I'd Shoot A Rocket into Israel For You

    I am a bad blogger as it has been more than a week since my last post. Are there punishments doled out for this sort of negligence? Perhaps a public flogging by professed woman-hater Charlotte Allen. She and Leonard Sax really should meet for lunch and challenge each other to see who can make the most myopic generalizations about an entire gender in under 30 minutes.
    If that happens, I think I'll stay at home and pound my head against the wall for a couple hours - I'll save myself a few bucks on lunch while my brain would experience the same sort of stimulation of actually listening to their conversation.
    The actual culprit, however, in my blogging recalcitrance has been Comcast, which installed our new Internet connection a couple weeks ago but provided a used modem that happened to be broken. What the hell, man?! Why can't they spring for a new modem? Are they really that expensive? And wouldn't they at least test a modem to make sure it works before installing it?
    I would also be willing to bet my roommate's beer belly that Comcast probably loses more money in lost man hours replacing broken modems they just installed than they would if they sprang for new ones. Comcast better watch out or I'll start a new I Hate Comcast group on Facebook, and then they'll be REALLY screwed!

    Anyway, I've mentioned previously on the blog that I spent a couple weeks this winter in the Middle East, including a few days bumming around Israel. Since then, I've been following the hullabaloo that's been brewing in Gaza, and it looks like Israel is eventually going to have to invade to stop Hamas from firing rockets into Israeli cities like Ashkelon.
    Clearly, the Israelis are in a tough position. They certainly can't stand for Palestinians to be terrorizing their people by randomly firing missiles across the border, yet any military action is inevitably going to be criticized ad nauseum by their critics as more imperialist bullying.
    Yet the way Israeli PM Ehmet Olmert has gone about this has really irked me, especially the way he's inflicted suffering on thousands of Gaza civilians in trying to stop the attacks. By doing this, they've only made the support for Hamas in Gaza stronger. Olmert needs to stop acting as though all Palestinians are conspiring against the country, even if many openly admit they hate Israel, and start treating them with dignity. How would things have been different if Olmert pulled out all the stops to ensure civilians were as unaffected as possible by their campaign to stop the rocket launches?
    Pessimists might argue nothing would be different, but isn't it at least worth trying instead of willy-nilly shutting off power supplies and nearly starving people?

    And, well, there's something else that I think Olmert needs to consider.

    TheWilhelmScream, in general, doesn't like war, thinks guns are very uncool (unless they're ion cannons on the Millennium Falcon) and abhors violence, but there was one thing walking around Israel that I could not deny:

    ISRAELI SOLDIER GIRLS DRIVE ME CRAZY!
    They're all so fit and tan, and there's just something about how the loose-hanging AK-47s move with the sway of their hips when they walk. Seriously, AK-47s are like high heels - they make every woman wearing them seem just a little sexier.

    It's quite obvious to me that if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, I'd be tempted to shoot rockets into Ashkelon just so I could get to check out all the hot Israeli soldier vixens who'd be arresting and frisking me during the consequential invasion!
    Note to Olmert: When it's time to invade, make sure you only send ugly soldier dudes.

PS: I saw Chicago 10 (awesome!) and No Country For Old Men (Meeeeh) over the weekend. I'll be blogging about those later in the week.

Comments

[eibhis]

what happened to "high heels are stupid"? flip flopping on foreign policy objectives again mr. dadigan?

[RHLHJ]

It seems that Israel's policy towards Gaza is akin to a high school football coach - one of you adolescent idiots screwed up and I don't care who, but you all need to run laps until you drop. Except the football team is a populace that hates you and the entire offensive line would like nothing better than to ply you with incendiary devices. Sure, a wall seems stupid, and power and food seem like fine things to provide a disadvantaged people. But if you can build a wall and go all high school football coach and save some lives, well then that's what Jesus would do.