"Or What?"

That was my reaction upon reading the ultimate end of Charles Krauthammer's latest apologia for blowing up brown peopleAy-rabs.

And no, I'm not referring to this bit:

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There’s only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel’s very existence.

My reactions to this were "of course Israel is still in military control, you ninny, they determine who gets to stay and leave" and "It figures that this kind of empathy-free ass wouldn't understand that Gazans might care about settlers occupying the West Bank".

And no, it wasn't this bit either:

Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

My reaction was "this is nonsense", like suggesting that the only possibilities in Northern Ireland were the eradication of the IRA or the end of Britain. As much as they're a source of tension and terror, and as much as they're ridiculously counter-productive for getting anything useful accomplished, Gaza's rockets pose no existential threat to Israel. They simply don't. And nor does Hamas. They don't have the power.

No, "Or What" was my reaction to this:

Israel’s only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The unpardonable error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.

Hamas’ rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire.

Yep, this is it! "Or what?" So what happens if another rocket gets launched from Gaza after all this punishing fire? Trying to take away the supply of the damned stupid things is nearly impossible; they're small, portable, and easily smuggled into the country.

Does Israel come back in again? Whoops, there's your occupation back, Chuck! Now they don't need rockets to blow up Israelis!

Or maybe do they just keep on bombing everything flat? Well, that'll sure help the cause of peace!

This is the problem with asshats like Krauthammer. Since they have no idea how human beings think, they have no idea how human beings react or behave. So they come up with these grand statements about how "they'll stop, or else", assume that they would do so in that circumstance, and never consider either how people really react and what might happen when their carefully-dreamed-up fantasies fall apart! Chuck can't even learn from history: if he could, then he'd have realized that it has never, ever worked like this, and thus is very unlikely to ever work! And what happens when it doesn't?

"No violence will be tolerated?" Or what?

(Unless, of course, the "or what" is dumping them all in Jordan, the Transfer That Dare Not Speak Its Name. And I'm sure that would go well.)