This is what weakness looks like: this country’s most important associate in the Middle East suffers a sneak attack from a neighbor who sends heavily armed squads into civilian areas to kill as many men, women and children as possible while raining down rockets indiscriminately across the country.
Our sawdust-brained president decides it’s not important enough to cancel naptime and the White House “calls a lid,” meaning Joe the Vacuous will have no comment on the situation 24 hours after it started.
In the attack so far, more Jews have been killed than in any other single event since the Holocaust. Thaaaaat’s right. So for all you “Never Again” folks out there, this moment is a challenge: did you really mean it? If so, what do you plan to do? And if you feel a little uncomfortable now that reality has come calling, maybe that tells you something. One should mean what one says, otherwise one will never say what one means.
The attack continues to be answered by Israel with airstrikes and artillery fire into the Gaza strip; eventually they will invade. The war – because it is a war, all-out and without quarter due to its beginning – will be relatively long and very bloody indeed. And though the Israel Defense Forces have taken care to avoid civilian casualties so far – difficult in Gaza, with its dense population and the habit of Hamas and their associates to collocate military installations with important civilian targets like schools and hospitals – they may become less attentive as time goes on and casualties mount.
Eventually, the clash may evolve into a four-front war as Hezb’ollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the West Bank and even Syria join the attack, thinking the time may have come to wipe the “Zionist Enemy” out. Which in turn has the stomach-churning possibility of becoming a region-wide conflict with dire, and even existential, consequences. Remember, at least one of the states in the region values national survival less than the opportunity to hasten the arrival of the Thirteenth Imam. Moreover, thanks to Joe’s ineptitude and lack of clarity, that state is about to go nuclear. Oh, well done.
Speaking of which: it’s now pretty clear that Iran has been training and supplying Hamas with sophisticated weapons for this attack. Whether the weapons came from the Taliban’s new stash in Afghanistan or through new purchases is unclear. But come they did, and their presence casts the administration’s decision to pay a $6 billion ransom for American citizens held by Tehran in a very bad light. By the way – don’t try the repellant Anthony Blinken’s transparent fib about Qatar only allowing the funds to be spent for medicine and food. Qatari officials celebrated the Hamas attack and massacre, money is fungible and the whole argument is a fetid insult to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
Before this situation gets any further down the road to Perdition, a short, strong statement from the President is necessary, probably followed by a vigorous demonstration that no, the United States, despite past vacillations, is not kidding. Perhaps the President should channel Theodore Roosevelt who, in 1904 was faced with the kidnapping of a probable American citizen in Tangiers, Morocco by local tribal leader Ahmad al-Raisuni. Roosevelt dispatched warships to Tunis and John Hay, his Secretary of State, announced simply: “We want Pericardis alive, or Raisuni dead.”
But he won’t. He can’t. He is utterly captured by the Left of his party which believes with the twins of odium Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar that this whole thing is Israel’s fault. Because, well, it exists. So, utterly flummoxed, Joe retreats to his beloved basement and refuses the necessary. Meanwhile, chaos gathers and the world grows darker.
Contrast all this to 2019. There was no war in the Levant. There was no war in Ukraine. There was prosperity and peace, the byproducts of a strong president who people around the world understood to mean what he said, and who would react forcefully if U.S. interests were threatened. There was no invasion of our southern border, little inflation or unemployment. In the Mideast the news was of the Abraham Accords, a breakthrough peace agreement between Israel and two of its Arab neighbors, brokered by the administration of Donald Trump. Something to remember, come November of 2024.
Finally, it’s worth noting that both Christian and Muslim eschatology describe a final battle between good and evil. The characters differ a little, but both agree that afterward, the world as we now know it will cease to exist. Muslims are a bit vague as to the location, but in the last book of the Christian bible, it’s pinpointed: the Mountain of Megiddo, or Armageddon. It’s about 35 kilometers southeast of the port of Haifa, in Israel. Hamas’ military commander in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, has already used “day of the greatest battle” rhetoric and urged universal participation in it.
To anyone in Washington, D.C. who still has this country’s – or the world’s – well-being and interests at heart: wake the hell up. It’s time for leaders to lead, before we’re all buried in rubble.
As for you, Joe – never mind. You’ve already done enough.
