Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka
Sunday, August 27, 2006
A Must Read
This article in the Washington Post is a must read. I hope to have some commentary on it tomorrow.
posted by LWY, 11:27 PM
3 Comments:
Very interesting and sad, thanks.
I think this sums up the dispute I've been having with Ezzie:
But they had emerged with different conclusions. For Dichter, "the barrel of terrorism has a bottom." If you captured or killed enough terrorists, Dichter believed, the problem would be solved. "They deserved a bomb that would send the dream team to hell," Dichter said. "I said, 'If we miss this opportunity, more Israelis will die.' "
Yaalon disagreed: "We won't get to the bottom of the barrel by killing terrorists. We'll get there through education. Dichter thinks we'll kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. That's it -- we've won. I don't accept that."
I don't think there's a bottom either.
I think this sums up the dispute I've been having with Ezzie:
But they had emerged with different conclusions. For Dichter, "the barrel of terrorism has a bottom." If you captured or killed enough terrorists, Dichter believed, the problem would be solved. "They deserved a bomb that would send the dream team to hell," Dichter said. "I said, 'If we miss this opportunity, more Israelis will die.' "
Yaalon disagreed: "We won't get to the bottom of the barrel by killing terrorists. We'll get there through education. Dichter thinks we'll kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. That's it -- we've won. I don't accept that."
I don't think there's a bottom either.
JA - I thought the same. I would put it differently, though, as I've said - there IS a bottom, but the problem is that whenever someone sees you empty any of it, they fill it even higher. But if you empty it faster, they may finally give up on trying to refill it, when nobody wants to be emptied out and they're sick of having to keep filling it.
Ezzie:
But if you empty it faster, they may finally give up on trying to refill it, when nobody wants to be emptied out and they're sick of having to keep filling it.
I actually agree that this is a possibility. However, I think that Israel would have to "empty" the barrel so fast that the costs (i.e. turning into monsters by killing so many civilians, as well as losing a lot of Israeli lives in the meantime) would be far too great.
In that specific example, I could have easily understood them destroying the whole building even with the children next door. In general, though, I don't think Israel can kill its way out of the problem.
But if you empty it faster, they may finally give up on trying to refill it, when nobody wants to be emptied out and they're sick of having to keep filling it.
I actually agree that this is a possibility. However, I think that Israel would have to "empty" the barrel so fast that the costs (i.e. turning into monsters by killing so many civilians, as well as losing a lot of Israeli lives in the meantime) would be far too great.
In that specific example, I could have easily understood them destroying the whole building even with the children next door. In general, though, I don't think Israel can kill its way out of the problem.
