Highways to Baghdad and Damascus

[yankeedoodle]

 Here's an interview on Radio Australia with a Canadian who went-a-soldiering for Israhell, and has written a book about it.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2016/12/lnl_20161227_2220.mp3

Pretty informative, but it really gets interesting when, at about minute 16:30, we can hear this:

"In the 90's...Israelis believed...a new Middle East was being created."

[...] 

"There were maps published in Israeli newspapers in those years showing the new highways that would be constructed to bring shoppers from Baghdad to Tel Aviv and we would be able to go from Jerusalem to Damascus.  And trade would replace war, and you could zip these new highways past rusting tanks at the side of the road."   

Seems like everything is going to plan.  Might take a while for the highways, but the rusting tanks will be there.

War without end
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/war-without-end!/8107078

At age 19 Matti Friedman was drafted into the Israeli army and sent to a remote hill called 'The Pumpkin' inside a security zone in Lebanon. There he witnessed all the horror, boredom and stupidities of a modern war. Two decades later the war is all but forgotten but the lessons he learned there have implications for all the battles being fought in the Middle East - and beyond. His book is a stark look at the tangled conflict in which peace might not be the endgame.

This episode was first broadcast on June 2, 2016.