No. That's the difference between the pragmatic and the fantisist. Unless you accept reality as it is, you will fail.
Then let’s talk about reality—not the fantasy you’re selling dressed up as pragmatism.
The “reality” you’ve embraced is one where mass civilian death is collateral, occupation is peacekeeping, and anyone who demands basic human rights is labeled a fantasist. But there’s nothing pragmatic about policies that breed generational rage, fuel endless insurgency, and leave children buried under rubble. That’s not stability. That’s a slow-motion catastrophe.
What you call pragmatism is just moral surrender—resignation to the idea that violence is the only language worth speaking. That’s not realism. That’s intellectual laziness propped up by political cynicism. And history proves it false. Occupation didn’t pacify Iraq. Bombing didn’t bring peace to Afghanistan. Crushing Gaza won’t bring safety to Israel. It just sets the stage for the next round of vengeance.
The real pragmatist looks at what actually works—de-escalation, diplomacy, accountability, and justice. Those aren’t fantasies. They’re the only tools that have ever broken cycles of violence in places from Northern Ireland to South Africa. The fantasy is thinking you can bomb your way to coexistence.
You think I’m the one ignoring reality? Reality is watching children die in shelters and still claiming the war is being conducted responsibly. Reality is refusing aid, flattening neighborhoods, and calling it a strategy. Reality is the world turning away as famine spreads and pretending it’s all unavoidable. I see that clearly. You just excuse it.
So no—I’m not the one failing to accept reality. I’m the one refusing to normalize atrocity and slap the word “pragmatic” on it. You say peace is impossible unless Israel rules Gaza. That’s not peace. That’s imperialism. And history has never been kind to empires that mistake submission for order.
The world you’re defending isn’t stable. It’s a powder keg. And clinging to it because the alternative requires imagination and courage doesn’t make you pragmatic. It makes you complicit.
It's funny how you say that WW2 ended in reconstruction. As if there were alternative scenarios. WTF are you smoking? How about you're grateful we're not having this conversation in German?
Iraq was a success. We removed Saddam. Is Iraq a mess now? Yes. But at least Saddam is not in power. Iraq is no longer a tool of evil. I'd say that's a huge success.
With people like you in charge the good guys will be perpetually hamstrung giving evil a free reign. Evil needs people like you in order to flourish.
If removing one dictator while plunging a country into chaos is your definition of success, then you’re not measuring outcomes—you’re measuring theatrics. Saddam is gone, yes. But so are hundreds of thousands of lives, a stable infrastructure, and any pretense of regional balance. In his place came civil war, sectarian militias, ISIS, and Iranian entrenchment. That’s not a success story. That’s the cautionary tale you refuse to learn from.
As for WWII: reconstruction wasn’t automatic—it was a choice. The Allies didn’t just defeat fascism; they followed through with the Marshall Plan, de-Nazification, and a commitment to rebuilding Europe. If that war had ended with collective punishment, carpet bombing into oblivion, and military occupation without transition, it wouldn’t have brought peace. It would have spawned the very extremism we fought to end. So yes, we’re lucky this conversation isn’t in German—but that’s not because of brutality. It’s because we chose to rebuild, not just destroy.
What you’re advocating now isn’t that kind of justice. It’s collective punishment wrapped in the flag of “tough choices.” You want Gaza turned into post-invasion Iraq, but somehow expect a better result. That’s not courage—it’s willful amnesia.
And let’s be clear: opposing indiscriminate violence doesn’t mean giving evil a free reign. It means refusing to become it. If you need to trample laws, starve children, and bomb hospitals to defeat your enemy, then you haven’t won—you’ve just lowered yourself to the terms they wanted all along.
Evil flourishes not because people call for restraint, but because others, like you, convince themselves that morality is a liability. You call people like me a problem for “the good guys.” But if the only way to be one of the good guys is to look away while civilians are killed en masse, then maybe that label doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Yes, I'm defending it. Because it's the less destructive, long term. Yes, I think you are cold hearted and you don't seem to care about people's suffering. Instead you get caught up on slogans. Just my impression.
Then let’s speak clearly, without slogans.
You claim I’m cold-hearted for opposing a policy that kills thousands of civilians, flattens neighborhoods, starves children, and targets places of refuge—because you believe, in the long term, it’s less destructive. But that’s not pragmatism. That’s cruelty dressed up as strategy. “Less destructive” for whom? Certainly not for the families buried under rubble. Not for the children with amputated limbs. Not for the communities that will grow up under siege, trauma, and rage—conditions that breed the very extremism you claim to oppose.
What you call “less destructive” is a calculation that erases the suffering in front of us because you think it serves a hypothetical future. But history shows again and again: mass civilian suffering doesn’t lead to peace. It leads to radicalization, blowback, and decades of instability. Iraq proved that. Afghanistan proved that. You’re not preventing the next war—you’re planting its seeds.
And no, I’m not caught up in slogans. I’m insisting on a moral red line: you don’t kill innocent people to get to your version of peace. Not if you want that peace to last. Not if you want to live in a world where might doesn’t make right. The idea that restraint is weakness—that you have to break a people to save them—isn’t just cynical. It’s the logic of every failed occupation in history.
So yes, I reject your justification. Not because I ignore suffering, but because I refuse to pretend that bombing civilians is how you end it.
What chances does any of those have to work unless Hamas is first gone, and their network of power is gone?
I'm not sure you are aware of it, but the moment ISIS fell apart, Muslims, generally, stopped talking about global Jihad. We can kill fascism with force. We have done so repeatedly, with success. I think it's the way to go in the case of Hamas as well.
Then let’s confront the heart of your argument: that force alone can end extremism.
If defeating fascism were only a matter of killing its leaders, the world would be at peace by now. But every time that logic is applied without a plan for what comes next—without justice, representation, and a stake in the future—it doesn’t kill the ideology. It fuels it. You point to ISIS, but that’s exactly the case study you don’t want: after its collapse, the region remained unstable, with new militant factions emerging from the ashes. Force removed a symptom. It didn’t cure the disease.
And Hamas? You want it “gone.” Fine. But gone how? By leveling the territory it controls? By starving its population into submission? That’s not strategy—that’s collective punishment. And even if Hamas disappears tomorrow, what replaces it in a flattened Gaza governed by foreign soldiers and scarred by mass civilian death? You haven’t answered that, because your answer is force—and force alone.
That’s the real problem. You claim to want peace, but your framework is military domination. You reject elections, international oversight, and diplomacy not because they’re unrealistic—but because they require restraint, patience, and compromise. You don’t trust those tools. But history has never shown a single case where durable peace came from humiliation and siege.
What I’m proposing isn’t fantasy—it’s the only model that’s ever worked: demilitarization with political resolution, reconstruction with international guarantees, and a population given reason to invest in something other than vengeance. It’s not easy. But unlike endless war, it has a future.
And no, I’m not unaware of Hamas’s power structure. I’m aware that bombing families and destroying civilian infrastructure does not dismantle it. It entrenches it. Because people don’t turn to extremism when they’re empowered—they turn to it when they’ve been shown that law, diplomacy, and humanity are myths.
So if you truly want Hamas gone, then give people something stronger to believe in than hate. That’s not weakness. That’s the only winning strategy history has ever endorsed.
I'm fine with dominance. As long as the dominance comes with respect for human rights and democracy
Yes, of course, the free and democratic western powers were just as bad as Hitlers Germany or communism under the thumb of USSR. <- sarcasm
Then let’s test your claim.
You say you’re “fine with dominance”—so long as it includes respect for human rights and democracy. But that’s the contradiction at the core of your argument. You can’t impose democracy at gunpoint while denying rights to the very population you’re ruling over. That’s not democratic dominance. That’s colonialism rebranded.
You invoke the West as if its historical record proves your point. But what actually separates liberal democracies from authoritarian regimes isn’t that they win wars—it’s that they constrain themselves. That they recognize, at least in principle, that power must answer to law. When we abandon that, when we say human rights are optional if the target is unpopular enough, we’re not defending freedom—we’re eroding it.
Flattening Gaza isn’t a defense of democracy. There are no elections in the rubble. Starving civilians doesn’t protect human rights. There is no liberty in a siege. What you’re defending is domination in spite of democracy and rights—not in service to them.
And let’s be clear: Israel is not installing a functioning democratic system in Gaza. It is not offering equal rights, representation, or self-determination. It’s offering rule by force over a population that overwhelmingly has no say in the matter. That’s not some enlightened form of governance—it’s precisely the model you claim to oppose when it’s carried out by others.
You want to call that pragmatic? Fine. But then stop cloaking it in the language of freedom. Because freedom without rights, without law, without accountability—is just power. And power without restraint is what built every regime you claim to stand against.
Dude. You're the one normalizing civilian suffereing. Not me. You're the Hamas apologist. You've come up with no solution in getting rid of Hamas. Which makes me think you don't want to get rid of them.
Hamas ideology is on par with Nazi Germany. Arguably it's the same ideology. Via Italy, Turkey and first Napoleon the thirds France. The fascist way of thinking is very seductive. Which is why it's so damn hard to combat.
At no point has fascism ever been defeated by nice words. In every case it was was ultimately defeated with violence. That's the only language (Islamo-)fascists understand. These fascist ideologies were all removed at great cost of civilian human lives. Because fascists tend to view any life as expendible. They're complete bullshit to defeat. But worth it. I think.
I get the impression you would label any action against Hamas as war crimes. That's just my impression of you. Yes, I think you are a Hamas apologist. You seem to oppose any method with which to disempower Hamas.
Then let’s get serious—because accusing someone of being a Hamas apologist for opposing the mass killing of civilians isn’t just wrong, it’s the exact moral failure that gets us here in the first place.
You claim I’ve offered no solution. False. I’ve explicitly said Hamas must go. But there is a difference between removing Hamas and destroying Gaza. One is a goal; the other is a crime. You collapse that distinction because you’ve made violence the only admissible answer—any restraint becomes appeasement, and any civilian suffering becomes a regrettable necessity. That’s not strategy. That’s surrender to the logic of extremism.
You invoke fascism, comparing Hamas to the Nazis. Fine—then let’s finish the analogy. The Allies didn’t flatten every German city indiscriminately. They didn’t bomb refugee camps or blockade food into children’s mouths. And after the war, they didn’t occupy Germany indefinitely with no plan for rebuilding—they rebuilt it. You want to copy WWII? Then copy all of it. That includes post-conflict governance, international oversight, accountability, and investment in peace—not just brute force.
Your argument treats civilian life as collateral to an ideology. You say Hamas treats people as expendable—and then adopt a strategy that proves them right. That’s not defeating fascism. That’s mirroring it.
You say I “seem to oppose any method” to disempower Hamas. What I actually oppose is indiscriminate methods that entrench the very cycles Hamas thrives on: humiliation, dispossession, and grief. You don’t disempower extremism by proving its propaganda. You do it by creating an alternative.
You want Hamas gone? Great. So do I. But if your only method is to kill until no one’s left standing, then don’t pretend you’re defending civilians. You’ve just decided some lives matter less. And history never remembers that as victory. Only as shame.
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