Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Hamas' Miscalculation - Why The Group Thought It Could Get Away With Striking Israel
Friday, November 23, 2012
The escalation in the fighting last week between Israel and Hamas
caught many observers by surprise. Operation Cast Lead, Israel's 2008
campaign against Hamas, had led to an uneasy calm between the warring
sides. And last year's release of Gilad Shalit (the Israeli soldier who
had been kidnapped by militants in 2006) in exchange for a thousand
Palestinian prisoners had even given observers hope that Israel and
Hamas had found a way to manage their conflict. But then, Hamas attacked
an Israeli mobile patrol inside Israeli territory on November 10 and
Israel retaliated by assassinating Ahmed Jabari, Hamas's military chief.
This time, the violence that has followed has not faded quickly;
indeed, the fight is still intensifying. Given the destruction wrought by Israel and Hamas' last major
conflict, Hamas' calculations in the lead-up to this round of fighting
are especially puzzling. The typical explanation is that Hamas ramped up
its rocket campaign earlier this year in an effort to break Israel's
siege on the Gaza Strip. Under fire, Israel had to retaliate. That answer, though, is unsatisfying. In many ways, the siege had
already been broken. True, the Gaza Strip is tiny, densely populated,
squeezed between Israel and Egypt, and dependent on both countries for
the passage of people and goods. And all of that makes it a rather
claustrophobic place. Yet Israel's efforts to tightly control the area's
borders, which started after Hamas won elections there in 2006, had
gradually wound down. After the public relations disaster that followed
Israel's 2010 mishandling of the Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla, the
flow of goods over the Israeli border into Gaza increased substantially.
Moreover, the tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border, through which most
of the goods coming into Gaza are smuggled, became so elaborate that
they resembled official border crossings. In fact, the volume of trade
that travels through the tunnels could be up to $700 million dollars a year. To some extent, Hamas had a political interest in perpetuating the
siege idea, which could be used to foment anger against Israel and drum
up popular support. Further, it made sense for the movement to preserve
some limitations on the movement of goods into Gaza, since the smuggling
industry lined its coffers. Thus, although life in Gaza might not have
been all that pleasant for Gazans, Hamas wanting to break the siege is
not a compelling explanation for its renewed violence against Israel. In fact, two factors pushed Hamas to ramp up its bombing campaign:
competition from Salafi groups and Hamas' belief that its strategic
environment had improved in the wake of the Arab Spring. Since Hamas was
elected, it has found the Salafi groups in Gaza especially difficult
rivals to manage. Fatah, Hamas' main competitor before it pushed the
group out of the area in 2006, was never such a challenge: with the Oslo
peace process discredited and Israel's retreat from the Gaza Strip
largely attributed (at least in the Gazan psychology) to Hamas' militant
activities, the remnants of Fatah just couldn't compete. The small
jihadi outfits, though, embodied the fighting ethos. And unlike Hamas,
they were free from the constraints that governing puts on ideological
purity. Under pressure, Hamas repeatedly tried to quell the Salafi threat,
and it did not shy from using brute force to do so. The clearest
demonstration came in August 2009, when Hamas killed the leader of Jund
Ansar Allah, a Salafi group that had openly challenged Hamas' authority,
and a number of its members. But short of using extreme violence to
suppress Salafism in Gaza, which would have been too costly for Hamas,
Hamas could not eliminate the Salafi challenge. It watched with worry as
new Salafi groups emerged and strengthened throughout the strip. The pressure on Hamas only increased in the wake of the 2011 Arab
uprisings. The Egyptian revolution and the subsequent chaos in the Sinai
Peninsula were a backwind in the sails of Gaza's Salafis. The collapse
of authoritarian regimes in North Africa unleashed a flood of weapons
and fighters, which Salafis channeled into the Sinai Peninsula. With the
Egyptian military unable to control the area, Gazan Salafis turned the
peninsula into a staging ground for attacking Israel. They believed
(correctly) that Israel, anxious not to kill its peace accord with
Egypt, would not dare to respond directly. Indeed, Israel resorted to thwarting attacks emerging from Sinai and
the Gaza Strip as best it could by preventing Gazans from getting to
Sinai in the first place. On a number of occasions, Israel preemptively
targeted Salafi leaders in Gaza. The Salafis responded by lobbing
rockets back at Israeli's southern towns. Periods of quiet between
rounds of violence became shorter and rarer. The new regional order presented Hamas with a serious dilemma. As the
ruler of Gaza, it could not sit on the sidelines while Israel targeted
territory under its control. But it was unable to fully rein in the
Salafis without proving once and for all that it was no longer a
resistance movement. For Hamas, then, the only choice was to tolerate
the attacks. It portrayed them at home as a way to preserve the struggle
against Israel. Abroad, it refused to acknowledge any role in them at
all to reduce the danger of a backlash. Over time, pressure from Hamas
rank and file led the organization to take a more active role in each
round of violence.
