Why Israel (and the West) Don't Win Wars Anymore
Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 7 months ago to Politics
Excerpt:
"Almost all statistical work in international relations should be taken with a grain of salt, but the results here are almost certainly correct. At one point, Western nations ruled over the vast majority of the world’s surface area. Today, the US can struggle for decades to impose its will on one poor nation on the other side of the globe and end up leaving in disgrace.
It seems unlikely that there’s a technological reason for this change. If anything, strong countries should be getting better at accomplishing their objectives. Sure, insurgents now have things like cellphones and IEDs, but that’s unlikely to be as important as new tools primarily available to rich states like nuclear weapons, precision bombs, and advanced satellite and surveillance technology.
The mention of nuclear weapons in the last sentence should provide a clue as to where I’m going with this. The use of nukes in a conflict like Afghanistan or Iraq is unthinkable. This provides a clear example of how new humanitarian ideas make it more difficult to fight and win wars.
Looking at the US and Israeli wars in the Middle East of the last several decades, it’s remarkable how few people have been directly killed by the stronger side. I’ve gathered numbers for eight conflicts below.
...
Let’s put these numbers in some historical perspective. Only looking at civilians who died due to direct military action, in WWII Germany lost 1.5-3 million and Japan lost up to 800,000. Even after the Second World War, millions of civilians died in Korea. These are all interstate conflicts, but that’s not the point, as Western countries used to be a lot more willing to commit atrocities when putting down insurgencies too.
It would be nice to believe that there isn’t a tradeoff between protecting innocent life and winning wars. My theory of the origins of counterinsurgency doctrine is that it emerged in the late 2000s as a way to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear, which is that you defeat an enemy and develop a stable state primarily by winning civilians over to your side, and you win civilians to your side by looking out for their objective interests. Yet this would be quite amazing if it were true. Given that insurgents hide among civilians and live off the local economy and infrastructure, there will often be times when killing them or otherwise hindering their operations will require risking harm being done to the broader public. How much harm one is willing to inflict on noncombatants is a political and moral question."
"Almost all statistical work in international relations should be taken with a grain of salt, but the results here are almost certainly correct. At one point, Western nations ruled over the vast majority of the world’s surface area. Today, the US can struggle for decades to impose its will on one poor nation on the other side of the globe and end up leaving in disgrace.
It seems unlikely that there’s a technological reason for this change. If anything, strong countries should be getting better at accomplishing their objectives. Sure, insurgents now have things like cellphones and IEDs, but that’s unlikely to be as important as new tools primarily available to rich states like nuclear weapons, precision bombs, and advanced satellite and surveillance technology.
The mention of nuclear weapons in the last sentence should provide a clue as to where I’m going with this. The use of nukes in a conflict like Afghanistan or Iraq is unthinkable. This provides a clear example of how new humanitarian ideas make it more difficult to fight and win wars.
Looking at the US and Israeli wars in the Middle East of the last several decades, it’s remarkable how few people have been directly killed by the stronger side. I’ve gathered numbers for eight conflicts below.
...
Let’s put these numbers in some historical perspective. Only looking at civilians who died due to direct military action, in WWII Germany lost 1.5-3 million and Japan lost up to 800,000. Even after the Second World War, millions of civilians died in Korea. These are all interstate conflicts, but that’s not the point, as Western countries used to be a lot more willing to commit atrocities when putting down insurgencies too.
It would be nice to believe that there isn’t a tradeoff between protecting innocent life and winning wars. My theory of the origins of counterinsurgency doctrine is that it emerged in the late 2000s as a way to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear, which is that you defeat an enemy and develop a stable state primarily by winning civilians over to your side, and you win civilians to your side by looking out for their objective interests. Yet this would be quite amazing if it were true. Given that insurgents hide among civilians and live off the local economy and infrastructure, there will often be times when killing them or otherwise hindering their operations will require risking harm being done to the broader public. How much harm one is willing to inflict on noncombatants is a political and moral question."
My older siblings friends fought in Vietnam.
They all came back with the same story:
"We weren't there to win, I know that. Hell, I don't even know why we were there, just glad I came back in one piece"
My dad and all my friends dads fought WWII.
They knew why they were there and fought to win.
That said, every war since the Revolutionary War was started and funded on both sides by the Prussians (Rothschilds, Warbergs, cabal, NWO) whatever you want to call them these days.
War is profitable. Very profitable.
The proof-in-the-pudding? You will never see those in power send their children to fight and die in foreign wars.
I've always appreciated Sci-Fi dramas like "War of the Worlds," "Independence Day," etc. because there was no "nicety" about the aliens. They were just coming to wipe out humanity. They didn't care about anyone's skin color or dogma.
"My theory of the origins of counterinsurgency doctrine is that it emerged in the late 2000s as a way to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear, which is that you defeat an enemy and develop a stable state primarily by winning civilians over to your side, and you win civilians to your side by looking out for their objective interests."
It's an interesting hypothesis, but devoid of any parallel in history. The history of the Jewish nation shows a dozen times that they were conquered by some invading nation or other. In several, it notes that any male "that pisseth against the wall" (meaning only 4-5 years old) was killed rather than enslaved. In almost all of those conquests, the Jews were butchered to such a degree that only 10% of their people survived and those were scattered in and forcibly assimilated into their conquering nation. We can look at the rise of Islam - especially in the Ottoman State - and they had a very strict policy over captives: convert or die. It's hard to argue that they have been anything but effective in >1000 years of bloodshed. Had their sectarian differences not caused distracting internal strife it isn't hard to see a world populated by nothing but adherents to Islam. And if the US incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us anything, it is that military power is meaningless if the people retain a spirit of rebellion. (See also the Free France movement during WW II.)
Now its not that I specifically endorse the killing of "civilians" in war. But it's naive to follow the politicians who think that a military victory presages an ideological conversion. And without that ideological conversion, can one really call the war "won?"
Nobody…..rightly so…..has the stomach for that.
If they invade Gaza what’s the objective? Some hawks will tell me to kill all Palestinians. But consider that…….really? Israel will become a pariah state. Any goodwill left from the Holocaust would be erased. The American Left is tearing itself apart over this. I’m sure the Establishment will make sure this is under control before the election. Hamas really jumped the gun. Unless it wasn’t really created by Hamas to begin with. the next generation of Hamas has been created by this latest struggle. After enough cycles of this it will go nuclear at some point.
Israel could be facing a 10 million man army, they are sowing the seeds of their complete and utter destruction.
There is nothing this country could do to stop it. They're not even trying, they are cheerleading for all-out war. How insane is this?
We will be viewed as the collaborators we are.
Think: Hamas and Hezbollah have been entrenched in Mexico for some years now
After 2-1/2 years of open borders by the brainless douchebag, how many Hamas and Hezbollah are in this country just waiting for the word to cause trouble?
President Trump, where are you? We need you now.
Bring the army, navy, marines, and air force home to defend the borders and to expel all illegal immigrants/invaders.
D.C. fedgov is populated with looting scum deserving of prosecution for treason.
Egypt and Jordan are poor countries, thy can barely take care of their own. AND, let's face it, they sent their trouble makers to Gaza in order to be a thorn in Israelis side. You really think they want them back? Yasser Arafat and his entire family, from his father on down, was ejected from Egypt for being political trouble makers. Yasser Arafat was not a Palestinian, he was an Egyptian.
Northern Egypt is only 20-30 miles from southern Gaza. It's not like the troubles are being shipped far away, even if they were willing to take them in.
In WW2, germany and japan wanted to take over land and resources and the "west" simply wanted to stop them, and return the land to the original owners. And then the west helped rebuild the defeated nation's citizens. In a way, this was NOT what happened in previous wars. The USA and the west spent a lot of money defeating Germany and Japan, and then spent a lot of money rebuilding Germany and Japan. Kind of stupid really.
Since then, the "west" continues to fight the "aggressors" at its own expense, and takes essentially no "booty" but just expects to be be loved by the people who were "freed". The only way to stop the aggressors was to kill off enough civilians and military to get the aggressors to STOP. We should have never gone into Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan with the expectation of being loved for being the good guys.
Was that actually the case?
FDR wanted the US in the war (to cover up his failures and the effects of the federal banking laws.)
FDR cut off oil supplies to Japan, and purposely ignored the reports of the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps it was that the aggressors had been convinced via propaganda or forced into a corner
(by the banking cartel or other governments) where they concluded that military action was their
only option, e.g., WW2 Japan, Russia in Ukraine.
War is good for money lenders and military goods makers, and for the politicians that work for those 2 cartels.
The "West" (Deep State) is making war for profit of those groups who would be bankrupt
without control of government agencies.