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Objective: Zero

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Can You See Three Ayatollahs in This Picture?

Oh oh, there I go again! I said I wouldn’t write about politics, and a few hundred bombs and a thousand casualties later later I got so upset that I couldn’t help myself.

I have just finished reading a book about the Second Punic War, in which a Carthaginian force under the generalship of the brilliant Hannibal Barca, invaded Italy and for seventeen years fought the Roman Republic. In his book Hannibal’s War, British Military Historian John Peddie writes:

Wars, historically, wear many different complexions: they may be ideological or defensive, punitive or vengeful. They may be fought for economic or social causes or for reasons of aggrandisement. But however they may rise, of one thing we may be certain: they cannot be successfully fought without a clear-cut, grand objective [italics mine], within which will lie other, minor, objectives, each one a stepping stone, culminating, hopefully, in victory.

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States seems to have lost sight of this simple fact. What was our objective in Korea? Vietnam? Nicaragua? Iraq? Afghanistan? In every case, we just decided it was just eating up too much in time and resources and just declared a victory. But in every case, was it a victory?

The same is the case with Benjamin Netanyahu’s block by block destruction of Gaza. What has he accomplished to date? Oh, and yes, he is with Trump in invading Iran. And how will that end?

I can just see gas prices rising so quickly that Trump will have to declare a victory prematurely. Wars used to be pretty popular, until we started losing all of them.

Infamy as a Way of Life

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Israel’s Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu

Israel has a right to exist. The Palestinians have a right to exist—though no one but a few die-hard Arabs say that Palestine as a nation has a right to exist. I am not sure now that Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud Party, however, have a right to exist.

The path taken by Netanyahu’s Israel is a dangerous one. You could be hyper-aggressive and murderous to the maximum extent, but only insofar as the people are backing your every play. Eventually, you could cross a line where not only the world at large but your own people are tired of infamy as a way of life. What happens then? Can you continue to do the same sort of thing and continue to get away with it? Probably not.

Crusader States

The Arabs see Israel as just another “crusader state.” After the wildly successful First Crusade (1096-1099), much of the Holy Land was divided into a series of feudal states run by the Crusaders. These included the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Edessa. Some of them lasted a surprisingly long time. And they might still be around today if the Arabs were not united under a powerful new leader like Saladin (from Kurdistan of all places), and the Crusaders became ever more disunited and fragmented over the next couple hundred years.

Who is to say that Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinians and other Arabs will not result in a unified alliance to wipe it off the map? What will our attitude be in such a case? Will we have to send in our army to protect Israel’s right to exist? That would be good for another five hundred years of hatred in the Middle East.

I think the Western World had to keep a tight leash on Israel and do everything it can to stymie the right wing politicians who have been in the ascendant there since the days of Menachem Begin. (At the same, our own right wing will continue to support Israeli aggression and confuse the issue.)