As to Israel, no position adopted by Israel will ever placate them. Israel is in the Caliphate-to-be. Just like when Russia withdrew from Chechnya in 1996, any olive branch held out by Israel will be seen by the Jihadis as a sign of weakness. This is why Israel is in such a shitty situation. Really founding that country was a bad idea.
........................
Shortly after 9/11 many Americans began asking what soon become a cliched question, 'why do they hate us?'
The Bush administration's answer was simple and direct: they hate our freedoms. Millions of Americans sighed in collective, existential relief. Now, in good conscience, they could pour their emotional energies into supporting the Global War on Terror - a battle between perfect goodness and implacable evil.
But while folks around me (excepting my LBO homies) waved flags, exchanged emails with jpeg attachments of bombers dropping their payloads on Afghan villages and marveled at real-time images of the USAF's 'shock and awe' campaign against Baghdad I found myself asking a rather different question: 'why do people follow the ObLs of the world?'
Because, you see, it's one thing for an individual to nurse a dangerous fixation - in the Jihadi case, restoring a Caliphate - after all, people cherish a wide variety of unfortunate ideas. The question is, why would an otherwise reasonable person begin to see sense and logic in some fuck nut's extreme concepts?
And this is where the causal link comes into play.
By bombing much of Lebanon into rubble (to use the most recent example), Israel has surely managed to convince some previously quite calm and non-Jihadi blokes that perhaps there is indeed a clash of civilizations in play and maybe they need to be holding the spear instead of running from it.
So while it's probably true that "no position adopted by Israel will ever placate them" [Jihadis] it's equally true that Israel, by laying off its program of hegemon assholiness, can help prevent their ranks from swelling. Call me a tragically naive leftist, but I think that would be a vast improvement.
Once that happens (if ever) the die hard extremists - certainly a very small minority - can be dealt with through the usual intelligence and police procedures.
No hyperventilating is required. Indeed. the less excited talk we get about Islamo-fascism, dream caliphates that supposedly threaten the West and "global guerrillas" the better.
.d.
I never liked you Rusty...you were always a smart alec, a sass mouth and a bit of a giggle puss.
Dr. Impossible
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/