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Guardian
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Bergen, Norway
Feb 2001
time: 06:18
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OK, as many will remember, I have done this a couple of times before. First just after September 11 in a thread started by MarkG, and then I did a follow-on thread a couple of months later which was widely misunderstood at first and nowhere near as popular...
Anyway, at the risk of being flamed by the supporters of one side or the other, here I go again...
There was a time when they used to say that a picture couldn't lie. Obviously, this no longer rings true, but pictures still do have stories to tell, and a picture can make the story come alive in a manner rarely achieved with words alone.
As for my position on the mideast crisis, I am no strong supporter of either side at the moment. This isn't a clear cut, black and white, good guys vs. bad guys kind of thing with the faults all on one side and the virtues all on the other. This is war, and nasty things happen on both sides - as tends to be the case in war. Essentially, war in itself is a nasty, dirty, stupid business. More often than not, it is utterly foolish and wasteful, and can only lead to death and destruction.
Sadly, it is inevitable at times.
That's human nature for ya... 
Yes, there are good guys in the Middle East, and yes, there are terrorists. -But there's also a whole good bunch of people on both sides who are simply trying to get on with life and who never conspired to blow up anybody. If it was just the extremists on both sides who were going at each other, then it wouldn't be so bad, really. They could kill each other off and everyone else could live happily ever after.  The problem is, it's not that simple. That's the tragedy of war; it hurts everybody. Strictly speaking, the only way to win a war would be to face your enemy and convince him that he's wrong before any bombs go off. Once the shooting starts, everybody loses. The Israelis didn't want this, and neither did the Palestineans. They're all trapped, in a way.
Personally, I do not believe that there can ever be a military solution to this conflict. -But at the same time, I can not and will not ask Israel to stand down while they're still getting bombed and shot at. I feel that the Palestineans do have a right to live there and that Israel should stop pushing them around, but I also can't disagree with the student who stood on the street in Jerusalem and said, "Killing a bar full of innocent people will not lead to liberation - we will not reward that!"
-And to think that Hamas claims they're merely defending themselves!
First of all, blowing up a bunch of civilians is NOT heroic and has precisely nothing to do with defending yourself. Second, military solutions will only go so far... you can't kill all your enemies. You'll make new ones along the way, and you'll be likely to find yourself having to strike harder and harder and harder - and still not getting the outcome you were looking for.
As an American general once remarked upon hearing reports of how the US was 'winning militarily' in Vietnam, "You can't win militarily. You have to win totally, or you're not winning at all." (Sadly, I don't remember the man's name - or else I would have given him the credit for it.)
Brute force alone never solved anything, and true peace never came until people realized this and acted accordingly. I can only hope that some time, this will happen in the Middle East. They all have a right to live there, but not at the expense of each other.
Shimon Peres once said that the people in the Middle East were all in the same boat, and that they could either sail together or sink together.
Right now, the boat is in a storm, it is taking in water and the crew's not doing much about it 'cause they're too busy trying to kick each other overboard. They are slowly sinking together, a little deeper every day now...
-But they still have time...
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03-04-2002 16:01
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