Thank you for this....it helps dull the horror I am feeling as Canada falls in line with American warhawks and abstains from voting for a cease fire.....because the resolution won't write in an amendment calling Hamas a 'terrorist organization'.
As if we in Canada know what a terrorist is......never having experienced dispossession ourselves.
Of course, we could ask our indigenous people to help us understand terrorism...but they've lived through it already and are too generous a people to point out to us why for White first worlders, the terrorist is always 'the other'.
You are right of course......there is no way to a lasting solution through war. But if my country stands by tongue tied and dumbfounded while a genocide is committed in Gaza....justified by calling the political leadership of that country terrorists.........I honestly fear I may give up all hope for my grandkids.
So again, thank you for writing so clearly............and for reminding us both of the horror of the Iraq War, and of that earlier atrocity, America's invasion of the Philippines. The American Empire is rarely a liberator of anything but other folks land and wealth......but let's not call them Terrorists.
Thank you for this; I search for words to help with the pain. I’m not Jewish, nor Palestinian, but my heart breaks for such great, great loss. I worry, too, that what lead to where things are now is a blueprint for where we will go in the days and years to come.
It is late afternoon in the mountain time zone. Our granddaughter is preparing to host some friends for a Halloween party. We are in the safety of Canada, and I don't expect the party to be disturbed by bombing. When I read of Palestinian parents writing the names of their children on the children in case they are killed my heart breaks. I weep for the children who have done nothing wrong except for being born Palestinian. I don't understand why the world allows genocide to happen.
This is an excellent history of the US folly in Iraq. It also provides a concise history of the area between 1948 and 2006. However, it is silent on the consequences of the ceasefires with Hamas in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, each of which Hamas used to rearm for subsequent horrors, most recently involving beheadings, rapes, and the mutilation and burning alive of parents, children and the elderly.
There is also no explanation how a negotiated ceasefire for peace can be accomplished with a terrorist dictatorship that has publicly avowed to never recognize Israel's right to exist.
I agree that a negotiated settlement would be far better than everlasting war. But the extremists in the Israeli government have scuttled Oslo. Everlasting war gives them opportunities to grab more land and enriches their buddies in the arms trade
I'm the product of a culture that teaches pacifism and considers war to be a sin. I dream of the day when the number of conscientious objectors exceeds the number of those willing to go to war. Of course, there little chance of that as long as our culture glorifies war.
Best thing done so far. I admit I skimmed the first half, as I agonized over the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, read my Andrew Bacevich and Andrew Cockburn, was well aware. But it's necessary for newcomers to the news to go back over it, and how it all is of a piece with the approach to Arabs in Israel.
One of the ignored side-effects of 9/11 was to let Israel have far more free reign over Gaza and the West Bank, partly because westerners were much less likely to have Arab sympathies, partly because Bush could hardly complain about behaviour that his own forces were inflicting on other Arabs.
And now, it's come to this. Inevitably. That's the unacceptable message that's being called "support for terror". It's not "support" to observe that something was inevitable, if people were made to suffer for long enough. And this piece is not supporting Hamas to note that the current Israeli strategy will end in shame and pain.
It's relatively easy to outline the downsides of counter-insurgency. But what are the risks of communicating 'you can do whatever you like to us, and there will be no real consequences'? You also adopt the faddish notion of Trump and others of 'forever wars'. For low to mid-intensity conflicts, a war of a few to even twenty years is hardly a 'forever' war. The enemies of democracy and modernity take a much longer-term perspective and this confers a considerable advantage over those in the West raised on video games and the internet with the attention spans of fruit flies. The blithe and faddish thinking in your article that all foreign interventions are doomed to failure was behind the disastrous unforced errors of both the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and its botched execution. The relative stability in Afghanistan with no U.S. casualties for 18 months was purchased at a meagre ongoing cost of a troop deployment of 2500 with air support. What was needed in those circumstances was a capacity for long-term thinking and the enduring loyalty of a true friend. The Afghans deserved better than to be sent back into the Dark Ages based on the fashionable salon room thinking as reflected in the sweeping and shallow assumptions of your article.
I was very impressed with your Oct 13 article "Can Terrorism be Resistance?". I understood the conclusion was pretty much a No. If the recent atrocities by Hamas result in a cease-fire and negociation, would you consider then that their terrorism "worked"? As an aside, I agree with you in this article and I also suspect regular Israelis do too, which is one of the reasons they despise Netanyahu.
You Can't Bomb Your Way To Safety
Thank you for this....it helps dull the horror I am feeling as Canada falls in line with American warhawks and abstains from voting for a cease fire.....because the resolution won't write in an amendment calling Hamas a 'terrorist organization'.
As if we in Canada know what a terrorist is......never having experienced dispossession ourselves.
Of course, we could ask our indigenous people to help us understand terrorism...but they've lived through it already and are too generous a people to point out to us why for White first worlders, the terrorist is always 'the other'.
You are right of course......there is no way to a lasting solution through war. But if my country stands by tongue tied and dumbfounded while a genocide is committed in Gaza....justified by calling the political leadership of that country terrorists.........I honestly fear I may give up all hope for my grandkids.
So again, thank you for writing so clearly............and for reminding us both of the horror of the Iraq War, and of that earlier atrocity, America's invasion of the Philippines. The American Empire is rarely a liberator of anything but other folks land and wealth......but let's not call them Terrorists.
That could be considered dangerous rhetoric!
Thank you for this; I search for words to help with the pain. I’m not Jewish, nor Palestinian, but my heart breaks for such great, great loss. I worry, too, that what lead to where things are now is a blueprint for where we will go in the days and years to come.
It is late afternoon in the mountain time zone. Our granddaughter is preparing to host some friends for a Halloween party. We are in the safety of Canada, and I don't expect the party to be disturbed by bombing. When I read of Palestinian parents writing the names of their children on the children in case they are killed my heart breaks. I weep for the children who have done nothing wrong except for being born Palestinian. I don't understand why the world allows genocide to happen.
This is an excellent history of the US folly in Iraq. It also provides a concise history of the area between 1948 and 2006. However, it is silent on the consequences of the ceasefires with Hamas in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, each of which Hamas used to rearm for subsequent horrors, most recently involving beheadings, rapes, and the mutilation and burning alive of parents, children and the elderly.
There is also no explanation how a negotiated ceasefire for peace can be accomplished with a terrorist dictatorship that has publicly avowed to never recognize Israel's right to exist.
Can there ever be peace until Palestinians acquiesce to a bunch of people in New York drawing lines on a map to disenfranchise them from their homes?
And thanks for Tom Waits...hadn’t heard that for a long time.
I agree that a negotiated settlement would be far better than everlasting war. But the extremists in the Israeli government have scuttled Oslo. Everlasting war gives them opportunities to grab more land and enriches their buddies in the arms trade
I'm the product of a culture that teaches pacifism and considers war to be a sin. I dream of the day when the number of conscientious objectors exceeds the number of those willing to go to war. Of course, there little chance of that as long as our culture glorifies war.
Best thing done so far. I admit I skimmed the first half, as I agonized over the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, read my Andrew Bacevich and Andrew Cockburn, was well aware. But it's necessary for newcomers to the news to go back over it, and how it all is of a piece with the approach to Arabs in Israel.
One of the ignored side-effects of 9/11 was to let Israel have far more free reign over Gaza and the West Bank, partly because westerners were much less likely to have Arab sympathies, partly because Bush could hardly complain about behaviour that his own forces were inflicting on other Arabs.
And now, it's come to this. Inevitably. That's the unacceptable message that's being called "support for terror". It's not "support" to observe that something was inevitable, if people were made to suffer for long enough. And this piece is not supporting Hamas to note that the current Israeli strategy will end in shame and pain.
It's relatively easy to outline the downsides of counter-insurgency. But what are the risks of communicating 'you can do whatever you like to us, and there will be no real consequences'? You also adopt the faddish notion of Trump and others of 'forever wars'. For low to mid-intensity conflicts, a war of a few to even twenty years is hardly a 'forever' war. The enemies of democracy and modernity take a much longer-term perspective and this confers a considerable advantage over those in the West raised on video games and the internet with the attention spans of fruit flies. The blithe and faddish thinking in your article that all foreign interventions are doomed to failure was behind the disastrous unforced errors of both the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and its botched execution. The relative stability in Afghanistan with no U.S. casualties for 18 months was purchased at a meagre ongoing cost of a troop deployment of 2500 with air support. What was needed in those circumstances was a capacity for long-term thinking and the enduring loyalty of a true friend. The Afghans deserved better than to be sent back into the Dark Ages based on the fashionable salon room thinking as reflected in the sweeping and shallow assumptions of your article.
I was very impressed with your Oct 13 article "Can Terrorism be Resistance?". I understood the conclusion was pretty much a No. If the recent atrocities by Hamas result in a cease-fire and negociation, would you consider then that their terrorism "worked"? As an aside, I agree with you in this article and I also suspect regular Israelis do too, which is one of the reasons they despise Netanyahu.