Tuesday

Dick Cheney dies, age 84. A mediocre college student (don't worry about it, there were lots of us, most of us made it through life anyway), he matured into a gutsy, outspoken man, including as Secretary of Defense. I remember his anger later as Vice President when President Bush fired Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld had been Cheney's man, and Cheney was furious at Bush and expressed it.

Most of all I remember two different occasions at Tyndall Air Force Base, airmen coming very respectfully up to me and asking, "Sir, aren't you Vice President Cheney?" That was in 2007, and after the second Time, I went to the VA clinic and enrolled in a supervised exercise and diet regimen and lost 47 pounds in twelve months. It's easy, weight drops off and energy increases if you do it right, and by spring 2008 I no longer looked like Dick Cheney. No, I'm absolutely dead serious. 

The weight loss and continued heavy exercise and careful eating program turned out to be lifesaving when I had the heart episode, October 2010 through January 2011. Several heart doctors affirmed that the exercise and lost weight had been significant to my ability to survive as long as I had. 

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Long as I'm halfway on politics, which I studiously avoid here, I just might as well go ahead and say it - - if a nation is viciously attacked by surprise, as the US was by Japan on December 7, 1941 ("Let's remember Pearl Harbor, as we did The Alamo"), and again by violent Islamists on 9/11, the attacked nation's reaction and response is not likely to be measured, reasonable, proportionate "fairness" but enraged, outsized vengeance: for Japan, merciless nuclear fury unto total destruction and unconditional surrender. I remember this as a living witness, and our European campaign that destroyed Germany. There are the latter day peaceniks, those who lament our merciless firebombings of German and Japanese cities during WW2: I am not one of them, I was there and well remember our raging determination. 

Why, oh why have I wandered down this muddy detour? Because of the idiocy of stopping the war against Hamas only to see Hamas emerge from their tunnels firing, executing opposing Gazans, still determined to rule, and filled with hatred and resolved to destroy Israel. 

The Israeli response to 7 October has been even more unconscionable than their treatment of Gaza and Palestinians since 1948: they were goaded into it by Hamas' unspeakable atrocities on 7 October and by the Palestinians who cheered 7 October then and now. A desolated Gaza and starving population is how war works under such conditions of eternal mutual hatred and violence (read the OT book of Joshua). Stopping the war in order to declare "Peace" while the enemy is being destroyed but can and will rebound is not how war works. At any point, Hamas could have ended the war and ended the suffering of the Gazan people by surrendering and laying down arms, but Hamas does not care about their people, only about their single focus: the destruction of Israel. Only Folly expects to stop and reason with such a foe. 

It isn't as if Gazans and Palestinians deserve what has come upon them, but they can thank their leaders for it.

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Now I should come up with something nice and holy to pacify those who disagree with me, but I'll let it go.

RSF&PTL

T90