Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If…
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.
Re: The problem with just taking out Hamas leadership is the decades of infrastructure built for war and terrorism sitting in Gaza, mostly underground
So what? That's just the real world-- no one is going to found the shangri-la. We took down Al Qaida and killed bin Laden but there are still Islamist radicals lusting for our blood too. If you seek a world with no enemies you're only option is genocide, and that will bring down not merely the opprobrium of the world, but the wrath of Heaven too. For all my life and then some we have lived with weapons of such lethal power trained on us that their wholesale use would render trivial every calamity of history added together. Put away millennialist dreams of a Peaceable Kingdom and learn to live with risk and danger, lest in seeking utopia you bring about the very things you fear worst, like some hero in Greek tragedy.
ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ - Nothing in Excess.
If al-Qaeda had 500 miles of tunnels running through the DC suburbs filled with weapons and command centers, and then they attacked the city and did what they did in Israel on Oct 7, you'd best believe we'd be taking military action and not stopping until the tunnels were destroyed and every terrorist hiding within caught or killed.
The Israelis have learned to live with risk and danger in a much more real way than you or I and with pretty reasonable balance considering there have been multiple attempts to wipe them off the map - not abstractly, like idiot college students talk, but in real life. They thought they were managing the risk by forming partnerships with what seemed like "moderates" in Hamas and starting to loosen the Gaza restrictions a bit. They were repaid with Oct 7. I don't think very many Israelis think that Hamas in Gaza is a risk that can be managed any longer.
We're not talking about milennialist dreams, we're talking about how to survive on a tiny slice of the Middle East. The dream was that the Palestinians would ever accept a state that didn't involve wiping away the Jews. That dream is now dead.