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Very interesting and informative discussion. I listened twice. But I think, though, that your questions along with your guests' answers missed the central mark again and again essentially by identifying the war's agency of state actors rather than a much broader on the one side Western Liberal multi-pluralist civilisation and on the othe…
Very interesting and informative discussion. I listened twice. But I think, though, that your questions along with your guests' answers missed the central mark again and again essentially by identifying the war's agency of state actors rather than a much broader on the one side Western Liberal multi-pluralist civilisation and on the other 'intrastate' Islamic religious zealotry. A couple times you asked your guests to zoom out to encompass a broader picture but you hadn't zoomed out quite far enough.
By focussing on Israel's war with Iran's proxies in Hamas or Hezbollah or discussing Iran and its allied states, instead you've all three assumed wrongly that the Westphalian principles of statehood are, in fact, applicable in this expansive conflict. I suggest these are not, in that Islamic state entities such as Iran are merely continually being used by religious fundamentalist leaders to gain ground to fulfil a holy, not militarily strategic, mission. You can only win a war in which you know who you are fighting.
Your guests were correct in identifying the West and in particular the U.S. as the greater targets -- but today, not in some distant future. Instruments of Western Liberal multi-pluralist states such as the press and governments have been, in fact, deeply confounded by this Islamic fundamentalist strategy: the West (let's state explicitly: including the vast majority of Islam along with believers of all faiths and creeds) must endeavour to resist our institutions being co-opted by illiberal forces and thereby giving credence to voices of presumed 'resistance' and 'reason'. Fundamentalism of any kind cannot be reasoned with by definition.
There is no diplomatic compromise to be sought in this war of zealotry. From The River to the Sea is really only shorthand for From The River Around The World and Back to The River. This is the stated mission we in the West have to upset if our principles are to prevail. That the press and Western governments continue to insist publicly that Israel's war is its own full stop suggests that the fundamentalists have got us right where they want us.
Nonetheless, I remain optimistic, because I suspect 'right where they want us' isn't any checkmate. But we may lose our Queen and much more before this round of war-game is ended.