Winners

The interesting thing about following a war that your country isn't in is that for once you can see it, if not dispassionately, at least more objectively than one might if it's your country. Our involvement (what a euphemism!) in Iraq is so politically laden, and each American watches it through the prism of his own domestic politics. In the current war, especially for people like me who are neither Arab-American, Muslim, nor Jewish, one can take a step back. What do we see?

War sucks. War is bad. War is messy. War is death. No one can say how many Hezbollah fighters have died, the Israelis have lost something like less than 50, but civilians die by the hundreds. Civilians, civilians, I just keep hearing that word and seeing small feet poke out from dusty blankets, from a pile of blankets all alike.

All the things man has created, strong bridges and sleek buildings and gleaming airports, gone. A world made up of ideas and designs and construction and effort and pride reduced to meaningless rubble. And even if we find a way to stop the fighting, if the sun came out tomorrow, the mess left behind is worse than 10 Katrinas. The life's work of so many people, building homes and careers and families, torn apart and blown into the wind like dandelion seeds.

And as Israel moves farther into Lebanon, and the rockets keep hitting Israel, it seems somehow like the Israelis are "worse" (this is what we've been talking about in the past couple of posts) because they are causing more damage and death-- but today it dawned on me, this is just what it looks like when one side is winning. When one side in a war is more successful, it means they are doing more damage. Hitting critical routes, airports, buildings. Trapping people in their villages. And Israel is really winning on that score, although the rockets keep hitting Israel in record numbers so this may in fact be the old adage you've used a thousand times-- winning the battle but losing the war (or at least keeping it at a draw). The horror of war means that whoever is better, who is succeeding, who is riding a rocket trail of glory, they are in fact the Huns, the Mongols, the Spartans, the Thing To Be Feared, The Bad Dudes. And of course nice people like us don't like The Bad Dudes, so the tide of public opinion turns away from Israel.

I asked myself, "What is Israel supposed to do?" and I still don't have an answer that satisfies me, but I do have one word: win. (I mean, I don't want Hezbollah to win and "eliminate the Zionists from the earth", so I guess I do want Israel or at least the wider world to prevail.) They're supposed to win, and that's what they're doing. This is what winning looks like. We're not used to seeing this in the US because when we are winning, we don't show the damage we leave in our wake on our media. But take a good look kids, before you shout your jingoistic slogans and yell "Sic 'em" to our military and send them out to win. This is what it looks like.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

[Please go to my last real post, and see Caribou's comments.]


"In my opinion, both sides are equally wrong in this war."

I agree with your assessment of pretty much everyone being jerks in this conflict. I guess I'm pretty spoiled. I'm used to there being Good Guys (sometimes us) and Bad Guys (sadly, often us) and being able to root for someone (like the people caught in the middle, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Israel) or condemn someone (like us, for say, coming over to "help", destroying their country, and floundering around in our Big Mess, all for the benefit of Halliburton, as far as I can tell).

In this conflict, you're right, everyone's to blame. Maya Angelou said about 9/11, "Now is the time for thinkers to think," and I guess I fault Israel-- a modern, educated, democratic people with a history of vast loss of life in war-- for not being somehow above this, above the death and destruction and willing to find alternative solutions. I have no idea where I got this silly notion. Clearly, if the bombs are falling on them, being smart either doesn't help or isn't working. Or maybe their past didn't make them as creative as I would have hoped.

And of course, the other side, while having nicer sides to it-- remember the IRA and Sein Finn-- has sworn to destroy Israel, and I mean destroy it. For them there seems to be no end game, there is no two-state solution or Nice Happy Middle East with Camel Rides and Swaying Palm Trees and a Mid-E-Pass where you can ride the trains from country to country on your vacation. They want a big smoking hole where Israel used to be, and how do you negotiate with that?

"In my opinion, this is a proxy war. This is payback time for the 1993 Hezbollah suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut."

I agree that this is a proxy war, although I tend to think of it as one of Iran vs. Israel. (Perhaps Iran & Syria vs. Israel.) Do you think that Israel cares that much that we got bombed 23 years ago (unless you were thinking of something else, that was 1983)? Or are you suggesting that we got Israel to fight in proxy of us? Because I gotta say, we're just not that with it down here south of your border. Other administrations, maybe-- and certainly, this one is the only one recently that's quite evil-genius enough to try it-- but this one really has its hands completely full and is floundering in its own incompetence. So evil yes, genius no. Basically, if it involves getting off their collective ass but doesn't involve anything with direct votes attached to it (like whipping up the base over gay marriage or flag burning), they really don't want to bother.

This reminds me, actually, of a joke I like-- After the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 and the Iraq War, all the crazy people took off their tinfoil hats, realizing that the CIA didn't actually have it together enough to be beaming thought control at them. (There's probably a way to jazz that up so it's funnier, but I'm on my first cup of coffee and my second day on this post, so, well, go find yourself real comedians.)

I'm always rooting for the underdog-- that's a Shakespearean* thing, I think-- and I have always (and I mean since the 1970s when I was a kid and the last era I recall with this much radical Islamic terrorism) respected the Jewish need for a real nation of their own but also the plight of the Palestinians. And maybe I'm just swaying with the breeze here (although I prefer to think of it as a "window into my thought process", haha) but the more I think about this, the more I keep hearing my friend asking, "But what is Israel supposed to do?" And somehow I keep coming around to the idea that this awful tragedy might have been the only way forward. That, to my little peacenik brain, is an anathema, but...

Oh, for God's sake. (Literally.) No wonder no one can work this out. But thanks for reading and writing comments and maybe we'll find some clarity together. Sadly, I have to stop trying to save the world and go back to trying to save my garage from the forces of chaos.



*Shakespeare's plays are often written on the side of the underdog, the outsider, who may get trampled a lot but always at least has their shining moment-- Othello, Shylock, there are more, but remember, first cup of coffee. OK, I can't really use that anymore since it's taken me hours of a line here and a line there in between packing and showing the house, so I'll use that chaos as my Official New Excuse.