Send more bombs ...

 

Bombs undergoing maintenance at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho in 2020.(
Photo credit: AIRMAN 1ST CLASS AKEEM K. CAMPBELL)

In reading The Cradle's piece regarding how the US is supplying Israel with serious ordinance while at the same time urging Israel to spare civilians while carpet bombing Gaza, the notion of Orwell, Doublethink and Newspeak comes to mind without question.

To whit.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on 2 December urged Israel to protect civilians during its campaign against Hamas in Gaza, even as the US military continues to send 2,000-pound bombs and artillery to the Israeli army for use in the densely populated and besieged enclave. 

Austin told the Reagan National Defense Forum in California on Saturday that shielding noncombatants in the densely populated and besieged enclave is necessary for victory in the urban fight. 

Austin stated that he had “learned a thing or two about urban warfare” while fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS).

“The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” Austin stressed. “If you drive [Gaza’s civilians] into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

But just one thing, it takes money, right?

Austin, a former board member of weapons manufacturer Raytheon, then asked the lawmakers in the crowd to pass both the military’s budget and the supplemental funding for both wars.

The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
Emmanuel Goldstein/1984

Emmanuel Goldstein (John Boswall) on a telescreen during a Two Minutes Hate
programme in the film Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

Factoid:

  The US has provided Israel roughly 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells since 7 October. 

This includes some 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs, which Israel used to kill 100 Palestinians in just one strike in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, according to US officials.