Originally Posted by Nicker
For decades, if not millennia, two factions (with identical and impossible goals of exterminating the other) have engaged in violent conflict over lands around shores of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Each faction purports to have deep, irrefutable, ancestral claims to the land, supported by the unconditional blessings of an almighty and merciful god, yet each think nothing of committing crimes of cruelty against their enemy or subjecting their own people to danger, deprivation and death, in order to advance their political and religious aspirations.
One side is wealthy, has superior military might and can afford a go-slow strategy of gradual strangulation. It says little and does much; expanding aggressively, disproportionately retaliating against any resistance, punishing entire families and villages for the alleged crimes of individuals, fighting rocks with tanks and enforcing a casualty ratio well above twenty-to-one.
The other faction is impoverished, out gunned and stupidly relies on desperate, cynical acts of provocation, which dependably result in a worsening of conditions for the very people they claim to protect. They hide fighters in homes, hospitals and schools, then complain about the inhumanity of civilian casualties. They repeatedly ignite armed conflicts which they have no hope of winning and which they must know will only add to the devastation of their lands and people. They use overt savagery against foes and friends alike, then wonder why they cannot elicit universal sympathy for their cause.
On October 7, 2023, after years of grinding and intensifying oppression by the former, the latter again provoked a hopeless war, expecting a preposterous, novel outcome (an enduring victory) despite no change in initial conditions or tactics. The stronger faction unleashed its predictable, amplified and deadly response, demanding that millions of people flee their war machine or accept responsibility for being trapped in its path.
Misery, disease, pain and death. A necessary price that others must pay, so that the two factions can assert the authenticity of their claims and the justification of their evil deeds. While neither side has any hope of annihilating the other, they pursue this goal with gluttonous delight, until exhaustion forces them to negotiate a peace, which both are already planning to violate.
Like furious toddlers, they cannot imagine a world where they do not get their way. Neither do they understand that, while they cling to the robes of their vengeful Father God, they will never, ever grow into adult human beings.
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How that other thread should have opened, IMO.