Un

Let's finish off the week with a bang. Oh, I'm clever alright. You don't get it. A BANG. Tee hee. A play on words. But you don't get it. Gosh I'm terrific. And you're jealous cuz I'm so smart and handsome too.

I have my research staff working on a name for this week. From now on, every week gets a name. The working title has been Geopolitics Week, but that's pretty bland. Geocowardice Week is a bit on-the-nose, but it captures the intent. My marketing department will be launching a contest toward the end of this quarter, to encourage participation from the millions who read FP in awed silence. However much I assure them that they need not be intimidated by my brilliance, their reticence persists. It is understandable. I leave nothing left to say. It is the nature of perfection.

Today's installment takes us far back into the hoary recesses of primordial time, last year when Iran was bombing Israel every day. ... What, you don't remember that? No, you'd be too young. It was so very long ago. July and August of 2006. Forever ago. And it was only Jews. Hezbollah -- that is, Iran -- firing rockets every day and night into Israel from Lebanon. So here are four, yes, count them, FOUR masterpieces that I bestowed unto the world at that time. But a new generation has arisen since then, and wise old anchorite that I am, I've descended from my mountaintop once again to present these tablets of wisdom. Study them well, my children. Many profound mysteries will be revealed, to those who are worthy.

Just ignore the inconsistency of tone, here. I am an insecure antagonistic fool, and a hard-driving powerhouse executive, and a blessed sage. I am vast. I contain multitudes.


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Droppings

Hezbollah bombs Israel from Lebanon. What's a Jew to do?

Please do recall the two and a half months of unrelenting bombing of Belgrade. Something to do with clinton’s penis, as I recall. Judge for yourself if it was disproportionate -- the bombing I mean, not the penis. I have no opinion about the penis. clinton’s penis. I’m sure it’s an adequate penis, as penis’s go. But that’s not really the point, and I wish you’d stop harping on it. My point does have to do with proportionality, but really isn’t related to clinton’s penis at all. So drop it, will you? The subject, not the penis. Not that you need to actually drop his penis. Although considering it’s clinton you’re talking about perhaps you do need to drop it. That good old boy gets around, don’t he. Wasn't there something about that a few years ago, involving a little Jewess? See? clinton knew how to deal with the Jews. Anyway, the subject is distasteful. Well, perhaps that’s a poor choice of words, but it does finally bring us away from your weird obsession with clinton's penis and back to the real subject, of clinton and his bombs.

Samir Kuntar? One of the terrorists Hezbollah wants to trade the kidnapped -- kidnapped, not captured -- Israeli soldiers for. Samir Kuntar took a day trip into Israel from Lebanon one blue morning in 1979, and shot a father in the head in front of his four year old daughter, “so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then," in the words of the mother, “he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt." Samir Kuntar -- hero of the struggle. What a Kuntar.

No, Israel is surely out of bounds. Bad! Israel, bad! Do not defend yourselves. The world will do it for you. The world is renowned for its various Jewish problem solutions. No example springs immediately to mind, but I’m sure if I did a google search, say, keywords, Jewish problem solution, I’d come of with some useful insights. ... Hmm, here’s a site that comes right up -- something called theamericannazipartydotorg ... why, here are lots of ideas about how to help the Jews out of their current dilemma. See? Jews? You don’t need to invade Lebanon and kill Hezbollahns. France, Russia and Germany will provide many volunteers to deal with you.

UN um peace-keepers slash by-standers must provide an invaluable service, if they were deployed to Lebanon in even greater numbers. They’d, uh, be a boon for the local economy, spending all those Euros in frequenting discos and bistros and cinemas. Their pretty blue helmets would add a much needed flair to the fashion landscape -- masks clash so dreadfully with almost all headwear. They would provide an example of good posture to the local children. And the unerring moral sense behind the entire UN enterprise could only serve to elevate the debate to a higher plain. It wouldn’t be so awfully rabbinical.

So, as for “proportionality” regarding current events in Lebanon and Israel, we’ve discussed clinton’s penis, and Kuntar. Seems pretty proportional to me -- both sides of the issue. And that’s all the proportionality this discussion merits. Unless there’s some sort of confusion of terms going on, and by disproportional one means an eye for an eye. Kill the killers. They invade your homeland for several decades with impunity, you finally invade their rat holes and do what you can to dissuade their homicidal enthusiasms. But there’s something so distressingly masculine, in unapologetic self-defense. There’s something so biblical in the idea. It’s disquieting.

Let’s start talking about clinton’s penis again. Because those months of dropping long cylindrical bombs were proportionate, ever so much, and the world agrees with me in this. At last, we’ve learned to stop worrying and love the bombs when they drop from the north only. Dropping dropping dropping. Everything seems so phallic today. I’m so confused. I don't know who I am anymore. I keep having these dreams.

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Responsibility

Fifteen hundred rocket attacks on Israel by Hezbollah. I beg you to consider this. Suppose it had happened all over a single night. A massive bombardment like the spiteful judgment of a hateful god set to overturn a nation from dusk to dawn. Clearly, clearly such a blatant attack is nothing but an act of all out war. Full scale, no restraint. Please now reframe the issue, very slightly. Instead of overnight, imagine this hail of death occurring over a week. A season. Several years. A few decades. Now please tell me what the real difference is. Please tell me.

Diffused horror is still horror. A hundred thousand cries of anguish sounding in a single hour, or in the span of a young life cut short -- what, pray, is the difference? Are fewer people killed and maimed and bereft? Is the cost of rebuilding, or the cost of burials, less? If the enemy elects to kill on a timeline short or long, are we to form different opinions of his malice, by this?

Sewers are meant to handle feces -- they sweep it away. But too much feces and it backs up and floods the house. Is the point that a little murder is okay, but too much is not? No. We're talking about feces, but not about sewers. We're talking about ice cream. A little feces in your ice cream is not acceptable, in any amount. A little terrorism, a little murder, is not acceptable, in any amount. Period.

And Israel at long last stirs itself from its torpor and dismay to turn in muted fury on its tormentor. Muted, notice. Leaflets dropped from the skies. Flee, this ground is not safe! And villagers -- I do not say innocent villagers, since they harbor the monster rather than beat it to death or at least drive it from their midst -- the villagers, I say, given fair warning know to turn to the north and seek some haven. As do, of course, the terrorists. This is what Israel does. It warns its enemy, that the -- well, not innocent, but the non-combatants might preserve themselves. And the cost of this humanity, of which Israel cannot, God bless her, shed itself, is that her own young men are set upon by dug-in scum. Ambush. A fair enough tactic, in war. But they have been warned to flee. The Jews become Abraham, laying out their own children in obedience to the morality their faith has taught them. The message becomes, Flee, or prepare to lay in wait to kill our sons. What morality has Allah taught the terrorists? Well, we speak of different gods, don't we.

Imagine the glee the enemy feels. From behind a shield of civilians they fire their random shrapnel-bin-laden rockets. Dead Jews are a victory, and dead Lebanese are a victory as well. Even dead terrorists are a victory. They're so brave, you see, and so heroic. The Jews are so brutal and unfeeling. Why, are they even really human? Such is the reasoning of the psychopath, or rather the sociopath. We're dealing with insanity here.

The analogy isn't one of gangs infesting the streets, and the neighborhood simply tolerating them. Indeed, this is what the villagers have done -- tolerated the monsters. After all, it is not the Lebanese who are the victims. Not being the victim is very tolerable. No, the analogy is of gangs infesting the streets, and the police doing nothing. Lebanon has a government, you see, which has not been clearing out the garbage, and has not been enforcing the law. The deaths of each and every civilian is on the heads not of the Israelis who are finally defending themselves, but on the officials placed in power by the villagers. If somebody has climbed my bell tower and is killing pedestrians with a high-power rifle, the first few deaths are not on me. But when I learn of it, and don't call in the police -- well then.

If Lebanon is not competent to maintain order within its borders, or to prevent those within its borders from waging war on a neighboring country, it had only to request aid from the outside world. It failed to do this, in an example of grossest negligence. I guess they didn't mind all those rockets, as long as they were landing outside of the country. More dead Jews. Tsk tsk. Such a shame. If only there were something we could do but there just isn't that's all. It's out of our power. Hezbollah runs the south and that's all there is to it. No. Every dead civilian, Israeli or Lebanese, is on the heads of the feckless pols in Beirut who stood idle while Hezbollah ran wild.

"Droppings" had a few words about proportionality. Sometimes I lapse into the incomprehensibly bizarre. Well, that's just me. But Israel could bomb Lebanon into a second Dead Sea, and it wouldn't be disproportionate. The world would understand my point, if these 1500 rockets had fallen in a single night. The world would be shocked and aghast. Yes, even the world would be, though the victim be Jews. And to such a mighty and fierce and unprovoked a sneak attack, a full-out war of retaliation would be totally understandable. We may not remember the Maine, but we remember Pearl Harbor. And the outcome of that little affair was the burning of Tokyo and a metamorphosis of a few other Japanese cities into ashes and glass. Churchill responded to the Blitz by firebombing Dresden and Hamburg as if they'd been overwhelmed by an upswelling of primal magma. Proportional?

No. It shouldn't have taken so long.

But that's the problem, isn't it. The paradox of timelines. If atrocities happen over a long enough period, they do not add up to their sum. They are so much less. I refuse to accept this. Cycle of violence? That implies some degree of symmetry. So far the image has been so elliptical it's almost parabolic. With Israel, of course, inevitably, at the bottom of the feces funnel. I do not care if Israel strikes immediately in anger, or after a time, with deliberation. I care only that an appropriate and effective response is made. The only appropriate response to genocidal monsters is to kill them back.

I hope to God that's comprehensible.


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Threat Assessment

Some of you will remember it. 1983. Lebanon. 241 dead marines. 241 dead marines. All at once. 241. Remember? Or at least did you learn it in school? Do me a favor, eh? Count to 241.

...

Done? Took a while, didn't it. Bigger number than it sounds, right? That's a lot of death. Now, who is it that killed these 241 marines? The name should be on the tip of your tongue. Yes. Hezbollah. Hezbollah. Iran-backed, Syrian-backed Hezbollah. Responsible for the deaths of 241 men enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. 241. Should I be sarcastic about it? Is there some cheap shot I can take? It’s only 8% of the number that died on 9/11? It’s comparable to the number who die each year from misadventure by coconuts?

Well, they are long since dead, these 23 years, as is Reagan, who fled Lebanon because of this massacre. Dead, dead, all dead. Oh -- there is one party still active. Hezbollah. Living in Lebanon unmolested for this quarter of a century, this generation. The children and grandchildren of that first cohort now fill the ranks of Hezbollah. It’s a culture. And all cultures are equal. Who are we to judge. […] That was me being vulgar. The particular issue before us is beyond vulgarity. It is a solemn matter, that there should have passed a generation during which our dead marines molder in their graves while Hezbollah grows in strength and passes from one victory to another. Victory: dead Jews, or, secondarily, dead anyone else. It is a matter for gravest consideration.

Hezbollah, and Hamas, and the Mahdi Army of Sadr -- it’s an infestation. It’s a plague. And Syria. And Iran. Shall we consider this as if it were a grave threat? How many people die each year from terrorist attacks? Has anyone done that research? Because I’m sure the number isn’t zero. If we add up all the annual human deaths by sharks and bats and rats and scorpions and bears and tigers and deadly snakes and venomous spiders and jelly fish and Africanized honey bees, I fully expect that it will be significantly less than those by terrorism, broadly defined. It’s a plague. It’s an infestation. Has anyone done the research as to how to eradicate small pox, or Ebola, or malaria? I’m sure there must be a way of saving human lives, if only we could figure out how to eliminate the vermin.

Or maybe terrorism is an urban legend. After all, you haven’t been killed by terrorists. That would explain why it’s mostly all talk, and so little real commitment. Now the Manhattan Project, that was a commitment. World War Two -- that was a commitment. I’d take a cheap victory, if anyone was offering it. No one is. Victory is going to be expensive. It always has been, as a certain generation of Americans could remind us. But that generation, unlike Hezbollah, is past and passing. Today’s Hitler reads a Koran and prays facing east. Is there no lesson then that we might learn, from history or from epidemiology, as to how to deal with deadly, vicious, inhuman threats?

I’m so frustrated -- it’s on the tip of my tongue, the answer. Something to do with hunting every single one of them down and killing them. And their parents. And burning down the village they grew up in. Something like that. Something about making a real effort. Something about pulling out all the stops. Something about taking this war seriously. Maybe, say, not simply observing Israel’s war with Hezbollah -- as if a country could wage a war against a non-country -- but actually contributing to it, by sending troops to southern Lebanon as we sent them to, oh, say, Germany.

Well, maybe the answer will come to me in a dream.

Oh. It seems that nobody dies from coconuts falling on their heads. It’s a non-urban legend. Just like it’s a myth that all cultures are equal. Just like the Holocaust was a myth. Well, there’s some controversy over that one. But can one point three billion Moslems be wrong? What seems wrong to me is that Hezbollah should still exist, after the massacre of 241 marines. Maybe that's a myth too. Maybe the idea of self-defense is a myth. Maybe somebody should do some research, to establish the truth in matters such as these. If it's important, that is. Maybe it's not. Who can say. Do any of us really have the right to judge?

Sleep well.

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"What if they gave a war..."

...and nobody came? We have the answer now, these four decades after that ever-so-deep and really-not-immature-at-all question was first posed. What happens when they give a war and nobody comes, is that the side that gave it takes over, and the ones who don't come get exterminated or enslaved. Surprise!

What if Hitler gave a World War Two, and nobody came? Asked and answered.

I’m not actually sure who gave this present war, Israel or Hezbollah -- maybe they gave it together. But nobody’s coming. Nobody else. What do you call a party where only two people show up? A date? What, did the invitations not get sent? Were they lost in the mail? Cuz there wasn’t any RSVP, and dats a faq, Jacques.

UN Resolution # 1701498 4)03+94“9$ %03 03-2-4@5867*65759 024uv.,m.gn 3w643jn;l kj43 09u!)xh 0u c08%9*u 80vgf09j j 2, which arranges or orders or suggests or masturbatorily fantasizes a cease fire, and incidentally condemns Israel as a fascist aggressor criminal rogue nazi zionist entity state nation of Jukikes, doesn’t seem to have the courage of its conviction. Fifteen thousand UN pornography watchers I mean peace keepers is too high a number, apparently. Are there even 15000 people in the whole world? Cuz I’m pretty sure France was going to provide some thousands of troops, now down to several hundred, which number will eventually and inevitably resolve itself to a one-eyed pastry chef and two usherettes from EuroDisney. One of them will have a nasty yeast infection, and I don’t mean the chef.

My point? Well, I’m very depressed lately, and that breeds pessimism. But from the dank dark haze of my oppression I attempt at least some clarity of thought, and it seems to be this. You don’t get to vote, unless you’re willing to back it up with action. The UN has voted, and now will do nothing. Alas, it shouldn’t be some sports bar where loudmouth drunks holler their opinions and then forget what they just said so they stuff themselves with pork rinds … or should I say flambéed Crêpes Soufflées à l’Orange. To purport to direct the grand course of human events, and to imagine that by mere dicta all will be well, well, this is what anthropologists call word magic, a superstitious belief of primitive people -- people who are, evolutionarily speaking, hardly human at all -- mere primates, say australopithecines or at best homo habilis. Hmm -- how'd we get back in this damn sports bar?

What if they gave a vote and nobody meant what they said? All the ayes it seems are actually neighs, brays from whinnying jackasses pretending to be Houyhnhmns. This is inconsequential, given that it is the UN we’re talking about. We know what “un-” means: a prefix of negation or abnegation. What is of consequence is that Israel, by most accounts, has lost the war to which nobody is coming. And that’s just too bad, because it’s not like Israel couldn’t see it coming. It wasn’t a blind date. Well, Hezbollah certainly wasn’t blind. HeSSbollah has had its eye on its goal for thirty years and more. I do seem to recall some biblical verse about Israel being made blind for a time. I always took it as referring to blindness about Jesus. Hezbollah isn’t Jesus, is it? Maybe something to do with the Hidden Imam, but not Jesus. Oh, it’s all so complicated.

Any final thoughts, Jack? Well, yes, I suppose I have one. What is it? Well, it’s that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed pastry chef is king. Meaningless? You might very well think so. I couldn’t possibly comment. Oh alright, I'll comment. Who was the pastry chef? In a world where hardly anyone stands up for integrity, the loudest loudmouth runs things, per dicta. Yeah. The UN and its UNpeace-keepers.

What if they gave a peace, and nobody came? Asked and answered.

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You get the point. I have a problem with sneak attacks. I suppose sometimes they're necessary. I have a problem with hypocrisy. Sometimes it's expedient. I have a problem with a failure to respond to deadly threats. I can't think of any time that's okay.


J