Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and David Sacks had a Twitter Space discuss how the continuing Russia, Ukraine war and the Hamas-Israel war could expand into larger wars and even something that looks a lot like World War 3.
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It seems like Israel’s worst strategy is to enter Gaza searching house by house for Hamas – that’s no doubt exactly what Hamas wants. So what else could Israel do?
What would happen if Israel just started pumping sea water into every tunnel opening they find? A tunnel network will certainly not be completely connected, but large portions should be connected. From the images I’ve seen, Hamas’ tunnels are just cut through the dirt, and might easily collapse.
It’d take long pipelines and lots of pumps – but not impossibly so. If Hamas comes out of hiding to attack them – great – that’s sort of the point. And it doesn’t make for dramatic anti-Israel images like exploding bombs. (I doubt there’s enough tunnels to cause massive subsidence and building collapse, though perhaps some schools and hospitals would.)
Context can help frame questions.
Something like 1.5-1.7 million people died in the Vietnam War. At the time, many refused to call it a war.
Deaths on all side in Ukraine conflict are in the low tens of thousands.
Deaths on all sides in the Hamas conflict are in the thousands.
IMHO, Israel will stop major action after about a month, (maybe after taking a little land) and follow it up with a decade of assassinations of anyone who is rumored to be Hamas leadership. This would follow historic patterns.
Every death is a tragedy. Numbers are useful for considering how conflicts fit in history.
Your words ring true.
As astounding as it is, I found myself similarly comparing the numbers — Ukrαine, Gaza, Korean War and Vietnam — and with a similar conclusion. As bad as 1500 + 4700 sounds, it is rather low by comparison to other, larger, fairly recent conflicts.
What ‘feels different’ though is the Urban Guerrilla aspect of the Gazan conflict. Its not like Israel is fighting a regimented opponent. Almost exclusively, a bunch of younger men (older boys included), lighting up their fairly crâhp so-called missiles, more-or-less aimed at Israel, to create havoc and death, like mosquito bites. Lots of mosquitos. By contrast, Israel’s bombardment is determined, accuracy-enhanced, targeted and eye-openingly potent.
Yet, even so saying, I too am left with “this still feels like the usual playbook between Israel and her tormentors”. She (Israel) exacts 3 to 1 … to 5 to 1 casualties on her Hamas irregulars, decides by public opinion to have had enough, and quits. Then goes after a decade of targeted assassinations. Geld the enemy.
The really demented problem though is that Gaza is enormously over-populated, entirely dependent on the truckloads of crumbs ‘given’ to them by the UNWRA, UNESCO and all the rest of the baby-blue hats. They are singularly unable to produce their own foodstuffs, or things-of-commerce. Name a Gazan export. Go ahead and try. No, not crâhp missiles.
Every death is a tragedy. But numbers are useful for assessing conflicts in a historical context.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Reports have suggested that the number of deaths in the Ukraine conflict is probably closer to 300,000 by now.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/troop-deaths-injures-ukraine-war-nearing-500000-nyt-citing-us-officials-2023-08-18/
How are they even remotely relevant to talk about this topic, and why should we expect their input to be somewhat insightful ?
Name one good “expert” who’s opinion we can all rely on. They have as much a right to mouth off on a topic they want to, as you and I are doing here.
This discussion may have had meaning a year ago. Also why did they deliberately block the guy that was about to raise this point?
Pfftttt. Israel-Hamas will be forgotten in a couple of months. No one cares about the Palestinians. No one. Not even their caring sharing muslim brothers in neighbouring Egypt. Harsh, but its true.
Russia used to be the second greatest military in the world. Now its barely the second best in Ukraine (It used to be the third until the Wagner group quite). Its probably a good bet that their nukes and ICBMs don’t work anymore.
China is looking at the mess that Russia is in and thinking again about Taiwan. Its been a dick to all its neighbours and doesn’t have any great friends. Not even N. Korea.
Theres the wild card of Trump coming back, but he was actually a very peaceful president. Otherwise the western hegemony will get stroner.
I think the next decade is looking more peaceful than its ever been.
Its probably a good bet that their nukes and ICBMs don’t work anymore.???
NO .. NO its really not a good bet at all Russia has proved capable of still putting men on the space station to this day, something NASA contracts out to SpaceX its a good bet a hell of a lot of there nukes work.
Trump was a very peaceful President as only a President personally under the thumb of your enemies could ever be. Actively working to undermine your defenses and being peaceful are compatible in the short term but not the long term.
That is moronic. Everything was better under Trump. You have to make up crap because Biden is such a disaster. Unless you are one of those fools that actually believe the Steele Dossier
I’m from Russia, if that’s the case. I am amazed how your nation, possessing such resources and technologies, remains so weak and incapable of war that it is whining en masse because your current president, oh my God, is begging you for some money for just “one of the fronts of the approaching world war “.
I’ll just explain. America and its people were forgiven a lot in Europe, in Asia and in the world in general, while it was ready to fulfill the role of leader. If America doesn’t keep quiet or doesn’t want to solve the world’s problems, it’s just an overfed parasite and it’s worth giving power over the world to a force that will solve problems, be it a renewed Europe or someone in Asia, for example, China
The GOVERNMENTS of other arab nations don´t care about Palestineans. Because they are all enemy of Iran. And Israel and US are their allies against Iran.
These complicated patterns of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even though it’s also my enemy, just less of an enemy than the other enemy” is common in European history, it was common in the colonization of the Americas, etc.
Notice that Christian Palestines in general have the same opinion of Israel as the muslim ones.
Palestines are destined to suffer. These conflicts with Israel happen since the 1930s before Israel even existed, when jewish militias destroyed many palestinean homes and even poisoned water wells.
If you dig deeper, there is ALWAYS a “but they did that before”… we will reach the Crusades, the Roman Empire, the Babylonean Exile, the Phillistines which were probably the Sea People, etc.
It’s funny you mention that about nobody caring about Palestinians because right before reading this article I read that MBS has instructed religious scholars in Saudi Arabia to tell the population to “stop talking about Palestine” and that “nothing good has ever come from talking about Palestine and nothing ever will”.