| No High Moral Ground (anywhere) When the Dogs of War are Let Loose. |
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By John Freivalds
Duluth News Tribune
Published: TBD
Shakespeare was perhaps the first person to use that phrase which aptly fits what is happening in Gaza. The dogs of war is a phrase spoken by Mark Antony William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry 'Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war."
“The dogs of war” captures the idea of war as a force that, once unleashed, is exceedingly difficult to control from either side. According to Wikipedia it is meant to represent a vivid and powerful image and compares the unleashed chaos and devastation of actual war to that of a pack of wild, uncontrollable dogs.
Queen Rania of Jordan let the West have it. “This is the first time in modern history that there is such human suffering and the world is not even calling for a ceasefire,” Queen Rania added. “So, the silence is deafening – and to many in our region, it makes the Western world complicit.”
We should stop to look for a permanent solution in our lifetime as it is pretty hopeless. But in modern-day politics you can’t say it’s hopeless. Hamas and Israel do agree on one thing: each accuses the other of being just like Hitler’s Nazi’s !!!!
The righteous indignation of how Israel has treated Palestinians has spread throughout the world and no less than my alma mater, Georgetown University in Washington, DC, is seething with protests against Israel --enough with the old school tie. But wait, Georgetown since 2005 has received US $760 million from the Government of Qatar and even put a facsimile of the school of Foreign Service in Doha. And a professor of political science there is a former classmate and a Jew no less. Qatar wanted to influence the US government policy and what a better way but to give the US tons of money and to set up a campus. And to top it off, Qatar now is reported to be the exiled home to top Hamas leaders. The Biden administration’s hope is that Qatar will intervene to help get some 200 Hamas hostages freed.
Will this do anything to put the dogs of war at bay? I hate to be so pragmatic but not a chance.
History teaches us that the only thing that puts the dogs of war at bay is the total subjugation of one side to the other. The world war with Japan ended after two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Nazi Germany was totally devastated by the Allies during World War II and, closer to home, the longstanding American Indian War in the 1880s finally stopped when the ancestral lands were taken away from the Indians and the tribes removed far off to desolate reservations. And the war in Vietnam ended when the Vietnamese expelled the US, and the Soviets suffered the same fate in Afghanistan.
The best we can hope for is a holding pattern that can last at least for a generation until the next flare up. But for now, Israel hopes to kill every Hamas member. However, half of the population is under 18 and will graduate into full blown terrorists.
Palestinians want their own space and not to stop at check points everywhere show your papers. Your basic two state solution but it is not something we will see in my lifetime. Like it or not we all have a dog in this fight. College campuses are for the underdog Palestinians while the establishment is for the Government of Israel. And lurking everywhere is the ugly specter of antisemitism. So, what to do?
Back to the dogs. Everyone should calm down and get a cuddly therapy lap dog. That would be a start to get us out of this quandary.