Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not have the right to kill, or through inaction, allow the death and other suffering of innocent civilians.
I am a military retiree. I believe in a strong national defense. However, I do not believe that because you have a strong military that you must use it.
War is the ultimate negative sum game: nobody wins a war. One side manages to lose it to a lesser extent. The objective of negative sum games is to stop playing them as soon as possible. Nobody benefits from a protracted war – Sun Tzu.
Tzu also recommends that the very last thing you should consider in war is to lay siege to the enemy’s cities. It is tacit admission that all else that you have done has failed. I have not seen any evidence that Israel has tried anything else. They jumped immediately to the military sledgehammer approach.
The Art of War was published about 2,500 years ago. The Gaza War is one more piece of evidence that governments are poor learners.
I maintain that all wars are two conflicts: the military conflict and the political conflict. For the military conflict I give a grade of D- for the political conflict: an F only because there is no lower grade. No political attempt was or is being tried.
Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not have the right to kill, or through inaction, allow the death and other suffering of innocent civilians.
I am a military retiree. I believe in a strong national defense. However, I do not believe that because you have a strong military that you must use it.
War is the ultimate negative sum game: nobody wins a war. One side manages to lose it to a lesser extent. The objective of negative sum games is to stop playing them as soon as possible. Nobody benefits from a protracted war – Sun Tzu.
Tzu also recommends that the very last thing you should consider in war is to lay siege to the enemy’s cities. It is tacit admission that all else that you have done has failed. I have not seen any evidence that Israel has tried anything else. They jumped immediately to the military sledgehammer approach.
The Art of War was published about 2,500 years ago. The Gaza War is one more piece of evidence that governments are poor learners.
I maintain that all wars are two conflicts: the military conflict and the political conflict. For the military conflict I give a grade of D- for the political conflict: an F only because there is no lower grade. No political attempt was or is being tried.