Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I wrote the other day about the Gaza ceasefire deal negotiated between Israel and Hamas. I heard about it on Wednesday around lunchtime in California when President Biden announced it in a press conference. The deal was brokered by negotiators from the US, Egypt, and Qatar, and had been in the works for 8 months. By the time I posted that blog about it 24 hours later there were already trouble signs that the deal might fall apart before it even took effect. Now, despite wobbling it looks like it will begin Sunday morning at 0630 local time in Israel.

What have been the wobbles? Well, first, the deal had to be approved by Israel's cabinet. They set a date of Friday, then pushed it to Saturday, raising worries they might kill it with delays. A vote on Saturday would've pushed implementation of the terms out past Sunday. The cabinet moved the vote back up to Friday.

Not all of Israel's cabinet support the ceasefire. The far right components of prime minister Netanyahu's ruling coalition are opposed. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he and members of his party would resign if the ceasefire passed, weakening Netanyahu's coalition possibly to the point of losing majority. That's why I noted yesterday that Netanyahu strengthening his majority recently was crucial to him finally agreeing to ceasefire terms that have been on the table for 8 months. Ben Gvir softened his stance, though, and withdrew his threat to resign even though he and fellow party member Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich voted against the agreement. Ministers of some other far-right parties are opposed, too, though they are only observers, not full voting members, of  the Security Cabinet.

The ceasefire agreement also faces threats from, well, not-ceasing fire. Israel has claimed Palestinian fighters are still launching attacks, justifying it launching attacks in return with tanks and airstrikes. And Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to fire missiles at Israel. Still, Israeli military units seem to be forming up to begin withdrawing on Monday morning, and authorities are working on details of exactly which imprisoned Palestinians will be released in exchange for freed hostages.

At this point we're only a few hours from 0630 Sunday morning in Gaza. Despite the wobbliness the ceasefire seems to remain on track. Of course, even once it begins it remains at risk. Not only is Israel likely to continue responding militarily to any armed provocation but the details of phases 2 and 3 of the plan are not yet hammered out. The agreement acknowledges a return to war if the two sides cannot come to terms.

If you haven't been paying much attention to international news you might not have noticed that civil war in Syria took a sudden turn over the past 2 weeks. The conflict, which launched as part of the Arab Spring protests in 2011, had been at a stalemate for years. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad quickly regained control of most of his country with the help of allies Russia and Iran. Assad was utterly brutal in his punishment of those who defied him, killing more than half a million including with banned weapons such as poison gas and displacing millions of residents who fled to other countries as refugees. But in the past 10 days a new rebel alliance began capturing cities one by one across the country. This weekend rebels entered Damascus seemingly unopposed. Assad had already fled to Russia.

The rebels' timing was shrewd... or incredibly lucky. Russia, which had provided military troops, equipment, and funding to prop up Assad in years past, is stretched thin by its incredibly costly invasion of Ukraine. Iran is stretched thin by fighting Israel through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Who are the victorious rebels? The alliance seems to consist of Islamic Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and various Kurdish rebel groups that held parts of the country in the 13 year long stalemate. HTS is led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who was previously an al Qaeda leader. He says they're more inclusive now. We'll see what happens next. Sadly it's not high bar for the next Syrian government to be better than the last.

It's in the news today that members of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah were targeted in a coordinated attack using exploding pagers. Yes, pagers, the small devices a lot of people clipped to their belts or put in their pockets back in the 1980s and early 90s to display phone numbers or extremely short messages from people who called. As of this evening (US time) it's reported that 9 people died and nearly 3,000 were injured.

When I saw an early version of the story this morning my immediate reaction was to chuckle— in disbelief. The idea of an exploding pager sounded ridiculous... and also a bit quaint. It reminded me of the story that the CIA in the 1960s tried to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. It's debatable that attack even occurred. I mean, exploding cigars where a joke decades ago.  I remember seeing ads in the back pages of magazines aimed at kids for mail-order novelties such as exploding cigars, joy buzzers, and spicy bubblegum.

But this attack actually happened. And it's not a novelty toy.

It got me thinking right away: whoever is responsible for this— Lebanon and Iran point their fingers squarely at Israel— put a lot of planning into this. They would have had to compromise the supply chain all the way back to manufacturing. I mean, it's not like standard pagers come preloaded with explosives that a simple computer hacker could trigger. When Hezbollah ordered thousands of pagers some months ago, the responsible party would have had to 1) find out about the order, 2) design an exploding mechanism, and 3) infiltrate/take over the manufacture to insert the explosive and trigger, before 4) the thousands of pagers are shipped. Subsequent reporting says that the pagers were manufactured by a European company licensed by a Taiwanese electronics brand.

BTW, why were thousands of Hezbollah members using pagers? It's reported that back in February the terrorist group's leaders urged its members to stop using cell phones for communication as it believe Israeli intelligence could track their phones. That's also part of why Israel is suspected of responsibility for the exploding pager plot.

Among the casualties were a few members of foreign governments, including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. Speaking of pointing fingers at who's involved in what.... Of course, it's no mystery to anyone who pays attention to Middle East politics that Iran bankrolls Hezbollah terrorism. It's just an example of someone getting caught with their pants down— I mean, pager in hand.

Thanksgiving Travelog #6
Washington, DC - Sun, 19 Nov 2023. 2:30pm.

Sunday we visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. It's a place that's been on our to-see list for many years that we haven't gotten to for many reasons... including major things like the Coronavirus pandemic causing us to cancel at least one trip to Washington, DC as well as prosaic things such as difficulty getting tickets. Until now. We had tickets for 10am, when the museum opens, and no fixed plans until after the museum's closure this afternoon. It turned out we didn't need all day. We spent 4 hours there, unrushed.



This visit is not an easy topic to write about. Unlike most museums, which celebrate accomplishments in art, society, or technology, this one commemorates the losses in a very dark chapter in human history. But it also asks us not to look away from what happened— because by looking away we make it easier for those who would deny or minimize what happened, and make it more likely such things will happen again.



Speaking of happening again, one thing that struck me over and over in reading about Hitler's consolidation of power in Germany in the 1930s and the way he wielded it, is just how many parallels there are in the US politics of the past 8 years. Or even in the past 8 days.

You think something like this won't/can't happen again? Bub, we're already several steps down the road to it happening again.

. . .

I don't want to make this entry too heavy a political one so I'll skip ahead to one of the last exhibits we visited in the memorial. This is the Hall of Remembrance:



In this room is a bit of earth from each of the concentration camps where a total of several million Jewish people were murdered. Small candles on several of the walls are there for visitors to light in remembrance of those slain.

The inscription on the far wall is from the Book of Deuteronomy:

Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children and your children's children.

One week ago Israel was viciously attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, which is also de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters purposefully massacred hundreds of civilians in addition to waging attacks on military targets. Soon thereafter I started seeing the analogy in the news, "10/7 is Israel's 9/11." I was already thinking it myself.

I've also seen some articles where writers highhandedly admonish readers how 10/7 and 9/11 are not alike, because of how al Qaeda was a non-state actor and Hamas is a state actor, or some equally beside-the-point thing like that. There are two big problems with this. First, fuck the finger-wagging man-splaining. Anyone attempting to use asshole style arguments and rub my nose in how smart they are by explaining to me how I've been mistaken the whole time is rarely going to win points with me. Rarely, because it's rarely the case such people are actually right! I will agree with an asshole's point if they are right. But almost invariably assholes are not right, because they are too caught up in their own egos to recognize facts contrary to their prejudices. In this case these finger-waggers are wrong because of problem #2: All analogies fail when you take them too far.

The point of making an analogy is to illustrate how something unfamiliar or simply new, in this case the 10/7 attacks on Israel, is similar in a few keys respects to something much more familiar, like the 9/11 attacks on the US. The key is in a few key respects. An analogy will always— always— break down if you take it too far. The "take it too far" in the case of these contrarian writers is them comparing the different geopolitical positions of Hamas vs. Al Qaeda and arguing that because those two are not the identical the whole comparison is null and void. That's horseshit. Their argument is a logical fallacy (overextending an analogy proves nothing) and an indication of arguing in bad faith.

The point of the analogy between the attacks is not that Hamas and Al Qaeda are the same (except also in some limited regards) but that the impact and consequences of the attacks have, or are likely to have, key similarities. Here are three big similarities I can think of right off the top of my head:

1) The attack killed a huge number of people, proportionately. The 9/11 attacks in the US killed just under 3,000 people, virtually all civilians. The initial death toll in the attacks on Israel was estimated at just over 100 in the hours after the attack. Just that death toll is a comparable loss as the US population in 2001 of 285 million is 30x Israel's population of 9.3 million today. And as the breathtaking scope of the 10/7 attacks became clearer after the first few hours, the death toll increased to over 900. Edit: after several days it was increased to 1,400. That makes 10/7 actually fourteen times as bad as 9/11 in terms of proportionate loss of life.

2) Policy reaction to the attacks will change government and society. The US government implemented sweeping, permanent changes after 9/11. The changes are still all around us in our daily lives. In Israel, this attack is seen as a massive failure of the country's sophisticated and far-reaching intelligence apparatus. What changes in surveillance and security policies will be made? And will this attack ultimately topple the precarious government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Israelis are understandably pulling together in this time of war, but at the same time many are openly criticizing the leadership of Netanyahu— who for years has defined his political brand as his ability to keep Israelis safe from attack better than absolutely anyone else.

3) Israel has a rare moment of global support— and may overplay it. Following 9/11 the US had broad international support, including from geopolitical rivals who'd ordinarily condemn US foreign actions, to find and bring to justice the parties responsible. This support backed the invasion of Afghanistan and tolerated, to a certain extent, broad suspicion of Muslim people and Muslim majority countries. The US overplayed its hand, though, in invading Iraq under flimsy pretenses that later proved false— arguably knowingly false— and in violating its own commitments to the international rules of law through actions such as detaining prisoners without charges or trial and using torture. Nevermind that the US's enemies did such things as a matter of course; the US was held by its peers and its own people to a higher standard. Israel faces the same challenge today. This attack was brutal. It violated the rules of war, via its deliberate attack on civilians and taking of hostages. But Israel will lose its moment of international support if it does the same in return. It may seem unfair that it's held to a higher standard, but it's simply a fact that it is. And already its war on Hamas is causing a widespread humanitarian crisis. The 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been without power or piped water for several days. Israel is telling 1 million of them to leave ahead of a ground invasion, but where will they go? The borders, including Egypt's border, are all closed.

When I visited the Alamo in Texas a few days ago I thought a lot about how to frame what happened there in terms of a larger history. The popular story is about American heroes choosing death over defeat and the enemy's brutality making "Remember the Alamo!" a powerful rallying cry for independence. But independence from what, and why? The way those parts of the story are framed at the Alamo itself raised my skepticism because I could see the tool marks of recent politics on them. Sure, simplified us-versus-them stories are winners with most. But not with me. I wanted to dig deeper.



One way to frame what happened at the Alamo is as part of a larger independence movement in the US. Of course, Texas wasn't part of the US back then. Texas was a state in Mexico, which had won independence from Spain in 1821. But a good many of the settlers of Texas were from the United States. In fact Mexico encouraged Americans to come settle in Texas. Arguably one of the lessons is that Mexico should've known better than to invite Americans in; they'd revolt and demand independence. 😂

Politically Mexico was a mess back then. The following independence were rocky, politically, as different schools of thought and different factions collided over how to structure the national government. Some wanted a decentralized government, similar to the confederacy of the US under the Articles of Confederation that preceded the US Constitution. Others wanted a strong centralized government. And others proclaimed a third way, balancing the first two.

The 1824 Constitution of Mexico had created a federal system in which many rights were devolved to states. But over the years the central government asserted more power, including passing anti-American laws that limited immigration from the US and taxed US imports heavily. These were unpopular with the influential Anglo-American population in Texas. Mexico officially abolished slavery in 1829. That, too, pissed off the American immigrants as most of them were from the American South, where slavery remained legal, and had brought their slaves— and their view of slavery as the natural condition for Black people— with them. The final straw came in 1835 when the new president (there had been several in just a few years), Antonio López de Santa Anna suspended the constitution, replacing it with a series of articles that gave him strong, centralized power. Texas revolted, as did many other states.

One fair question is if many states revolted, why was there only fighting in Texas? One answer is that Texas was more revolting. Texian soldiers sacked some Mexican outposts, infuriating Santa Anna. In addition, Santa Anna believed the US was orchestrating the revolt against his power. He led his army to Texas to punish the American ex-pats there. Ultimately, though, when Santa Anna was defeated, no other states demanded independence, only Texas.

Turkey today ratified Finland's petition to join NATO. The vote in Turkish parliament, which was hardly a sure thing, now goes to president Tayyip Erdogan, who has signaled he will sign it. Erdogan's approval was also hardly a sure thing. He demanded, and won, a few concessions from Finland as a condition of the vote. Turkey is the last of 30 NATO member countries to approve Finland's petition. Finland may officially be inducted at the next NATO member meeting in July. Example news coverage: Reuters article 30 Mar 2023.

This may sound like wonky, unimportant international news, so let me put it in context. It's about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

1. One of Russia's stated goals for invading Ukraine was to prevent a country on its border (i.e., Ukraine) from joining NATO.


2. Russia's invasion prompted more countries to want to join Russia; principally Sweden and Finland.


3. Finland joining NATO greatly increases the Russia's border with NATO members. See map below.


4. Own goal: Russia.

Prior to Russia's invasion in 2022 the country had very little border with NATO states. There was a bit with Estonia and Latvia. Counting in Kaliningrad, it shares a bit of border with Lithuania and Poland. And if you consider Belarus basically part of Russia (it has basically a sock-puppet government) it has more border with Lithuania and Poland.

One of Russia's stated goals/justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022 was to limit its border with NATO. Russia contended (i) Ukraine was going to join NATO, (ii) NATO represents a military threat to Russia, and therefore (iii) it had to annex Ukraine to keep NATO further away.

Claim (i) was false. Ukraine did not want to join NATO— though it started talking about it more seriously as Russia built up for the invasion. Claim (iii) is ridiculous logic as if Russia did annex Ukraine it would add borders with NATO member states Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

...Not that any of this would justify invasion even if it were true, but it didn't even make sense. And now Russia has achieved the opposite of its stated goal. Finland and Sweden, which were content being outside of NATO prior to 2022, petitioned to join. Now with Finland's membership imminent (Sweden's is still blocked on approval from Turkey) there soon will be hundreds of new miles of NATO member countries on Russia's border. Russia's aggression provoked the opposite of one of its stated goals.

Episode 9 of The Pacific, "Okinawa", follows very much in the footsteps of the previous episode, "Iwo Jima". Historically the two campaigns were pretty much one right after the other. Each entailed weeks of pitched battles.

Brutal combat has been the norm across this series. In Okinawa it reaches a new level of brutality. American soldiers are shocked and dismayed to see Japanese soldiers using the local civilian population as human shields... and worse, as human bombs.

Eugene Sledge is the main viewpoint character in this episode. Sledge, previously the mild mannered new recruit from a genteel family in Mobile, Alabama is now the grizzled combat veteran showing the newer recruits how to survive in brutal combat. The new level of brutality really gets to him, though; particularly seeing civilians exploited as human shields.

The episode ends about 6 weeks after the Battle of Okinawa is concluded. The Marines still on the island are climbing up on trucks to be sent somewhere else. An officer tells them, "They dropped some new kind of bomb" that destroyed an entire city. That would be the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.

BTW, some historians hold that the brutality of combat, and the Japanese Army ethos never to surrender, seen on Okinawa influenced American military leaders to drop the bombs. Prior to those bombs the plan had been to use Okinawa's harbor and airfield as an critical launching point for an assault on the Island of Japan that would involve 3,000,000 US soldiers.

This week I've continued watching The Pacific, a 10 episode miniseries about WWII. In many ways it's a companion piece to Band of Brothers, the critically acclaimed miniseries about US Army paratroopers (the storied 101st. Airborne) fighting in Europe. Among the ways they're similar is that both have Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as executive producers. They're different, though, in that while Band of Brothers was critically acclaimed and I found it engrossing, The Pacific has routinely fallen flat, marred by frequent lack of a compelling storyline and/or sympathetic characters to follow. Why do I keep watching it, then? I guess I keep hoping it will get better. And in episodes 5, 6, and 7, it kind of does.

These three episodes, the broad middle of the series, tell the story of the Battle of Peleliu. If you paid attention during WWII history class and don't remember that name or location, that's one of the most important points about the Battle of Peleliu. But it's not one this series makes, except only in brief, passing reference later.

Colossal Intelligence Failures

At Peleliu Island, the 1st, 5th, and 7th Marines are sent to capture a Japanese airstrip. The military's plan is that it's a critical toehold to support an invasion of the Philippines, which will then be the crucial launching point for an assault on Japan to win WWII.

The military's plan is also that securing this island will take just a few days. Military intelligence is that there are only a few thousand Japanese soldiers defending the island, greatly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of US soldiers committed to the operation. On that mark the military intelligence was wrong, though "only" by 2-3x. There were 10,000 Japanese defenders.

The far bigger intelligence failure was in assessing how well prepared the Japanese defenders were. They had built heavy fortifications, including an extensive network of tunnels in natural caves in the coral ridge that overlooked the airfield. They were so well defended in these positions that it ultimately took more than 2 months to defeat them, and the US experienced brutal attacks and heavy casualties in doing so.

One Side Learned, One Side Didn't

Part of what happened here, though the series doesn't say it— I figured this out from reading up on the history myself— is that one side was learning, one side wasn't. The Japanese were the side that was learning.

In defending previous island assaults, the Japanese would fight Americans on the beach, trying to repel the landing. Japanese generals saw that this was ineffective. Among other things, it left their soldiers exposed to powerful attacks by naval artillery and heavy machine guns. Japanese leaders also saw that the notorious "banzai assault" was too costly. While it had strong shock value at first, once Americans started anticipating it they were able to inflict heavy casualties against charging infantry with their rifles and machine guns.

At Peleliu the Japanese pulled all their defenses back. They hid in bunkers and fortified caves. They built these hideouts to resist common patterns of attacks by rifle fire, artillery, and grenades. The Japanese also practiced excellent fire discipline. They held their fire during artillery and bombing attacks, as rifle fire does pretty much nothing against air and naval assault except confirm the defenders' location. As a result the US Navy thought that after 3 days of bombardment before the amphibious assault they had largely destroyed the Japanese defenders... when in fact they had barely touched them.

Brutal, Brutal Fighting

Fighting in the Battle of Peleliu was brutal from start to finish. ...And again, that finish took more than 2 months. One respect in which the writing of these episodes was good is that it doesn't reveal up front how long the fighting would last. That immerses us viewers in the characters' developing sense of dread. "Alright, men, let's do this!" turns to "Shit, this is hard," to "OMG, is this ever going to be over?!" to "I hope when they kill me I get to die quickly."

Just capturing the airfield took 3 days of brutal fighting. The Japanese soldiers remained in their well fortified positions and held their fire (part of fire discipline, mentioned above) until the Americans were close enough for maximum damage.

While a lot of US Marines were able to land on the island they were not able to establish any kind of beachhead or organized position. That meant they couldn't get supplies in. The weather on Peleliu was brutally hot, with daytime temperatures surpassing 105° F (40° C). The Marines couldn't even get water. Overheating and dehydration contributed to the Marines suffering enormous losses.

Even once the airfield was captured it wasn't actually secured. There were still significant Japanese defenders in the hills overlooking the airfield. They'd fire on US soldiers from well fortified positions by day and stage spoiling raids by night. The US had to find each defensive area and basically pry them out. That took a long time— that's where the battle stretched from several days to 10 weeks— and came at enormous cost of casualties.

Never Have So Many Paid So Much for So Little

I remarked near the start of this blog that it's unsurprising if you've never heard of the Battle of Peleliu even if you're familiar, by name if nothing else, with other major WWII Pacific battles such as Guadalcanal, Bataan, and Iwo Jima. That's because while Peleliu was a major battle, in terms of effort expended and lives lost, it was ultimately a pointless battle. The US military did not use Peleliu for staging and attack or defending the flank while invading the Philippines. In fact they never even used the airfield after securing it.

The US suffered 10,000 casualties in the Battle of Peleliu. That was just over 20% of the total forces committed. Among the Marines, though, the casualty rate was much higher. The 1st Marines suffered an astonishing 71% casualties. Those men were put through a meat grinder... and ultimately for nothing.

This is a reality of history that this TV miniseries makes only passing mention of. It's, like, one sentence of voiceover narration, and it's not even until the intro of the next episode.

But Is It Good TV?

Ultimately while this trio of episodes are better than the few before them, they still fall well short of being great TV. Partly that's because the screenwriters and directors continue to struggle with the fundamentals of visual storytelling. The visuals themselves are beautiful, but the story is too hard to follow. There are too many characters, and frankly they all look the same in identical shirts and helmets with blood and sweat and grit smeared on their faces.

What's good about these 3 episodes, then? They're engrossing for their frenetic action. It seems like there's never more than a few seconds of screentime between someone shooting or being shot at. The characters all become sympathetic because they're living through hell. When a soldier breaks here, you feel for them. And the men who've been assholes to each other for several episodes start looking after each other instead of looking for opportunities to pick on each other. ...Well, mostly. One guy gets ragged on by his whole squad for shitting himself in an ambush.

So, is it good TV? Ultimately no. And the reason isn't just the fundamentals of good plotting and characterization. That's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is the whitespace in these episodes, the things they don't address. Yes, Peleliu was brutal; we see that in High Definition. But it was also pointless. Some war leaders knew that. Some leaders knew that and they were overruled. The media was distracted by other things, so this story of wasted lives was barely reported. Could this have been avoided? Were any lessons learned? The show doesn't address that beyond a single sentence. A single sentence after 3 episodes. Almost everything I've written here, these 1,000+ words, is from research the episodes prompted me to go and do on my own. It's a sad statement that a TV show's most important contribution is that it prompted me to go somewhere else to understand what really happened.

Last night I watched ep. 3 of The Pacific, entitled "Melbourne". Yes, it's been a few weeks since I've written about this miniseries. No, it's not just because my blog has been backlogged. I actually haven't watched the shows in almost 4 weeks. Frankly I'm finding this show much less compelling than Band of Brothers, which inspired it.

Episode 3, "Melbourne", is frankly an example of why this show is much less compelling than the other WWII miniseries. In this episode, the marines are stationed in Melbourne, Australia. to recover from the grueling Guadalcanal campaign shown in the previous 2 episodes and to wait for the US to produce & deliver enough weaponry for them to take on the next campaign. If that reads like it should be the crawl text in a quick montage that introduces the next combat-heavy episode, you're catching my drift. The problem is, that's the whole episode.

A few character-driven stories do occur here. Sgt. John Basilone, one of the viewpoint characters, is awarded the Medal of Honor. In case you don't know, it's the highest award for the US military. Two other viewpoint characters, Bob Leckie and Sid Phillips, both find girlfriends in Melbourne. While these could be compelling vignettes that convey larger issues rather than just character drama, the writers kind of whiff on that idea.

• The story of Bob Leckie's romance goes on way too long, particularly in that it reaches an abrupt and very unsatisfying dead end. Plus, the sex scenes are gratuitous to the point of feeling wrong.


• Sid Phillips' romance story errs in the opposite way. It's so short, basically just one scene, it's like, why even bother?


• John Basilone's story could have been fleshed out a bit more. The writers only gloss over the character drama of the Medal of Honor recipient realizing that he needs to act like a war hero now; he can't go all drunken-cowboy around Melbourne like his buddies anymore. And he's being sent back home to sell war bonds. There's the opportunity for some serious Captain America energy here, portraying the soldier's frustration with being assigned a responsibility he thinks is way less important than what he can do by leading a squad in combat. But again, the writers only gloss over that.

Will I continue watching the miniseries after this? Well, I already did. I was bored last night and not ready to go to bed, so I clicked through to episode 4. I figured, maybe this one will get back to actual war. 🤣