In Israel military and political leaders are sweating blood trying to thread a needle that has no eye; how to rescue hostages, kill the Hamas leadership and its psychopathic foot soldiers, minimize “civilian” Palestinian deaths and protect their own troops from harm while accomplishing all this in an urban environment that resembles some hellish first-person shooter video game. Chances to accomplish all of these objectives is objectively zero. And they know that. The real mission is to destroy Hamas while not failing catastrophically at the other objectives.
Of course, if they fail at that primary objective then all the other failures; deaths of soldiers, hostages and civilians will have been in vain and therefore infinitely worse. And they approach this mission with the knowledge that Hamas orchestrated this cataclysm for the express result that they would get to kill a lot of Israeli soldiers without the Israelis achieving their goal of eradicating Hamas from Gaza. I’m sure the IDF knows all this. For that reason, I’m guessing that they will resist the pressure brought to bear by Israeli peaceniks, moderate Arab state leaders and Joe Biden, that the battle in Gaza be limited and without result. But that’s my assumption. All past experience has been that Gaza is an insoluble problem that cannot be resolved. Time will certainly tell.
In the House of Representatives word is that many of the establishment leaders are bowing to necessity and approving Jim Jordan’s bid to become Speaker. Here, I don’t even have an inkling about what will happen. As far as I can tell most of these politicians are crooks who only follow orders from their paymasters so it’s impenetrable to me. Maybe the need to come up with an aid package for Israel will force the establishment shills to accept Jordan against their wills in order to allow the legislation they want to proceed. Possibly some good will come of this accident of timing. I’ve heard Jim Jordan is supposed to be the one in ten thousand, honest man. I hope he is and I wish him well. What I do hope is that he draws the line at further funding for Ukraine. After all I think it’s only fair that we restrict our support to one major war at a time. Ukraine has had their chance. Now let them work it out with the Russians. If that’s still possible.
Joe Biden is going to Israel. I’m sure he’ll regale them with tales of his service at the battle front in 1948, 1967 and 1973. He might even relate the story of his hand-to-hand duel against the dastardly Arab terrorist Corn Al-Pop. He was one bad dude.
Joe Biden in the Holy Land. Surely the Lord of the Old Testament has some lightning, earthquake and brimstone saved up for just such a contingency. I mean, Joe is like some local representative of Sodom or Gomorrah showing up after a local atrocity. Turning Dr Jill into a salt pillar seems like letting him off light. But politics makes for strange bedfellows.
The election and Trump indictment news moves along on the expected trajectories. The more certain that Trump will be imprisoned the more certain that his support among Republican voters will increase. It’s like some fateful confluence of irresistible forces is dragging us to a crisis that can only be resolved by a radical shift in the status quo. Maybe it’s an illusion but it seems that we won’t be splitting the difference this time. It appears that the system is breaking down catastrophically. Now I say appears because as has been mentioned innumerable times before, there is an awful lot of ruin in a world empire. But short of armed intervention by the military it seems like people are getting fed up with the dysfunction that has been imposed on the whole country. But we’ll see.
Anyway, that’s what I have to remark on today. More madness and more dysfunction. More of the same.