Losing Wars

 Posted by  Israel and Palestine  4 Responses »
Jun 102010
 

It is commonly believed that wars are won and lost on the battlefield; that wars have “winners” and “losers” irrespective of their political outcomes. For instance, it is this belief that causes Vietnam vets to claim that “we won the war but were betrayed by the politicians.” This belief is false. Wars are not sporting contests. The winner of a war is not the one who controls the most territory or has killed the most enemy soldiers. Instead, the winner of a war is the one who cause is furthest advanced by the outcome of the war. The Allies won World War II because Germany and Japan were thwarted in their efforts at global and regional dominance (respectively), not because we conquered Germany or forced the Japanese to surrender. The Confederacy killed more soldiers than the Union army, and successfully defended their capital throughout the war, but the Union won the war because the Confederate states were prevented from seceding and slavery was abolished.

Because wars are political tools and their outcomes are measured in political terms, sometimes the winner of a war is not determined until years or decades later. In that sense, I would argue that France lost World War I. In World War I, Germany was not trying to conquer France. They were fighting to continue their expansion of German influence throughout the European continent. France, with the help of their allies, won on the battlefield and forced Germany to surrender, but that victory failed to stop Hitler’s rise (and may even have encouraged it) and failed to stop Germany from pushing it’s expansionist claims again thirty years later.

And in that sense, I think it has become clear that Israel lost the Six Day War.
Continue reading »

Crazy report

 Posted by  Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Jun 092010
 

This article which details faults in the BP oil spill prevention plan ought to raise serious concerns. It’s pretty clear that BP basically lied to federal investigators when getting approval for the rig. Which leads to some questions:

1) Can criminal charges be filed in addition to the obvious civil suits?

2) How could federal regulators not have caught these sorts of errors. Some sort of audit needs to go on there.

3) Every other safety document that BP has produced needs to be evaluated with a fine tooth comb, and sooner rather than later. Depending on the outcomes, I could see federal regulators shutting down all BP facilities until things are fixed.

4) Is this standard practice in industry? I’d like to see an audit of other randomly chosen environmental impact plans. Both from energy companies, and other companies that might have gotten away with this sort of shenanigan.

This is really infuriating…

International reaction

 Posted by  Uncategorized  5 Responses »
Jun 032010
 

A few days ago, Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla meant to breach a blockade around Gaza. This post isn’t about whether the raid was justified, whether inappropriate force was used, or even whether the blockade is a good idea in the first place.

This post is about the international reaction to the raid. Specifically the immediate condemnation from around the world regarding Israel’s actions. Within hours of the raid, a number of governments had condemned the act and less than 24 hours later the U.N. was debating resolutions to do the same.

But at that point, nobody knew what had happened. Was the flotilla smuggling arms? Nobody knew. Were the Israelis murdering civilians? Nobody knew. At that point, all that we knew was that there had been an incident, and that people had died. What I want to know is how a government could issue a condemnation before the facts are known.

When North Korea sunk a south Korean warship there were weeks of fact finding that occurred before the international community had gathered enough evidence to condemn the act. In the case of Israel, condemnations were issued within hours. Continue reading »

Antisemitism

 Posted by  Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Jun 022010
 

When my grandfather was in his 20′s, he was denied admission to medical school because he was Jewish. He had to deal with antisemitism every day, and it had a fundamental impact on his life.

I’m am now 31, I’ve lived in 4 states and visited most of the rest of them, and this past weekend was the first time I’ve ever been personally exposed to antisemitism. And unlike my grandfather, who had to deal with antisemitism with practical consequences, I just had to deal with the brief annoyance of walking away from the person spouting the idiocy (that the economic crisis was because of Jewish greed on wall street and that Jews didn’t see anything wrong with what Madoff had done because putting money before all else was central to Jewish culture).

Yes, it was unpleasant. But I actually took something positive away from the experience. Being exposed to antisemitism for the first time made me realize how lucky I am not to have to deal with it on a regular basis. Because I never see it, it’s easy to forget how much anti-Jewish sentiment used to exist in this country. It’s easy to take for granted that these days basically nobody cares that I’m Jewish – or if they do its because they’re hoping to get some matzah on passover (why anybody likes matzah is beyond me, the stuff is vile…).

There are a lot of problems in this country, and I think most people are pretty pessimistic about the trajectory that we’re heading. But there’s been a lot of progress too, and we shouldn’t let ourselves forget that.

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