"Madness"

At the end of Bridge on the River Kwai, the British doctor looks out over carnage and just says, “Madness.” I feel much the same looking at the news from Israel and its neighbors.

Everyone is mad, and everyone can cite reasons for their madness. No one seems particularly interested in reasons to be sane. So each new mad act justifies a new mad response.

Israel’s response is disproportionate. The civilian body count indicates that. And over time, the growing disproportion between Israeli civilians killed and Arab civilians killed has been a key factor in Israel losing support worldwide. But proportionality is not easy to come by when your soldiers are kidnapped and lots of missiles are fired at your country. It would seem that a descent into chaos would aid Israel’s enemies more, but that’s more of a short run calculation than Hezbollah’s leaders and financers may realize. One sign of that is how their clear recklessness has earned them condemnation as well.

I can’t sort this out. Here’s as good an attempt as any. It seems to me a bloody tragedy, touching millions of lives, and like a tragedy in the classic sense, its unfolding seems inexorable as it flows from the character of the people who govern lives. I do so hope I am wrong in that.