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Daniel Greenfield
We’re in a war between savages and civilization. Everything else is a detail.
Some of us woke up to that war when planes crashed into skyscrapers. Others when we saw beheading videos spread across social media. What we saw in Israel, Hamas terrorists raping, mutilating and defiling corpses, is another bloody wake-up call. There will be many others.
Beyond the politics and the geopolitics, we still haven’t come to terms with what we’re fighting.
The barbarism of murdering women and children, taking them as hostages, and posting photos of their dead bodies to social media, is not a byproduct of Islamic warfare, it’s the whole point.
Cruelty, beheading, burning to death, torturing and mutilating are the essence of Islam. This is how Islamic warfare was practiced beginning with Mohammed for over a thousand years. It’s how it continues to be practiced, whether it’s ISIS fighting other Muslims, Azebajani troops killing Armenians, Hamas attacking Israelis, or Islamic terrorists plotting carnage in Western nations.
Bearing Arms
Israel’s gun control policies worsened the death toll
If your name isn’t Rip Van Winkle, you’ve heard what happened over the weekend in the Middle East. Israel was subjected to a massive attack by Hamas using thousands of rockets, drone bombs, and a thousand armed men who breached the border and entered Israel via sea, air, and land.
The militants attacked several rural communities and the city of Sderot. They massacred more than 250 people at a trance music festival with a peace theme. In the age of smartphone cameras, there are too many videos of the massacres to shake whatever faith in humanity you have left.
As of this writing, the toll stands at over 700 Israelis killed (archived links) and more than 2000 injured, several hundred of whom are in critical condition fighting for their lives. Around 130 Israeli civilians have been kidnapped and taken back to Gaza as hostages. This was a medieval pogrom with modern technology, not a valiant struggle for freedom.
Israel’s reputable intelligence and security apparatus failed to keep their citizens safe. This happens from time to time around the world. US intelligence agencies failed to prevent 9/11. Indian intelligence failed to prevent the Mumbai 2008 terror attacks (known as 26/11 for the 26th of November 2008). But the death toll wouldn’t have been so insanely high if not for Israel’s gun control policies.
Glenn Reynolds
Is Everything Suddenly Going to Hell?
Or are people just starting to notice?
There are lots of reasons to feel bad about everything: The domestic political situation, the domestic – and global – economic picture, foreign affairs and national security, culture. And they’re good reasons, and you should be worried.
But.
It’s also the case that a lot more people are suddenly noticing how bad things have gotten. You see it on things like immigration, where now “sanctuary cities” are suddenly in favor of building the wall, now that people are actually immigrating to them. You see it in the parental pushback on school closures and trans craziness. You see it in the growing realization that the Biden Administration – and, really, the entire Western governing class – is clueless and inept on foreign policy and national security, and pretty much everything else. And you see it in a growing impatience with the gentry class fixations on race, gender, and climate change while ordinary people struggle to make ends meet.
Dana Pico
The Israeli-Hamas War and the frustration of the Usual Suspects
As my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach has noted, the Editorial Board of The New York Times has unambiguously supported Israel following the sneak attacks by Hamas guerrilla fighters.
The brutal terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas is a tragedy, one that may change the course of the nation and the entire region.
The Editorial Board minced no words in calling the attacks “terrorist,” which they certainly were:
To the world’s horror, they attacked civilians — including older people, women and children — and took them hostage. More than 150 people remain captive in Gaza, in a further atrocity.
As we previously reported, the Times covered the attacks extensively. The 24-hour cable news networks? They are doing the same thing. But, as we also reported, the very #woke[1] Philadelphia Inquirer has been strangely quiet on the whole thing. Columnist Trudy Rubin, who does appear to support the Israelis at least somewhat, criticized Israel’s security policies, which is at least realistic given that the nation was caught completely by surprise.
Far-left columnist Will Bunch? He gave the obligatory statement that yes, Hamas attack was “butcherous,” “immoral and unconscionable”, right before blaming Israel and it’s “long-running, brutal occupation regime”:
Front Page Magazine
Will Israel Do What it Takes to Secure Peace?
Moral reflections on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden – and Gaza.
The joint aerial bombing by the British and the United States of Dresden, Germany between February 12-15, 1945, killed up to 25,000 people. They were mostly civilians. The bombings had a devastating effect on Hitler’s Germany and played a key role in Germany’s surrender in the Second World War on May 8, 1945.
On August 6th and 9th of that same year, the United States of America detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The explosions killed between 129, 000 and 226,000 people. Less than a month later, the Japanese surrendered, thereby ending World War II and Japanese imperialism.
Unlike most trained ethicists, I have no agonistic hand-wringing moments regarding the scope and breadth of these acts of war against enemy combatants. The moral purpose of war is to totally vanquish the enemy. Attritional warfare is the military strategy that best achieves this goal. Military scholars often quibble over what constitutes attritional warfare; nevertheless, we may surmise that any war in which the agents attempt to win by consistently and mercilessly wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through loss of human life and military resources by any means, is an attritional war. Sometimes critics of attritional war will refer to them as wars of “mass destruction.”
