Nation Building’s Last Stand in Gaza-Israel’s war teaches us what we should have done after September 11

Frontpagemagazine ^ | May 16, 2024 | Daniel Greenfield

[SJackson]

Operation Salt Fish - Conclusion
U.S. Marines of the 32d Marine Amphibious Unit and legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment form a joint security guard during the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut, Lebanon. Arafat was in the sights of at least five snipers at that point. The commander of the team radioed Raful Eitan and sought permission. Eitan delayed giving a response. The commander reiterated his request, warning Eitan that Arafat was going inside and would be out of their sight within seconds. Eitan held off for as long as he could, then finally replied:

[SJackson]

Israel's cat-and-mouse game with Yasser Arafat

For decades, Israel tried unsuccessfully to take down the leader of the PLO; one time, Arafat was in the sights of 5 snipers, but they couldn't take the shot because of a promise Begin made to Reagan; another time, IDF chief Eitan himself took a fighter plane to Beirut and dropped bombs on an office building shortly before Arafat entered it.

[SJackson]

And Americans don't even want "what Americans want" anymore, since the nation that existed in 1945 has been dissolved and replaced with the largest, greatest nation building exercise in the history of mankind - turning a continent populated by whoever into a better "nation" than the European settler nation that was called "America" and that existed, essentially, from 1775-1965.

A lot of truth in that. We've abandoned our history.

[PGalt]

What civilized individuals would like is NOT WHAT ISLAM WANTS (and is willing to die for).

[rdcbn1]

The Israelis are often their own worst enemy.

The situation they are facing now is the end of a chain with a lot of links of bad decisions.

Most of the bad decisions center on not making a decision to press their advantage and allowing politics to interfere with sound decision making.

[MikelTackNailer]

We have just two examples of successful Nation-building; except they're actually Nation-RE-building: Germany and Japan post WWII...and Germany was a half-success thanks to the Soviet Union.

The trick was utterly defeating them, crushing all will to fight, before our magnanimous investment of fortune and effort to rebuild them back into viable nations.

Since that era we've been cursed with spineless idiots in leadership positions wasting our soldiers lives and our tax money with halfway measures while NOT winning wars - just continued profit for the military-industrial complex who finance said idiots and help keep those types in office.

Poster PIF at post #13 was correct that the correct response to 9-11-2001 was to obliterate Mecca and Medina - while militarily destroying their oil industry. Nothing like going back to eking out survival back in the deserts for re-learning humility and perspective.

[Angelino97]

FrontpageMag was one of THE Neocon flagship sites in the 2000s. Its core foreign policy position was always to make the mideast safe for Israel.

Thus, FrontpageMag promoted wars on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, often under the guise of promoting democracy.

But now that "nation building" and "Neocon" are unpopular terms in conservative circle, FrontpageMag is attacking those brands. Same policies, new "America First" packaging.