Asklemmy

Here's something I can tell you that's not a hypothetical.

20 years ago I watched thousands burn, jump and get crushed to dust live on a classroom TV. Our leaders agreed that there would be retribution no matter the cost, and the ones who spoke out against it were called cowards. In retrospect, I think so much of the anger people felt was because with all our supposed power and might, in the back of their minds they couldn't feel safe anymore. These people whose identities had become so entwined with boastful national pride were ready for their glory to be restored with the suffering and death of others. It didn't matter who did the dying. We'd given ourselves to fear.

The world stood behind us and over years and then decades the body count climbed to a number nobody could know. We poisoned the land of the people we killed with depleted uranium in everything from tank shells to breaching charges and the rate of cancer deaths is still rising in those places. Do you know what America got back from its campaign of horrors?

Nothing.

What exists in the wake of these "just" crimes is a world no safer than it was before. The war on terror likely made far more terrorists than it stopped and the freedoms we gave up never came back. The terrorists won. Their goal was to undermine our society and its status in the world. And they did just that with a handful of people.

Israel has already exacted it's blood cost. It's already doubled their number of dead. The world doesn't have the same sympathy for this thing anymore because so many know where it leads. If it doesn't bring itself back from the brink then it can only lead to more years and decades of killing. I know this ain't great to hear but when people are saying to level Gaza and it's people once and for all does that not ring in your ears like someone saying their extermination is the "solution?"

Knowing what I know now, yeah, Israel should have done just slightly more than nothing. You should have showed the world your pain and your attackers your humanity. If you truly wish for peace than what better time than when perhaps you could have had sympathy from some across that fence. Wars don't solve anything. They just get people killed. I know that advice or opinion seems impractical but there has to be a moment where some people demand an end to the violence. None of us know how big that group would have to be or what they could say to stop the killing but they could.

It only took a few hundred people 20 years ago to undermine the worlds remaining superpower. They couldn't until they did and the same goes for those who would demand peace. I'm not sure where you're from or what you've seen in life but I can tell you as I age this thought is only becoming clearer. We have a choice in these moments. I only wish that I could go back and put my voice with the cowards that knew these things back then.

The only offensive war worth fighting and the only war that can be won is for the hearts and minds of your enemies. Defensive wars are a different story but lets not mince words on the difference between an incursion, an invasion and an occupation.

This is the entirety of my perspective, so I've got really nothing to add. I truly have tried to give you a genuine answer here so take it or leave it but that's where I get off this conversation.