Monday, January 24, 2005

No reply. What do I say now?
Having been unable to get a smartarse comment from lexifab, nor knowing whether I've left Dr. Clam speechless or that he just hasn't had the time to reply with school starting today - where do I go from here? I guess I'll have to make a guess at what he's thinking of replying and keep going :). I suspect he thinks that the average Israeli voter is very happy with the decision to suspend talks when terror strikes - also the decision to close the various checkpoints to arab workers indefinitely; and that therefore they are the correct decisions. I would like to make a point that terrorists only attack democratic countries (interests) for the reasons that non-democratic country's leaders can afford to look at the long term war strategy, and don't have a need to get re-elected. Therefore, to counter terrorist strategies, democratic countries must "suspend" democratic reasoning quite some way to get closer to achieving a win. Israel does have the time between elections to do this, and emergency powers at its disposal as well. Israel's leaders may well be afraid of assassination attempts by its own people, however. I get the feeling that Israel's "defenders" such as Adriana Fallaci, change assumptions within a single argument, expecting capabilities and discipline of Palestine that can only be possible with an entity with the status of a country; then argues that this is evidence that palestine doesn't deserve to have the status of a country.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

blah,blah,blah

10:57am

lexifab said:

You want a smartarse comment: Fine. You are being way too generous to Israel. There have been more innocent arabs killed than jews since the second intifada started - and you think Israel has the moral high ground? That is quite a stretch. Also, you give Israel the benefit of the doubt about fairness because all is fair in war - and then you faithfully assume that it doesn't apply to terrorism from the other side of this war. Israel should first consider the UN resolutions on this subject before acting so high, mighty and self-righteous.

Dr Clam said...

Hurrah! It must be International Smartarse Comment day. I would just like to reiterate my previous comment that the US, Australia, Israel, Micronesia, and possibly the Marshall Islands are the only countries in the world with a shred of decency, and all the others are so much pus. Pave the West Bank, I say; it will make a good parking lot for "Walt Disney's Holy Kingdom" after all the warring Israelis and Palestinians are given green cards and move to Texas- which is, I am sure you will agree, the optimal solution to the situation...

Dr Clam said...

I've given quite a lot of thought to the 'Walt Disney's Holy Kingdom' proposal. I hope you won't reject it out of hand.

For instance:

*The death toll from the Intifada would hardly make a ripple in the Texan murder rate.

*Texas already has a strong tradition of quasi-judicial executions.

*There is plenty of room in Texas to put two new U.S. states, which could be called Israel and Palestine.

*They could be sited such that they both had plenty of oil, so they wouldn't feel so inadequate compared to the states left back in the Middle East.

*Instead of giving scads of money to Israel to defend itself, and scads of money to Jordan and Egypt to defend themselves from the Israelis, the U.S. could keep it all and use it to buy other stuff. And it could tax the people it used to give money to.

*There are just not enough Middle Eastern restaurants in Texas. This plan would fix that.

*Back in the Old World, Walt Disney's Holy Kingdom, surrounded by razor wire and filled with animatronic disciples, would employ hundreds of thousands of people and serve as an engine for economic growth, propelling the whole Middle East into the 21st century.

Dave said...

Um. I just want to jump in here and say that the above comment attributed to me was no, in fact, authored by me. I would never use the word 'intifada', since I have at best a precarious understanding of its meaning.

While I am untroubled by this nigh-harmless instance of the Cool New Crime of Identity Theft (hey, it's the 21st Century - if you haven't been impersonated yet for fun or profit, you're just not important enough), I would like to ask my eponymous doppleganger to attempt a slightly more left-leaning stance in future.

Unless, of course, the comment in question was authored by my dark and malevolent supernatural tumour-twin, like in Fight Club or The Dark Half, coz that's cool. They're your fingers too.

Anonymous said...

I admit it. It was me. I guess it was too much to hope that you would have the same password I remember you having back in high school - so I faked an extra comment. I was trying very hard to work out what a left-leaning commentary would be - so I asked my partner what they thought about Palestine and they just said that Israel should pull their finger out, basically.

Anonymous said...

In reply to that malevolent alterego like in "The Dark Half" comment : You are being quite disparaging about multiple personalities. I have a close friend with dissociated identities (ie. multiple personalities) that neither they (well their "main" personality) nor anyone else knows about. This is scary yet fascinating. The biggest frustration is not being able to share detail with friends without revealing the evil that is the root cause which is also dangerous information. Yet there are absolutely hilarious situations that crop up from time to time, which I just have to keep to myself.

Dave said...

Um, yeah, but I was specifically *not* talking about real MPD-sufferers (one of whom I know, about whom there are only a limited number of funny observations to be made), but about the notable Non Real Phenomena cited.

You know NRPs. They're things like UFOs and chupacubras and President's Bush's self-awareness.