Armageddon Strategy

[DaveT]

Just as it was impossible to say anything good about Saddam Hussein, it is equally impossible to say anything good about Hezbollah. So what?

Since when do we measure ourselves by the moral standards of terrorists?


The "argument" that Israel is "defending itself" by bombing Beirut is an insult to the world's intelligence. It is on a par with -- and integrally related to -- "We are fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here."

It is a cynical lie. It is illogical on its face. Israel's loyal friends should hide their heads in shame for repeating this ludicrous line of crap.

It is also a lie wrapped within a much larger lie. Not only is Israel bombing Beirut for reasons other than just "defending itself" from Hezbollah -- the alleged strategic rationale of trying to induce Lebanon to exercise its sovereignty and disarm Hezbollah is a crock of crap as well.

Israel knows better than anybody that destroying the infrastructure of Lebanon while collateral damage claims hundreds of fatalities will never induce the Lebanese polity to co-operate with Israel against Hezbollah. Nobody on earth is that stupid. Not even the American neoconservatives who so laughably claimed that the Yankee invaders of Iraq would be welcomed as liberators are that divorced from reality.

No, Israel sees the chaos of sectarian civil war in Iraq, and hopes to replicate it throughout the middle east. Instead of stable governments in Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and the rest of the middle east -- Israel wants regional chaos, pitting Arab against Persian, Sunni against Shiite, secular against religious, authoritarian against democratic.

General Shinshecki knew -- as did almost the entire world -- that America invading Iraq with less than 400,000 troops would lead to chaos. The various cover stories for that war (WMD, spreading democracy, payback for attempting to assassinate Poppy) were all ludicrous on their face. To this day, most American leftists just think that Bush is an idiot and his advisers are lunatics (which are both defensible notions, by the way), but refuse to give them enough credit to suspect that they might really have a coherent strategy that provides perpetual war profits for their sponsors and a long term ambition to re-colonize the entire region.

Israel is launching Phase II of this grand Armageddon Strategy.

Chaos reigns in Iraq; and it is about to reign again in Lebanon. The propaganda has already started "linking" these two separate provinces of Hell to the terrorist regimes in Syria and Iran.

Once some kind of war can be hoked up with those two countries, we will see American and Israeli bases on the soil of each of those countries while local government by irregular militia provides what little civic life as will exist.

After a decade or so of this perpetual chaos, somehow a well behaved polity will emerge across the region -- the swamp will have been drained in the cutesy metaphor of the American neocons.



If I were an Israeli, looking back at 58 years of war, I might be ready for this Armageddon Strategy. Piecemeal wars and perpetually faltering peace negotiations have done nothing to make Israel a secure and normal country. It seems to be eternally under siege.

I honestly don't know how I would feel if I had to live with suicide bombers and night riding rocketeers.



But a truthful rendition of the Armageddon Strategy won't play in Peoria. So the propaganda gets catapulted -- WMD, democracy, self-defense, collective punishment -- all of it morally questionable, but all of it bogus.


As an American, I might even support a frank declaration of war against all the backward cultures of the world -- if I thought we could win it.

But we can't.

And neither can Israel.

Which is why these bogus rationales are so despicable. They are all based on the assumption that the American and Israeli military can remake the civilization of half a billion or so human beings -- and the further assumption that the poor dumb masses at home won't support World War III if it looks like we started it.

The fantasy of infinite power is the most dangerous delusion on earth.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. We're fighting them over there cuz.....

they wouldn't come over here. (The Iraqis)

[Kailassa]

2. As an American, you might even support

a frank declaration of war against all the backward cultures of the world -- if I thought we could win it. ???

Am I hearing you aright?

To many cultures in this word, America is a backward and uneducated society, poor morally and now poor financially as well. Beware of the justifications you may give so freely.

[DaveT]

3. Thanks for responding

And yes, it does seem like a morally repugnent idea that I expressed.

But, I really don't think it is -- because the "if" clause is so off-the-charts impossible.

Only in the realm of science fiction and raving lunatic fantasy would it be possible to unify the world into a single, humane, democratic and libertarian social order by conquering the world. In this impossible dreamscape, if we could really put an end to the culturally constructed divisions between people with a single military campaign, yes, I would consider buying into it.

It is an old and foolish dream that should be far more discredited than it is -- Woodrow Wilson led the USA into a war to end war; the Internationale sang of a revolution that would unite the human race; the End Timers pine for the real Armageddon as fortold by the prophets.

All fraudulent madness.



I really do believe, along with a wide variety of scholars and mystics (including Marshal McLuhan), that the world will evolve to a single global culture -- and that Bush and the idiots in charge of both the USA and Israel are actually retarding this process. Atavistic characters like Bush, Sharon/Olmert, Bin Laden, and the Iranians Ayatollahs are all united in their mutual fear of peaceful evolution. Such people will cause tremendous suffering in a series of insane wars -- wouldn't it be nice to get all of that misery over with in a single war?




You are so right that other people consider the USA backward. I'm one of those other people.

I invoked that ludicrous dream only to show that I can understand the emotions of all these crazy people trying to use war to vindicate their presumed cultural superiority. They consider themselves idealists.

But, in the cold, hard light of day, "we" cannot win the battle of Armageddon. So we are best advised to try to avoid it.

[Just Me]

4. PNAC - AIPAC = same strategy.

They are delusional,...the world is living in an illusion,...and, meanwhile, humanity is lost and insecure and without peace. Those SOBs really do NOT give a damn. They don't! Accept it. It's true.

The world is at war. WRONG! Human beings are at war,...with themselves, within themselves, outside themselves.

Pity how human potential is being wasted by a disease/illusion it creates. The world will survive in spite of it,...and would be far better off.