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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict.

Do I have news for you. The region is in conflict. Hezbollah and Israel have been in a hotter-than-usual shooting war for nearly a year.

The point to me looks like it is to damage and degrade Hezbollah operations by attacking their communications network. Fear is an element and tool in all conflicts. If you can scare your enemy into using messenger boys on bikes instead of instantaneous, encrypted communications you've made their decision making process much slower. Presumably, the reason Hezbollah has so many pagers is that they moved away from cell phones due to Israeli capabilities and actions.

If you only accept unequivocal victory as a meaningful action in conflict, then there's no point to much of war. Maybe it's true and a sad reality that much of conflict is pointless. Rocket Attack #3019 seems pretty pointless, yet everyone seems pretty dedicated to continue without points.

It's just a terrorist attack.

Terrorist attacks typically target civilians. If reports are true, then this attack targeted Hezbollah operatives embedded in the the Hezbollah supply chain. That would explain why an Iranian ambassador was hurt.

Most civilians don't use pagers anymore. Even civilians in the African bush have fancy cell phones with big screens. I'd wager in a place like Lebanon that possession of a pager is so highly correlated to being involved in Hezbollah operations that saying "everyone that has a pager in Lebanon helps Hezbollah" is largely a fact.* Downstream of the pager supply probably includes some doctors, logisticians, and other adjacent support personnel, but it probably it includes a lot of invested decision makers and operatives as well.

  • Some professions still use a lot of pagers. For now it seems there are still functioning hospitals, so not ever doctor's pager was blown up.

Presumably, the reason Hezbollah has so many pagers is that they moved away from cell phones due to Israeli capabilities and actions.

Real life imitates The Wire.