Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ragionare lucidamente

Quando il sangue ribolle e gli occhi sono accecati di Yossi Sarid
"I was there, at the cabinet table, at the security cabinet table, in 
"the kitchen," when we were bombed by the bad news: One terrible report 
followed another horrific report that came after an intolerable report. 
There was a feeling of suffocation. Even before we met, we had heard the 
usual declamations, which unfortunately are generally empty phrases. The 
artillery salvo - of threats and ultimatums - does not really change the 
situation, and sometimes only aggravates it. The first minutes are the 
most difficult: The decision-makers, too, have no clear idea of what is 
going on, who was hit and who was kidnapped and what is happening on the 
ground. Rumors of all kinds penetrate even their closed and guarded 
quarters.
The cabinet ministers arrive urgently and they are all worked up - we 
can no longer accept, there is a limit to everything, this time we will 
teach the bastards a lesson they will never forget. The senior officers, 
faces grim, huddle among themselves, spread out maps and bend over them, 
running a finger across the Green Line, the Purple Line and all the 
lines in the world, which must now unavoidably be crossed and hit.
I don't remember any introspection, because at these moments the blood 
boils and goes to the head and blinds the eyes. On several occasions I 
suggested that consultations not be held and decisions not be made on 
the day of the disaster itself, because the day of the disaster is 
always prone to a further disaster of hotheaded and wrongheaded judgment.
I was no different. My blood boiled, too. How much can we take? Wild 
thoughts rushed through my mind, but at least I knew that I had to be 
cautious with respect to myself and my thoughts. Most of the people 
there were experts on force; I was an expert on its limits. It is so 
easy, in meetings like these, to be tempted into undertaking such 
promising operations, which will prove counterproductive. Nearly every 
operation looks promising on the map.
The meeting begins and the army reports and the army proposes. Sometimes 
someone, a minister or an officer, tries to moderate things here and 
there, but moderation no longer has a chance between the chastisers with 
whips and the chastisers with scorpions.
Thus it happens that we invade Gaza again - not really reoccupying, just 
"raiding," as though there is a difference. And once again we invade 
Lebanon, not to stay, only to demonstrate a presence, and the paper of 
the "decision-makers" does not blush. And thus we immediately blast 
power stations as an initial target, and immediately afterward it is not 
clear who darkened whose world. And that's the way we expelled 400 Hamas 
members to Lebanon, so they could be prepared in advance of their 
return, better trained and more determined.
The cabinet also decided that "there is and will be no negotiating on 
the release of Palestinian prisoners." If Israel holds direct or 
indirect contacts in the wake of the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad 
Shalit, and ransoms him in return for the other side's prisoners, our 
enemies' appetite will grow and the kidnappings will only increase. And 
yet we did not conduct a dialogue and we did not release anyone, and the 
kidnappings increased anyway, and this time there were two, not one, 
such incidents.
The abduction in the north took place just two days after the 
publication of Giora Eiland's report on the abduction in the south. The 
report uncovered many flaws and did not uncover others. Another orphaned 
failure in our orphanage. It was precisely this form of orphanhood I 
meant when I referred to the "introspection" that I found lacking. If 
with all the red lights flickering and all the warning bells going off 
two more soldiers were kidnapped, then something has rotted and decayed 
here, and that something is irresponsibility as a method. So, before we 
pummel our enemies, or maybe while doing that, we have to heal 
ourselves, and such healing is totally self-directed and self-contained, 
and does not depend in the least on Hezbollah or Hamas.
Once I read a seminal book in criminology, "Crimes Without Victims," 
about suicides and drugs and prostitution. Now the time has come for a 
book to be written about blun ders without anyone being responsible and 
with a great many victims.
One rainy day Yitzhak Rabin explained to me, as a prime minister and as 
a friend, why he had to look for every possible crack that would allow a 
settlement with Israel's neighbors. "It is impossible to stretch the 
muscles and the nerves of a nation for so many years. Sooner or later 
they become lax," he said, and added: "The Israel Defense Forces is a 
good army, all in all, but even the best army's strength is limited and 
its staying power is liable to decline, and it must not be subjected to 
too many tests, certainly not unnecessary ones."
One can always make excuses and say that it is our enemies who are 
testing us, but experience shows that we have sacrificed our sons on too 
many occasions.
The situation has not become better since Rabin spoke and I listened to 
those words - it has become worse. And not only in our region, but 
throughout the world. If ever there was "deterrent capability," and 
especially the power of the lone superpower to exert deterrence, it has 
lost it completely. Instead of dealing properly with Iran, which is 
pulling the strings of international aggression, and also the strings of 
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, George Bush slammed Iraq, of all 
countries, and now all the villains have learned that the Americans are 
not all- powerful and that they can gradually be worn down and routed. 
And instead of dealing with North Korea and its proven missiles and 
nuclear weapons, America mired itself in Afghanistan, which is in the 
process of being retaken by the Taliban. And now Somalia, in the Horn of 
Africa, has also fallen prey to murderous fundamentalism following 
failed American intervention and taking the wrong side, as Bush and Dick 
Cheney are wont to do.
Until American enlightenment brings the world its redemption, it is 
destroying it and "innocent people" continue to be blown up in Mumbai, 
in London, in Madrid and everywhere else. Never was there a World Cup of 
blood such as the one that began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, where 
50 people are murdered each day in the capital alone.
 From overuse, Israel, too, lost its regional deterrent capability. A 
pistol that is aimed and in a safe mode is in most cases more 
threatening and deterring than a pistol that fires all the time and only 
rarely hits the target. For example, people continue to suggest that we 
deliver a crushing blow to Beirut. But we were in Beirut not so long ago 
and conquered it lock, stock and barrel, and very quickly it sent us 
packing. What will the aerial bombardments do now that the ground 
occupation did not do before? The noise of the tanks, preparing for a 
renewed incursion, sends shivers up my spine and makes me break out in a 
cold sweat.
Deterrent capability consists not only of military might, but also of 
moral might. After all, Bush himself, and not the defeatist bleeding 
hearts, often talks in the name of the Moral Majority and world morality 
and cites it as the culmination of his vision. The trouble is that you 
cannot set rules of behavior and serve as an example to others when your 
own soldiers are daily attacking people who have done no wrong, 
torturing prisoners, sending suspects to "black holes" that are as far 
as East from West, and holding detainees indefinitely without judicial 
review. The president himself is violating human and civil rights by 
ordering mass wiretapping, by the wholesale penetration of private bank 
accounts and by unrestrained assaults on journalists who are faithfully 
doing their job. Most of these phenomena are of course not foreign to 
Israel, which encountered difficulties when, in the biblical metaphor, 
it did the deed of Zimri and demanded the reward of Pinhas. This is not 
deterrence; this is joining the evildoers and strengthening them and 
their arguments.
I am not ideologically opposed to the use of force when needed, and woe 
to us if our force fails us. I do not represent pacifists, not even 
individuals who refuse to do army service, and I have never represented 
them. I am still trying to represent acquired skepticism and to speak in 
favor of perplexity and in condemnation of whitewash. We have too many 
whitewashers in the government and in the General Staff.
Amid all the militant machismo, the voice of moderation must also be 
raised and heard, and it says now that force alone will simply not cut 
it. It is better for the ministers and officers to remember what Gaza 
did to us in the past 40 years and what Beirut did to us, and what 
Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia did and are doing to 
powerful America - and to calm down. It is best to arrive at the crucial 
meetings calm and sober-eyed.
Only once in history did America manage not only to win, but also to 
rehabilitate. The outcome of World War II was dictated not only by 
Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, but also by Harry Truman and 
George Marshall. Since then America has only been winning, continually 
winning and losing. And so it is with us, too - winning and winning, yet 
we have had no quiet for 40 years or even 40 days.
Iraq is destroyed, Afghanistan is destroyed, the Gaza Strip is destroyed 
and soon Beirut will be destroyed for the umpteenth time, and hundreds 
of billions of dollars are being invested solely in the vain war against 
the side that always loses and therefore has nothing more to lose. And 
hundreds of billions more go down the tubes of corruption.
Maybe the time has come to put the pistol into safety mode for a moment, 
back into the holster, and at high noon declare a worldwide Marshall 
Plan, so that the eternal losers will finally have something to lose. 
Only then will it be possible to isolate the viruses of violence and 
terrorism, for which quiet is quagmire and which in our eyes are 
themselves quagmire. And once isolated, it will be possible to eradicate 
them one day."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/738530.html
Notare che non si tratta del pensiero pacifista, ma di puro e semplice 
pragmatismo, causa ed effetto, valutazione delle conseguenze.
P.S. lo so, ora la smetto di copia-incollare.
Riot, l'elitista ademocratico

 P.S. lo so, ora la smetto di copia-incollare.
Roba cosi' per puoi.
BTW anche questo pur ottimo articolo non e' "pragmatismo" ma una
analisi influenzata come tutte da idee e - nel senso buono -
pregiudizi.
Palmiro Pangloss