Plenty of tactics for war, no strategy for peace

Jonathan Freeland over on Comment in Free has a good piece about the current crisis in Gaza. He quotes a senior European diplomat as saying this week’s invasion is “tactics, not strategy by the Israelis, who are expert in dealing with symptoms, not causes” . This is the act of a nation that has plenty of tactics for war – but no strategy for peace.

We had twenty five years of that mindset on this island before the serious talking started. No to sound too cliched but the old biblical maxim that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind is as true today as it was in 300 BC and in 1980’s Ireland.

Events like these always trigger propaganda wars. In this case both parties are experts in global news management although I get the impression it is the international community and not Hamas which is more effectively countering the official Isreali position in the traditional press.

A quick O’Conall Street round up of the blogs and online TV output tells its own story. Youtube has over 800 clips posted mainly by Palestinian supporters but only a few uploaded from inside Gaza. Understandable given Israel’s control of much of the telecommunications infrastructure but a major failing in the Hamas propaganda machine none the less.

Unsurprisingly the blogosphere is also alight with debate about these events. Over 129,000 blogs have mentioned the ‘Gaza siege’ but very were few written inside the conflict zone. This is a conflict which in classic advocacy terms relies on external advocates to influence and shape opinion. The Palestinian people have many advocates around the globe but Hamas very few. It will be interesting to see if the global solidarity stays with the people of Palestine or if Israel succeeds in turning global opinion against Hamas.

In the meantime ordinary people will live and die in a 21st century hell.

Hillary next Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton will be named the next US Secretary of State after the Thanksgiving Holiday this weekend. So the New York Times says today.

This is very good news for Ireland and should challenge Brian Feeney and other commentators who have been less then supportive of President Elect Obama’s commitment to this island.

For an insight into why Obama would appoint the woman who fought him so hard read Karen Tumulty in TIME this week.

As he wrapped up his second week as President-elect, it was clear that Obama was taking the long view in both diplomacy and politics. How else to explain the fact that he had all but offered the most prestigious job in his Cabinet to a woman whose foreign policy experience he once dismissed as consisting of having tea with ambassadors? Or that Clinton might accept an offer from a man whose national-security credentials, she once said, began and ended with “a speech he made in 2002″? Nowhere did Obama and Clinton attack each other more brutally last spring than on the question of who was best equipped to handle international relations in a dangerous world. That they could be on the brink of becoming partners in that endeavor is the most remarkable evidence yet that Obama is serious about his declared intention to follow another Illinois President’s model in assembling a “team of rivals” to run his government, in what could be a sharp contrast with the past 40 years of American Presidents. “I’ve been spending a lot of time reading Lincoln,” Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. “There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was President, that I just find very helpful.”

Obama’s ambition is clearly to assemble a ‘team of rivals’ as Lincoln so famously did.

God speed Mr President elect.

The morning after the day before – The Munster Haka

Feck the politics.

Munster nearly took the All Blacks last night. Go on Limerick!

Historic not just because of the antipodeans first visit to the new Thomond Park but also because of the first ever Irish Haka.  This could catch on.