10/16/23

 Monday, October 16, 2023

In bed at 9 and awake at 5:45, up at 6:00.  46°, high of 54°, cloudy day ahead, AQI=21, wind NNW at 15 mph, 5-15/25.  Sunrise at 7:06, sunset at 6:07, 11+1.

Treadmill:  31:14 / 0.76

Israel in Gaza, Russia in Ukraine, U.S. in Vietnam.  One answer: Israel suffered a horrendous loss of life from Hamas which governs Gaza; their attacks on Gaza are retaliatory, very different from Russia's ruthless attacks on Ukrainian civilians and vital infrastructure and on America's invasion of Vietnam, which posed no threat to the U.S.  On the other hand, both Israel and Russia are engaging in war on civilian populations.  Almost half of the Gazan population is children; another sizable percentage are elderly, and many are women.  All are enduring Israel's siege cutoff of food, water, fuel, and electricity.  Israel refuses to allow a humanitarian corridor to and from Egypt or to guarantee that it won't attack trucks carrying relief supplies waiting to be delivered from Egypt.  Hospitals are attacked and affected by the lack of electricity and medical supplies.  Does what Hamas did on October 7th and thereafter justify what Israel has been doing in retaliation - legally or morally - or does it make the Israelis like the Russians?  Is Netanyahu merely another amoral sociopathic Trump, or more like Putin or Syria's Hafez Assad? "People live, people die."  Ben-Gvir?  Smotrich? the settlers?  Do they all simply honor Oriana Fallaci's maxim:  "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  Sec'y. of State Tony Blinken has stated that the U.S. position is that the U.S. stands foursquare with Israel's right to defend itself and to take steps that ensure that Hamas can never repeat the acts of October 7th, but “[i]t needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”  Are those empty words?  The U.S. has put strong pressure on Israel to reopen the water supply to Gaza, especially in the southern region since the influx of refugees was already stressing supplies, and today Israel did so, but observers say that without electricity and fuel, the pumping stations and the plants that take salt out of the water don’t work. 

I am thinking of Israel's IDF forces dealing with the challenge of distinguishing Hamas people from innocent civilians and the situation facing American forces in Vietnam distinguishing VC people from innocent civilians.  Every Vietnamese was potentially VC.  I am remembering My Lai.  I am remembering Morley Safer's report showing Marines burning peasants' "hooches" outside of DaNang.  I remembering "free fire zones," and mass resettlements of peasants into "strategic hamlets," forced relocations that uprooted people from their homes - at gunpoint- to separate them from the VC and deprive the VC of any potential support from the people.  I remembering my first haircut on the Marine side of the DaNang airbase and wondering if the Vietnamese barber trimming around my ears with his straight-edge razor might be a secret VC or VC supporter.  What kinds of thoughts about 'the civilians'  are predictable, indeed inevitable, among the IDF soldiers once they are in Gaza?

From this morning's WaPo: “I think they’re going to go back in, heavy, and it’s going to be a bloodbath for everybody,” said Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., a retired Marine Corps general who served as the chief of U.S. Central Command until last year. He predicted that the violence will be “dragged out over a much longer period” than the Hamas attack, with the Israelis getting bogged down in the messy unpredictability of urban warfare."

On the other hand, here are Tom Friedman's thoughts from today's column in the NYT: 

My bottom line? Just ask this question: If Israel announced today that it was forgoing, for now, a full-blown invasion of Gaza, who would be happy, and who would be relieved, and who would be upset? Iran would be totally frustrated, Hezbollah would be disappointed, Hamas would feel devastated — its whole war plan came to naught — and Vladimir Putin would be crushed, because Israel would not be burning up ammunition and weapons the U.S. needs to be sending to Ukraine. The settlers in the West Bank would be enraged.

Meanwhile, the parents of every Israeli soldier and every Israeli held hostage would be relieved, every Palestinian in Gaza caught in the crossfire would be relieved, and every friend and ally Israel has in the world — starting with one Joseph R. Biden — would be relieved. I rest my case.