Ex-leftist Colin Meade reproduces a translated version of a letter from Dr Mounir Herzallah that appeared July 30th in the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tagesspeigel:
"Until 2002 I lived in a small village in southern Lebanon near Marjayoun, the majority of whose inhabitants were, like me, Shiites. After the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, it was not long before Hezbollah were in control in our village as they were everywhere else. Hailed as victorious resistance fighters, they seemed to be armed to the teeth, storing missiles in bunkers in our village. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and some housing on top of the bunkers! A local sheikh laughingly told me that whatever happened the Jews would lose out, because either the rockets would be fired at them or, if they attacked the camp, international public opinion would condemn them for the civilian deaths. These people have not the slightest interest in the Lebanese civilian population; they use them as shields and, when dead, as propaganda. As long as Hezbollah are there, there will be no peace."
Emphasis mine. The question isn't why would Hezbollah do this - they're the Condor Legion of Iran's Islamofascist movement, with all of the murderous death-wish behaviour such allegiances to fascism always entail. The question is why so many in the West, mostly but not exclusively on the Left, would work so hard to make this evil so profitable for them.
Israel is a terrorist nation and it will bleed to death at someday. Until then you f**** can live in your dream world denying all the attrocities Israel has committed to the humanity.
Thanks for that elucidation but where exactly do you hang out tampon? With Allah's Axers, Hammers or Hisshollers?
WW2 only damped down Jew hatred for 40 or 50 years (typically the amount of time you can expect results from a decisive war).
Time's up.
BTW tampon the Jews have your number:
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2006/07/tactics-strategy-grand-strategy.html
Your hate is an element of their war plan. The more you hate the bigger the Jewish victory. Can't get much more diabolical than that.
Bwahahahahaha.
You have to remember how it works for Tamtom.
If the Palestinians stage a fake "massacre" (Jenin) then the Jews are to blame because it is "true in principle." If the Arabs execute a real massacre (Hama), it is just an internal matter of no concern to us.
When the Palestinians strap bombs to their young men and send them into Pizza Parlors then it is "fighting back." If the Jews then build a wall to keep them out it is "racism and apartheid."
Now we see that, even if the Hez kill Jews using rocket launchers placed near an apartment building, then the Hez is "just fighting back." If the Jews take out the missiles so their kids don't get killed then the predictable civilian deaths are "another Jewish atrocity" (after all, by definition, it is never Hezbollah's fault).
Like your headline says - for people like Tamtom, the Jews must always lose.
This is true also of Daily Kos. Something like 47% believe Israel's existence has been an unmitigated disaster; the real explanation for casting out Lieberman is his Jewish faith coupled with support for Israel.
For a more realistic view than "Condor Legion islamofascist" (how often do ephithets serve as a substitute for thought?) look at
Like it or not, Hezbollah is fact of life in Middle East
Some excerpts...
"Most critically, Hezbollah has the devotion--not just the support--of many of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, who make up almost half the country's population.
Hezbollah is not the Palestine Liberation Organization, which could be crushed and sent packing from a country that was not its own. Hezbollah cannot be defeated without exterminating the entire Shiite community. U.S. policy in the area will fail, with disastrous consequences regionwide but especially in Iraq, as long as Washington accepts Israel's caricature of Hezbollah as a bunch of fanatics who "want their own people as human shields ... [and] civilian casualties on both sides."
Wishful thinking must not inform U.S. policy. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites fleeing the war in south Lebanon have reached Beirut with no interference from Hezbollah. The interference has come from Israeli planes shelling them as they flee and strengthening their determination to resist, with their lives if need be. Many families, even non-Hezbollah families, are leaving at least one man behind in the south to fight against Israel. For the moment at least, Hezbollah's support is growing."
"The military situation for us is perfect," a Hezbollah official told me last week as Israeli ground forces inched deeper into south Lebanon, taking heavy casualties. "The Israelis are destroying everything. Even children are saying they have nothing to lose now.""
"What we are witnessing in Lebanon today are the first tremors of an earthquake that will create a new Middle East order--although not the one Washington has in mind. Protracted war in Lebanon will only radicalize the Lebanese face of Hezbollah, increase its already heroic stature in the region and entrench it as a proxy through which Iran will try to seek regional ascendancy. The time for diplomacy, for scaling down the rhetoric, is now. "
Like gamblers who keep raising the stakes after each loss, Bush and Olmert continue in their unrealistic faith that military force is a panacea for the world's ills, and that a New Middle East is being born from the bodies of the dead and maimed. From Uri Avnery
"It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.
The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud."
The military situation is perfect, the Israelis are destroying everthing?
That's hilarious. Both that the guy said it, the reporter wrote it down without laughing, and that you would repeat it here.
I guess anger is the only thing they have left. I always laugh after some counter-terrorism raid. A bunch of newly angered Islamists run into the street, shouting "we're REALLY angry now! Now you've gone and done it! Now we're really angry!"
(Laughing) Yes. The Israelis will destroy everthing, and now they will be really angry. Once they stop being angry, perhaps they will want to talk. Perhaps not. Lebanon is a democracy -- supporting an armed group harrassing your neighbors is an act of war. If they want war, then the Israelis must comply to some degree. It's not a losing gambler, it's a chess player playing against a bunch of cavemen.
But they're really angry cavemen, so I guess that's something. Oooh. Anger. I am so afraid of those homicidal maniacs becoming angry.
The point of my posting is that Hezbollah is not some small group of "homicidal maniacs" but a political group very integrated into Lebanese society, that cannot be destroyed without an ethnic cleansing which removes nearly 40% of the Lebanese population. There is no excuse for Hezbollah's terrorist actions against civilian populations, but destroying Hezbollah is not an attainable goal, because genocide against 40% of Lebanon is not possible (leaving aside the issue of morality). Any objective observor would have to acknowledge that one consequence of Israel's invasion/bombing of Lebanon has been major increase in support for Hezbollah, both inside Lebanon and in other Arab countries. Read Haaretz online to see what Israeli public opinion thinks about the success of the war so far.
As far as the "human shield" claims, clearly Hezbollah risks civilians by mixing weapons into residences, etc., but Hezbollah is mostly composed of people who live in those residences/towns. The clear fact is that Israel created "human shields" by bombing/rocketing roads leaving southern Lebanon and by not providing a single safe route for civilian evacuation. Any aerial photograph of roads in southern Lebanon will show they are lined with destroyed civilian vehicles heading north, not to mention the direct Israeli rocket hits on ambulances which the LA Times showed last week,etc.
Yes Tom, Hezbollah is integrated into the people there. That's why we call them an armed political party. And yes, a lot of civilians are going to get killed in any Israeli attack, that's why we call it war. And yes, people get mad at the neighboring country when they bomb your cities.
But either you are reasonable or you are not. If you are reasonable, then you tell Hezbollah that they are a great political party, we love you guys, but put down the army toys and let the grown-ups play, okay? If you are not reasonable, then you are just angry. Then you too become a combatant. Such is life.
The Israelis have yet to commit to another full-scale invasion of Lebanon. I'm betting they secure the area to the river and then run patrols all the way up to Beirut to keep things worked up. In the final analysis, if the people of Lebanon want an armed party attacking the neighbor, then they want war. It's not my call, but as you point out, by provoking the Israelis and then whining about the consequences you get war anyway.
Reasonable people can talk. It begins with both sides letting the other exist. After that, we can talk about other things. Non-reasonable, armed, homicidal people may not be interested in talking as a means to resolve conflict, only as a tactical method to reposition for attacks. Israel says they want to stop bombing. I believe them. Why would they want to continue this?
The trick is for Israel to swat at the little flies a bit, but not too much. Identifying towns as combatant and destroying them seems to me about the right balance. You can do this without even having to have a lot of troops on the ground. Sure horrible things are going to happen. That's why we don't kidnap our neighbor's soldiers, launch rockets into our neighbor's country, or dress up in our neigboring country's army uniforms and machine gun buses. When we do those things, we are inviting destruction down on us. Yes. The military situation is just perfect. Israel is destroying everything.
Sigh.
Its kind of reassuring in a fast changing world that you can always count on right-wing blogs to back Israeli atrocities to the hilt, no matter what.
In response to Hizbollah attack on a military patrol, the Israeli response so far is about $2-3 billion in infrastructure damage, 600 dead Lebanese civilians, and about 800,000 Lebanese refugees. Hizbollah seems to have killed a far higher proportion of enemy combatants than Israel (over 50% vs under 10%) in spite of its less accurate weapons.
And most of the comments by readers on this site indicate a concern for Lebanese civilians about equal to the Bush Administration's. ie. not a lot.
The claimed contrast between Israeli collateral damage and evil Hizbollah terrorist murders seems to be spinning further into unreality also.
Lebanon's civilians need a ceasefire, and they need it now. So does Gaza. This carnage is doing nobody any good, least of all Israel.
"And most of the comments by readers on this site indicate a concern for Lebanese civilians about equal to the Bush Administration's. ie. not a lot."
Durruti -- the best I can give you is that I would want my own people treated like the Lebanese if the roles were reversed. You cannot have an armed political party launching military raids OF ANY KIND across your border. That is like so freaking simple I can't imagine people arguing with it. This is true for my country, your country -- anybody's country.
Lebanon should immediately call for Hezbollah to disarm and request international support to verify compliance. In return, the international community can ask Israel to cease fire and/or consolidate positions. There is a way out, but it has to be based on rules that would be fair for everyone, not just some special story about the mideast and how bad one side or another is.
If you don't care about making the situation fair no matter who the parties are, you're probably more part of the problem than the solution in my opinion.
Tom, although I agree that the Lebanon-Hezbollah relationship will be difficult to unravel, you're mistakenly conflating support into membership:
Untrue. That 40% of Lebanese are not armed members of Hezbollah, they support Hezbollah or approve of their goals. If the stated goal of an action is "destroy Hezbollah", the only people who need to be neutralized are actual Hezbollah members; once the armed party is gone, this 40% can go about their lives. "Cleansing" a large chunk of the Lebanese population is not necessary to stop the rocket attacks, murders, and kidnappings inflicted upon the Israelis--only a few thousand armed thugs need be taken care of.
Of course the solution is never simple to implement. In the battle theater some of these 40% may allow Hezbollah to operate in their towns, which makes those towns legitimate targets even though populated by civilians. Some may also help Hezbollah by producing propaganda for the group or by willfully impeding the political process. But if Israel can neutralize the military capabilities of the armed group they support, then the civilian approval of the newly emasculated group becomes (in the short term) unimportant.
Nor is such genocide necessary, for the reasons listed above. Wiping out the small number of armed terrorists or at least eliminating their ability to carry out attacks, on the other hand, is an attainable goal for Israel to aim for--and that is exactly the goal of their latest campaign.
To be frank, Israel doesn't give a damn what 40% of Lebanon's population think... so long as they aren't launching rockets or otherwise attacking Israelis.
Careful there, according to international law you just made a legal case supporting Israeli attacks on such targets in civilian zones. Very close to the same justification the Israelis make, as a matter of fact.
Wait, you just claimed that the civilians in those towns are Hezbollah. Now you're saying that denying Hezbollah mobility, and refusing to provide Hezbollah a route for evacuation, is somehow wrong? Are you aware that the restraints you're implying should be implemented are wholly unrealistic?
And no, Israel did not "create" the human shields. Israel did not foricibly relocate civilians into a war zone for the express purpose of tripping up the enemy, nor did they force the enemy to adopt a human shield strategy. The blame for this situation lies entirely on Hezbollah, who continues to engage the superior forces of a nation-state on the battlefield of their choosing--and they chose a civilian zone.
Durruti, what you are ignoring is intent. Hezbollah is desperately trying every single day to murder Israeli civilians. The rockets they launch could easily and more reliably target Israeli military marshalling areas, but instead they are intentionally and brazenly launched at civilian population centers. Does that matter to you at all? The bottom line is that the only reason Hezbollah doesnt manage to kill horrific numbers of Israelis is that they dont have the technology... yet. Is it really reasonable for Israel to wait around until they do?
Tom Volckhausen:
I don't see any moral problem with destroying 40% of Lebanon's population, if that's the percentage of said population that participates in terrorism and war. That's not genocide, and it's not ethnic cleansing, it's winning.
It seems like your position is that if you're in a war and your enemies are numerous enough it is immoral to win.
I'm not buying that.
And right after your little schoolmarm lecture about "how often do ephithets serve as a substitute for thought?"
Hell if I know. How often?
Durruti,
After seeing that some of the pictures of the deceased removed from the collapsed building in Qana were clearly staged by using cadavers, in which rigor mortis had already set, thereby showing without any doubt that the cadavers were older that the supposed time of bombing, how can you believe anything these people say?
I bet I know your answer: “Don’t bother me with facts because I have made up my mind!”
#16
Killing 40% of Lebanese would certainly qualify as genocide, looking at the definition from dictionary.com (gen·o·cide The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.) Maybe you play the game where "words mean what I want them to" and not what the dictionary says, but that makes communication quite difficult. Note that I was arguing that genocide, with the whole world watching on TV, is not practically possible, so it is not a strategy that Israel can (or should) consider.
#17
If removing the entire civilian Shiite population from South Lebanon is not "ethnic cleansing", what would constitute ethnic cleansing in your opinion?
As to "How Often?", the easy answer is "Too Often".
The epithet that caught my attention was IslamoFascist, which is incorrect exactly because Hezbollah is a somewhat new hybrid of political party active in the democratic process/terrorist/armed militia. Categorizing often replaces understanding and to deal with Hezbollah successfully we need to understand it. Pretending that Hezbollah is simply a covert wing of the Iranian/Islamofascist conspiracy ignores the nationalist roots in the Israeli 80's invasion/occupation. From Sun Tzu
"18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
#14
"Wait, you just claimed that the civilians in those towns are Hezbollah. Now you're saying that denying Hezbollah mobility, and refusing to provide Hezbollah a route for evacuation, is somehow wrong? "
You made a classical logic error. I did not claim that all civilians in South Lebanon were Hezbollah and there is plenty of evidence that many are not. I simply noted that many/most Hezbollah were residents of South Lebanon. Overlapping categories but by no means identical. How conventional nation/state armies deal with guerrilla resistance seems to be the central question for military strategists these days, and the short answer is "Not Very Well".
"Killing 40% of Lebanese would certainly qualify as genocide,"
On 15 June, 1944, the United States invaded the Japanese home Island of Saipan. Out of 31,000 defenders, 24,000 were KIA, 5,000 were suicides, and 921 surrendered. Hundreds of Japanese families committed suicide.
The United States expected similar casualty ratios for the rest of the Japanese campaign, hence the reasoning that dropping the atomic bombs actually saved millions of Japanese lives, and Japanese culture.
Words DO mean something, not just anything. If you are fighting using the rules of land warfare, and you have a high percentage of the population as casualties, that does NOT mean you are guilty of genocide.
"Words DO mean something, not just anything."
Agreed, and dictionary definitions are a very good place to start.
Enuf said about something Israel is not doing and will not do.
Tom:
You might have noticed that we managed to defeat Nazism without the "ethnic cleansing" of eighty million Germans. Nazis who, I might add, had the support of far more than 40% of the population.
But that happened in the real world. Not in your world, where Evil is invincible, wildly popular, and morally superior to God. And everyone else is damned the moment they dare to lift a finger against it.
Years ago I read "Black Hawk Down" -- great story. Very enlightening was the way the soldiers were being fired at by shooters hiding behind children and pregnant women. This wasn't firing missiles from some hidden spot at night or pushing buttons on a F-16. This was face-to-face.
It's obvious from Tom V.'s comments as well as Durruti's post that they have no conception of what truly decisive force is in the violent competition between nations and peoples. This paragraph from the Chicago Tribune article that Tom links to in post #6 illustrates the problem:
Have the U.S. and Israel forgotten the lesson of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon: that force resolves nothing? Yes, the PLO sailed out in the end. But Hezbollah rode in and is still fighting Israel 20 years later, more determined and more organized than Yasser Arafat's men ever were.
The PLO sailed out in the end...... This was not a decisive use of force, because the Reagan Administration prevented Israel from annihilating the 12-24,000 PLO fighters that were trapped in Beirut along with virtually all of the PLO leadership.
Ruthlessness is a great virtue in war. Pre-mature mercy is a terrible vice.
It may well be true, as Tom V. asserts, that Hizballah has widespread support among the Shiite population of Lebanon. If so, they have chosen war with the Israeli population. That is their right. They have also freely chosen to wage this war without any of the limitations or restrictions in the Western warfighting code. That is also their right. However, they must also accept the responsibilities and potential costs that come with these decisions.
When one people in violent competition with another people dispenses with the rules of warfare, then the other people is entitled to dispense with those rules also. In that case, the operative word in the phrase "enemy civilian", becomes "enemy", not "civilian".
Israel should destroy all of Hizballah's forces and infrastructure in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. It should also depopulate southern Lebanon of all Shiites. They have chosen war to the knife and they should be given war to the knife.
"Not in your world, where Evil is invincible, wildly popular, and morally superior to God. And everyone else is damned the moment they dare to lift a finger against it."
That is not my world. In my world, evil is both inside us and around us. In combatting evil, we must take care not to become evil ourselves. I am no pacifist and am well aware of the moral complexities of action in the real world.
I work as an engineer and deal with unintended consequences of design decisions every day. Political and military decisions have similiar unintended consequences throughout history. Simplistic efforts to do good (like GWB's invasion of Iraq) often have more bad results than good, and are judged failures by history (we do not have to wait for history's verdict on the Iraq war, as it is obvious to all those not imprisoned by rigid ideology).
Israel's attack on Lebanon appears to be a failure to me so far, with hundreds of dead and thousands wounded outweighing any temporary reduction in Hezbollah rockets. Evil acts have occurred on both sides, since dead civilians cannot distinguish between Israeli bombs or Hezbollah rockets. This is not a morality play with the axis of absolute evil arrayed against the axis of absolute good. Maybe if you and I had been born under Israeli occupation in Lebanon we would be Hezbollah militants instead of internet discussionmeisters. If we had been born in Israel we would likely be in the IDF.
I am not arguing for inaction, but simply for intelligent, effective action. The US had every right and responsibility to attack the Taliban/Al Quaeda in Afghanistan and I am very sad that we have allowed that situation to degrade back into another chaotic failed state. If we had devoted the required military/political/logistic resources in Afghanistan, Bush could be leaving office with at least one success, instead of the current pathetic mess he will unload on his unlucky successor.
Actually no, I was being mildly facetious. Of course I am aware that all civilians in South Lebanon are not terrorists. But by your own admission, Hezbollahs is known to reside there and to use civilian infrastructure and roads to hide and move about. This makes those roads legitimate military targets. If the goal is to impede enemy mobility, and the enemy uses a set of roads, then those roads will be blown up; you're insinuating that Israel should not do this because the unintended effect would be that people in South Lebanon would not be able to move freely... except that is exactly the point of the exercise: the terrorists who are generally indistinguishable from the civilian population in which they cower cannot move around and re-supply.
Israel is not looking at the map and saying "Oh crap, we accidentally prevented civilians from leaving"; the goal was to prevent Hezbollah from leaving.
The problem of civilians getting caught in the middle is a given, once Hezbollah made the decision to use those towns. Cutting off roads does not force Hezbollah to store rockets in schools or to intentionally draw fire on apartment buildings, nor does it force civilians from leaving the city proper and setting up camp outside in the open. (Though Hezbollah has been known to keep civilians in town at gunpoint--perhaps you'd like to take up the human rights violations with them instead?) You're mistakenly blaming Israel for creating the set of human shields, when all Israel has done is demonstrate that the terrorists cannot hide behind those shields any longer while killing Israelis. And whether you like it or not that decision is wholly within the realm of just warfare and international law during the defensive action Israel is undertaking.
I think depopulating a new DMZ is the best thing for all parties. Over time, there can be a schedule for re-populating as the MNF and armed Lebanese forces can pacify cities. Clear out all the civilians, build another wall, then restart one city at a time. Perhaps a ten or twenty year plan for repopulation might be workable.
Now this is just plain risible:
Uh, actually, you DO have to wait for history. You can't write it in the present while events are happening; that's why it's called history and not "running commentary".
Or would you have liked to write the history of the mighty communist Soviet empire in 1984? How about the failure of the Korean war back in 1951? Did history judge the colonies a disaster after the original Articles of Confederation failed?
#28
Clearly you are a "Believer" rather than an "Unbeliever". Just keep on believin' and maybe it will come true, especially if you wish on a star.
When do current events become history? If 2003 now belongs to history, we can safely judge the accuracy of "Mission Accomplished","Major military activity completed","Greet with flowers","Invasion will pay for itself","Insurgency in its last throes","A Transformed Military","Deadenders"etc.,etc. Did those guys get anything right?
I'm not so sure the Iraqis would prefer another 40 years of Saddam Hussein to GWB's "simplistic" removal of him.
That would have been the consequence of your position, Tom. The ruin of all pacifism is its idiotic refusal to recognize that inaction is a moral choice with moral consequences. And your refusal to support American assistance to a friendly government that is under attack by an utterly barbaric foe, just because you hate George Bush, is a position somewhat inferior to pacifism.
Cross posted from another thread:
Hizbollah and Hamas have constructed core ideologies based upon this Islamic theology of Jew hatred, which one can glean readily from their foundational documents, and subsequent pronouncements, made ad nauseum. Hamas further demonstrates openly its adherence to a central motif of Jew-hatred in Muslim eschatology—Article 7 of the Hamas Charter concludes with a verbatim reiteration of the apocalyptic hadith alluded to earlier:
“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: `Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’; but the tree Gharkad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985).
Apocalyptic Muslim Jew-hatred
Now if people want to hate Jews I'm not going to get too upset. Their loss.
If people act on that hatred then they are in deep crap.
If people want to hang around active Jew haters then they are not safe. If the Jew haters shelter behind their own women and children the best I can say is "unfortunate" the worst is "another family of haters out of the gene pool". Capiche?
If people are forced at gunpoint to shelter the haters we as Jews will try to kill as few as possible. Preferably zero. However, given reality some times it will be a lot. As in every hostage situation it is the folks holding the hostages who are at fault.
Jews have a very long history. We have long memories. But, I tell you what. Leave us alone, we leave you alone. F with us and you won't like the results.
So let the word get out. Jews are a biker gang. Nicest people you want to meet. Until you F with them. Quit F ing with them and all is forgiven.
How hard can it be?
*
Tom,
The ship Bush was on had accomplished its mission.
I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of people in Lebanon who champion Hizb'allah would gladly champion the government if it would take over building schools and hospitals in their neighborhoods. Though some might find it hard to believe their is massive gulf between a person hating Jews and a person strapping a bomb to their chest. Kind of like the difference between a pickpocket and a serial killer. One's a crook the other's a psychopath. Or atleast that's what I keep telling myself.
"#9 from Tom Volckhausen on August 1, 2006 06:58 PM
The point of my posting is that Hezbollah is not some small group of "homicidal maniacs" "
No it is a LARGE group of "homicidal maniacs" who commit War Crimes to ensure civilian deaths for propaganda purposes.
"a political group very integrated into Lebanese society,"
As the Nazis were integrated into German Society?
Except the Nazis were not supported by other nations as Hezzbollah is supported by Syria and Iran.
Technically, about 5 seconds after they happen; but that doesn't mean you've gained the long-term perspective necessary to write about them. And if you think 3 years is all you need to write the narrative, you've got no place using the word "history" in any context.
Tell me, what was history's judgement of Britain's success in dealing with the Malayan Emergency back in 1951, a scant three years into a 12 year conflict, when the British High Commissioner was killed and the general feeling was "if even the High Commissioner was no longer safe, there was little hope of protection and safety for the man-in-the-street in Malaya"? Considering how the British eventually resolved the Emergency years later, what makes you think you are better suited to judge the final outcome of what Bush has repeatedly called "a generations-long fight" this early into the war?
"we do not have to wait for history's verdict", indeed. If that is what passes as serious thought in your circles, you may want to actually read some history before making solemn yet ridiculous pronunciations about it.
"I'm not so sure the Iraqis would prefer another 40 years of Saddam Hussein to GWB's "simplistic" removal of him. "
So you expected Hussein to live and rule until the age of 110! I know the right likes to attribute superhuman qualities to the Axis of Evil but that is quite stretching it.
I have not advocated(and do not advocate) "refusal to support American assistance to a friendly government that is under attack by an utterly barbaric foe".
What I would advocate is that the US use the leverage it gains from our financial/political/military support to push Israel towards policies with a better chance of longterm success for the region. Since Hezbollah was created out of the last Israeli invasion/occupation, what is the chance that another invasion/occupation will get rid of them?
The Bush administration's reliance on military force as a solution for all problems and their disdain for diplomacy is an ineffective and immature foreign policy. I like the image of Rice as the Maytag repairman of diplomats, waiting for the call that never comes, though I doubt she would know what to do if it did.
Tom,
Actually, I find your vague criticisms of Bush administration diplomacy to be ineffective and immature. Other than not taking action, you advocate no course.
To claim that the Bush administration "disdains" diplomacy contributes nothing to the discussion and of course is an easy claim to make - all that is required is overlooking the extensive diplomatic efforts that the administration has engaged in for the last half decade.
#35
The British Malaysian emergency is always the insurrection trotted out as an example of how to win. But, the British didn't win. They compromised and pulled out.