A realistic look at war

My take on war is that the winner is the one with the most sustained resources.  The North had the industry and population to outlast the South.  The Allies had the industry out of reach of the Germans and the Japanese plus a much larger population.  This last component of resources was forgotten in Vietnam and in Palestine.  The Vietnamese had many more people willing to die for their cause than the U.S. did, despite the latter's greater access to industry.  The Israelis are aware that they are surrounded by a much larger population that does not share its interests; the more the Israelis make war, the more enemies they create.

You can find a much broader perspective on how war rarely accomplishes its ends in "War and Truth in Libya and Palestine", Tarak Barkawi, Al Jazeera English, 2011-04-28.

Freedom and democracy: It's not what you believe but what you do

I find it very hard to read Charles Krauthammer; I think he is very rigid in his thinking.  When he wrote in his latest column, "From freedom agenda to freedom doctrine", Washington Post, 2011-02-10, that George Bush and the neo-cons were the only ones interested in promoting freedom and democracy, I stopped reading.

What he ignores is that the neo-cons solution was to bring freedom and democracy at the point of a gun.  We can see how well that is working in Iraq and Afghanistan where chaos is more the norm.  What he ignores is that the Egyptians have started on a path to freedom and democracy, not with guns but with their gums.  They did it not with outside armies but by themselves.

In writing this, I did go back and skim Krauthammer's article.  He does make a good point with the second point of his Freedom Doctrine, but most of the rest is a call for the world being as we think it should be, not as others may want it.

A much better read is "They Did It", Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 2011-02-12, written in Cairo.  One of the best quotes is, "Because the Obama team never found the voice to fully endorse the Tahrir Square revolution until it was over, the people in that square now know one very powerful thing: They did this all by themselves."

Keeping up with events in Egypt

If you are a news freak who couldn't get enough news about Iran in 2009, your best source on Egypt is Al-Jazeera.  The English version on the web is at

http://english.aljazeera.net/

For the latest, check out the blogs.  There is also plenty of commentary from many sources and perspectives.  One I found particular interesting is "The triviality of US Mideast policy" by Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center.  He relates how the headmaster of his school was unknowingly made irrelevant by an anti-Vietnam War protest.    Similarly, events have made most of U.S. Mideast policy irrelevant and outdated.

P.S. Cairo time is 8 hours ahead of Central Standard Time.

A prime example of the stupidity of war

You won't get through this with dry eyes: "A Mideast Bond, Stitched of Pain and Healing", Ethan Bronner, New York Times, 2009-12-30.

If you consider your course just, will your means be wise?

"When you once describe a venture as a holy war you surrender all capacity to judge honest alternatives." - Jamail Tabari, Arab archaeologist, character in "The Source" by James Michener. This was published in 1965.

Tabari was describing the blunder of the Crusaders assuming that Arabs were part of the "enemy". The Arabs wanted to form an alliance with the Crusaders against the Turks. The Crusaders saw the Arab clothes and slaughtered the "enemy", even those who were Christian.

I also thought of "When will they ever learn" as the title of this blog entry.

Bush invades Afghanistan without many Pashto-speaking troops and Iraq without many Arabic-speaking troops. Did he really understand what people on the ground really wanted? He thought of himself as a liberator; they thought of him as an invader.

Jihadists wage war against those wherever who don't agree with them. Are they any different than the Crusaders massacring Arab Christians? Or George Bush invading countries he doesn't understand.

Where are the Crusaders? Where are the Mamalukes? Where will the Jihadists be in one hundred years? Where will the United States be in one hundred years? I don't think either will achieve its supposed goals by then. And each will be replaced by other antagonists on their own "holy wars".

When will they ever learn?

An old troublemaker as a peacemaker

Muammar Qaddafi has written a very interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times, "The One-State Solution" for Israel and Palestine; he calls the proposed state Isratine.

He argues that there is already much co-operation between Jews and Palestinians with Arabs in politics in Israel and Israeli factories in Palestine.

Judge for yourself if he makes sense.

Do robots have rights? The ramifications of the answer

I was intrigued by the article in the latest issue of Wired: "Do humanlike machines deserve rights?"

It briefly described the latest Fisher-Price Elmo, Elmo Live, which kids readily relate to.

The Wired article also described some of the vicious things that people do to some of these life-like toys. It posed the question that if robotic devices become more human-like, should they have rights?

One commentator said that it is not what we are doing to the machines but what are we doing to ourselves.

Long ago I read that evil is treating other people as things. Are some of our things becoming so humanlike that we have a hard time distinguishing things from people? Or are some of our things so removed from humans that we don't even consider human beings in their use.

The 9/11 terrorists treated the people in the World Trade Center as things to be obliterated for their twisted goals. Some of the people in the World Trade Center treated people as things to be manipulated in the running of large corporations. Hamas treats Israelis as things, having no idea who their rockets hit. Israel considers the residents of Gaza as things who happen to be in the way of destroying Hamas. When a bomb strikes a building, is it only the handful of "bad guys" inside that are killed, or several kids that aren't even old enough to understand politics?

Country after country wants nuclear weapons so they can easily take care of their enemies. But who is the enemy? Do the vast majority of the people who would be obliterated by a nuclear weapon have anything to do with the grievances of the attacking country?

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she would obliterate Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons. How many Iranians are actually developing those weapons? Even if they support the development of those weapons, do they deserve to die because another country doesn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons?

We just had an inauguration in which God's guidance and help were invoked to help us through our various crises. But those who invoked God's guidance subscribe to the teachings of Jesus. Did Jesus not say "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? This has also been interpreted as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

If we don't want others to have nuclear weapons, should we? If we don't want 500-pound bombs slamming into our houses, should we slam bombs into other people's houses?