Saturday.....War On Terror.....Repeating History

J Street is an American lobbying organization started in 2008.  Primarily consisting of American Jews, its founding was in no small part helped by George Soros who departed in 2008 because his reputation might be detrimental to the organization. It claims to be pro-Israel but is called by some a front organization for anti-Zionists. One of its members has been appointed by President Obama to a significant position on American-Israeli relations. In Europe, a new leftist organization of Jewish intellectuals has just formed a similar organization called JCall.  This group claims to be pro-Israel but also has its detractors. Its goal is a lasting peace in the Middle East through negotiations. Yesterday marked the 35 year anniversary of North Vietnamese tanks rolling into Saigon. This was a war that was essentially won by the United States on more than one occasion but eventually lost due to a failure to recognize that much of the criticism coming from this country came from people, who also claimed to be pro-America, but inhibited the work of its military. In his book Intellectuals And Society, Thomas Sowell quotes a little diity about a master of one of the colleges at Oxford University;
My name is Benjamin Jowett.
If it's knowledge, I know it.
I am master of this college.
What I don't know isn't knowledge.
The type of intellectual that comprises JCall deals with a philosophical theory. They experiment on paper and the model's results are formulated in their own minds. Its an interesting thing to consider but a dangerous thing to implement for the virus of profound hate and determination for war cannot harm the computer model but infects and destroys when it is forced to deal with real human beings. The knowledge these intellectuals do not have is that only if Iran and Syria were dealt with first could negotiations have a lasting effect.  But...if it's knowledge they do not have...it's not knowledge. Just as the protesters during the war in Vietnam emboldened and motivated the North to continue, and just as the protesters of the war in Iraq gave determination and sustenance that prolonged the agony before a turning point, the Jewish intellectual that claims to speak for all European Jews and Jewish intellectuals makes it much more difficult for the Israeli government to defend their nation and their very existence. In his chapter Intellectuals And War: Repeating History, Sowell quotes the North Vietnamese architect of war, General Vo Nguyen Giap from a 1995 interview in:
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our victory....Every day our leadership would listen to world news at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
In 1972 I stood, wearing my field jacket, stone faced, in front of the Pitt Student Union as Jane Fonda spoke to cheers and applause. She looked at me with a smile that disappeared when it wasn't returned. Neither she nor I were, or are, intellectuals but concerned citizens, one who thought that stopping war, was stopping evil, the other who thought stopping evil, was stopping war.