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My Take
US-Israeli failure to bomb Iran into submission was preordained
From Nazi Germany to Vietnam, history is rich with examples of countries that simply refuse to surrender to bombing
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Alex Lo has been an SCMP columnist since 2012, commenting on China and international affairs.
Winston Churchill famously praised the resilience of the British people during the Blitz, describing the nightly bombings of London as a “cruel, wanton, indiscriminate” attempt by Adolf Hitler to break the spirit of a tough “island race”.
He was not wrong about the toughness and courage of his fellow citizens. But as one of the United Kingdom’s greatest leaders and historical writers, he created a false impression of the uniqueness of the British wartime experience.
Strategic bombing alone, without the reinforcement of ground troops, almost never achieves its purpose. British resistance was not the exception but the rule.
The war launched by Israel and the United States against Iran is a case in point. As Trita Parsee of the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told the South China Morning Post, “it’s safe to say that the [Iranian] government’s internal position is stronger than it was six months ago.”
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