50,000
I got back from my six day break and took a look at the news and saw that Israel is still a dead nation, I know that because Olmert isn't yet hanging from a lamp post.
When a suicide bomber straps on a vest I call him a dead man. Of course, technically, he's not really dead until he splatters, but he knows what's going to happen, he's dead. Israel knows what's going to happen, even if it's not publicly admitted and even though, technically, they're not going to get splattered so much as scattered. But they don't fight won't fight. Israel is dead.
Just how it was that Israel passed from time will be a matter for historians to determine, but there is a certain grim entertainment in contemporaneous speculation, and besides, it might be of some use to the rest of us who might fight.
Where to start?
I read an article by Solzhenitsyn last night where he speculated that the West went soft because it had become too tied to its material wealth. Solzhenitsyn is a nut. That particular observation I'll handle just by dismissing it. I abandon my material wealth every time I go outside for a walk and get sweaty. I don't carry my material wealth with me. It's true it's there for me when I get back, it's true for the soldier that it's there for him when he gets back. To protect that wealth is one additional reason to go to war and sweat. Solzhenitsyn's observation is just one of envy and incomprehension, but there is one way that material wealth does soften men and nations, and that is through the presumption that the sanity and intelligence that makes the accrual of that wealth possible is a sanity and intelligence shared by the rest of the world. It's not. Envy is universal, but not the intelligence and energy and discipline and judgement, not the pragmatic sanity. To presume that that sanity is even comprehended by much of the rest of the world is to misjudge the enemy. To presume that "we are the world" is to presume mistakenly. There is a disinclination towards war which is not fear but which is a disinclination to give up the idea that life is best when it is reasonable. This is the concept of peace. It is hard to move from that pleasing concept of sane reasonable peaceful productive pursuit to the new unreasonable sanity of the need for war.
I don't use the term "rational". I'm not certain there's often much that's purely rational in the activities of men, but our society certainly is reasonable. It's based on the idea that meaning in life is individual, that individuals strive, negotiate, compromise and live as well as they can and the nation exists simply for the purpose of making that struggle possible... and occasionally, as a nation, following much that same pattern towards its citizens and towards other nations. It does work. We're rich, and that individual striving for meaning, much of it in reference to acquiring wealth, is why we're rich and why many of us are happy.
I certainly immensely enjoy my own modest life and I'm very pleased with the concept of the reasonable and it's in this way that I relate to my friends. But a Hizbollian is not my friend, or my neighbors friend, and it is this that the West has not yet accepted. There are people out there who are not our friends. This does hurt one's feelings, but the thing is, those people out there who are not our friends can not be our friends, because they can not see the world as best when it's reasonable; therefore they want to kill us therefore we must kill them, and that's unreasonable. It is very hard to give up the reasonable as a rational world view.
I will note again that we strive as individuals. The whole meaning of the West lies in the individual, there's no justification for government accept by the consent of the governed; in peace we strive as individuals yet live in comity with our fellows. In war we are not individuals. We die as the state deems necessary. It's this extraordinary movement from the individual to the state that makes the West so disinclined to war.
However, this is where that extraordinarily rare quality, rationality, would be useful: a hard war can not be fought successfully unless individuals become expendable at the judgment of the state. This is unpleasant, but this is necessary, this is rational: for the duration of the war the individual must be willing to give up his life at the judgment of the state, and those not fighting must be willing to see those lives expended. It's simple arithmetic: for 50,000 lost, millions are saved, and that's all there is to war.
50,000, that's the number. Once Israel is prepared to lose 50,000 of her sons she has the possibility of saving herself as a nation.
Note:
There has been some conversation about improving the first part of this equation, the killing part, rather than the dying part. It is said that Israel (and thus the West) must become ruthless. The West now functions under unimaginably stringent rules of engagement while the rest of the world follows no rules at all. Therefore, Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! this becomes the new theory, that the West must not be so chary in it's use of bombs for the purpose of killing. To this I will state a simple elemental truth: you can't hurt people with bombs. You can kill them, you can't hurt them, not in their resolve. Bombs without troops are an enhancement to the enemy when the enemy is a guerilla force without investment in the state. Any airforce General who argues otherwise should be up on the lamp post alongside Olmert. --50,000.
When a suicide bomber straps on a vest I call him a dead man. Of course, technically, he's not really dead until he splatters, but he knows what's going to happen, he's dead. Israel knows what's going to happen, even if it's not publicly admitted and even though, technically, they're not going to get splattered so much as scattered. But they don't fight won't fight. Israel is dead.
Just how it was that Israel passed from time will be a matter for historians to determine, but there is a certain grim entertainment in contemporaneous speculation, and besides, it might be of some use to the rest of us who might fight.
Where to start?
I read an article by Solzhenitsyn last night where he speculated that the West went soft because it had become too tied to its material wealth. Solzhenitsyn is a nut. That particular observation I'll handle just by dismissing it. I abandon my material wealth every time I go outside for a walk and get sweaty. I don't carry my material wealth with me. It's true it's there for me when I get back, it's true for the soldier that it's there for him when he gets back. To protect that wealth is one additional reason to go to war and sweat. Solzhenitsyn's observation is just one of envy and incomprehension, but there is one way that material wealth does soften men and nations, and that is through the presumption that the sanity and intelligence that makes the accrual of that wealth possible is a sanity and intelligence shared by the rest of the world. It's not. Envy is universal, but not the intelligence and energy and discipline and judgement, not the pragmatic sanity. To presume that that sanity is even comprehended by much of the rest of the world is to misjudge the enemy. To presume that "we are the world" is to presume mistakenly. There is a disinclination towards war which is not fear but which is a disinclination to give up the idea that life is best when it is reasonable. This is the concept of peace. It is hard to move from that pleasing concept of sane reasonable peaceful productive pursuit to the new unreasonable sanity of the need for war.
I don't use the term "rational". I'm not certain there's often much that's purely rational in the activities of men, but our society certainly is reasonable. It's based on the idea that meaning in life is individual, that individuals strive, negotiate, compromise and live as well as they can and the nation exists simply for the purpose of making that struggle possible... and occasionally, as a nation, following much that same pattern towards its citizens and towards other nations. It does work. We're rich, and that individual striving for meaning, much of it in reference to acquiring wealth, is why we're rich and why many of us are happy.
I certainly immensely enjoy my own modest life and I'm very pleased with the concept of the reasonable and it's in this way that I relate to my friends. But a Hizbollian is not my friend, or my neighbors friend, and it is this that the West has not yet accepted. There are people out there who are not our friends. This does hurt one's feelings, but the thing is, those people out there who are not our friends can not be our friends, because they can not see the world as best when it's reasonable; therefore they want to kill us therefore we must kill them, and that's unreasonable. It is very hard to give up the reasonable as a rational world view.
I will note again that we strive as individuals. The whole meaning of the West lies in the individual, there's no justification for government accept by the consent of the governed; in peace we strive as individuals yet live in comity with our fellows. In war we are not individuals. We die as the state deems necessary. It's this extraordinary movement from the individual to the state that makes the West so disinclined to war.
However, this is where that extraordinarily rare quality, rationality, would be useful: a hard war can not be fought successfully unless individuals become expendable at the judgment of the state. This is unpleasant, but this is necessary, this is rational: for the duration of the war the individual must be willing to give up his life at the judgment of the state, and those not fighting must be willing to see those lives expended. It's simple arithmetic: for 50,000 lost, millions are saved, and that's all there is to war.
50,000, that's the number. Once Israel is prepared to lose 50,000 of her sons she has the possibility of saving herself as a nation.
Note:
There has been some conversation about improving the first part of this equation, the killing part, rather than the dying part. It is said that Israel (and thus the West) must become ruthless. The West now functions under unimaginably stringent rules of engagement while the rest of the world follows no rules at all. Therefore, Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! this becomes the new theory, that the West must not be so chary in it's use of bombs for the purpose of killing. To this I will state a simple elemental truth: you can't hurt people with bombs. You can kill them, you can't hurt them, not in their resolve. Bombs without troops are an enhancement to the enemy when the enemy is a guerilla force without investment in the state. Any airforce General who argues otherwise should be up on the lamp post alongside Olmert. --50,000.
posted by mouse at 9:19 PM
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