Saturday, October 21, 2023

Force, the Last Resort of Nations (Mitigated By Good Manners If You're Lucky)


"Life-saving shipments." Okay, but let us be clear that what is coming to HAMAS in Gaza is about life taking, fundamentally, and there will be little scope for humanitarian considerations until that war is concluded.

Don't take it from me, take it from one of the finest judicial minds this country has ever produced.    
"I believe that force, mitigated as may be by good manners, is the ultima ratio, and between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of world I see no remedy except force." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Holmes knew about force and irreconcilable conflict, having served as an infantryman in the Civil War where he was wounded three times. At Antietam he was shot through the neck and left for dead on the field, one of 23,000 casualties in that single battle.

Be prepared to see Civil War-size casualty numbers once the Israeli Armed Forces really tear into HAMAS. Let the IDF mitigate that reality by abiding with the laws of war, to whatever extent those good manners may apply to a sub-state adversary, but realists should expect to see a nearly-Carthaginian peace imposed on HAMAS in Gaza.
  

8 comments:

James said...

https://twitter.com/TheFigen_/status/1713996310380961865
Considering where you work!

James said...

I'm from Texas and snakes don't bother me but this is too much. Oh by the way I meant the town you work in DC!!

TSB said...

That *is* pretty startling. DC? Well, I work in close line-of-sight to DC but on the Virginia side of the river in the Land of Annexes, where the real work of government get done. It's a fine distinction, but an important one to me.

James said...

I do not envy you!

James said...

We're about to see politicians who rode wokeism to power deny they ever had anything to do with it.

TSB said...

Has the Great Awokening gone too far by cheer-leading for Hamas and chanting "from the river to the sea" or even (in Sydney) "gas the Jews?"

I can believe that, at least I can see big hints of it in places like Germany and France where they are starting to actually deport some Hamas-loving immigrants. Even our own weak backlash against Harvard students is encouraging.

Will it be Thermidor in America again? Will the San Culottes vote in Trump again? Yeah, big things may be happening.

James said...

The way they treat Trump makes me laugh. It reminds me of Atlas who if you threw him to the ground he got up stronger, but if you held him up in the air he got weaker. Maybe it was Theseus or Perseus.

TSB said...

I think Atlas was tricked into holding up the sky forever, which is kind of a tempting fate for Trump: condemned to harass his opponents on social media forever (!). That's a show I'd pay to see.