Thinking Meat

Mongrel Nation Revisited

Get a load of this paragraph from the always quotable Arab News:

The Al-Aqsa Intifada revealed a weakness in the Israeli army. It lacked the most important pillars on which any army is built; it had no historic depth and no exceptional military leader because they are a new nation that encompasses a number of nationalities united only by the lie of the return to the promised land, which many are beginning to question.

One would think the Arabs might ponder this at some length. Seems like, with all their "historical depth," they seem unable to do much more than send their children to die uselessly while trying to dislodge a country that's less than 1/100th their size, and 1/1000th their population. And their own last "exceptional military leader" lost his country in three weeks, and now spends his days hiding under a rock and calling for suicide bombings against invaders. His predecessor managed to kill several thousand unprepared civilians, after which he most likely became a stain on an Afghan cave -- or, per the most favorable interpretation, a walking ghost who releases an audiotape every few months. (Why an audiotape? Because most of his audience can't read. But at least it's got "historic depth," whatever that is.)

Oh well. I'm reminded of another group of deranged ideologues who employed similar rhetoric about another mongrel nation -- with similar results. If this is the best the Arabs have to comfort them, well, I'd say the Israelis won a long time ago.