The Conservative Cat

Time and again, Israel has proven it possesses the military strength to hold on to Palestine. Why, then, are we still fighting about it? Because what matters in today's world is not who owns the land, but who deserves it.

This is very serious. It takes an entire government with a functioning army and police force to control a piece of land, but to complain about unfairness, all you need is an idiot with a microphone. And of course, if the complaint is not heeded, you can use it to justify mass murder.

Allowing ordinary people to commit mass murder in the name of justice is a huge mistake. It's all right for ordinary people to publish books and record CDs, because you can do books and CDs without killing people. Real war requires billions of dollars of equipment and thousands of highly-trained soldiers. Eventually, the war has to end because one or the other of the players runs out of resources. That does not happen in a terror situation because idiots with improvised explosive devices cost next to nothing. In this way, terrorism is a lot like email spam.

But none of this would matter if it weren't for the ideological framework of fairness that gives the terrorist moral cover. Terrorism leaves both the terrorist and the victims worse off than when they started. Without the moral cover, it's simply a stupid act of vandalism.

So it's time to stop thinking of the Middle East in terms of right and wrong and accept the reality of the situation, which is that a capitalist democracy sitting on a worthless piece of land is able to support a higher standard of living than the theocratic dictatorships surrounding it. This higher standard of living enables that aforementioned capitalist democracy to equip a modern army that can protect it from the dark designs of its neighboring dictatorships. If the dictatorships were required to raise their own armies to take back the worthless piece of land, then when the dust settled, everyone would know who won and who lost. Instead, we have this goofy system where the losers keep coming back for more and we're supposed to feel sorry for them while they commit ever more horrible crimes.

I'm sorry, but that's completely unacceptable.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat