Israel To Withdraw Some Troops As Half Of Gaza Starves

4 thoughts on “Israel To Withdraw Some Troops As Half Of Gaza Starves”

1. I was born in 1944. I never spoke until my father came home from Guam. His last official duty was to be in the first group of our naval personnel to venture into Hiroshima. His job was to document the devastation during which time he was exposed to significant radiation. At that time no one really knew what meant. Fortunately, he was seemingly unaffected by the experience, although I do remember the stress of his post-war job did seem to make him easy to anger. That didn’t last a long time. I spoke my first sentence when I first met him walking through the door of his father-in-law’s house. I greeted him and wished him well. I was walking but not talking at that time. From that day, in my opinion, nothing the US has done with its armed forces or its massive treasure has accomplished a single thing that protected any of us from harm. We lost tens of thousands in men Korea, and accomplished nothing. We sent millions of soldiers and tens of billions of dollars to Vietnam and accomplished nothing. They are still communists, relatively prosperous, and one our larger trading partners. In the Mideast we have engaged in three wars, all in retaliation for supposed actual or threatened “terrorist” attacks, only one of which occurred on our shores. Trillions of dollars has been expended with no effect. The Taliban, which we funded and helped to set up, along with the indigenous drug lords, took control of Afghanistan less than a week after we left. We have no control in Iraq. The British, the French, the Russians and the US have been trying to take over SE Asia and the Middle East for nearly 100 years on whatever phony pretext they could muster, paid a huge price in lives and treasure and accomplished virtually nothing. At this rate I can see no future for humanity. We just have to drink blood and try to dominate those we consider less qualified to mange their own lives and property. We send money to Ukraine to keep a bully we dislike in check and to Israel to help the bully we do like butcher those it considers inferior and unworthy. We have no chance to prevent decline. Entropy and its accompanying disorder is the law and it is inevitable. BTW, there’s was a new entry yesterday from “Disgraceland” opining on some of these very points.

   1. How right you are. Pretty depressing if you ponder the situation too much. If we have 10 thousand years of civilization behind us, then we’ve been heading directly where we are now for that long. The Geneva Convention rules are sorely outdated. We no longer bring warring armies to a neutral sight and let them slug it out. All wars are now house to house and no one can win them. Israel vs Gaza is the result. There is no good or just way to proceed. We lost that opportunity thousands of years ago.

   2. Dr. Lucky. A thoughtful & moving piece, well written.

   3. Mr. Lucky — I grew up as a kid during Vietnam and only really knew two things at that time — news of the war often made my mom cry while she was making dinner and that she was planning to use my college money to ship me off to Canada should the war drag on another decade or so when I would become eligible for the draft. My family does not have a long history of military service, so I have grown up respecting that commitment and sacrifice. But my takeaway from your elegant summary is wondering if (and then when) this country will reach the point that it does NOT entrust our government leaders to decide when there is a just and worthwhile cause of action. I fortunately missed Vietnam, but have yet to see either a righteous or worthwhile commitment of our service men and women in my lifetime. If I had military-age kids, I know I wouldn’t want any recent President deciding that feeding them to the meat grinder was a sacrifice my family needed to bear as proud and good Americans. I am thankful I was never confronted with the dilemma.