Excerpts
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss potential consequences of the attack on a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over Ukraine and the ground invasion by Israel into Gaza.
----
JUDY WOODRUFF: Does this mean, David, the idea of any sort of resolution is just so far off in the distance, you can’t even imagine it?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, yes.
We’re in sort of a parallel universe where it’s sort of a military operation we have not seen before. So Hamas has had no success in inflicting any damage on the Israelis, in part because of the Iron Dome missile defense system and in part just because their rockets are not that great.
But they — when the cease-fire proposal went out there, they greeted that with a barrage of missiles nonetheless, not because they hoped to inflict any damage on the Israelis, but they hoped the Israelis would inflict damage on them and kill Palestinian civilians, which is one of the reasons they have decided to tell their civilians not to flee the areas that are afflicted.
So, it’s a rare moment in military history where a party rejects a cease-fire in order to get more of their own people killed. But that’s part of the strategy, which is a global strategy, a propaganda strategy of eliciting this European response.
I think the U.S. has done a good job, John Kerry’s done a good job of rejecting this strategy of using human shields. Bill Clinton has said things. But this is the strategy they’re trying to enact, and it’s just this perverse military strategy of getting your own people killed.
No comments:
Post a Comment