Before his death, Pope Francis made one final request: that his popemobile—the vehicle from which he once greeted crowds around the world—be transformed into a mobile health unit for the children of Gaza.
Before his death, Pope Francis made one final request: that his popemobile—the vehicle from which he once greeted crowds around the world—be transformed into a mobile health unit for the children of Gaza.
I suspect that’s the smart thing about all this. There already are hundreds of aid vehicles. The point of turning the popemobile into another is to, in the best case scenario, have one that Israel is going to be very hesitant to bomb out of fear of alienating Christian zionists, or in the worst case deliberately setting out to create a visible and symbolically meaningful bad story for Israel when they can’t hold themselves back from killing the aid workers in this thing. Maybe it’s wishful thinking to expect people to pay attention after a year and a half of livestreamed genocide but it’s a thought.
How long did Vietnam last?
From Tonkin to the fall of Saigon it was about 11 years, but I think there’s definitely a lot of important differences between Vietnam and Gaza (namely the capacity for the indigenous population to fight back, and the scope of the war). Maybe a slightly better comparison would be to the East Timor genocide which lasted even longer (75 to 99 per wikipedia), but was much more frontloaded in the initial invasion with less intense genocidal tactics afterward.
I don’t know how much media attention mattered in either case, though, as I understand it the role of the domestic antiwar protests in the US against the Vietnam war is largely overstated in relation to the highly effective Viet Minh fighting and morale loss in the south.
The domestic antiwar protesting caused the American military to seize up. The rank and file didn’t support the war and the whole machine was incapable of being effective because of it. There was widespread go-slow or simply not doing the work occurring, as well as the obvious sabotage like fragging of officers.
I agree that it didn’t achieve much politically, but I think we overlook the impact on the troops themselves.