Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Bengalzona]

(12-25-2023, 03:04 PM)Dill Wrote: I have a somewhat different view of this B-zona. 

We went into Afghanistan determined to avoid "state building," and pretty much turned sections of the country back over to the warlords who helped us.
I.e., we re-created the conditions which created the Taliban in the first place. We didn't go their to take their land and homes for ourselves, and settle it 
with hundreds of thousands of Americans so it was easier to disengage.

I like the Star Wars analogy though. For virtually all Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon, the state which dispossessed them is
still the #1 enemy and ongoing threat.

Merry Christmas to you and your family, by the way.

Theoretically we did not want to state build when we went into Afghanistan. That was the "sell job" on it, anyway. In actuality, that is what we ended up trying to do. I suppose some of our admin 'masterminds'; figured "Hey. We're doing it in Iraq. Why not Afghanistan too?!?!?!". Ultimately, we ended up propping up a corrupt regime which was willing to play along up until the point that U.S. troops left (a.k.a. Vietnam).

As for the Taliban, we really didn't need to re-create them since they never really left anyway. They just bode their time and waited for the Americans to fly off. Then they waltzed back into a power vacuum, having already procured side agreements with most of the tribal leaders. (BTW - The Taliban are far more shrewd and organized than Hamas.)

But back to the Palestinians. Personally, I am of two minds. The Palestinians have been wronged quite a few times over the years. They have some legitimate beefs. But would their position not be better today if they had, at least temporarily, gone along with U.N. Resolution 181 in 1947 and established their own state within the "Two State" proposal? That would have at least made them a sovereign nation. And even if they wanted to war with Israel to regain what they consider as lost land, doing so as a sovereign nation is a far better position than making yourself an orphaned population and relying on the feigned goodwill of neighboring nations... nations which continuously used the Palestinians for their own interests.



Consider this. When Israel seized the Sinai, Gaza, and the West Bank (all territories which were to be reserved for a future Palestinian nation) in the Six-Day War of 1968, they did not seize those places from the Palestinians. They seized them from Egypt and Jordan, who basically considered them 'up-for-grabs' since there was no soveign nation claiming them.

There simply was no nation of Palestine prior to the PLO declaring themselves as one in 1988. There was a group of people who called themselves Palestinians, but no nation. Like many other peoples in the world (Kurds, Wigurs, etc.) they were and are a people without their own nation. That is a damn tough position to be in in the modern world. But the Palestinians had the opportunity to incorporate and have their own land and government. Tell me what the Kurds wouldn't give for that opportunity, eh? So, before someone starts arguing "But they owned the land!!!", they did not properly 'own' the land. They inhabited the land for centuries under the Ottomans and later under the British Admin. But they did not legally 'own' it. Recognized ownership in the modern world comes from establishing yourself as a nation.

BTW - Merry Christmas, my friend! My best to you and your wife!