War, Uh, What is it Good For?

Take a Cold Hard Look

There were horror stories during the Vietnam war. But if you step back and think about the audience for the Vietnam war they were but a mere twenty years removed from “The Big One”, World War II, and so many had seen far worse up close and personal. The napalm wiping out forests and small villages in an instant didn’t shock the generation that witnessed “the bomb”, or bombs that dropped on Japan. Or who had gone through the extreme horrors of war in Europe and the Pacific.

It may sound callous but indignities and the devastations can only be witnessed through a lens of experience, and the generation sitting in the easy chair after work, listening to Walter Cronkite speak of body counts and jungle scenes played out in the background, they’d both seen and experienced worse in their own young lives. Even those that stayed back home, and didn’t experience the war up close and personal had seen the movie reels, and were keenly aware of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and had born second hand witness to all the events of the Second World War.

We have had a relatively benign run since Vietnam ended, somehow the media managed to soften the images coming out of Iraq until they appeared to be a video game, which bore little resemblance to the truth. And though we were mired in Afghanistan for over twenty years the war didn’t play out on the nightly news, we saw only skirmishes, fire fights, here, and there. The devastation was more than once removed, or even twice removed.

Sure Beirut was a bombed out mess, and at times Lebanon and other Middle East cities appeared to have suffered damage and devastation equal to anything seen in World War Two. But we as a nation were only tangentially involved in those conflicts. Few here in the states could even say what conflict was in play, who was involved, and how Beirut had been reduced to rubble. Hezbollah, Isis, Houtis, Kurds, Hamas, all this sounded tribal, old world, and though Americans died in large numbers under one attack there all was quickly forgotten. A Reagan foible and footnote to his Presidency. With over four hundred American dead. Why were they there, the average American couldn’t say. What was the mission? Once again, Americans had no idea. Something to do with Middle East peace.

Which brings me to the point of today’s column, Gaza.

The destruction we are witnessing in Gaza appears other-worldly, as if such devastation belongs back in a time of newsreels, and black-and-white TV. The devastation is complete, as if Gaza has become a modern version of Dresden, bombed into a complete and utter submission.

A few generations far removed from the horrors of World War Two and Vietnam see this and absent any and all experience with such Hell on earth are shocked. They have no lived experience with such inhumanity visited upon a neighboring people. We have at least three generation who have come of age who have no idea what the My Lai Massacre is, or was. They weren’t part of that nightly debate.

Now listen up and listen very clearly, because this is all a very touchy subject, and clarification and pure understanding is a full requirement in any such discussion.

I am well aware of the horrors of October 7. I am well aware of the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. I am aware of the cries from one side of “from the river to the sea”, and I am also well aware of West Bank Settlements being built unabated. There is no innocence here.

Let me repeat that, because one side clearly claims to be innocent.

There is no innocence here.

There is only rage, hate, and destruction.

A level of destruction, and devastation is being visited upon Gaza the likes of which have not been seen since World War Two.

And people with some sense of humanity see a brutality that horrifies them.

No matter which side you support, and my “Right” side reflexively supports Israel at every turn without question, no matter which side you fall on I’d ask you to just listen to some sensible comments and respond over time. Because it will take time to sort out what happens after.

After this destruction.

After the hostage situation resolves.

After the conflict is ended.

After Israel has finished leveling Gaza into unrecognizable rubble.

I ask very real and sensible questions.

Will Gaza, and the Palestinian people be allowed to go back to October 6 borders. Will they be able to enlist foreign aid and rebuild. Will they be allowed to colonize what used to be “Gaza” prior to October 7, will they be allowed to return to their “homes”, or what used to be their homes, and rebuild.

To have suffered, perhaps learned a lesson about the consequences of attacking an enemy as they did on Oct 7, and to understand that possibly a more peaceful means of co-existence is required for survival.

Or, as I truly suspect, will the borders be re-drawn. Will the occupation take a different turn. Will Israel exact a price of land for the transgressions of Oct 7, and will Gaza be reduced by half, or even two-thirds, with new settlements taking over what used to be Gaza, what used to be Palestinian land. In the same way settlements grow on the West Bank today on land acquired in the 1967 War. With Palestinian homes bulldozed, and Israeli citizens living in high rises on the West Bank, expanding greater Israel beyond the 1967 borders.

If that happens then one must question the severity of the response to Oct 7. And wonder if the aim wasn’t to punish a people for an attack, but to seize the land and remove that people from their rightful land, remove them from mere existence. A planned response to ensure that the West Bank settlement growth can continue on in what used to be Gaza, now not only “occupied”, but occupied.

The world has not seen a destruction of a town, and villages, cities, on this scale since World War Two. And many, I’d say at least three generations removed from the horrors of Vietnam, thought this level of human on human destruction was no longer possible. As if we had “advanced” as a species past such awful conflict. As if visiting such devastation on another people was archaic, inhuman, and we are now a more thoughtful and intelligent species capable of negotiating our way through conflict to avoid all such destruction.

Look, I know this is a touchy subject, and I break fully from all my “Right side” brethren on this topic.

I sympathize with the protesters. They are part of a generation that thought such utter inhumanity was lost to history, from another era, incapable of replication in today’s modern age.

I’m sorry to disappoint my Right leaning readers. All these Christians that reflexively support “our greatest ally Israel”. The Mike Pence type. The Tom Cottons. Especially the Lindsey Grahams.

I saw the horrors of Oct 7. Of course I did. I was aghast at both the heinous acts, and the failure of the Mossad. A country with an “Iron Dome” that can destroy 300 missiles before they even land, and who can escape 300 missiles fired at them absent even the loss of one life is one you don’t expect to be vulnerable to hang gliders coming over a wall. But come over the wall they did, and it was a day of atrocity. I wouldn’t have blamed Israel for exacting some revenge on those responsible, so as to prevent another future similar event.

We have given the Israeli’s weapons they can use surgically. They have demonstrated they know how to use such surgical weapons, in attacks on Iran and centrifuges, electric plants, and computer grids.

But looking at what has followed the response seems even more than a bit heavy handed. It is reported that 1,139 Israelis have died from Oct 7 on. With 34,178 Palestinian deaths, and over 78,000 Palestinian wounded.

34-1 ratio. 110-1 ratio dead and wounded.

Does that sound like a commensurate response rate to you? Are you comfortable with that?

And it isn’t done yet. Today as I type this the Israelis are shelling and entering Rafah, so the Palestinian death toll will rise much higher, an even larger ratio.

You can sit comfortably having your coffee and this column can have your ire up, and you can say “they deserve everything they get for attacking on Oct 7.”

I get it. I understand. I comprehend a visceral reaction. Neanderthal as it is, I get it.

But in those previously mentioned numbers are children, and in big numbers.

And it is all US supplied weapons and weaponry that has led to each and every death. So to some extent we are complicit.

Are you comfortable with that? Is that all right with you? America itself has definitely picked a side.

Now look, I have no blood in this at all, though my oldest sister now deceased, used to claim in an Ancestry study we have some Ashkenazi bloodlines. If we do I’ve lived no ethnic experience of that in sixty-six years. Somehow that culture was erased from the family generations before I came alive.

But as I say, I have no connection to this conflict. None. I am neither Israeli or Palestinian. But I am a humanitarian. And I agree with the students, the protesters, we are too advanced as a people, as modern society, to witness the destruction in those two videos above. That level of destruction is criminal. There are no two ways about it. The response is not commensurate. It is far too heavy-handed. Thirty-four to one. That is a slaughter, not a reasonable response.

You can’t talk to the Right about this. They are of a shut mindset. That it is the Left in a campus uprising makes them all the more reflexive in their nature.

Time is going to tell the tale of whether I am right, or I am wrong. And when that time comes I will write about it. I will take full responsibility of having been wrong.

If over time Gaza as it was on Oct 6 is rebuilt, and the Palestinian people now chaste, having learned a hard lesson, are allowed to grow and flourish once again within time honored borders known as “Gaza” on Oct 6, I will write that I was wrong about intentions in this conflict.

But if the Gaza borders are re-drawn, if Gaza as it was known on Oct 6 is never allowed to exist again, then I will ascribe sinister motives to this entire conflict.

Borders were drawn in 1948. We need a return to them. Even in territory claimed in the 1967 war. Those settlements being built are illegal. I don’t want to hear about “safety”, and the danger of the “Golan Heights” hovering over Israel proper.

The Palestinians as a people are incapable of fostering an all-out war with Israel absent devastating consequences. We are witnessing that now. We need a two-state solution that provides them their own land, not with an “occupation” but with the freedom to flourish as their own peoples.

A country capable of shooting down 300 incoming missiles with an Iron Dome is quite capable of dealing with a bordering neighbor that loathes them. Not a live was lost when 300 missiles were “incoming”. What does that tell you? It is very instructive, it should speak volumes to you. If it does not, you have a closed mind.

I don’t want a hand in the destruction of a people. I don’t want to be even tangentially connected to such destruction. At heart I am a pacifist, an isolationist. I want to cause no trouble in the world but to react to threats accordingly. To speak softly but carry a big stick.

Whether you want to realize you did this or not, you participated. Yes you, you on the Right, you cheered aid to Israel, you backed weapons sales, shipments. It is US produced weaponry visiting a Hell on earth to the Palestinian people.

Seeing those photos I say “enough”. I say “Never again”. I am no war criminal. And I do not want my government or fellow citizens making me complicit.

If that makes me anti-semitic go ahead and place your ugly labels. I know what is in my heart. I support the establishment and home for the Jewish people in the Mid-East. I’ll pray for their health and prosperity.

But I will do the same for their neighbors as well.

If you choose to label me with ugly lies that is in your heart. That is what lies inside you. Not me.

Take your reflexive response somewhere else.

I want to side with humanitarians. People who see a 34/1 ratio and say “that cannot stand”, “that is unjust”.

Time will tell. Soon the smoke will clear, the fighting will stop, and borders will be drawn.

We will know then. We will know then.

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