The lure of madness

[Behind the Aegis]

Had an international board of experts convened to invent that action that exemplifies the quintessence of a national march of folly, it is doubtful that it would have achieved the perfection of the launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip into pre-1967 Israel. Even in comparison with past records for silliness, self-defeating behavior and missed opportunities, this is without a doubt a new Palestinian record.

It is doubtful that even the launchers of the rockets could state the purpose, or explain the usefulness, of attacks from within the very territory that Israel evacuated to the last meter: What are they trying to prove by this? That the Palestinians are incapable of behaving, and are not even trying to behave, like a normal state entity? That the "resistance" has become an end in itself, and will not stop at the Green Line (pre-1967 borders), or even at the Partition Plan borders? Or perhaps - which is worse - there is not even any plan, but rather a kind of demented nihilism that has become a self-definition?

It is a nightmare in its own right to fight an enemy whose logic, or even the method in his madness, you are already sick and tired of trying to understand. But it is a doubled and redoubled nightmare when we also have to deal with demons of our own, who are no less loony. Especially the sort who tempt us again and again to respond to their irrationality with illogic of our own and to get swept up together in the joys of reciprocal lunacy and self-defeating behavior, which has already been going on for generations.

And indeed, the mutual deterrence system of Israelis and Palestinians is reminiscent of the joke about the lunatic who threatened to jump off the roof and was persuaded to climb down only after another lunatic threatened to cut down the building with a razor, "because that nut is capable of doing that."


more...

[barb162]

1. masochistic personality disorder

"demented nihilism"
"past records for silliness, self-defeating behavior and missed opportunities"
"self-defeating behavior"

[Lithos]

2. 18 April, 1942 - Doolittle bombs Japan

The Doolittle Raid demonstrated that the Japanese home islands were vulnerable to Allied air attack, and also provided an expedient outlet for U.S. retaliation for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

--snip--

Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians. But the Chinese paid dearly for sheltering the Americans. The Japanese military slaughtered an estimated 250,000 civilians while searching for Doolittle’s men. The crews of two planes (10 men total) were unaccounted for. On August 15, 1942, the United States learned from the Swiss Consulate General in Shanghai that eight of the missing crewmembers were prisoners of the Japanese at Police Headquarters in that city (two crewmen had died in the crash landing of their plane). On October 19, 1942, the Japanese announced that they had tried the eight men and sentenced them to death, but that a number of them had received commutation of their sentences to life imprisonment. No names or details were included in the broadcast. Japanese propaganda ridiculed the raid, calling it the "Do-nothing Raid", and boasted that several B-25's had been shot down. In fact, none had been lost to enemy action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid

More than a few similarities.

[bemildred]

3. Well, yeah, but calling the other guys nuts borders on universal, too.

Especially when you don't want to talk with them yet.