Kapuscinski

Perhaps Desultory Eclecticism's favorite literary journalist.  I picked up The Soccer War  at my favorite bookstore last week.  In it, an interesting first-hand interpretation of the Six-Day War:

"Why did the Arabs lose the 1967 war? ...You could hear that Israel won because Jews are brave and Arabs are cowards.  The Jews are intelligent and the Arabs are primitive.  The Jews have better weapons...all of it untrue!  The difference lay elsewhere--in the approach to war.  When war breaks out, everyone in Israel goes to the front and civilian life dies out.  While in Syria, many people did not find out about the 1967 war until it was over...Syria was losing the Golan Heights and at the same time, that same day, that same hour, in Damascus--twenty kilometers from the Golan Heights--the cafes were full of people, and others were walking around, worrying about whether they would find a free table...The soldier cannot be alone: he will never hold out if he...knows that his brother is sitting in a nightclub playing dominoes, his other brother is horsing around in a swimming pool, and somebody else is worrying about how to find a free table...War cannot be a matter for the army alone, because the burden of war is too great and the army itself will not manage to support it.  The Arabs thought otherwise--and they lost.

(The Soccer War; p-201-202)

I understand we're not in Syria, 1967.  But for the past two days I've personally been much more distraught over this news than this news .