I get the story, and I agree about pummeling bullies into the dirt, but I don't think the metaphor really applies: The bully was guilty in his entirety because he was one man. The Lebanese aren't one man or even one group but several, all of which are suffering for the actions of Hezbollah.

A closer metaphor would be if the small sailor was not only beating the Marine up but also the waitress who the Marine grabbed to cover-up with.

"Well, the Marine just isn't going to let her go it would seem, and the only way to get to him is to beat her up too, so, that's just how it goes."

Anyway, I'm all for grinding Hezbollah into the ground, but a bad metaphor is a bad metaphor.

I agree that the metaphor isn't perfect, but it deserves more credit than you give it.

The Lebanese have elected Hezbollah into their government, their political class and Army refused to do anything about Hezbollah and have refused for 6 years to do what they were supposed to accomplish with the aid of the UN via UN resolution.

Hezbollah has rearmed and regrouped and dug-in while Israel pulled out and waited. Nothing has been done. You can make a case that Lebanon had no ability to disarm Hezbollah, even with the aid of the UN, that's fine. But any retard could have seen this coming.

And when a fight is coming, you get away from the bully. Any schoolkid knows this, you make yourself a non-target. When you're talking about the IDF and IAF, that means you move away. That means when leaflets are dropped talking about striking your neighborhood, you leave.

The Lebanese people are at least responsible for their own well being. If they choose to ignore Hezbollah, that is their responsibility. If they choose to elect Hezbollah into their government, that is their responsibility. Do all the options at this point suck? Absolutely. There are no win-win solutions here. The Lebanese people, complicit or not, are going to get more trouble than they deserve, but the alternative is asking Israel to continue sacrificing their civilians -- who are just as innocent as the Lebanese.

In short, I agree with your counterpoint about the waitress, but if the analogy were perfect, she should have been smart enough to get the hell out of the way. That's life.

Or even moreso, she shouldn't have been flirting with the bully, romanticizing his brutish charms.

I'd feel comfortable with the metaphor if i believed this particularly Israeli government had that kind of resolve. Nothing i've seen so far has indicated that. This situation seems more like the defender turned around, tried to take the attacker down with a nerve hold, and when that failed jabbed at him for a while asking when the cops where gonna show up.

Original source should be attributed. The original is at Treppenwitz (http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2006/07/thanks_i_needed.html), an Israeli blog.

I'd be more comfortable with the metaphor if the story were true in the first place.

It's a sign of blowhardism to make up life experiences to illustrate a point that you want to make, even when the point has some validity.

Most anybody with experience in boxing, Olongapo, the Marine Corp, or Shore Patrol could catch the stench of fiction coming off this particular vignette.

Geeze. The blogosphere.

Ignore the purported Dickens quote at the end. It's full of anachronistic terminology --"moral relativism" "journalists" "chardonnay" -- and is an obvious fake.

The real Chapter XXIII says nothing of the sort. Kinda undermines the credibility of the whole post, eh?

I was thinking beyond Hezbollah. The Bar Fight Lesson is pretty much a universal human lesson.

As for the Lebanese generally, they're just the place where this happening. But then, that happens in all wars.

The Lebanese just happen to live at the juncture of Syria's war against Lebanon and Iran's war against Israel. Which is why what's happening now was always a question of when, not if. Since neither war is going to go away unless the Syrian & Iranian regimes do, moving is probably the best option if living in a war zone is unpalatable. Especially since Lebanon's civil war is very likely to break out full-bore once Israel leaves, which means casualties are going to go up, not down.

And thanks, Tim. Didn't know the original source.

Author Ralph Peters, retired military, has made the point often that, until an enemy feels defeated, the fight isn't over. One of his current examples is Anbar Province in Iraq which hardly saw an American soldier for months after the initial fighting was over (due the the 4th Division not being allowed through Turkey). He points out that these Anbar Sunni felt they'd been betrayed somehow but not beaten.

And, BTW, the writer's 'old Air Force buddy' seems to have been in the Navy--or maybe he served in both.

Bart's right. You can search the entire text of Dombey and Son here.

It isn't an invention though; rather, simply a misattribution. Searching around shows it was actually written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and excerpted, near as I can tell, from The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories . It sounds, from the few blurbs I saw, to be pretty far out afield even for Clinton-Mena conspiracy bunk. I can definitely understand why people would want to associate with someone other than Evans-Pritchard.

#6, Wastelandlive: I kind of felt that way too.
I also liked Dickens speaking of moral relativism. :-)

I agree that the metaphor is slightly off - if the sailor were Israel, everybody would have been trying to hold his arms behind his back while the bully beat him.

There is a harsh footnote to this lesson; something that we used to know but have chosen to forget. No conflict is ever settled completely until civilians (innocent or otherwise) have felt the sting. Germany had to pay for Hitler with the blood of women and children. Every reasonably successful peace treaty in history (such as the treaties that followed 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, and WWII) was brought about only after a heavy dose of blood and iron.

We have had very high hopes and good wishes for the future of Lebanon, and we still do. Unfortunately the current government, like past ones, continues to be a whore for Syrian and Iranian aggression against Israel. You can blame anybody you like for the suffering of the civilians caught in the middle, but people will suffer for the actions of their leaders regardless of what anybody thinks about it.

" ... right down to the skull in places." (?) If the writer meant skull instead instead of face, then I'm with #6--doesn't smell right. I have good knowledge of scalp lacerations, some knowledge of boxing, and cutting the scalp with a bare-knuckle punch would be unlikely--facial skin is more mobile and less dense. More likely would be a broken carpal bone (the classic 'boxer's fracture'). As a supposedly trained boxer, the Navy guy would be unlikely to deliberately hit the skull, especially with unwrapped hands.

Unless the Marine was hanging upside down from a pair of monkey bars used as a stage prop for the local Olongapo whores.

And the sailor delivering the uppercuts had a Liberace-like appreciation for jewelry.

And the slovenly, drunk, obnoxious Marine WASN'T out with his buddies. Or they had developed a special "start shit with a squid, you're on your own" culture unique to the Corp.

And the Shore Patrol or local bouncers all knew what was at stake, and so decided that the big obnoxious Marine had to learn his lesson.

I especially liked the part about the dialogue during the sparing match. It reminded me of Stan Lee's comics, where Spider Man is having existential debates with the bad guys while they take turns throwing each other through walls.

Good Lord.

I don't mean to be harsh, but if anything about that piece struck anybody as authentic during the first read, then he should have his critical lense recalibrated.

Now the metaphor itself... I don't know. I see the point. I fully agree that Hezbollah needs to suffer a thourough defeat. Equilibrium has to shift. Neither Lebanon nor Israel should have to return to the status quo.

But since when do you have to completely humiliate the bully to come out on top?

The way I learned it was you stand up to the bully, you knock him down, and then you offer him a hand up. If he takes another swing, you do it again, harder. It really doesn't matter what he SAYS: you, he, and everybody watching knows he got his ass kicked. If you're nice about it, you might earn a friend; if you insist on being an arrogant prick, he might just bring a gun to school the next day.

Metaphor THAT.

If your point is that defeat transcends culture, I agree. Israel couldn't easily be restrained from outside if it wasn't so dependant on U.S. economic aid. Money always comed with strings. You can have your cake or eat it.

Uh, did some one delete my proper link?

A difficult lesson.

Because the comments are interesting. As well as all the track backs. BTW I left a link to here in the comments.

And it seems like there are a lot of DLGN-25 (my old ship) sailors posting.

First off, I am the author of the piece in question... thank you to the person who provided the correct attribution.

Second, those who smugly assured the readers here that my post was a bit of fiction (and bad fiction at that) can go soundly to hell. The events happened as I described them and I witnessed them with my own eyes. Obviously I have cleaned up the story a bit and excluded facts/information that could be distracting to the point I was trying to make. For instance I didn't think it would be helpful to share the fact that all the participants were pretty drunk... or that we were all dragged in by the shore patrol within minutes of the fight ending. I also have no way of knowing if the results of the beating actually changed the future behavior of the marine since I never saw him again. However, for some smug SOB to dismiss something I wrote as fiction simply because it doesn't match up with his/her world view... now that is what's wrong with the blogosphere.

Damnation University - School of Hard Knocks

“Spare the rod spoil the child.”

I recall the son that cowered in the presence of his domineering Father. The futility of his situation drove an inner rage that he could not express without fear of reprisal. He acted out these frustrations through disobedient acts of a rebellious nature. Lying, stealing and the malicious damage of other's property became his forte. He was a delinquent whose emotional quotient was primarily driven by schadenfreude towards his father and humanity in general. Some called him a bully.

How poignant it is that we live in a society where delinquents flourish. How distressing that they conduct violent acts with impunity against innocents. How terrifying that rather than subduing these forces, we respond with rage and want to murder them. How should we act to change a society that lacks compassion and/or empathy for others?

"The world is a dangerous place to live
not because of the people who are evil,
but because of the people who don't do
anything about it."
Albert Einstein

Some attribute the quotation "spare the rod and spoil the child" to the Bible; in fact, it comes from a poem by Samuel Butler. The Bible verse itself reads, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him. Proverbs 13:24 (NIV)" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanking

The ironic thing is that this poem is supposedly, "a burlesque satire on Puritanism." Wikipedia says "The closest analogy in the present day to the meaning of "Puritan" in the 17th century would be 'fundamentalist'" http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Puritan

"Is it possible that our children are learning violence across their mommy's and daddy's knees in the name of love, and done in the best interests of the child, with approving nods from the religious and educational establishments-even the courts- while all of us abhor rioting, terrorism, street crime, capital punishment and any form of torture, brutality, and human inhumanity?"

“Butler's burlesque poem portrayed the Puritans as obnoxious nuisances whose hypocrisy and stupidity needed to be exposed. Inadvertently, however, Butler popularized for us, three hundred years later, an aphorism taken literally today by more orthodox descendents of his antipathy.”

A lot more interesting material on the subject at:

theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1981/v37-4-article1.htm

A poignant Idiom:

The school of hard knocks: Learning through difficult experiences. An early training in the school of hard knocks was good preparation for a career in politics.
Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms

Regards,
Fool e

#17 from treppenwitz on August 5, 2006 11:42 PM
First off, I am the author of the piece in question... thank you to the person who provided the correct attribution.

Second, those who smugly assured the readers here that my post was a bit of fiction (and bad fiction at that) can go soundly to hell. The events happened as I described them and I witnessed them with my own eyes. Obviously I have cleaned up the story a bit and excluded facts/information that could be distracting to the point I was trying to make. For instance I didn't think it would be helpful to share the fact that all the participants were pretty drunk... or that we were all dragged in by the shore patrol within minutes of the fight ending. I also have no way of knowing if the results of the beating actually changed the future behavior of the marine since I never saw him again. However, for some smug SOB to dismiss something I wrote as fiction simply because it doesn't match up with his/her world view... now that is what's wrong with the blogosphere.

-

Your story reads wrong to me.

Of course, I wasn't there. Many a story that people who weren't there are inclined to downplay (if not dismiss) is all too real when you are in the middle of it and when supposedly florid prose is stark, unavoidable fact.

Still, I am not inclined to take this anecdote as a universal lesson about anything. It wouldn't settle an argument for me if I didn't agree with the point you were making, so I can't turn around and attach weight to it just because I do agree with your general point.

I do not think there is anything wrong with such skepticism in the blogsphere, online or in general.