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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (257497)	8/1/2014 12:21:38 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541921

You could also say that there is no excuse for putting weapons in a UN facility and firing them. Weapons have been found in at least 3 UN safe houses, and weapons fire came from at least one of them. You seem to believe that the Israeli military is completely dependent on the US. Not so. The Israelis do plenty of military R&D on their own, and modify most (perhaps all?) of the weapons that they buy from the US. And make their own. Not something that I especially like, but under their circumstances it is understandable. And there have been plenty of tech start ups that have come out of the military R&D that they have done. See en.wikipedia.org excerpt: Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle is a 2009 book by Dan Senor and Saul Singer about the economy of Israel. It examines how Israel, a 60-year-old nation with a population of 7.1 million, was able to reach such economic growth that "at the start of 2009, some 63 Israeli companies were listed on the NASDAQ, more than those of any other foreign country." [1] The Council on Foreign Relations states in its publisher's blurb for the book that Start-up Nation addresses the question: "How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources—produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom?" [4] The Economist notes that Israel now has more high-tech start-ups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country in the world. The success of Israel's high-tech sector over the past two decades has attracted recent attention from business journalists and The Economist describes Start-up Nation as the most notable of a "growing pile" of books on the subject. [5] In their attempt to explain Israel's success in this area, Senor and Singer discard "the argument from ethnic or religious exceptionalism, dismissing 'unitary Jewishness' or even individual talent as major reasons for Israel's high-tech success" and analyze two major factors that, in the authors' opinion, contribute most to Israel's economic growth. Those factors are mandatory military service and immigration. [4] The authors argue that a major factor for Israel's economic growth can be found in the culture of the Israel Defense Forces, in which service is mandatory for most young Israelis. The authors believe that IDF service provides potential entrepreneurs with the opportunities to develop a wide array of skills and contacts. They also believe that IDF service provides experience exerting responsibility in a relatively un-hierarchical environment where creativity and intelligence are highly valued. [6] IDF soldiers "have minimal guidance from the top, and are expected to improvise, even if this means breaking some rules. If you're a junior officer, you call your higher-ups by their first names, and if you see them doing something wrong, you say so." [1] Neither ranks nor ages matter much "when taxi drivers can command millionaires and 23-year-olds can train their uncles," and "Israeli forces regularly vote to oust their unit leaders." [7] The book also dwells at length on immigration and its role in Israel's economic growth: "Immigrants are not averse to start from scratch. They are by definition risk-takers. A nation of immigrants is a nation of entrepreneurs. From survivors of the Holocaust to Soviet refuseniks through the Ethiopian Jews, the State of Israel never ceased to be a land of immigration: 9 out of 10 Jewish Israelis today are immigrants or descendants of immigrants the first or second generation. This specific demographic, causing fragmentation of community that still continues in the country, is nevertheless a great incentive to try their luck, to take risks because immigrants have nothing to lose." [8]

To: bentway who wrote (257497)	8/1/2014 1:06:17 PM
From: stsimon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 541921

I try not to armchair quarterback combatants from thousands of miles away since complex weapons systems do not work perfectly every time. I guess I missed the part about World War II where they firebombed our largest cities and dropped atom bombs on us. The did attack Pear Harbor killing roughly as many people as the World Trade Center attack in 2001. So as a result of the WTC attack I guess we could have dropped a couple of nukes on Bin Laden and burnt Afghanistan to the ground... You can see how utterly nonsensical rules are in war. It is best to bring a gun to a knife fight. Civilians are going to die in War. I suspect the United States has killed more civilians in war than any other country.