The War Nerd on Gaza

The War Nerd finally writes about the January war in Gaza. And what he says isn't pretty. Here's the gist of it:

The lowdown on Gaza is simple: in the short run, Israel did a decent job of killing Hamas’s cadre. Gaza’s a small place, and it was pretty much shooting fish with headscarves in a sandy barrel. They blew up the place real good, made themselves feel better after getting roughed up by Hezbollah a couple years ago. OK, so you’re a Hell of a counterpuncher; so what?. . . what happens five years from now when all those dead Hamas guys’ little brothers are ready to graduate from the rebuilt Gaza I-Hate-the-Jews Academy.

He concludes that Israel is going destroy itself in the long run if it doesn't start making better decisions:

. . . what a lot of people don’t get about war is there comes a time when there ain’t no smart moves any more. . . . And Israel, in the long term…well, they’ve got those 200 nukes, and the US Congress…and that’s about all. They won’t get driven into the sea like Arafat used to screech, but they’ll get meaner and smaller until all the smart people, the ones who can, will get out, and what’s left will be another scrappy desert fort making deals with the locals. A lot of Crusader kingdoms went out that way, just one decision away from getting re-absorbed into the Muslim soup. If they’d made a deal with the Mongols, maybe we could’ve done something with this. But nooooooo, they were too snotty. Nope, doesn’t look good, and worse yet it’s going to be some ugly maintenance wars, where you have to blast a lot of schools and hospitals, and still don’t get anywhere. Like that scene in Fight Club where he bleeds all over the Mafia guy, till the wise guy screams he can use the basement. “Lou! Lou! You don’t know where I’ve been!”