Palestine
Yes folks, there is and was a place called Palestine. It's not new. It wasn't invented in the recent past. It's just never been a recognized nation state. The concept of a nation state is of fairly recent vintage, unavailable for leftards and others to use throughout most of Palestine's history. Throughout most of Palestine's history it has been under the thumb of one empire or another, so it's never become a modern nation state.
I've been thinking for a long time that a similar notion exists right here on the Canadian prairies, in a region we prairie folk know as the Palliser Triangle. It exists. As a geographic region, it's been here a very, very long time. It's been inhabited, first by nomadic tribes, later mostly by farmer folk and now by urban dwellers. Never been a nation state, though.
History is full of changing borders or frontiers and conflicts over the same. And quite often winners of said conflict will change the names of those places as well as the borders. Usually, although less so in more recent times I suspect, frontiers and regions have been defined by the topography, the climate, the principal method of wresting a living therefrom. The Palliser Triangle, for any reader who has never heard of it, was a region on the northern North American plains which is characterized by fertile soils and climate conditions that barely allow for the practice of agriculture. Palliser was a dude hired by the Canadian/British government to assess the suitability of the region for settlement. Thanks to the development of new strains of wheat, the region did become suitable for grain growing, although Palliser had his doubts, and beginning in the 1880s began to fill up with peasant and other farmers, a tiny number of whom happen to be my ancestors who arrived in 1882. But I digress.
The whole point of this post is to answer the oft repeated meme coming mainly from my side of the political spectrum, that there was never any such place as Palestine. Sorry friends. That's just nonsense.
Doesn't mean I support the Palestinian cause vis-a-vis Israel, 'cause I don't. I once had sympathy for the Pals, but they have proven over and over and over that they aren't the least bit interested in settling with Israel and getting on with it. That's another thing that I don't expect will happen in my lifetime, but I'm betting when and if it does, it will happen as suddenly as the collapse of communism did in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I've been thinking for a long time that a similar notion exists right here on the Canadian prairies, in a region we prairie folk know as the Palliser Triangle. It exists. As a geographic region, it's been here a very, very long time. It's been inhabited, first by nomadic tribes, later mostly by farmer folk and now by urban dwellers. Never been a nation state, though.
History is full of changing borders or frontiers and conflicts over the same. And quite often winners of said conflict will change the names of those places as well as the borders. Usually, although less so in more recent times I suspect, frontiers and regions have been defined by the topography, the climate, the principal method of wresting a living therefrom. The Palliser Triangle, for any reader who has never heard of it, was a region on the northern North American plains which is characterized by fertile soils and climate conditions that barely allow for the practice of agriculture. Palliser was a dude hired by the Canadian/British government to assess the suitability of the region for settlement. Thanks to the development of new strains of wheat, the region did become suitable for grain growing, although Palliser had his doubts, and beginning in the 1880s began to fill up with peasant and other farmers, a tiny number of whom happen to be my ancestors who arrived in 1882. But I digress.
The whole point of this post is to answer the oft repeated meme coming mainly from my side of the political spectrum, that there was never any such place as Palestine. Sorry friends. That's just nonsense.
Doesn't mean I support the Palestinian cause vis-a-vis Israel, 'cause I don't. I once had sympathy for the Pals, but they have proven over and over and over that they aren't the least bit interested in settling with Israel and getting on with it. That's another thing that I don't expect will happen in my lifetime, but I'm betting when and if it does, it will happen as suddenly as the collapse of communism did in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
posted by Louise at 5:01 pm
8 Comments:
Part 1 of 2
I don't expect either of us will see it in our lifetimes, Louise.
BTW, a supposed majority of Egyptians and Egyptian MPs in the new Parliament favor "revoking" their 1979 peace treaty with Israel. That will be the icing on the cake to almost all Israelis, and object people in the civilized parts of the world, that a treaty with an Arab state isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Ditto with the "Palestinians". In the next Israel-Arab war(s), I predict Israel will "take the gloves off" and, whether it's Lebanon, Egypt, Syria (probably not Jordan, they're not suicidal), at the end, the Arab state(s) involved will be in no doubt whatever that they were defeated.
Which brings to mind a pertinent history lesson from World War 1.
end Part 1
Part 2 of 2
In the last 6 months or so of World War 1, there were constant rumors of an Armistice. Not a few Allied Generals were adamantly opposed to an Armistice. Some British, French and, most notably among the American Generals, General John "Black Jack Pershing, CinC of the American Expeditionary Force.
In the meanwhile, the Allies had drawn up a war plan for 1919 that entailed driving the German Army back into Germany, smashing it and the nearby piece of Germany and forcing an abject unconditional surrender of Germany.
When the German representatives were actually negotiating an Armistice, some commanders, including Pershing and some of his corps commanders kept the aggressive fighting on until literally the last hour before the Armistice.
The reason -I'm coming to my point- was that they felt, as Pershing insightfully said it, "If we accept a non-surrender armistice, in a few years, the Germans will start to believe they weren't really defeated in the war...and in 10 or 20 years theyll rearm and we're all going to have to come back and do this all over again."
Pretty smart fellow, that Pershing! Not that he could read crystal balls. He was a great soldier and a very knowledgeable historian. In addition, he had the ability to see things as they are, not through a veil of wishful thinking.
If the Western Democracies, the US or the US and Allies have to go to war, CRUSH THE ENEMY, as Germany was crushed at the end of World War 2, when they did see they were crushed...and unconditionally surrendered.
Since the end of WW2, the Western Democracies have forgotten how to fight a war with resolve. You fight to win and do whatever is necessary to win. We had no problem bombing the hell out of Germany and Japan, even making Japan the first target of nuclear weapons. They took our demand seriously then, and surrendered.
In the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the First Persian Gulf War. In the so-called "War on Terror", which is actually the West's War on Islamofascism, we have fought with one hand tied behind our backs, each of our countries' leftard Disloyal Opposition doing all they could to hobble the war effort. The net result is not victory, not defeat, but a shameful travesty that insults the memory of all the brave men and women who gave their lives in this war.
This is why our current enemies are emboldened. We have lost the priceless value of deterrance. They accurately see our moral weakness and are neither fearful of us nor deterred. Even Israel, once feared as well as hated, is now merely hated. The 1973 Yom Kippur War was the last war they fought to destruction. Now they've picked up the Western Disease of irresolution.
The timeless lesson here going all the way back to Sun-tZu is: Wars are won or lost in the will. Do not go to war unless you're prepared to do whatever it takes to destroy your enemy and obtain all your strategic objectives. If you break this rule, a smaller, weaker but more ruthless enemy can defeat you.
/end_rant
Come one. You must have some more. That was a good rant.
I agree with you and lament that we in the West have forgotten how to fight wars. The enemy needs to be utterly crushed, otherwise, as you say, they rise again and start a grievance industry.
Come "on". Typing is not my strong suit.
One final thought, an example of what I was talking about above.
In the mid-60's, at the height of the Vietnam War, the US persuaded South Korea to send substantial combat forces. They sent the South Korean 1st Marine Division. If you read the history of Koreans and Korean military history, they can be just as ruthless as were the Turks. That's pretty damned ruthless.
Anyway, the SK 1st Marine Div. was stationed in an area in central Vietnam that had a strong and active Viet Cong force.
The VC apparently decided they'd start their action against the SK Marines by capturing about a half dozen SK Marines, obscenely torturing them to death, then leaving the horrible-looking corpses for their SK Marine comrades to find.
That was a big mistake.
The SK Marines then went out and captured about the same number of VC. They *skinned them alive* and put the skinned corpses up on stakes, in the heart of VC country.
There were no more attempted atrocities against the SK Marines...and the VC laid low, avoiding combat with them as much as possible.
That's ruthlessness creating deterrence.
Eeeeewuuuu. Just reading that made me cringe.
Yeah. Pretty cringe-worthy.
I'm not advocating Western nations' forces do such things. I'm just saying if Western nations have to go to war, we need to drop the PC nonsense and fight it with the same resolve, commitment and gloves-off methodology as we showed in WW2.
The Iroquois Indians used to skin people alive as a form of torture. Makes me wonder if that "tradition" was brought from the old world.
"I'm not advocating Western nations' forces do such things."
Sure you are. You're just a war monger and you know it. ;P
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