A man walks into a bar, sits down at the counter, orders a beer, and puts out some bird seed for the parrot that’s sitting on his shoulder. They guy sitting next to him asks, ‘What’s with the bird?’ The man replies, ‘This is Ralph. He’s very special. I take him everywhere.’ The guy asks, ‘What does he do that’s so special?’ The man lifts up the bird’s left leg and it starts to sing, “Come to me my melancholy baby.” Then he lifts up the bird’s right leg and it starts to sing, “Way down upon the Swanee River.” They guy is suitably impressed. ‘What happens if you lift up both legs?’ ‘It falls on its face, stupid.’ (Badaboom)

Not a good situation, being without a leg to stand on. But I’m afraid that’s where we might be headed now, with our underpinnings not as sturdily planted as we’d like them to be, and, if I may beg your indulgence, I’ll explain what I mean by that cryptic remark. Or, actually, I’ll first ask a question or two. After the first few rocky decades, The U.S. has been Israel’s bestest pal in the world arena. Why is that? Is that because we have been a Light unto the Nations? (Look up the word ‘risible’ in your online dictionary.) Is it because we are The Only Democracy in the Region? (Consider America’s ongoing support for authoritarian regimes before you answer.) Or is it because they finally understood that we are a Strategic Asset, a reliable ally in a hostile region, one that would hold up its end of the bargain, one worth investing in? So what happens when the strategic asset becomes, in some ways, a liability, when our vaunted Intelligence is not so intelligent?

Consider the musings of some random dude, one of our ‘friends’ at the State Department. Let me get this straight. According to what we’re learning, Israel has been allowing suitcases of money to flow into Gaza for over a decade  to finance Hamas because they thought it was a necessary counterbalance to the Palestinian Authority. What idiot thought that one up? Wait, it’s the same idiot who’s still in charge? We know all there is to know about the P.A., but they can’t compete with Hamas as blood-thirsty psychopaths. Then Israel managed not to notice that the Hamas crazies were about to attack them? Or worse. They did know, or some of them knew, but they chose to ignore what they were told until it was too late because they knew better. And now the same idiot who got them into this mess is running off his mouth. ‘Nothing will stop us.’ I know we have to support them, but this guy is not making it easy. They’re preparing to blow up all of Gaza to take out this Sinwar guy. I got news for them; he ain’t there. Wherever he is, he’s not sticking around for them to find him. He’s not like Saddam Hussein, hiding in a bunker hoping no one will notice he’s there. With Sinwar, it’s ‘addressee unknown, no forwarding address.’

One of the most frustrating things about living in The Land is listening to the government’s pathetic attempts at hasbara (explaining ourselves to anyone who will listen) over the years – especially when you know you could do better than the dweebs that are doing it now. Get someone who speaks mother-tongue English. Someone who knows what he/she is talking about. Someone who is appropriately animated and registers the proper emotions at the right moments. Someone who is able to deal with some very hostile questioning without flinching and is able to respond in kind. There’s gotta be someone like that. Maybe not as eloquent as Abba Eban or as quotable as Golda Meir, but somebody. And there must be a few folks who can make some decent videos that explain what’s going on in Gaza, something better than a four-minute clip on YouTube.

And one more thing. What the Israeli government needs is a red team and a blue team. (That’s a suggestion I picked up from a noted journalist, one that everyone loves to hate.) When the generals and the politicians are done bloviating and trying mightily to cover their respective tuchuses, a team of dispassionate, well-informed actual experts ought to be there to starts poking holes in the less-than-well thought out plans by the guys-in-charge. That’s the red team. Imagine the following conversation that won’t take place but should.

Now that you’ve told the world that ‘nothing can stop us,’ that we’re going for ‘total victory,’ let’s take a minute to consider what you mean by those stirring remarks. Remember what Shammai said, ‘Say little and do much.’ (Theodore Roosevelt reimagined that as, ‘Speak softly, and carry a big stick.’ Or as they say all over the world, ‘Talk is cheap.’) First of all, exactly what do you mean by ‘total victory’ and how are we to achieve such a lofty goal?’ Would that involve capturing or killing Sinwar and his buddies? With enough time and effort, sooner or later they will all be dead-men-no-longer-able-to-walk, but do you intend to continue the ground operations until that blessed day? As far as the cutthroats under their command, getting rid of all of them might prove as elusive as exterminating the last cockroach in a NYC apartment. Some of them might just ‘disappear,’ return to their families as if nothing had happened. That’s what Saddam Hussein’s troops did. And the tunnels? How long would it take realistically to destroy all of them, especially when we keep finding new ones – even if there were no one trying to stop us? You understand that flooding them with seawater would permanently ruin the groundwater throughout Gaza and might endanger the lives of our hostages stuck down there.

As far as we are concerned, the main priority must be getting the hostages out before Hamas kills them all or our boys shoot them by mistake. Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a compromise plan to end the fighting, which would have to include the release of everyone Hamas still has. What are you prepared to accept? Or are you going to keep insisting on ‘total victory?’ Suppose everyone you trust is telling you that this is the best deal you’re going to get. Are you prepared to face the nation and tell them that – even if some of you own team isn’t happy?

Right about then, the blue team would enter, breathing fire. The reasons the Americans keep harping on ‘the day after’ is because they kept screwing up by not doing that since the 1950’s when they overthrew Mohammad Mossaddegh, the Iranian ruler, and put in the Shah, who was overthrown by Khomeini, and the world is still dealing with the brilliancy of that plan. And then the Americans went to war in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, none of which was a resounding success. So they have learned a thing or two about what not to do by having done it themselves. We have to understand that, when the fighting stops, all we’ll be left with is a series of terrible options, and we’ll have to decide which one is the least worst one, so be prepared. The one thing we shouldn’t do is try to reoccupy Gaza all by ourselves. What would happen then is all the other countries saying, ‘So long suckers, it’s all yours. Now go fix it by yourself.’ Leaving us to deal with a million unhappy people who have no place to live and no place to go. We’re the ones who should be walking away from this disaster zone and leaving our neighbors and the smart asses at the U.N. to pick up the pieces and pay the tab.

The next day, these two imaginary teams met for coffee somewhere in Jerusalem and had the following conversation.

Do you think they’ll listen to what we told them?

Some will and some won’t, and we all know which is which.

The way I see it, all the military and security people have their resignation letters written and their bags packed, just waiting for the fighting to stop. The politicians? Well, we all know what they’re up to…

I’d hate to be in their shoes. Once this is over and there’s a formal inquiry as to whose fault all this is.

I’m not even looking that far ahead. I can see things getting out of hand real quick. There was this incident a few weeks ago when a guy in miluim shot a civilian who had just taken down a terrorist, and the police tried to cover it up. Now you have three hostages shot by our own troops after the commander told them not to shoot. How are we supposed to convince anybody that our guys are acting ethically against the enemy when we’re not following the rules with our own civilians? And I just saw this warning from some rabbi that our troops shouldn’t desecrate mosques in Gaza because someone must have done just that. There’s going to be a bunch of cameramen taking pictures if any of our troops takes a leak against a building or tosses chewing gum on the ground, and it will be all over the news.

I’m more concerned about the reaction here. There are lots of people – not just their families – who think the government is not focused enough on getting the hostages released. But nobody expected three poor guys to get shot when they were supposed to be rescued. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a big split between the people who will say, Let’s get our hostages back and be done, and those who want to keep going because otherwise the troops who have been killed will have died in vain.

With lots of people in the middle.

I don’t know. We just don’t seem able to catch a break….

Which is exactly my point. If you don’t exactly have a leg to stand on, it’s very hard to catch a break.