2 million Gazans, 3 million in the West Bank and even millions more in other muslim places which actively pursue war with Israel, for peace to happen, then it is probably a bargain at that price.
The real difference between the Japanese, the Germans and hamas in Gaza is that once those people saw what they had done to other people, they stopped celebrating those things. hamas will never allow for that and I don't think the religion of islam will allow it either.
Hard agree. The meta point is about the value of life. The European mind in Europe and North America cannot conceive of life being considered cheap. But much of the world has this exact view. It is primarily low empathy, a strong feature in the global south.
Or to put it more simply, when a feminized society champions compassion over practical matters, like enforcing national borders, we get this altruistic soup infecting national policy. The Islamic world has absolutely none of this. They do not move to Western nations and celebrate our decency. They marvel at our naivety. Are these the Europeans who conquered the world?
you talk about the value of life...but then you make yourself a hypocrite when you decry a “feminized society”. dude, it’s men with guns who are the problem. women, if they were in charge, would not seek to resolve things as men do. authoritarianism always restrains and/or punishes an other...which kicks off the cycle of infinite revenge. men with guns are the embodiment of authoritarianism.
men with guns don’t truly value human life, except by its punishment value in the taking.
All false. It is men who have been preoccupied with universal laws and the rule of law. Women by contrast are controlled by emotion. Every female leader from Bodicea to Thatcher has started a war.
You need to do more reading. That blue pill will get you nowhere, lol.
“…once those people saw what they had done to other people, they stopped celebrating those things…”
I disagree. I believe it’s this way: “…once those people realized how badly their countries had been destroyed as a consequence of their actions, they stopped PUBLICLY celebrating those things.”
I read an article by a sociologist who spent a year in Germany in the mid-50’s living in a village with ordinary Germans, and interviewing them and others in the region. His sad findings were that most residents still believed that Germany was basically right throughout Hitler’s reign. They were resigned to the new order of things, but there was not a great repudiation of evil one would have hoped for.
You are incorrect but still prove a valid point. In WWII large swaths of the Japanese military were annihilated due to their "death before surrender" mentality. This pretty much eradicated those who had actually participated in the carnage directed against anyone who wasn't Japanese. Sure, there were some left who were "true believers" in Bushido, but they were in the vast minority. It was less of a thing in Germany because despite the lack of prisoners being taken among the ss, large swaths of the military were freed at the end of the war. When you deduct from both those who were tried for war crimes and executed there are 2 very different pictures presented.
In Japan, the idea of Bushido was pretty much erased as those who practiced it gave their lives, along with the lives of many others who didn't adhere. But in Germany the idea of nazism persisted and the hatred of Jews held on. There was a very good reason Jews left Europe en masse after WWII, the idea was still alive there that they were evil.
Which brings me to my point, the only way to truly win a war is to erase the ideology that started it in the first place. So the reality is, if it takes 2 or 5 or 10 million muslims who adhere to the teachings of muhammed, or even all of them to get peace, then that is the bargain they choose to make.
I’ll give you points for arrogance – both personal and strategic. You assert error but point none out. And you blithely write off 10M ppl – keeping spiritual company with Mao, Stalin, Hitler, & Pol Pot. Each of them claimed the dead were responsible for their own deaths.
Ok then I will point out where you were wrong. The German people were very nationalistic and hitler was a nationalistic guy. But his base platform was socialism, which no matter what the left says makes him their guy. No one really regretted the nationalism, and coming out of the Great Depression, socialism had a lot going for it. Hell, even the US did social projects just to keep people busy. But where the US did public works projects, Germany did rebuilding their military projects in preparation for a new world war. If the US had spent the amount of money they did on do good projects on building up the military, we would have started the war as well equipped as when we ended it.
A lot of German people were already nationalists, so it isn't strange that after the war they were still nationalists. And the whole socialism thing put people to work, just for a bad cause. But I have yet to meet a German who thought the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe was a thing to be proud of. And after even a decade of Russian occupation in East Germany, it isn't surprising at all that they wished for things to go back to how they were before the war.
The difference between my thinking and all the other great leftists is that they chose who was to die, with the muslims, they are choosing themselves, I just think it wouldn't be tragic if we obliged them in fulfilling their desire to die.
Yes, this sounds accurate. Sorry to suddenly dip lighter during a serious subject, but I have a special fondness for your title, and the movie, "Joe Dirt". It was mostly based on my life, after Joe's dog Charlie, my greyhound dog's name, was killed. I suppose this kinda relates to Chris' subject at hand.
I used to think that only I had crazy things happen to me, then I saw "Joe Dirt" and realized at least that someone else could imagine it, even if they didn't experience it in real life.
wow, that’s a lot of likes for advocating the death of 5 million plus. you do know they rolled back the 6 million attributed to the holocaust, right? which was a big part of the guilt that led to israel arriving at all.
You underestimate, I would gladly sacrifice 1.2 billion muslims if it brought peace to the middle east and as a result to the rest of the world.
Only the leftist nazis have rolled back the 6 million number. And as far as the "guilt" you speak of leading to the allowance of the Jewish state, Britain had no reason to feel guilty as they hadn't participated in the mass murder of the Jews. They did however have a serious bone to pick with the palestinians for siding with the nazis. Weird how the nazis are doing the same thing today.
If you are serious you are literally a psychopath. And if you are not serious you should shut up and think a lot fucking harder before choosing to present yourself as a monster. They’ll have to publish a new edition of ATROCITOLOGY just for you.
Go live with the muslims and then get back to me with your views. If you are still alive that is. Seriously, everywhere they end up, they cause huge problems and eventually take over by eliminating everyone who isn't a muslim. Their koran even says that is what they are supposed to do in order to live a good life. 1400 years of history can't be wrong.
The beast of hate is fed in the middle east by teaching children to hate, especially Palestinian children. Kind of like American college students are taught to hate their heritage. According to polls taken of Muslims around the world, the majority, including those living in western countries, want to convert the world to Islam. It is a central feature of the religion and western norms, what is left of them, are considered degraded and immoral. If this faith ideology believes in conquest and ultimate submission of non-Muslims, then your reasonable assertion Chris, can not apply to people who think like this. Maybe ultimate battle defeat would tame such ideas, but Islam has expanded since its inception through conquest.
Besides, the dark forces making chaos around the world want a disordered middle east so that they can control energy transports, the modern silk roads, and the complicated geopolitical cauldron that rages intentionally in that part of the world. Someone benefits from this instability and violence, not just the weapons makers. Certainly, it is more distraction from the covid death shots, inflation, flood of immigrants, just like the Ukraine conflict.
One’s way to address the tenor of Islam is for radical imams to starting dying at an accelerated pace, particularly those who run madrassas or work at universities. These are the “retail” spewers of hate.
Certainly, it is more distraction from the covid death shots, inflation, flood of immigrants, just like the Ukraine conflict.
Bingo. It's amazing how this all started mere days after losing the McCarthy / Ukraine pipeline. There is absolutely no way for us to know what is really going on over there because everything is filtered through the same media that brought us covid.
“According to polls taken of Muslims around the world, the majority, including those living in western countries, want to convert the world to Islam.”
The same is true of Christians. Are some Muslims violent? Certainly. As were the Crusaders.
“…a central feature of the religion [is that] western norms…are considered degraded and immoral.” Can you disagree with them given the trajectory of the West after June 23, 1960 (the date the FDA approved “The Pill”)? Shame has disappeared from our society as a restraining force.
I’m not defending Muslim violence (my late sister died in 2005 in Baghdad), but we Christians do not have the historical moral high ground of peaceful coexistence.
It is vitally important to note that the Muslim countries farthest from the Middle East (Indonesia & Malaysia) do not support violence. It is only those influenced by the Wahhabists and the Muslim Brotherhood (and the employees & adherents of the Iranian theocrats) who lust for blood.
I don't disagree with you, except to bring up the crusades is not applicable as they occurred 1,000 years ago.
My concern is that the violence and suffering is more engineering by the grand cruel task masters that wish to take over the world. How timely the Ukraine war began and how convenient the problems sparked in Israel just as the world stopped caring about Ukraine. Excess death due to poison gene therapy countermeasure shots is rising around the world but that should not be noticed or discussed. Very well organized these protests around the world now grabbing all attention from other issues, including the purposely inflated cost of living because of overprinting of money by central banks.
I am suspicious that these things are not organically and naturally occurring. People should not allow themselves to be so easily drawn into these divisive events as they are volunteering to be manipulated and to let the bad actors continue succeeding in their plots, nicely hidden behind the curtain. I think everyone could get along if violence was not what certain powers really want.
“the crusades is not applicable as they occurred 1,000 years ago.”
But they live on in the hearts of Muslim Arabs.
“How timely the Ukraine war began…”
Actually, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was ENTIRELY to be expected. The invasions of Russia have always come from its west, and the former Soviet satellites all being recruited into NATO has aggravated this Russian fear. The Russians psychologically REQUIRE a buffer zone. The 2008 Bucharest declaration of NATO country leaders that Ukraine “will” join NATO was just too much. The U.S. State Dept’s continued meddling in Ukrainian affairs and accelerating UKR’s NATO membership in 2021 was the final straw. This is all due to a zealot apparatchik at DOS named Victoria Nuland.
“…how convenient the problems sparked in Israel just as the world stopped caring about Ukraine.”
There are reports that the planning of this attack started over a year ago with direct Iranian help. I suspect the causes are Biden’s utter weakness as signaled by the disastrous Afghan pullout, followed by Netanyahu’s political weakness over unpopular judicial reforms he’s pushing.
“Excess death due to poison gene therapy countermeasure shots is rising around the world but that should not be noticed or discussed.”
True, but I don’t see this coverup being any different from the rest of the COVID lies & swindles. Alas, like Josef Mengele, those responsible will escape earthly justice.
“…the purposely inflated cost of living because of overprinting of money by central banks.”
Purposeful currency debasement through inflation IS one way governments react to excessive debt. But they do so only when servicing that debt becomes burdensome. Western nations are not yet confronted with unserviceable debt levels. But obviously the music will stop sometime.
“I am suspicious that these things are not organically and naturally occurring.”
I agree completely, but as explained above, I’m not yet convinced that they’re all tied together by common authorship.
Someone wrote about this a while ago…Ezekiel 35: 5 ¶ Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.
7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.
8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.
9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
Unfortunately in this conflict there is no alternative to extreme violence at this point.
Israel, a sovereign nation under international law, cannot constantly be under threat of pogroms and annihilation by the Islamofascist terrorists which surround it. No other sovereign nation has to justify its existence in perpetuity. The terrorists must be eradicated to prevent further savagery. Everything else has been tried to placate the Muslims in the surrounding areas: financial assistance by governments around the world, diplomacy including the offer of statehood in the so-called two state solution, economic development and educational programs,etc. They are implacable, because at the bottom of it, they hate Jews and they want them gone. They want to kill all of them. They keep showing us this behavior. When are we going to believe them? In point of fact, all the aid, assistance and “solidarity” have made problem much worse and have led to the current debacle. Solidarity with groups that want to kill you is just fucking stupid. So Muslim terrorists blow up Europe, they blow up the United States, they blow up India, they blow up Muslim nations, and we send them money and amplify their bullshit propaganda and embolden them. They want to kill Christians just as badly.
This is not a joke. They say so in Arabic and Farsi on television, in publications. You don’t get those translations here because it doesn’t fit the Western critical theory intersectional bullshit egregiously stupid and destructive narrative of every culture is good except of course Western culture and now especially Jewish culture.
The bullies kill their own people all the time. They do it in Syria and Yemen and Iran and Afghanistan and Sudan and Lebanon, Iraq, you name it. They slaughter gays and women and any Muslim who stands in their way. They use women and children as human shields. They fight from under hospitals and inside schools. Hamas doesn’t care about Gazans. They shoot them if they try to escape to safety. They care about nothing but martyring innocents while the leadership sits in Qatar counting their money and making speeches. None of the SJWs make a peep about those atrocities and war crimes. It’s only when Jews defend themselves that the Commie agitators ( all paid and organized by the Democrat fundraising machine btw) get out in the street. So: STFU you phony hypocrite antisemitic cretins.
Israel must eradicate Hamas, Hezbollah, and Irans regime. The world should help them. This isn’t an isolated battle. How many times do we need to see this movie? If the Muslim world wants to be integrated into world civilization then they have to be civilized, not try to murder and dominate everybody who is not on their team. That means showing strength and resolve. And wiping out the death cult terrorists. Israel has to do it today. It’s a question of survival. You can see how things are going in the demoralized West. How long until we have the same situation here? We already do I believe. We certainly are inviting it with the moronic immigration and foreign policy moves we make.There are many tribes and nations that have disappeared. They were wiped out and dismantled by violent means more often than not. Violence is never the answer, except when it is. Civilization must triumph over homicidal maniacs and brutal savagery, even if the disgusting bigots at Harvard, Berkeley and other indoctrination camps don’t like it. It has to be done. The more you appease a bully, the worse it gets. Every time.
Yeah. I know. But the problem is this group of nuts has demonstrated that they are not content to coexist with Israel or the Sunni states without being the hegemon.
When they get nukes it’s only a matter of time I fear before we have a nuclear disaster. Other nations are going to have to help.
"No other sovereign nation has to justify its existence in perpetuity."
If you look at what the campus liberals are doing in Canada and Australia and such with their "aboriginal land acknowledgments" and so forth, they are trying to impose on the rest of the West the illegitimacy they've been pushing on Israel for generations.
Rhodesia and South Africa were the canaries in the coal mine. Israel is a wailing fire alarm. If we don't stand up for ourselves we are all doomed, not just the Jews.
They are even doing this in the Mother Country too, believe it or not. They have started the notion that Britain is "a nation of immigrants." The genetic record could not be clearer. It has been genetically stable for millennia. Even the Anglo-Saxons were a culturally dominant force only, not millions of soldiers. Same for the Romans. Even the Vikings added very little genetic material.
Our cultural enemies have absolutely no principles. Their one great strength is this blind need to win at all costs to bring about their vision. No cow is too sacred that it cannot be slaughtered to achieve their aims. It is precisely this single-mindedness we lack.
Oct 30, 2023·edited Oct 30, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
I think you are correct. In any case, what are the Israelis to do. Agree to a ceasefire? How long until the next attack by Hamas? How many more murders and rapes? This continues until the survivors in Gaza think, “we must surrender unconditionally or they will kill us all.”
There's also our Civil War, after which Southerners apparently were more eager than Northerners or Westerners to enlist in the armed forces of the country that had just defeated them and their parents.
And yet...and yet...the Confederate Flag continues to terrify modern-day yutes, despite the War of Northern Aggression having been won by the aggressors. That would be all them Yankee forebears. I think they too must take on moral guilt, them yutes. Sins of the fathers.
I've often wondered about that, and I'm looking at it from across the pond.
What is the reason for this? Even here in Britain the confederate flag is seen as a symbol of hate, which is obviously absurd.
Is this just conditioning at work? Those who hate the confederate flag also dislike statues of Robert E Lee. But I suspect they also hate statues of Churchill and Queen Victoria too.
As a Yankee who now lives in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, I believe there is a mismatch of the intent of those who display the CSA flag and the liberals who observe it. There are 3 principal reasons why the flag is still displayed: (1) Generational anger at the Carthaginian-level of destruction brought by Grant and Sherman to the civilian population of the South; (2) As a middle finger to pearl-clutching liberals who expand Federal intrusion at every opportunity; and (3) as a “rose-colored glasses” remembrance of a bygone era.
My favorite experience on the subject was seeing the Stars & Bars plate on the front of a Prius. Talk about cognitive dissonance…
I think deep down the reason progs hate the confederate flag, whether they realize it or not, is that it reminds them that there is another option besides compliance if they push too hard for their technocratic utopia.
That and they generally hate history because its remembrance gets in the way of their desire to remake reality and human nature in their own image.
You cannot produce a homogeneous cosmopolitan utopia when people insist on retaining their distinct culture, traditions, backgrounds, and everything else that makes them different from other groups.
Maybe this is reading too much into it, but it tracks. And I don't think the visceral animalistic terror and rage that the confederate flag provokes in yank progs can be explained by a simple abstract difference in interpretation.
They have been taught this symbolism, of course. It's actually a flag that reflects pride of the South, having absolutely nothing to do with racism or slavery or any of that.
Since subtlety of thought and blurring of lines is not a part of modern education, almost no one knows that Lee didn't support the war, but he did support the South.
In 2005, the Army was a hot mess in personnel readiness. Our MI Battalion left Fort Lewis, Washington to 'train' at Ft Sill, OK (home of artillery) because that makes total sense for intelligence training. We, seriously, only had access to one SIPR (classified) computer for an entire MI Bn. Sent hundreds of people TDY from Ft Sill to get trained.
I was the S3 for an MI Bn at BAF from 06/07. We were an Army National Guard MI Bn filled with an active duty company, an ARNG BCT MICO, Navy & AF SIGINTers. (Who we made into dismounted low-level voice intercept teams--basically carry 80lbs of batteries before your clothes, food, weapons etc...and we had all of about 3 weeks to ensure these guys were 'greened' enough they don't get killed first step outside of wire...) Our Frankenstein battalion replaced the Division MI Bn that was lost in the transition from a Division Army to a BCT Army.
The entire training calendar from 1st Army was criminally negligent. Shit. Show. I should have known then what took 17 years later to understand.
Sadly, we have failed to promote the true men of character to Flag Officers. Our Flag Officers do not know how to win, they only know how to continue the war and to ensure Joe doesn't embarrass the USA on 'his watch'.
The Army does not make Warriors, it makes bureaucrats.
While overseas, much email was sent among the field grade & company grade officers about 'Islam is incongruent with freedom...' nonsense.
I always answered those emails with, "IDK...Ishmael/Issac don't seem to be as far apart culturally as our emperor is a God like WWII Japan. The problem is not Islam, the problem is we are unwilling to kill one million military aged men. "
I'd read enough reports about beheaded female school teachers, seen literal piles of poop in showers instead of using the toilets, and at the time looked at Afghanistan like a 7th Century Dark Side of the Moon population. My revulsion and disgust peaked that summer day when we executed the TOC Battle Drills of Troops in Contact (TIC) culminating in executing the Battle Drill for casualty notification.
I was filled with hate at that moment--it was pretty intense for about two weeks before I could think again--but I did have a cogent thought during this time. To 'win' this fight, we'd need about 350K-500K Soldiers for 20 years--long enough to educate two generations of little girls, and to kill at least 1 million military aged men. If they still held a grudge for a goat that was stolen 500 years ago, bullet to the head.
The country needed to be defeated. Tamed. Blasted into the 21st Century.
I am not necessarily proud of those conclusions, but I was thinking about how beautiful Tokyo and Stuttgart were at the time.
All that being said--the entire world is sitting on the same bed of kindling. All of our lackluster, morally compromised, lying, immature, narcissistic leaders have lit their own wooden matches and are all threatening others that they will toss the match at them...
The entire West is going to have to come to grips with millions of Muslims & Leftists creating havoc in our own cities when Israel does what it looks like it plans to do.
Does anyone in the current administration have the guts to deport millions? Put them in camps? After the dirty-bomb is set off in NYC?
You ask a very good question. The difference is that the fight of the Arabs against the Jews (that phrasing is intentional) isn’t merely war like the US vs Japan or a Germany. This is a visceral, perpetual, insatiable hatred. I could quote Bible verses about Ishmael. Or I could try to describe how Israeli Arabs leered at me as a young woman walking the streets of Jerusalem twenty years ago. The wars of 1948, 1967, 1973 were decisive blows but the Arabs regrouped and came back for more. They won’t stop until there are no Jews in the Middle East. And I’m starting to wonder if they might come after “the Sunday people” next.
Leaving the religious aspect out of this, I’d think the chaos and conflict of Iraq or Syria are better comparisons. Knowledge of the region and the Sunni/Shia conflict would also be applicable here and I am not the person to speak about that.
My one immediate thought is that the presence of "visceral, perpetual, insatiable hatred" also negates the claim about this war teaching the next generation to hate, and therefore to become the next Hamas terrorists, because it wouldn't need to be inculcated.
Yes, the Israeli’s don’t need to teach the next generation to hate, because their own parents are already teaching that. I’m sure you’ve seen the Palestinian “summer camps” in which five year olds carry rifles and learn to be “martyrs”. It is a culture that glorifies death. How do you undo that?
“Some audio plays and a translation of the Arabic pops up on the screen as a Hamas terrorist calls his father: ‘Father, I killed 10 Jews! Check your WhatsApp! I sent you the photos! Father, I killed 10 Jews! I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands. Check your WhatsApp. Father, be proud of me!’”
Nice effort to garner the trust of Christians by calling them the Sunday people?! Ridiculous. Why are Christians in the region taking the side of Palestinians? It’s the grand delusion.
If only Christians were actually more aware of what’s in their books…
I didn’t invent “the Sunday people”, it’s a phrase the Arabs have been using for a long time. I don’t have a great source for you but this article from 2015 discusses their saying, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”: https://www.wnd.com/2015/02/first-the-saturday-people-then-the-sunday-people/
Sad to say I agree. I earnestly want all peoples to live together in peace. But Hamas has proven, over and over, to be a constant source of hate and violence. To create real change Israel must completely exterminate Hamas, and most of the infrastructure of Gaza. Then the people of Gaza will have nothing to go back to. Their paradigm must be 100% changed so they can change. Then they can only go forward. Ideally absorbed into Egypt and Jordan but realistically still in Gaza. Impose a caretaker gov't that builds what the people need, housing, factories for jobs, etc. There will be destruction of that infrastructure by zealots but as long as it is seen as hurting the common people it will eventually succeed.
No. In any sizeable population there will be the guilty and the innocent. $100 says in Gaza the guilty are a greater percentage of the population than most any other place, but there are the gramps and grannies and kids and the smart and the dumb who both do not believe the propaganda of Hamas and just want to get along. And the sizeable percentage that will find their minds cleared of the propaganda once all of that is in ruins. The challenge is helping those innocents escape when they are held as human shields, and their neighboring Arab countries do not want them.
I'm hoping the Israeli ground forces move slowly and predictably so the population can be herded around to calm areas, never with backs to the wall or the sea. Then like a school of fish they can mostly survive.
Unconditional surrender and the Marshall plan. We trusted our instincts more back then. Bombs and apologies don't work. I really think this insight of yours is worth holding onto!
Of course you’re right, Chris. But the real problem is that large swaths of our culture understand neither history nor human nature. Nor do they want to.
Your thesis that a total defeat of Hamas is better than a negotiated or partial defeat is borne out by history. You point out WW2, which was the complete and abject destruction of the facists. A more recent example is the obliteration of ISIS by ourselves and Iraqi and Kurdish allies. It was brutal and bloody, with around 30k combat deaths among our Muslim allies and tens of thousands of civilians. But ISIS lost scores of thousands of combat deaths, plus a large number of the "civilians" were ISIS supporters, Find drone footage of Irbil and Mosel, plus any of the lesser cities of Iraq and Syria, and the devastation makes Gaza City a mere pinprick. But that was what it took to tear these deadenders out, root and branch.
Douglas MacArthur, one of our greatest generals, said that there was no substitute for victory. The Israelis must completely massacre Hamas, then track the survivors down and kill them, anywhere on earth, just like they did to the Munich murderers and just like the Iraqis and Kurds did to the remnants of ISIS. You notice there are no stories about ISIS attacks anywhere for the past 3 years or so. They're all dead. Unless this happens, the Gazans will remain a death cult and the violence will continue.
When an enemy is defeated, they don’t rise. Germany. Japan. When the victors aren’t serious (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq...) there are neither victors nor vanquished. And the violence continues. Why did Churchill and FDR demand unconditional surrender in 1945? Because they didn’t in 1918.
You’re apparently not aware of the effect the Treaty of Versailles had on Germany & its people. The “seriousness” of the British & French in punishing Germany in 1919 led directly to Hitler’s rise and WWII. That’s why post-WWII the U.S. dictated the peace and implemented the Marshall Plan.
I agree with this. However I don't think it applies here.
Isreals hand has been forced. To accept this barbarism is to invite and encourage more.
Extermination of the jews is the driving force of their radical religion.
It will happen again regardless of Isreals response. Isreal can only hope to increase the time and severity of the "moral" crusade between episodes.
As far as WW2. Yup it quite possibly it could've been prevented had the mistakes the victors made post surrender not happened.
The difference here is the barbarians are commanded to carry out these atrocities. It measures their holiness.
They will never view their actions as cruel because their fundamental belief is anything less than extermination of the jews falls short of the glory of their god.
Whereas eventually, the German people were ashamed of the atrocities committed against the jews.
These fanatics will never be ashamed of their cruelty; because cruelty is the point.
The ideology of the Nazis was defeated. The ideology of these barbarians can never be "defeated". The cruelty is righteous to them; it pleases their god.
Cruelty is love of god.
The treaty of Versailles was punitive, but nobody stopped Hitler and the Nazis before they powered up a giant war machine. Hitler should have been put out of his misery long before WW2 started. The Nazis were a crazy death cult whose grandiose plans never made sense except in the context of everybody rolling over for them. You have to stamp out the death cult.
No one amongst the Allies wanted to believe that Hitler meant what he said to the German people. The losses of WWI were SO great that ppl put blinders on until the blitzkrieg on Poland forced the truth on them. Keep in mind that both France and Britain essentially lost an entire generation. Denying reality is different from rolling over.
By not dealing with the problem, they got a bigger problem.
It’s difficult to assess in advance the domestic traction a nut job politician will get and what his end objectives truly are. If the Holocaust had not happened, how many today would believe such a thing would be possible? Not many. That is both good and bad. Good b/c man is hopeful, and bad b/c man is pollyannish.
Not saying the Holocaust wasn't/isn't the chief case study for many when it comes to the horrors humanity can unleash, but it seems to me that even if it had not happened, from the Armenian Genocide to the Killing Fields to the Holodomor, there is (tragically) no shortage of similar atrocities that should teach people today that these things are very, very possible. Now, whether or not they do/would I grant is open to discussion, especially regarding how well they are (or are not) being taught in many places.
> The treaty of Versailles was punitive
Not really. It was humiliating, but despite the propaganda not actually punitive, and what punitive measures it did have the allies didn't have to will to enforce. Thus the allies ended up with the worst of both worlds.
The NAZIs, like the USSR, both rose as a result of the US getting involved and turning yet another Franco-Prussian war that would’ve had a negotiated peace into the Long War, 1914-1945; or until 1991 as the ruse of the USSR created the Cold War.
America is not England, France nor Germany. So - It’s more like England committed (secretly) to France in 1907 via Lord Grey, then the English dragged us 🇺🇸 in. The February revolution against the Tsar happened before we declared war (at French instigation).
The October revolution was the German Counter to the French (Lenin).
Wilson desperately wanted to avoid America getting into WW1, he wept the night Congress declared war.
FDR did not arm until the war began, the 🇺🇸Army was an absurd 139,000 men. He didn’t accept battle until France fell in May 1940. “This time we’re not leaving.”
It would have been wiser to leave us out of it, it was folly not to let us leave. Just now we were leaving the Middle East, HAMAS has decided we’ll stay. Iran has a part in us staying too...
As far as the Master plan to exhaust us by war etc... did anyone look at the US Geological survey or our agricultural data?
As far as our industry being abroad... they were... they largely still are... but are returning in a tidal wave. We’re the one country on earth that CAN be Autarky should we need, all it takes is for us to put the nation above money; and we have before. It seems we will again.
Indeed we are... led by the very Captains of 🇺🇸 Industry.
If you’re reading arrogance here, you’re wrong. It’s venom.
You 🌍 really should have left us alone, especially this time.
We’ll sort out our internal problems here 🇺🇸 probably with 🩸 blood.
The Winner may want to have a word with you... 🌍
Agree. You should read The Accidental Superpower. Zeihan makes those points and more, backed up by history, demographics, geography and resource availability.
Uh, the ruse of the USSR?
“Ruse..” LOL. Past your nap time?
Did you mean the rise of the USSR?
No, Democrats are only wannabe Nazis. The actual Warlords have yet to be discernible...
.... worry not, they’ll come...
You can also argue that we were too lenient on Germany after the war. The victors let debts slide, failed to enforce treaty terms and did not demand the unconditional surrender of Germany. VDH made this case ...
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/jul/25/victor-davis-hanson-the-lessons-of-the-/
Bringing out VDH on an historical military matter is truly bringing the heat! I agree with his analysis and the unstated reason – it was the “Progressive era” and the Allies couldn’t wait to abandon the battlefield. Treaties are not “self-executing.” There was no conceptual equivalent to the
Open Skies Treaty (1989-2021) by which to monitor Germany’s compliance.
Of course, a magnanimous peace on the back end is as important to victory as the war itself.
No. It’s not. The only important thing is victory. You’re trying to infuse western conceits into a non-Western world. And THAT, more than anything else, is why this nonsense from various terrorists persists.
100% agree. But remember: Properly done, the most violent period of a war is the moment before the enemy surrenders. The last 3 times the U.S. pursued this principle were Berlin, Tokyo, and the 2001 defeat of the Taliban. Alas, we abandoned it in #3 as soon as the Taliban fled the battlefield.
Yes, that's why the US is putting 4 carrier groups into the picture: the most violent period is just before the US goes down. [Odds are the winners are going to give it a face-saving out rather than calling it surrender.]
Tell me more about that defeat of the Taliban, when they fled the field?
Apparently you’re not old enough to remember B-52s carpet-bombing the Taliban in open country and them fleeing into the Hindu Kush. You’ve also not served in the military – a “defeat” is tactical not strategic. Lee defeated various Union generals in different battles, but it was ultimately he who surrendered. The U.S. has never fought a war through to victory with an enemy who refuses to surrender, mainly because that requires annihilation, something modern “men” find distasteful.
The Russians have a stable peace in Kalingrad to this day, formerly East Prussia.
The Germans don’t get to complain about harsh peace terms.
The Americans initially did the Morgenthau plan, that and kept the Germans hungry but not starving the first winter. The Marshall plan was to rearm Germany and our occupied zones on the sly by feeding them first, instead of garrisoning millions against the Soviets, and it worked. What the Russians did in Kalingrad would have worked too, but we needed the Germans instead of our troops.
Then there’s Ireland.
Then there’s Carthage.
Then there’s the trail of tears...
Not to mention Versailles was a sideshow at the time of Hitler coming to power.
Not to mention Versailles’s defects were more 1-2 years of uncertainty all over the defeated lands while Wilson and the Americans conducted a full academic review of the countries - who in uncertainty descended into chaos, separatism, revolution, wars. The chaos in Germany wasn’t debts, it was uncertainty. The chaos also happened all over the defeated lands of Russia, Austria, and Turkey- Greece was at war in Turkey for 2 years after the armistice- Russia at war, Russia invading Poland, the Baltics and Finland aflame -
Uncertainty and no government while American academics conducted their review.
This isn’t utterly different than Reconstruction in the South- which initially dissolved State governments and didn’t replace them, prompting the rise of chaos, vigilantism, the Klan, and had Sherman rearming the Confederate soldiers already marching home (unarmed) to restore order.
It’s what happens when academics get involved.
1) “The Marshall plan was to rearm Germany and our occupied zones…” – Do you have any backup for this assertion? My own research yields nothing. Are you aware that most of the aid went to Allied nations? The UK received 3 times the aid as did Germany.
2) “Then there’s Ireland.” What do you mean?
3) “Not to mention Versailles was a sideshow at the time of Hitler coming to power.” Not true.
Hitler did not become Chancellor until 1933. Until then he was a noisy activist without office or power.
4) “…Versailles’s defects were more 1-2 years of uncertainty all over the defeated lands while Wilson and the Americans conducted a full academic review of the countries.” – Not true.
Wilson’s “14 Points” analysis was commissioned in 1917 and completed before the German government sent a message on Oct 5, 1918 requesting an armistice based on the 14 Points. The Armistice was signed on Nov 11, 1918. The Paris Peace Conference commenced on Jan 18, 1919 and ended June 28, with the Treaty effective Jan 10, 1920. The German government was well aware of the direction of the negotiations and didn’t have to wait until Jan 1920 (or even June 1919) to find out.
5) “Reconstruction in the South- which initially dissolved State governments and didn’t replace them…” – Absolutely untrue.
The state governments were not “dissolved.” Reconstruction laws required those governments to take certain actions to be re-admitted to the Union. The Confederacy was under martial law based on war powers, but the State governments continued to exist.
6) Since the State governments WANTED slavery, how did their supposed dissolution prompt “the rise of chaos, vigilantism, the Klan?”
7) “Sherman rearming the Confederate soldiers already marching home” – Again, do you have any backup for this assertion? My own research yields nothing.
John- I don’t have time to reconstruct my research, aka reading history.
All my points I’ll stand by.
However Sherman: Solder Realist Patriot by BHL Hart may yield some info, and the source for Versailles (and Ireland in part) can be found by a critical as opposed to credulous reading of Churchill “ The World Crisis.”
Academic this and me are not...
Nope. Completely wrong. The serious post-treaty financial & other penalties occurred because it was felt Germany could pay them. Why? Cuz they weren’t wiped out, but instead had a conditional surrender. You’re putting the cart before the horse.
The reparations were imposed as an integral part of the peace – not separately. “It was felt…” How dispassionate you sound. Are you a Liberal? “Feelings” have no place in war and peace negotiations.
BTW, did ANYONE ask the Germans what they “felt” about affordability? The reparations crushed Germany, which was Clemenceau and Lloyd George’s objective. They wished to achieve economically what their armies had failed to achieve militarily.
You’re missing the entire point.
Oh please, Enlightened One, explain “the point“ to us in the Ignoranti. But please use monosyllables…
Why would I bother?
I can remember during the days of the War on Terror, many critics, analysts and military leaders were saying that, "we're creating terrorists faster than we can kill them". this was a concept that seemed self evident at the time but, as you pointed out, didn't seem to come true (thankfully?).
to a larger point tho, what happened to the War on Terror? it seemed to almost evaporate overnight once Trump took office. what happened? did the regime find a new target for hate in Trump? it's obvious that the tools that were created to fight the War on Terror were quickly turned around to focus on the American population.
to my knowledge, no writer has written about this phenomenon.
“…what happened to the War on Terror? it seemed to almost evaporate overnight once Trump took office.”
I don’t think the family of Qassem Soluemani would agree…
Israel was able to obtain a (very) cold peace with Egypt and Jordan after their 1967 and 1973 wars, which only supports your thesis.
The issue here is that Gaza might be more like Libya, where a nasty vacuum was created when Gaddafi was overthrown. Is there an infrastructure and civil government to take over from Hamas, or even the incompetent and corrupt Palestinian Authority? Probably not.
Also, Germany and Japan were thoroughly defeated by the end of WWII, with no one egging them on at that point. Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, and many other places will keep on pushing the Palestinians and supporting them. Hopefully they don’t get directly involved because that puts it a lot closer to WWIII- but either way it makes it a much tougher calculus. You might defeat Hamas, but not all their backers.
I think Niall Ferguson correctly described Israel as being in a Zugzwang- it can’t do nothing, but anything it does might also be quite bad.
This is all well-argued, and important to consider. Thank you.
The VAST preponderance of the money Hamas & Hezbollah receive comes from Iran. Cut Iran’s money off via a blockade, and the temperature goes down in Gaza & Lebanon.
Exactly
Qatar is a conduit, not the source. Yes, Israel created Hamas to have as a perpetual enemy, but Hamas is responsible for its own actions. I doubt very much the Israelis disclosed (to the Palestinians) their role in recruiting initial members. The Israelis’ hands are not clean, but Hamas’ are caked with filth.
Did you read the thread that follows from that tweet? Netanyahu didn’t say any of it beyond the first sentence.
There is only 1 nuke needed – a low yield device over central Tehran, which has been fomenting terrorism and war for 44 years.
So you’re saying the Israelis encouraged (thru intentional inaction) the medieval deaths 1400 of its faithful so that the IDF could go on to destroy the world?
You might defeat Hamas, but not all their backers.
-----------
Exactly. Even if the literal people in Gaza aren't attacking Israel, they may still fund those who are.
Like all zugzwang, a product of one’s own planning and actions.
Also Numberwang
52! Numberwang!
@jb
I submit that this isn't Israel's play here w Gaza. From what I've read, they aren't looking to *defeat* the Palestinians in Gaza, they are aiming to eradicate them. Their ideal end state is to create so much carnage and destruction that the Gazans will be refugees in Egypt or wherever or they will simply cease to be. Gaza is becoming a Nagasaki hellscape that will be bulldozed and resettled by Israelis as if Gaza never existed. Israel has no intention of allowing any Palestinians to exist in Gaza to be supported or trained to fight.
It's straight up ethnic cleansing. That's it.
You're not wrong, but I'm not sure the situation applies in Israel for a few reasons.
Total war entails systematic eradication of the enemy's fighting force and command structure. Airstrikes aren't this. They're random and, although extremely destructive, not a reliable way to castrate the enemy completely. Leave behind a few enemy fighters and they'll be the ones deciding what narrative the next generation hears. It can be a prelude but I think 30+ years of trying this in the middle east shows it's not a complete strategy.
Israel's enemy is not contained to Gaza. Wiping out Palestinian terrorism or resistance or whatever you want to call it doesn't end there, because most of the rest of the Islamic/Islamist world is on the same page with them. Again, the past 30 years tells us that is not a trivial task and Israel is not up to it.
Last, you have to be willing to either walk away and establish firm boundaries or else conquer and subsume after the war is complete. The latter is what America essentially did to Japan, Germany and South Korea. Very little other than window dressing remains of their pre-occupation culture. These countries all look like American states now, more than they look like who they were before. There is hardly a trace of Prussian left in any German, and Korea and Japan politically and culturally were similarly refashioned in the image of a western liberal democracy.
Jewish identity is inherently exclusive and not interested in integration. We tried to make Americans out of Arabs and Persians and failed because we didn't complete the job; but Israel would never try to make Jews out of them. The last time Jews conquered and integrated people they were still called Hebrews.
And firm boundaries clearly didn't work either, because that's what they did after the last several wars they had with their neighbors, and here we have their neighbors covertly or overtly supporting Hamas.
If you look at the places in history where total war has succeeded, it's because they completed the job and followed through in the aftermath. If you look at where America has failed to do this in the Middle East, we did a half-ass job and made a pork project out of the follow-up.
All very interesting. Thank you.
Agree 100%. But I say America’s military half-assedness started right after WWII. Right around the time assholes like Robert McNamara started migrating to D.C.
and also we are talking about Muslims, many though not all, believe that eradicating the Jews - all of them - is what their faith tells them to do. "the rock will cry out, there is a jew behind me, come kill him" or something like that.
That is THE critical point in this mess. The surrounding muslim countries have been delighted to use the Palistinians as a political weapon from the get-go. If there was any ‘love for your borther’ they would have accepted them inside their own borders.
Interestingly they have another religious doctrine that allowed them to co-exist with Christians and Jews under an Islamic state - jizya, in which non-Muslim citizens were permitted residency and protection without harassment in exchange for increased taxes.
So it's not necessarily the case that genocide is their only religious option. But as long as they exist in a non-Islamic country, they are compelled to attempt to convert it by any means necessary.
The big difference between Islam and Christianity in terms of their evangelical doctrines is muslims are permitted deception and violence to make this happen. Not that Christians always avoid deception and violence... but one could argue that they're not supposed to be doing that, whereas it's hard to argue that muslims are not.
So true, deception is a core tenet of Mohammad's teaching. So, does that make you wonder about the honesty of any Muslim? I don't mean to be skeptical, but since it is in the Koran what are we to believe?
I think it depends. As I understand it they are not permitted to lie about just any old thing to non-believers. Only in service of preserving their faith. So you don't have to worry about doing business with them, not any more than any other people. They have honor and take contracts and oaths at least as seriously as Christians do, if not more so (the same can't be said for everyone). But if you're trying to convert them to your religion or rule of law I think it's reasonable to wonder whether it really worked.
They are allowed to lie in order to facilitate the spread of Islam. Not to preserve Islam only. But to spread it. This is an important distinction.
Ah, yeah thanks for the correction. That is important.
I expect this is true, unfortunately. I think what makes the Palestinian/Israeli conflict such a problem is that it is a pre-modern religious war, closer to Europe's 30 Years War than WW1 or WW2. It isn't so much a question of who rules whom or territorial control, but one of Palestinians (and others in the region) desiring to eradicate the Israelis. That sort of conflict changes the dynamics of the politics; consider that in WW2 Japan didn't want to remove all the Chinese from the conquered lands, but rather rule them, so total extermination was off the table.
My guess is that the only way to "solve" this problem is a pre-modern one: push the Palestinians as a people out of the contested areas and into e.g. Egypt and Jordan, making their behavior the responsibility of those states, states who might not want to risk further war with Israel. I put solve in scare quotes because this isn't a great solution, either. It does, however, end the Palestinian state question and allow Israel to set up hard borders with states that it can negotiate with on a more serious modern level. If rockets come from Egypt into Israel the response to "Stop these attacks or else we are at war and we will bomb you" is less likely to be "Good, go for it," from Egypt than it is from Hamas or the PLA or whomever runs things at the moment.
Again, this is unfortunate, but this is how wars between peoples were fought in pre modern times, and this seems a decidedly pre modern conflict. It's a war between peoples, not a war between states.
If surrounding countries were willing to take in palestinians that might work out. In spite of outcries against "ethnic cleansing", which would be loud and frequent. And those wouldn't be without merit. It's never nice to confiscate people's property and force them to relocate. But neither is blowing them up and reducing their cities to rubble.
Like I keep saying there are no good answers here. But this one is irrelevant unless/until Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and/or Lebanon can be convinced to take in millions of refugees.
Well, it is relevant in so far as it is possibly the only thing that will work, short of one side wiping out the other. I assume that in part the local Arab nations don't want to admit Palestinians because they don't want to be responsible for them. Which, well, fair enough, although if that is the case is would be nice if they would at least say that is the case.
That's the thing though, there aren't "good" answers, because it is an inherently bad situation we all find repugnant. That's why most people's moved away from those sorts of wars in modernity: we lost the desire to eradicate our neighbors in favor of a live and let live sort of approach. Pre-modern wars very often did follow the pattern of "If they won't stop raiding us we are going to go in, burn everything to the ground, and kill everyone who doesn't run fast enough until it stops." It is ugly and horrible, but it was the only way to stop the problem of one side not seeing the other as human, thus putting the other side in the realm of things to be exploited or killed without sanction.
I think the powers that be prefer non-solutions because it sells more bombs and justifies more tyranny. Which sounds glib but how the hell else am I suppose to interpret it?
Yea, if I had to guess, and it is just a guess based on what I have casually seen the past 30-40 years, the local Arab states would slightly prefer Israel not exist, or if it does exist that it serve as a boogeyman or scape goat. Those states care not a whit for the Palestinians except as a political tool, neither wanting them in their countries nor caring that they settle down and become prosperous outside their country; from their perspective they see the Palestinians as a sometimes convenient pretense for things, but sure as hell don't want them in their country. In other words the situation is a convenient problem that is outside their borders and can be leveraged politically now and again, and otherwise ignored. They don't want to be responsible for the Palestinian's actions.
For the rest of the world outside the Mid East, we don't like to see people exterminated and expect everyone to act like us in a vague "We don't pick killing fights with our neighbors." We no longer have any experience living next to peoples that just want us dead or gone in a strong way, so we can neither quite grasp the motives of the Palestinians and their leaders, nor the situation the Israelis are in. (I sometimes wonder if e.g. Bosnians and Serbs might sympathize a bit more, and with which side.) Some leaders want to leverage that for selling more arms, some to posture as "the good guys", some to simply use as a fun source of embarrassment to political opponents. At the same time, no political leader wants to say simply "Look, you guys need to fight it out until one side gives up or ceases to exist" because by modern standards that sounds horrible. By pre-modern standards, that seems to be the only thing that works.
:(
Why just Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon? How many Palestinians would you be willing to take into your neighborhood?
Or would you be more comfortable taking in a bunch of genocidal Israelis? You can listen to any number of those in the MSM. Do you want them for neighbor?
Because they are adjacent to Israel. And no, I wouldn't want either of them if I had my choice, but I also don't send either group money and weapons in support of their plight... At least, not personally. IRL we do not get to pick what our governments do in our names or who they decide to open the borders to. We just put up with it.
Jordan DID take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank after the 1967 war. In 1970 they expelled most of them because they were such a problem. Egypt does not want the Gazans for the same reason - they are too destabilizing. I suspect - I don't know - that the Palestinians by their behavior are now so toxic that nobody wants them.
Palestinians have the same status among other arabs (who often don't view palestinians as "real" arabs) as gypsies had in Europe a century or two ago.
This I know from living 25 years in Sweden's most "multicultural" city of Malmö, where at most 35% of the population is swedish.
Oftentimes, swedish teachers such as I had to play the role of UN Blue Berets in class when children of various MENA-heritage would try to beat the tar out of each other over some slight or other.
Children born in Sweden, by parents born in Sweden. That's the problem with all the MENA-peoples: they do not adapt, they do not integrate and they do not assimiliate.
All they do is exploit their host-nation, and establish enclaves ruled by a clan chief in conjunction with a preacher, and use indiscriminate violence against all slights and threats according to their own moral system.
Essentially, they are 7th century humans, and it's no wonder the other arab peoples despise them, as the "palestinians" behave the same no matter where they go and no matter how they are treated.
So, a bunch of displaced-by-force minorities didn't fit in. Shocker. Plenty of other Palestinians have been successful and peaceful, especially in the US. Maybe too much socialism in Sweden.
Your ignorance is astounding but not surprising.
The palestinians who came here and has come here since the 1970s have been shown every courtesy, have been given every option, and have been encouraged to try and fit in while retaining their culture - it's even written in our constitutional laws that migrants have an unalienable right to retain their own culture.
A migrant family of two adults and three minors would, after having received temp. right of residence, be given an apartment of at least 2 rooms (that's excluding kitchen and bathroom), with all appliances and would be allowed to live there rent-free (on welfare, which means working swedes pay their rent via taxes), have their power-bill paid via welfare, have free daycare and school for the children, free courses in swedish, the right to free-of-charge interpreters, the right to full health care and dental and preferential treatment at the unemployment office.
You don't know the first thing about us here, and how we've been bending over backwards for 50 years to help migrants feel welcome.
Giving stuff away for free has the same effect over here, on many populations. Hence my dig on socialism. So sensitive!
so the US and europe drives the UN to wedge israel into existence; then subsequently ignores the UN pointing out the genocidal apartheid that israel is perpetrating on those whose land they took.
unsurprising that the master race - err, chosen people - eventually become the hate that has chased them from every corner of the world. which kinda suggests that the OP, valid as it may be in the situations considered, is missing critical distinctions that make this circumstance unique. elsewhere in this thread others have pointed out this is a dispute among peoples, not states.
Also, the dispute is among peoples regarding territory, not religion. Funny how a bunch of so-called conservatives are mute about property rights when it comes to Palestinians. As if someone's house doesn't belong to them because they don't belong to an officially-recognized-by-the-West state called Palestine. Might makes right, history is full of conquered people and territory, possession is 9/10 of the law, are all valid points. Looks like Israel is ready to drop the facade and abandon the moral high ground to face that reality.
edit: not “become”; rather: manifest the hate.
Very well argued and stated - well done!
The next generation is already taught to hate Israel and Jews so it really doesn't matter what Israel does, they will be fighting for their existence until the people of Gaza love their kids more than they hate Israel and Jews.
The crazy thing is, Israel is being accused of "genocide" and treating Gazans the way hitler treated the Jews. If that were even remotely true it would have been Israel starting all the wars that have happened there and not every other muslim country or enclave.
I have a pretty harsh view of it but I have yet to have anyone actually prove it isn't reality. That view is that if it takes the death of 2 million Gazans, 3 million in the West Bank and even millions more in other muslim places which actively pursue war with Israel, for peace to happen, then it is probably a bargain at that price.
The real difference between the Japanese, the Germans and hamas in Gaza is that once those people saw what they had done to other people, they stopped celebrating those things. hamas will never allow for that and I don't think the religion of islam will allow it either.
Hard agree. The meta point is about the value of life. The European mind in Europe and North America cannot conceive of life being considered cheap. But much of the world has this exact view. It is primarily low empathy, a strong feature in the global south.
Or to put it more simply, when a feminized society champions compassion over practical matters, like enforcing national borders, we get this altruistic soup infecting national policy. The Islamic world has absolutely none of this. They do not move to Western nations and celebrate our decency. They marvel at our naivety. Are these the Europeans who conquered the world?
you talk about the value of life...but then you make yourself a hypocrite when you decry a “feminized society”. dude, it’s men with guns who are the problem. women, if they were in charge, would not seek to resolve things as men do. authoritarianism always restrains and/or punishes an other...which kicks off the cycle of infinite revenge. men with guns are the embodiment of authoritarianism.
men with guns don’t truly value human life, except by its punishment value in the taking.
All false. It is men who have been preoccupied with universal laws and the rule of law. Women by contrast are controlled by emotion. Every female leader from Bodicea to Thatcher has started a war.
You need to do more reading. That blue pill will get you nowhere, lol.
“…once those people saw what they had done to other people, they stopped celebrating those things…”
I disagree. I believe it’s this way: “…once those people realized how badly their countries had been destroyed as a consequence of their actions, they stopped PUBLICLY celebrating those things.”
I read an article by a sociologist who spent a year in Germany in the mid-50’s living in a village with ordinary Germans, and interviewing them and others in the region. His sad findings were that most residents still believed that Germany was basically right throughout Hitler’s reign. They were resigned to the new order of things, but there was not a great repudiation of evil one would have hoped for.
You are incorrect but still prove a valid point. In WWII large swaths of the Japanese military were annihilated due to their "death before surrender" mentality. This pretty much eradicated those who had actually participated in the carnage directed against anyone who wasn't Japanese. Sure, there were some left who were "true believers" in Bushido, but they were in the vast minority. It was less of a thing in Germany because despite the lack of prisoners being taken among the ss, large swaths of the military were freed at the end of the war. When you deduct from both those who were tried for war crimes and executed there are 2 very different pictures presented.
In Japan, the idea of Bushido was pretty much erased as those who practiced it gave their lives, along with the lives of many others who didn't adhere. But in Germany the idea of nazism persisted and the hatred of Jews held on. There was a very good reason Jews left Europe en masse after WWII, the idea was still alive there that they were evil.
Which brings me to my point, the only way to truly win a war is to erase the ideology that started it in the first place. So the reality is, if it takes 2 or 5 or 10 million muslims who adhere to the teachings of muhammed, or even all of them to get peace, then that is the bargain they choose to make.
I’ll give you points for arrogance – both personal and strategic. You assert error but point none out. And you blithely write off 10M ppl – keeping spiritual company with Mao, Stalin, Hitler, & Pol Pot. Each of them claimed the dead were responsible for their own deaths.
Ok then I will point out where you were wrong. The German people were very nationalistic and hitler was a nationalistic guy. But his base platform was socialism, which no matter what the left says makes him their guy. No one really regretted the nationalism, and coming out of the Great Depression, socialism had a lot going for it. Hell, even the US did social projects just to keep people busy. But where the US did public works projects, Germany did rebuilding their military projects in preparation for a new world war. If the US had spent the amount of money they did on do good projects on building up the military, we would have started the war as well equipped as when we ended it.
A lot of German people were already nationalists, so it isn't strange that after the war they were still nationalists. And the whole socialism thing put people to work, just for a bad cause. But I have yet to meet a German who thought the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe was a thing to be proud of. And after even a decade of Russian occupation in East Germany, it isn't surprising at all that they wished for things to go back to how they were before the war.
The difference between my thinking and all the other great leftists is that they chose who was to die, with the muslims, they are choosing themselves, I just think it wouldn't be tragic if we obliged them in fulfilling their desire to die.
Yes, this sounds accurate. Sorry to suddenly dip lighter during a serious subject, but I have a special fondness for your title, and the movie, "Joe Dirt". It was mostly based on my life, after Joe's dog Charlie, my greyhound dog's name, was killed. I suppose this kinda relates to Chris' subject at hand.
I used to think that only I had crazy things happen to me, then I saw "Joe Dirt" and realized at least that someone else could imagine it, even if they didn't experience it in real life.
wow, that’s a lot of likes for advocating the death of 5 million plus. you do know they rolled back the 6 million attributed to the holocaust, right? which was a big part of the guilt that led to israel arriving at all.
You underestimate, I would gladly sacrifice 1.2 billion muslims if it brought peace to the middle east and as a result to the rest of the world.
Only the leftist nazis have rolled back the 6 million number. And as far as the "guilt" you speak of leading to the allowance of the Jewish state, Britain had no reason to feel guilty as they hadn't participated in the mass murder of the Jews. They did however have a serious bone to pick with the palestinians for siding with the nazis. Weird how the nazis are doing the same thing today.
If you are serious you are literally a psychopath. And if you are not serious you should shut up and think a lot fucking harder before choosing to present yourself as a monster. They’ll have to publish a new edition of ATROCITOLOGY just for you.
Go live with the muslims and then get back to me with your views. If you are still alive that is. Seriously, everywhere they end up, they cause huge problems and eventually take over by eliminating everyone who isn't a muslim. Their koran even says that is what they are supposed to do in order to live a good life. 1400 years of history can't be wrong.
The beast of hate is fed in the middle east by teaching children to hate, especially Palestinian children. Kind of like American college students are taught to hate their heritage. According to polls taken of Muslims around the world, the majority, including those living in western countries, want to convert the world to Islam. It is a central feature of the religion and western norms, what is left of them, are considered degraded and immoral. If this faith ideology believes in conquest and ultimate submission of non-Muslims, then your reasonable assertion Chris, can not apply to people who think like this. Maybe ultimate battle defeat would tame such ideas, but Islam has expanded since its inception through conquest.
Besides, the dark forces making chaos around the world want a disordered middle east so that they can control energy transports, the modern silk roads, and the complicated geopolitical cauldron that rages intentionally in that part of the world. Someone benefits from this instability and violence, not just the weapons makers. Certainly, it is more distraction from the covid death shots, inflation, flood of immigrants, just like the Ukraine conflict.
One’s way to address the tenor of Islam is for radical imams to starting dying at an accelerated pace, particularly those who run madrassas or work at universities. These are the “retail” spewers of hate.
Certainly, it is more distraction from the covid death shots, inflation, flood of immigrants, just like the Ukraine conflict.
Bingo. It's amazing how this all started mere days after losing the McCarthy / Ukraine pipeline. There is absolutely no way for us to know what is really going on over there because everything is filtered through the same media that brought us covid.
“According to polls taken of Muslims around the world, the majority, including those living in western countries, want to convert the world to Islam.”
The same is true of Christians. Are some Muslims violent? Certainly. As were the Crusaders.
“…a central feature of the religion [is that] western norms…are considered degraded and immoral.” Can you disagree with them given the trajectory of the West after June 23, 1960 (the date the FDA approved “The Pill”)? Shame has disappeared from our society as a restraining force.
I’m not defending Muslim violence (my late sister died in 2005 in Baghdad), but we Christians do not have the historical moral high ground of peaceful coexistence.
It is vitally important to note that the Muslim countries farthest from the Middle East (Indonesia & Malaysia) do not support violence. It is only those influenced by the Wahhabists and the Muslim Brotherhood (and the employees & adherents of the Iranian theocrats) who lust for blood.
I don't disagree with you, except to bring up the crusades is not applicable as they occurred 1,000 years ago.
My concern is that the violence and suffering is more engineering by the grand cruel task masters that wish to take over the world. How timely the Ukraine war began and how convenient the problems sparked in Israel just as the world stopped caring about Ukraine. Excess death due to poison gene therapy countermeasure shots is rising around the world but that should not be noticed or discussed. Very well organized these protests around the world now grabbing all attention from other issues, including the purposely inflated cost of living because of overprinting of money by central banks.
I am suspicious that these things are not organically and naturally occurring. People should not allow themselves to be so easily drawn into these divisive events as they are volunteering to be manipulated and to let the bad actors continue succeeding in their plots, nicely hidden behind the curtain. I think everyone could get along if violence was not what certain powers really want.
Peace to you and your loved ones.
“the crusades is not applicable as they occurred 1,000 years ago.”
But they live on in the hearts of Muslim Arabs.
“How timely the Ukraine war began…”
Actually, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was ENTIRELY to be expected. The invasions of Russia have always come from its west, and the former Soviet satellites all being recruited into NATO has aggravated this Russian fear. The Russians psychologically REQUIRE a buffer zone. The 2008 Bucharest declaration of NATO country leaders that Ukraine “will” join NATO was just too much. The U.S. State Dept’s continued meddling in Ukrainian affairs and accelerating UKR’s NATO membership in 2021 was the final straw. This is all due to a zealot apparatchik at DOS named Victoria Nuland.
“…how convenient the problems sparked in Israel just as the world stopped caring about Ukraine.”
There are reports that the planning of this attack started over a year ago with direct Iranian help. I suspect the causes are Biden’s utter weakness as signaled by the disastrous Afghan pullout, followed by Netanyahu’s political weakness over unpopular judicial reforms he’s pushing.
“Excess death due to poison gene therapy countermeasure shots is rising around the world but that should not be noticed or discussed.”
True, but I don’t see this coverup being any different from the rest of the COVID lies & swindles. Alas, like Josef Mengele, those responsible will escape earthly justice.
“…the purposely inflated cost of living because of overprinting of money by central banks.”
Purposeful currency debasement through inflation IS one way governments react to excessive debt. But they do so only when servicing that debt becomes burdensome. Western nations are not yet confronted with unserviceable debt levels. But obviously the music will stop sometime.
“I am suspicious that these things are not organically and naturally occurring.”
I agree completely, but as explained above, I’m not yet convinced that they’re all tied together by common authorship.
Someone wrote about this a while ago…Ezekiel 35: 5 ¶ Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
6 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.
7 Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.
8 And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.
9 I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
Unfortunately in this conflict there is no alternative to extreme violence at this point.
Israel, a sovereign nation under international law, cannot constantly be under threat of pogroms and annihilation by the Islamofascist terrorists which surround it. No other sovereign nation has to justify its existence in perpetuity. The terrorists must be eradicated to prevent further savagery. Everything else has been tried to placate the Muslims in the surrounding areas: financial assistance by governments around the world, diplomacy including the offer of statehood in the so-called two state solution, economic development and educational programs,etc. They are implacable, because at the bottom of it, they hate Jews and they want them gone. They want to kill all of them. They keep showing us this behavior. When are we going to believe them? In point of fact, all the aid, assistance and “solidarity” have made problem much worse and have led to the current debacle. Solidarity with groups that want to kill you is just fucking stupid. So Muslim terrorists blow up Europe, they blow up the United States, they blow up India, they blow up Muslim nations, and we send them money and amplify their bullshit propaganda and embolden them. They want to kill Christians just as badly.
This is not a joke. They say so in Arabic and Farsi on television, in publications. You don’t get those translations here because it doesn’t fit the Western critical theory intersectional bullshit egregiously stupid and destructive narrative of every culture is good except of course Western culture and now especially Jewish culture.
The bullies kill their own people all the time. They do it in Syria and Yemen and Iran and Afghanistan and Sudan and Lebanon, Iraq, you name it. They slaughter gays and women and any Muslim who stands in their way. They use women and children as human shields. They fight from under hospitals and inside schools. Hamas doesn’t care about Gazans. They shoot them if they try to escape to safety. They care about nothing but martyring innocents while the leadership sits in Qatar counting their money and making speeches. None of the SJWs make a peep about those atrocities and war crimes. It’s only when Jews defend themselves that the Commie agitators ( all paid and organized by the Democrat fundraising machine btw) get out in the street. So: STFU you phony hypocrite antisemitic cretins.
Israel must eradicate Hamas, Hezbollah, and Irans regime. The world should help them. This isn’t an isolated battle. How many times do we need to see this movie? If the Muslim world wants to be integrated into world civilization then they have to be civilized, not try to murder and dominate everybody who is not on their team. That means showing strength and resolve. And wiping out the death cult terrorists. Israel has to do it today. It’s a question of survival. You can see how things are going in the demoralized West. How long until we have the same situation here? We already do I believe. We certainly are inviting it with the moronic immigration and foreign policy moves we make.There are many tribes and nations that have disappeared. They were wiped out and dismantled by violent means more often than not. Violence is never the answer, except when it is. Civilization must triumph over homicidal maniacs and brutal savagery, even if the disgusting bigots at Harvard, Berkeley and other indoctrination camps don’t like it. It has to be done. The more you appease a bully, the worse it gets. Every time.
"Israel must eradicate Hamas, Hezbollah, and Irans regime."
That's a TALL order.
Yeah. I know. But the problem is this group of nuts has demonstrated that they are not content to coexist with Israel or the Sunni states without being the hegemon.
When they get nukes it’s only a matter of time I fear before we have a nuclear disaster. Other nations are going to have to help.
It’s 965 miles from Tel Aviv to Tehran – about 10 minutes by medium-range ballistic missile. 10 min, and the terrorist funding stops forever.
"No other sovereign nation has to justify its existence in perpetuity."
If you look at what the campus liberals are doing in Canada and Australia and such with their "aboriginal land acknowledgments" and so forth, they are trying to impose on the rest of the West the illegitimacy they've been pushing on Israel for generations.
Rhodesia and South Africa were the canaries in the coal mine. Israel is a wailing fire alarm. If we don't stand up for ourselves we are all doomed, not just the Jews.
They are even doing this in the Mother Country too, believe it or not. They have started the notion that Britain is "a nation of immigrants." The genetic record could not be clearer. It has been genetically stable for millennia. Even the Anglo-Saxons were a culturally dominant force only, not millions of soldiers. Same for the Romans. Even the Vikings added very little genetic material.
Our cultural enemies have absolutely no principles. Their one great strength is this blind need to win at all costs to bring about their vision. No cow is too sacred that it cannot be slaughtered to achieve their aims. It is precisely this single-mindedness we lack.
Same playbook, same ideology.
Amen!
I love this and you've convinced me, thank you for the great examples, they pulled me over to where I had been leaning.
I think you are correct. In any case, what are the Israelis to do. Agree to a ceasefire? How long until the next attack by Hamas? How many more murders and rapes? This continues until the survivors in Gaza think, “we must surrender unconditionally or they will kill us all.”
There's also our Civil War, after which Southerners apparently were more eager than Northerners or Westerners to enlist in the armed forces of the country that had just defeated them and their parents.
The Civil War has the counterexample of "redemption," and the compelled ending of Reconstruction. It's a tough example to apply.
https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/event-details.htm?id=EB616570-AA88-4C91-AE92A10CC9945479
And yet...and yet...the Confederate Flag continues to terrify modern-day yutes, despite the War of Northern Aggression having been won by the aggressors. That would be all them Yankee forebears. I think they too must take on moral guilt, them yutes. Sins of the fathers.
I've often wondered about that, and I'm looking at it from across the pond.
What is the reason for this? Even here in Britain the confederate flag is seen as a symbol of hate, which is obviously absurd.
Is this just conditioning at work? Those who hate the confederate flag also dislike statues of Robert E Lee. But I suspect they also hate statues of Churchill and Queen Victoria too.
As a Yankee who now lives in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee, I believe there is a mismatch of the intent of those who display the CSA flag and the liberals who observe it. There are 3 principal reasons why the flag is still displayed: (1) Generational anger at the Carthaginian-level of destruction brought by Grant and Sherman to the civilian population of the South; (2) As a middle finger to pearl-clutching liberals who expand Federal intrusion at every opportunity; and (3) as a “rose-colored glasses” remembrance of a bygone era.
My favorite experience on the subject was seeing the Stars & Bars plate on the front of a Prius. Talk about cognitive dissonance…
I think deep down the reason progs hate the confederate flag, whether they realize it or not, is that it reminds them that there is another option besides compliance if they push too hard for their technocratic utopia.
That and they generally hate history because its remembrance gets in the way of their desire to remake reality and human nature in their own image.
You cannot produce a homogeneous cosmopolitan utopia when people insist on retaining their distinct culture, traditions, backgrounds, and everything else that makes them different from other groups.
Maybe this is reading too much into it, but it tracks. And I don't think the visceral animalistic terror and rage that the confederate flag provokes in yank progs can be explained by a simple abstract difference in interpretation.
Next you will tell us they had BLM and LBGTQ+ bumper stickers!
Absolutely! 🤣
They have been taught this symbolism, of course. It's actually a flag that reflects pride of the South, having absolutely nothing to do with racism or slavery or any of that.
Since subtlety of thought and blurring of lines is not a part of modern education, almost no one knows that Lee didn't support the war, but he did support the South.
Yes it is conditioning and ignorance at work.
In 2005, the Army was a hot mess in personnel readiness. Our MI Battalion left Fort Lewis, Washington to 'train' at Ft Sill, OK (home of artillery) because that makes total sense for intelligence training. We, seriously, only had access to one SIPR (classified) computer for an entire MI Bn. Sent hundreds of people TDY from Ft Sill to get trained.
I was the S3 for an MI Bn at BAF from 06/07. We were an Army National Guard MI Bn filled with an active duty company, an ARNG BCT MICO, Navy & AF SIGINTers. (Who we made into dismounted low-level voice intercept teams--basically carry 80lbs of batteries before your clothes, food, weapons etc...and we had all of about 3 weeks to ensure these guys were 'greened' enough they don't get killed first step outside of wire...) Our Frankenstein battalion replaced the Division MI Bn that was lost in the transition from a Division Army to a BCT Army.
The entire training calendar from 1st Army was criminally negligent. Shit. Show. I should have known then what took 17 years later to understand.
Sadly, we have failed to promote the true men of character to Flag Officers. Our Flag Officers do not know how to win, they only know how to continue the war and to ensure Joe doesn't embarrass the USA on 'his watch'.
The Army does not make Warriors, it makes bureaucrats.
While overseas, much email was sent among the field grade & company grade officers about 'Islam is incongruent with freedom...' nonsense.
I always answered those emails with, "IDK...Ishmael/Issac don't seem to be as far apart culturally as our emperor is a God like WWII Japan. The problem is not Islam, the problem is we are unwilling to kill one million military aged men. "
We had lost a Soldier around the same time I watched the movie Osama (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368913/) and read The Bookseller of Kabul (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9838.The_Bookseller_of_Kabul).
I'd read enough reports about beheaded female school teachers, seen literal piles of poop in showers instead of using the toilets, and at the time looked at Afghanistan like a 7th Century Dark Side of the Moon population. My revulsion and disgust peaked that summer day when we executed the TOC Battle Drills of Troops in Contact (TIC) culminating in executing the Battle Drill for casualty notification.
I was filled with hate at that moment--it was pretty intense for about two weeks before I could think again--but I did have a cogent thought during this time. To 'win' this fight, we'd need about 350K-500K Soldiers for 20 years--long enough to educate two generations of little girls, and to kill at least 1 million military aged men. If they still held a grudge for a goat that was stolen 500 years ago, bullet to the head.
The country needed to be defeated. Tamed. Blasted into the 21st Century.
I am not necessarily proud of those conclusions, but I was thinking about how beautiful Tokyo and Stuttgart were at the time.
All that being said--the entire world is sitting on the same bed of kindling. All of our lackluster, morally compromised, lying, immature, narcissistic leaders have lit their own wooden matches and are all threatening others that they will toss the match at them...
The entire West is going to have to come to grips with millions of Muslims & Leftists creating havoc in our own cities when Israel does what it looks like it plans to do.
Does anyone in the current administration have the guts to deport millions? Put them in camps? After the dirty-bomb is set off in NYC?
None of this helps me sleep...
bsn
You ask a very good question. The difference is that the fight of the Arabs against the Jews (that phrasing is intentional) isn’t merely war like the US vs Japan or a Germany. This is a visceral, perpetual, insatiable hatred. I could quote Bible verses about Ishmael. Or I could try to describe how Israeli Arabs leered at me as a young woman walking the streets of Jerusalem twenty years ago. The wars of 1948, 1967, 1973 were decisive blows but the Arabs regrouped and came back for more. They won’t stop until there are no Jews in the Middle East. And I’m starting to wonder if they might come after “the Sunday people” next.
Leaving the religious aspect out of this, I’d think the chaos and conflict of Iraq or Syria are better comparisons. Knowledge of the region and the Sunni/Shia conflict would also be applicable here and I am not the person to speak about that.
My one immediate thought is that the presence of "visceral, perpetual, insatiable hatred" also negates the claim about this war teaching the next generation to hate, and therefore to become the next Hamas terrorists, because it wouldn't need to be inculcated.
Yes, the Israeli’s don’t need to teach the next generation to hate, because their own parents are already teaching that. I’m sure you’ve seen the Palestinian “summer camps” in which five year olds carry rifles and learn to be “martyrs”. It is a culture that glorifies death. How do you undo that?
You cannot undo it, you can only match it in some form. Not by brainwashing your own kids of course, but by being realistic.
If your enemy's goal is your eradication, and not some peace settlement, that is the basis for your response, not wishful thinking.
“How do you undo that?” Attrition.
https://www.thefp.com/p/i-watched-hamas-unleash-hell
“Some audio plays and a translation of the Arabic pops up on the screen as a Hamas terrorist calls his father: ‘Father, I killed 10 Jews! Check your WhatsApp! I sent you the photos! Father, I killed 10 Jews! I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands. Check your WhatsApp. Father, be proud of me!’”
Nice effort to garner the trust of Christians by calling them the Sunday people?! Ridiculous. Why are Christians in the region taking the side of Palestinians? It’s the grand delusion.
If only Christians were actually more aware of what’s in their books…
I didn’t invent “the Sunday people”, it’s a phrase the Arabs have been using for a long time. I don’t have a great source for you but this article from 2015 discusses their saying, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”: https://www.wnd.com/2015/02/first-the-saturday-people-then-the-sunday-people/
You’re missing or avoiding the point
And what point is that?
I would also like to know?
Aren't Christians 10% of the Palestinian population?
Violence is never the answer unless it is the only answer.
Binary decisions are usually tough, but easy.
This one is easy; it's the only answer.
And I'm as close to a pacifist as you'll get, so it troubles me to say that.
Nonetheless it is "right" and necessary.
Sad to say I agree. I earnestly want all peoples to live together in peace. But Hamas has proven, over and over, to be a constant source of hate and violence. To create real change Israel must completely exterminate Hamas, and most of the infrastructure of Gaza. Then the people of Gaza will have nothing to go back to. Their paradigm must be 100% changed so they can change. Then they can only go forward. Ideally absorbed into Egypt and Jordan but realistically still in Gaza. Impose a caretaker gov't that builds what the people need, housing, factories for jobs, etc. There will be destruction of that infrastructure by zealots but as long as it is seen as hurting the common people it will eventually succeed.
Prolly cost less than US support to Ukraine.
Are you then ok w total extermination of the Gazan population? If that's what it takes?
No. In any sizeable population there will be the guilty and the innocent. $100 says in Gaza the guilty are a greater percentage of the population than most any other place, but there are the gramps and grannies and kids and the smart and the dumb who both do not believe the propaganda of Hamas and just want to get along. And the sizeable percentage that will find their minds cleared of the propaganda once all of that is in ruins. The challenge is helping those innocents escape when they are held as human shields, and their neighboring Arab countries do not want them.
I'm hoping the Israeli ground forces move slowly and predictably so the population can be herded around to calm areas, never with backs to the wall or the sea. Then like a school of fish they can mostly survive.
As you can see I am an incurable optimist. :)
Unconditional surrender and the Marshall plan. We trusted our instincts more back then. Bombs and apologies don't work. I really think this insight of yours is worth holding onto!
Of course you’re right, Chris. But the real problem is that large swaths of our culture understand neither history nor human nature. Nor do they want to.
They must be pummeled enough so they feel helpless. Enough so this won't happen again for at least 20 years.
That won’t happen. You’re obviously unaware of the history and culture.
It'll increase the intervals between episodes.
Just being pragmatic
It will save lives.
Your thesis that a total defeat of Hamas is better than a negotiated or partial defeat is borne out by history. You point out WW2, which was the complete and abject destruction of the facists. A more recent example is the obliteration of ISIS by ourselves and Iraqi and Kurdish allies. It was brutal and bloody, with around 30k combat deaths among our Muslim allies and tens of thousands of civilians. But ISIS lost scores of thousands of combat deaths, plus a large number of the "civilians" were ISIS supporters, Find drone footage of Irbil and Mosel, plus any of the lesser cities of Iraq and Syria, and the devastation makes Gaza City a mere pinprick. But that was what it took to tear these deadenders out, root and branch.
Douglas MacArthur, one of our greatest generals, said that there was no substitute for victory. The Israelis must completely massacre Hamas, then track the survivors down and kill them, anywhere on earth, just like they did to the Munich murderers and just like the Iraqis and Kurds did to the remnants of ISIS. You notice there are no stories about ISIS attacks anywhere for the past 3 years or so. They're all dead. Unless this happens, the Gazans will remain a death cult and the violence will continue.
Danny Huckabee
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