Timothy Snyder on Terror/counter-terror

[dorankj]

You understand that Hamas is the ruling ‘government’ for the Palestinian people, elected by them? They are largely supported by the Palestinians, there’s no huge call from the people to overthrow Hamas and have new leadership.

You guys need to get a grip on what’s really happening and not go with the college campus, media, ‘intellectual’ spin that always blames Israel or at least equivocates to try and justify this as a ‘normal’ war. If Israel stops fighting there will be no more Israel, if all the Arab forces (mainly pushed by Iran but often supported by many Muslims) stop fighting there will be no more conflict. Israel is just trying to exist, all the others are trying to kill all Jews and eliminate Israel, you must get that straight!

[Rideback]

US Navy war ships have intercepted missles fired from Yemen today, the trajectory isn't 100% known but most likely the target was Israel.Glad to see that both the USS Ford and USS Enterprise are now stationed where they can effectively have Israel's back.

[mister_coffee]

Again, it is easy to talk big when someone else is going to be doing the fighting. And the dying.

I think Israel could have done a bit better from a PR perspective out the door on this. If they'd announced the following early on:

1. We have counter battery radars and know how to use them. Any location where rockets are launched against us is a legitimate target and we will immediately strike it. If you launch rockets from a hospital, school, or mosque by the rules of armed combat those locations can be engaged and destroyed.
2. You have 48 hours (or maybe 24, or maybe 96) to return all of the hostages, alive.
3. You have 48 hours (or maybe 24, or maybe 96) to surrender all of the Hamas leadership to us, alive.

I think making specific demands and giving a hard time limit, even an unreasonably short one, would play well with world public opinion. It also puts the onus on Hamas to keep this from escalating and keeping innocent bystanders (or rather, more innocent bystanders) from becoming casualties.

To be fair, both the Israelis and the Palestinians have pretty efficient PR machines and they both spin with ruthless efficiency when the crap is flying. Like the whole recent thing with the hospital in Gaza. It is pretty clear now that that whole thing was caused by rockets launched by Hamas (or whoever else in Gaza has rockets), it wasn't an Israeli strike, and there is no way 500 people were killed. But a big piece of the international news media ran with that version of the story and at this point they are sticking with it.

As someone recently wrote, we're going to miss the Geneva Convention when its gone...

[Rideback]

FYI Ken, Israel is not at war with the Palestinians, Israel is at war with a terrorist organization called Hamas. There are not 2 sides. Unless you support terrorism. Hamas is a terrorist organization that hates the US as well as our ally Israel.

You seem to be falling back into your plan of going in 'guns ablazin'. Hamas members don't all wear red blazers and carry flags, it's virtually impossible to tell them apart from the civilians. Reports indicate that the hostages are not all being kept in one location, they are widely spread out and Hamas is using their tunnel networks to move about. What's that? Bomb the tunnels you say? Mmm, well the tunnels are under homes, schools and hospitals so you'd be taking those out as well.

[dorankj]

They are currently holding hostages! Yes, go rescue them ASAP and shoot anyone holding them or in the way. You guys are really sick!

[just-jim]

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“Evil”?
Pretty hollow words from someone who, just a couple days ago, was eager for the US to get into this fight “guns a blazing”, in apparent disregard of non-combatants.
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[Rideback]

Too late Ken, you already forfeited your opinion to be taken seriously.

[dorankj]

Evil protects evil! I won’t support this bull***. You live with what you won’t call out.

[mister_coffee]

Oh, and jokes being told in Russia. About Nazis.

— Good afternoon! You have a summons to the military registration and enlistment office.
-Who will we fight with?
- With the Nazis, of course!
- And against whom?

— Where did the Z sign come from?
- This is the first half of the swastika.
-Where is the other half?
- It was stolen.

Not so funny is that people are being charged with crimes for telling those jokes.

[just-jim]

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Yeah, I think we can probably end this discussion – for now – since things have reached the meaningless and inane point where Hitler/Nazis are introduced.

Under the terms of ‘Godwin’s Law’, the person making the such comparison automatically loses any discussion or argument they are making. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)
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[mister_coffee]

These same things were said about Nazi’s back in the day! I think you need new nooz.

I believe you were the one who brought them up. Godwin's law in action.

[dorankj]

Comparing Hamas in Gaza to Germany? Wow, that’s a crazy stretch! I think it’s pretty possible for Israel to eradicate Hamas as a ‘neighbor’ if we don’t cut them off with political and ideological horsepuckey like normally happens. And if we can’t muster any will to go rescue American citizens being tortured and brutalized by those animals then Biden is even weaker than Carter and that’s truly a sad state of affairs!

[Rideback]

Dual crisises, lessons to be learned from Israel & Hamas

https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/ ... szqeOfNz9w

[mister_coffee]

Historically when we went in after the Nazis without a good and careful plan we got chewed up pretty badly. Just saying.

It is obvious based on the outrageous nature of the attacks and atrocities that Hamas committed that their intention was to provoke a hasty and angry reaction. You don't need to know much about winning wars to know that doing what your enemy wants you to do is a bad idea.

[Rideback]

Allrighty then Ken, interesting comment. So, great guru where do you get your news from?

[dorankj]

These same things were said about Nazi’s back in the day! I think you need new nooz.

[just-jim]

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This isn’t a Rambo movie. Nor a 007 novel. And in spite of the simple-minded situations and ‘fixes’ faux nooz wants you believe, reality is actually is a bit more complicated….

And, no, we don’t know anything ‘precisely’. Hamas isn’t a small group of easily identifiable renegades all in uniform, waiting to get shot by the good guys. Hamas is a political party; it has members, student groups, women’s groups, it functions as THE government. It pervades society. It’s 100s of thousands of people in a population of over 2.5 million.

‘guns a blazing’ is what brought this sh*t show on.
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[Rideback]

Hostage rescue is absolutely not 'going in with guns blazing'.

The Israelis may or may not 'know precisely who the players are'. Given Israel's reputation for their high level of security it goes without saying that if they knew exactly where the core of the Hamas actors were, they would have already acted. The whole strategy of Hamas now is much like ISIS, they are hiding amongst the civilians of Gaza, they are using the tunnel networks to get around.

Biden's efforts to form alliances with more ME countries isn't in any way close to 'playing footsie' with them. Read the good articles and links that are on page 1 of this thread. The threat that Israel is facing, that all the prisoners are trapped in is today's problem to solve but without alliances formed and deterence in place the vulnerabilities will carry on for more generations.

[dorankj]

Isn’t hostage rescue exactly going in guns ablazing? We know precisely who the players are, the problem is political in that Biden has been playing footsy with the Iranians desperate to make a deal (that they will never live up to) and has shown how weak he is to decisively respond to evil doers, so of course we get MORE evil doings.

[mister_coffee]

Yes, it might well be our fight. But I think we need to know who all of the players are (and who are not) before we go in with guns blazing and our pants around our ankles.

This excellent Medium article kind of sums it up, I'll quote if you're paywalled:

https://johnwight1.medium.com/hamas-att ... 9d54d3945c

The unbounded and crazed wrath that the Israelis are currently raining down on Gaza is the wrath not of a military secure in its power, but one that has just been awoken as to the extent of its vulnerabilities. The scale of the chasm between the IDF and Hamas when it comes to military capability on paper has been bridged by audacity, courage, determination and ruthlessness.

An ugly occupation does not give rise to a pretty resistance and the Hamas attack was ugly in the extreme...

[Rideback]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ue&r=2be3h

Rubin makes an important point that Israeli Intelligence failed and their failure to protect the people of Israel was caused by the distractions that stemmed from Netanyhu's personal agenda. The govt's dissaray opened the door to chaos and Hamas recognized the moment. While everyone can condemn the barberous attacks by Hamas, it's just as important to understand that the Israeli govt failed to protect the people on her soil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... FYu6dD3Uqg

[dorankj]

With nearly 30 Americans killed in the original attack on Sat and believed to be 15 or so held hostage currently in Gaza isn’t it our fight too?!

[mister_coffee]

In Fallujah and Tal Afar we were able to clear out most of the civilians before the fight really started. And even then it took months of fighting. IDF won't have that luxury. Like I said previously this will likely be very comparable to the battle for Mosul a few years back. That battle took over nine months.

Fallujah was also about a tenth the size of Gaza.

There really isn't a "right thing" for Israel to do in this situation. And also all of the technological, training, and organizational advantages the IDF has over Hamas are substantially negated in this kind of battle, and weak points of the IDF (the fact that it is relatively small and can't sustain itself in a battle for very long) come into play. Storming a defended city takes a lot of soldiers and a lot of time, neither of which the IDF has.

[just-jim]

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https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/15/midd ... index.html

1300 Israeli dead.
2300 dead in Gaza with 9000+ injured. The WHO estimates 60% of those casualties are women and children.
50,000 pregnant women are in Gaza with 5000 due to give birth during in the next month’s time.

Israel has limited opportunity to do this the right way. They don’t, yet, appear to be successful in doing so.
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[Rideback]

Ken, how do you propose killing off all of Hamas? And though many believe that Iran financially supports Hamas there's been no proof, per our IntelCommunity, that Hamas planned or financially supported this attack.

Hamas is entrenched in Gaza, and as the US learned the hard way in Iraq, it's incredibly hard to kill off the bad guys when they're living amongst a civilian population. Hamas also terrorizes the civilians, it's not simply a matter of getting them to turn on Hamas. As hard as Falujah was on our troops, consider that in Gaza has a massive tunnel complex, that they have huge ammo caches and high rise buildings over 20 stories that all make for challenges we long-range armchair watchers can't even imagine.

This is Israel's war. It's up to them to direct the next play. Biden has now moved 2 carriers into place with all their support power which is a strong statement to Iran and any other ME power that it's best to stay out of this. We have a role as an ally and Biden has brokered exits for US citizens as well as frozen the $6 billion that was set to return to Iran for humanitarian use.