A. Okay, so now we know he is not a right-winger.
B. Actually, he is whining himself.
C. But there must be criticism if we are to win the next round.
Stop your whining
World War III requires patience and nerves of steel from the Jewish people. If you can't see any gain in this war, at least have decency to shut up
Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun
The Jewish people are a particularly jumpy people. It's always been that way. This is apparently due to their historic mission, which sometimes – especially in tough situations – becomes hysterical pressure. Nothing has changed for thousands of years. Apparently, it is very hard to learn a lesson.
Victory and failure are psychological terms, not limited to the battlefield. No less important than victory for our soldiers in Lebanon is the battle for our consciousness. From many perspectives, this second Lebanon war was comparable to the Yom Kippur War, albeit on a smaller scale.
This time, too, the war began with a surprise attack and revealed many of our shortcomings, which began with the pullout from Lebanon and arrogant delusions of tranquility. Six years of "euphoria" of a larger Land of Israel preceded that fateful Yom Kippur; this time, six years of dangerous withdrawals encouraged the enemy to attack.
Right and left share an equal measure of arrogance, and unfortunately pain. One need look no further than Ariel Sharon, who at once symbolized military prowess and cowardly withdrawal, to prove this. During the Yom Kippur War the IDF managed to win under the toughest of conditions, and to turn the Egyptian and Syrian invasion into a victory on the ground.
But the whining home front created a false consciousness, as if the enemy had won. At the time, tens of thousands of us combat soldiers sat west of the Suez Canal, ready to start fighting again, while the occipital media whined and moaned.
Now, when they ask the evil sheikh: How can you say you won, when you've lost a lot...he will quietly answer: The Israelis themselves say we've won.
Therefore, anyone saying Hizbullah won this war contributes to that victory. Those who respond by whining serve the enemy, just like those demonstrated on his behalf during the war itself, or who provide essential information in the media.
Even all the kvetchers – right-wingers particularly – understood their moaning was serving the enemy by speaking about our "failures", maybe they'd stop. If you can't see any gain in this war, at least have the decency to shut up.
...True, every wounded soldier is a wound for all of us. But we must also think about proportions: During the Yom Kippur War we lost 160 soldiers a day; during the Six Day War, 180 soldiers were killed in Jerusalem in just a day-and-a-half.
Then, too, there were screw-ups, failures and wounded. The image that the IDF never suffered difficult blows before is simply incorrect. It is a myth promoted by our enemies to inflate their achievements, and our kvetchers buy the lie, inflating our "failure" and serving the propaganda needs of "al-Manar."
No less important to understand is that this war was fundamentally different that previous ones, because it is part of a world war. The war started when the World Trade Center crumbled, and the enemy is the evil mutation of radical Islam, be it Shiite/Iranian or Sunni/al-Qaeda...
We must stop dreaming that we can fight underground bunkers by destroying the houses above them. Air strikes can prevent heavy rocket fire, can hit rocket launchers after they've fired their missiles, and can disrupt preparations and supply lines to a large degree. But they cannot penetrate bunkers and tunnels. They cannot tilt the balance. Goals can only be realized on the ground, in ground fighting, and on the diplomatic front with international involvement, with a goal of isolating terrorism, weakening it, and conquering it in a long, determined battle.
We must teach ourselves to have nerves of steel, and to respond to all the kvetchers: Stop! Stop your whining. Stop serving the enemy...
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