I don’t do politics, and you can be relatively confident you won’t be afflicted with them when you visit this blog. But as a Brit raised in a nation under terror, I have to express my frustration that whenever the the topic of todays politics come up, I am stonewalled from any discussion as being unable to understand life under terrorism. If I point out the long list of terrorist attacks that I can remember by the IRA during my lifetime on my home nation, blowing up shopping malls, apartment complexes in the city, cars, etc, it’s dismissed on the grounds of simple body count.
That, more than anything else, sets my sensibilities teetering. I want to vomit when someone in all sincerity tries to tell me I don’t understand terrorism after one event, nearly as far from him as my country is, that took less than 1/10th of the lives lost to terrorism in England during the course of my life, outweighs any thoughts or knowledge or insight to terror I might have because the IRA never got the same body count in one hit.
For years, America was the voice of reason amongst countries like England that were rife with terror that they were too terrorized to recognize was simply the reaping of what they sowed. England has the USA to thank for bringing us to an understanding, and a peace, with the Irish whom we have invaded and opressed for hundreds of years.
Today, I don’t understand how anyone can ever have thought that somehow England had any sort of entitlement to the northeast corner of Ireland. Religion? Bullshit. The Anglican (Episcapalean) church was founded by the English monarchy as an excuse for marital maneuvering and maintained as an excellent grounds for political intrigues, such as providing the excuse of “defending the faith” for trying to hold on to a piece of a neighbouring country.
And why do we still have Northern Ireland? Because its a sizeable source of income and revenue for some of England’s largest countrys. It stinks of vested interests. Claiming NI is about Cathloic vs Protestant has only persisted this long because those in each corner wrestle under the pseudo names. But nothing about the fighting is religious. The IRA don’t kill people and leave a note saying hail mary or we do it again. The British state-terror forces don’t open fire on teenagers driving on a Saturday night in the wrong part of town as they shout “Renounce the pope!”
30 years I lived under terror were lived so because My Great Nation persuaded me that we needed to be there to defend The Faithful, and that evacuation wasn’t possible because we needed to be there. In short. Gluttony. Lebensraum.
The NI conflict isn’t totally over. England still has to conceed that as much as it has integrated NI into itself, it doesn’t belong to England. It’s not called “Very West England separated by a big lake connected at two ends to the Atlantic ocean”. Its Northern bloody Ireland.
But we got where we have with the sage advice of fair minded, even thinking Americans.
Who were then attacked by fanatics and did exactly what every other nation has done and lashed out – the antithesis of everything America used its muscle to tell other countries suffering terrorism. And just like people in Manchester when the IRA blew up their shopping center, Americans don’t see how they are to blame. You’ve never even been to Afghanistan. Your pizza delivery guy is Afghani, and you always talk to him at the door and tip him well, right?
Listen, America, or whatever miniscule portion of it might still be reading. You have been terrorized. No, really, you don’t understand because its only happened once. You think you were terrorized, but you’re wrong. I have been terrorized since 9/11. It’s ongoing. Like all those stupid little European nations you used to berate for not being able to stop blowing each other up, you have lashed out, and it was good. Sadam in a freaking spider hole, how freaking awesome was that?
But you are thinking like a nation in terror. If you’re a guy in the 50s and a monster crawls out the swamp and your chick starts to scream like she wants to shatter glass, what do you do? That’s right, slap her to bring her to her senses. Ok. You’re the chick, and boy can you scream, bitch. Want me to be Erol Flynn? Well, start reading from the top again, dummy.
And next time you’re asking how these crazy middle eastern countries can support terrorists the way they do, let me know when you finish your lil’ole “War on Illegal Imigration” here. I mean, its not like your the most advanced nation on the country and you can’t keep out the beaners? You think just because Iraq is largely desert that everyone just hangs out near the border so if Osama gets in they must have invited him?
And what about Iraq? We did them a favor and rid them of a dictator, and in return we’ve been helping lower property prices by thinning out the population of people who might have a problem with Western society, freeing them to proffit from the sale of their natural resources to …. Western society. All we ask in return is the use of their country as a staging ground for our war on terror, a place to put our forces for the terrorists to come bring it on, the bait being the violation of an Arab nations sovereignty. But the gosh-darn terrorist actually have the nerve to turn up and shoot at us, blow us up, and generally prove not to be the total pussies our governments have been telling us they are. These aren’t sunbaked dopeheads so retarded the only thing they can say is “boom, splatter”. They’re like armed with weapons we’ve sold them, which was stupid of us, and actually fight like soldiers, well enough to challenge our military powers for well over a year, and they seem to be improving faster than we are.
Well, that’s just not on is it. I mean, Westerners who actually choose to fight for this threat are actually dying out there instead of random, innocent civiliains back here! We need to bring them back out of harms way, stat.
And last, but not least. The current conflict. I’m scared to say anything about it. If I fail to unequivocally side with Israel, or even consider taking devils advocate to try and understand the situation, the old AS red card gets waved. I’ve stopped watching CNN now because it churns my stomach seeing Larry King being so overtly hostile to anyone who doesn’t say “Look, Larry, Lebanon has terrorists in it, and the US should be there carpet bombing the crap out of it”, or the abject disdain Wolf Blitzer showed for Christiane Amanpour for not thinking it was as simple as “Lebanon bad, Israel angry, go Israel”. What made it painful was the triptych of Larry, Chrstiane, Wolf or Hostile, Neutral Hostile. Hey. Whats up with that picture? Lemme try with their surnames. King, Amanpour, Blitzer. Huh. Hint: She’s also not Lebanese.
Easy there with that Anti-semitic brand, that’s not what I’m saying, only that the US has strong ties with Israel, and seeing what is close to your sister nation under terror is painful. Back this brings me back to my point. America is a nation under terror, still, too. As you sit and watch Israel execute its right to defend itself, its a clear parallel to Americas response against Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11, you know, having its advisability and approach questioned not after 20 or 30 years but after only a couple of years.
Think about it – whether or not you agree or disagree with the War on terror, you can conceed that people of previously firm convictions are already questioning them today on the subject? And the final outcome is still unknown?
I think folks saying “Go Israel” sincerely believe that violent response is the best response in these times of terror. Wake up, dudes. Times of terror? I guess the countless thousands who died to terror in the last 80 years just don’t never hard the right threshold headcount?
If you’d been paying attention to the situation in Israel before it became a factor in your gas prices, e.g. reading Haaretz, you’d know that there was also unrest in Israel over officials daring to suspect that certain ‘terrorist’ actions were possibly engineered by Israeli militants trying to provoke action. Israel has been giving up ground trying to establish a peace, but incase you didn’t notice, they weren’t a nation in unity over that idea. Haaretz had an article on how outraged they were that a leading General was sent down to the southern border to investigate a suicide bombing before ordering a military response. In the ensuing flare up in the north, it went un-noticed that his findings didn’t result in an action on the southern border.
And if you were paying that much attention you might recall clearly the initial actions of this war. Kidnapping, victims taken across the line, Israeli shelling of, uh, terrorist infrastructure to stop them getting far with the kidnapees. Infrastructure such as Beirut airport.
Now try and imagine this for second. Some crazy Ameican religious cult crosses the border (Mexican or Canadian) some officials to try and blackmail the govt to do something about their nationals spilling across the border. Mexico, or Canada, drives tanks up to the border and takes out key airports, bridges, anyplace they think might be otherwise let the cult escape with their officials.
I mean, it’s their right, isn’t it? You obviously support the cult, by popular American standards applied to everyone else. Or they wouldn’t be a cult. And its not like smuggling kidnappees across a border is easy unless your cult has government backing, just like its not easy to illegally cross a border with an intent to emigrate.
So would the American response to Mexico or Canada firing tank rounds at its buildings and cities be the same as the Lebanese government, going on news shows and saying “Help”?
If it was, do you think some of your “right to bear arms” citizens might not feel the same way and fire back?
Ok – the analogy isn’t entirely cohesive, because they’re not part of the cult, but my point here is that the rockets into Israel started after Israel responded to the kidnappings by flattening chunks of Lebanon, and the Lebanese government didn’t return fire on Israel.
Its a minor point, but its also a truth. The idea that Israel fired at Lebanon because of rockets is a falseness. So every interview I see where the latter is almost the initial premise of whatever the person is about to say is like a lead weight. Especially since that is getting to be nearly every commentators first words.
And almost nobody is saying, “Hey, wait a second”, because we feel for our fellow victims in terror.
So how about we do the right thing and say to Israel, “Stop. You’re making things much much worse for yourself. We are coming to your aid”. If the UN can’t do it, then whichever nations are part of the coalition that lands troops at the border in 3 days time can start UN2 when they’re done establishing their presence over there. But right now the UN’s hands are tied by our stupid decision to let Israel unleash its vengeful wrath. “Vengance is mine”, says the Lord. This is something Israel has always had a problem with, according to their own history. Invariably they build up a very strong position, until they are provoked to anger, they lash out, and wind up spending a few hundred or thousand years in captvity and exile.
Heck, isn’t that why people are so blaze about the fact we re-inserted Israel into the most turbulent portion of the world 60 years ago?
Which is my final point. Next time someone tells me that that was 60 years ago, I think I need to respond with “So was what you did for France in WW2”.
kfsone's pittance 
33 Comments
Here’s why we don’t tell Israel to stop.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”
Also, Israel bought 2.9 BILLION worth of arms in 2005 from the United States.
Like it or not, that’s why I think the guys in Washington don’t tell them to stop.
Easting posted your blog on the Sturmgrenadier forums, figured I’d check it out. Interesting stuff here.
“Stand back Martha, he’s gonna blow!”
Sounds like that’s been building for a while. But: word!
You left out Iran and the building concensus of demands being made on their nuclear weapons program. It has totally been taken off of the radar map with this circus.
I think we need a remake…”The De-Americanization of Emily”. It would only require a couple proper name changes to make it contemporary.
My take is that for people to change the world they need to focus on the health, stability and security of their family, then their community, then their state, then their country, then the world. I don’t think anyone in history has ever graduated past level 2, yet. I’d try, but it’s mostly that I just don’t care.
Doesn’t much of what you said hinge on the notion that the folks who kidnapped the soldiers were Israeli? Because if they were in fact, Hezbollah, then you do have a situation where Isreal gave up land that it occupied under the condition that hezbollah would not occopy it to fire ordnance at Isreal, only to have Hezbollah in that land, committing an act of war, and then being miraculously able to launch weapons from lands that they were not supposed to be in.
So while I won’t suggest you are anti-semetic, I will suggest that you are simply stating a position in line with a LOT of the world that is no more enlightened or educated that those who take a different position.
It’s just different. Claiming the contrary position is made out of ignorance is condesending at best, and typical for that “LOT of the world” that I referenced above.
So I guess Australians arent allowed to comment either cos large numbers of us have yet to be blown up on home soil? *sigh* I want my 2 cents accepted like yours damnit!
JC: A girl I once shared a cigarette with (and another co-worker) were killed in the Bali bombings and another guy that I spoke to weekly on the phone for work was injured in that attack. Australians have a right to have their 2 cents accepted. Besides that, for many of us 9/11 was an event that shook our entire reality no matter which country we lived in.
Other than that, I’ve got nothing useful to contribute to the subject. To me, it’s a farking mess that seems to defy any analysis that doesn’t degenerate into ‘A did this at X point in time’ and ‘B did that at Y’. None of it seems to be producing any solutions.
Cowboy, you know what Yassar Arafat once said?
His greatest ally was Israeli nationalism. Think about that.
Trooper76, the sad fact is that Isreal is surrounded by folks that don’t want it to exist. That rules out any happy-ending scenarios no matter what side (including the “no sides” folks) people take..and it won’t end until either Isreal is gone or the places that surround it are.
Sorry KFS, we were attacked, and would have ben attacked again save preventive measures.
So as Americans, we are going to kick the living hell out these religious nutjobs until we, and only we decide collectively that our legs are tired.
Wy do they want us all DEAD?
They don’t want out money. They don’t apparantly want anything material as a matter of fact. They want us:
1: Out of the middle east. Every last one of us.
2: To pull the plug in Israel, and then turn a blind eye as they go about destroying it and killing every jewish citzen thereof.
3: The return of the Islamic caliphate.
4: Us. DEAD. Because we are infidels, non-believers.
Irish catholics by contrast simply wanted you, out. End of arguement. I could have seen there point until they started bombing tubestations and harrod’s. So screw the lot of them. Send in the SAS.
AMERICA does NOT take down buildings. We take down countries.
Afghanistan? Check
Iraq? check.
Syria and iran?
Batter up.
Why do so much people in the middle east support the idea of crushing israel?
1. They have no jobs.
2. They want to be rich, but they have no jobs.
3. Cause of 2. they are poor and have much time to listen to fundametalist.
4. They are easy pray for that kind of people.
Solution: Don’t fight them with guns, fight them with money. Try to help these countries like it was done with germany after the war. As a german, i love america and its culture. Why? Cause money makes friends.
War against terror creates more terror, not less!
Germany does not take down countries. We sell them machine parts.
Afghanistan? They like us. (At least they have no intention to terroris us)
Irak? Same as Afghanistan.
Iran? In times nobody spokes to them, Germany does, and sold goods.
Who tamed Gadafi? Germany cause we made a big oil contract and Siemens build large channels to Ice Age water reservoirs deep under the sahara. No terror support any more….
USA and all of its coalition, use your economy to fight terror, not your warmachine.
Afghanistan? We helped
Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers? This qualifies as wanting to ‘destroy’ Israel?
Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Iran is under heat for its nuclear program, Iran wants to flex muscle in the Middle East. Iran knows that getting it’s client (Hez) to kidnap two Israeli soldiers will trigger a response out of all proportion.
The hardest thing for Israel to do is to hold back its response. All they are doing now is breeding a new generation of fundamentalists in southern Lebanon.
And don’t say it can’t be done, because it can be , they gave back land to the Palestinians.
No. Wanting to destroy Israel qualifies as wanting to destroy Israel.
Why is it always Israel that is breeding a new generation of fundamentalists? Why isnt’ it Iran? Or Syria? Or Lebanon? Or the so-called Palestinian state? Why is the entity that all of these folks are constantly attacking that is the one at fault? Why is that kids in Iraeli schools are taught about Lebanon and Syria and Iran, et al, but kids in Palestinian schools are taught that Israelis are sub-human? Why do their maps not include an Israel? Is it at all possible THAT helps to breed terrorists as well?
Why is it considered a logical course of action to allow people who’s expressed intent is to destroy you to destroy you? Would any other country take that course? More importantly would the world expect any other country to take that course?
Then why does it always expect it of Israel?
Answer: Because the world doesn’t want to deal with the Islamic fundamentalist problem.
I hear you KFsone.
I can not say that I have ever lived under any of those experiences but I hear you. Sometimes it feels like I am unjustified in making an observation based on either side but then sometimes there is a moral obligation.
I hope that this does not detract from your blog.
Plummerx: I think you are making kfsones’ point very clear. That attitude is about half the problem.
Cowboy: Let me know what number of civilians are justified in meeting that level of response. They want to destroy you and you want to destroy them. What about the tens thousands of people that are standing, huddled in fear from the terror of both sides? At what point do their lives matter?
Fridge, that is an incorrect assumption. Israel has never stated as a goal or intent that they want to destroy palestineans, lebanese, syrians, iranians, et al. So the correct response is:
Let me know what number of civilians are justified in meeting that level of response. They want to destroy you and you want to PREVENT THEM FROM DESTROYING YOU.
Naturally the lives of civilians on both sides matter. The bigger and better question is: Which are more important: Israeli civilians or lebanese civilians? Clearly the answer is neither. Which then begs the question: If the israelis are willing to allow Lebanons right to exist and Lebanon is willing to allow Isreals right to exist, but Hezbollah is not willing to allow Israels rights to exist is the problem Isreal, Lebanon, or Hezbollah?
And if you agree on that question that the problem is Hezbollah, then what is the solution to a group who’s aim is the destruction of a sovereign country? I can think of only one solution.
So whats the solution Cowboy?
Cause guess what the one that goes ‘you must kill them all’ will never ever work. Hasn’t before, won’t now and never will.
Plummerx, thank you, spoken like a man fully terrorized. I think I was in the same place as you 10-15 years ago, in the way I felt towards the Irish bastards that blew up Manchester’s shopping district and killed a close friend of mine.
I’ve got to admit, as Pres. Bush started talking about a war on terrorism, I relished in the thought that perhaps those Irish fuckers were going to stop getting money and support from the USA and vengance would be served.
Which shocked and horrified me. As I watched the analysis of 9/11 unfold, I’ve come to understand why we’ve had a war in island, and it wasn’t because the Irish are barbarians or something. They’ve just never given up on believing they should be in charge of their own lives and their own country.
Religion isn’t why. Religion is the bait they use for roping in people to their side and for making the enemy misjudge them. America used to understand that. But now a lot of folks are too blinded by anger to see it, and yet you act on that assumption. They are terrorized.
People representing us – whether we be British, French, American, have been playing games in the Middle East over oil and land and whatever, and we only ever hear half the story.
The leaders and businesses over there are just as complicit. But like myself when I first realized how close I was to an IRA bombing, like yourself when you saw “Religious nutjobs” attacking your nation, the people over there immediately follow a chain of command. So when someone like Hezbollah come along, they have all the evidence they need to believe the USA is behind the war. Just like we had all the evidence we needed to believe Afghan was the place to nuke as early as 9/12/01. C’mon, don’t you remember the anger you felt the day after?
Nutjob mentality: American company ruined my family/hut/village/town/city/country, Americans are to blame, America is to blame.
You may notice. We have decided to share that mentality with them. “Dude flew to USA from Afghanistan before becoming a 9/11 terrorist therefore we flatten Afghanistan”.
In various interviews, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, I see Israeli officials saying little more than “You did it to Afghanistan and Iraq, don’t tell us we can’t do it”.
I sincerely believe that America’s stance over this issue today is different, weaker, than it would have been 10 years ago.
Cowboy: Is it really that simple? We should look at the situation merely as X hates Y?
60 years ago we decided that the inhabitants of the region weren’t really doing anything with the land, and that while they might be a little upset if we re-inserted an entire nation of people of the most opposite-to-theirs faith we could find that would all blow over once they moved into their new homes – somewhere else. That wouldn’t hurt, right?
With a heavy dose of our backing they were safely inserted, and won several small wars, taking some ground and establishing an ongoing presence.
(Why would those displaced people have any reason to have a grudge against us? We didn’t actually fight them or anything. What kind of a nutjob lays the blame on an entire nation for the fact that the stuff someone else makes somewhere else in their homeland kills people? All *I’ve* done is make his country richer by buying his oil, and agree that if he decides not to sell it to me we should starve his stupid little nation out of existence)
This current situation has evolved in this order:
H:Kidnapping
I:Destruction of major infrastructural targets in neighboring Lebanon
H:Return fire of rockets
I:Can of whoopass against Lebanon
And we are taking sides in this because H hates I.
Americans seem to have forgotten that wars are not final. Fact is that Hezbollah still perceive Israel as an invader, as someone to be ejected. We assert that a war was fought that decided that matter. Therefore Israel are on an exact and equivalent footing to the natives of the region. That’s how it works, right?
Just like America accepted Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba and has never tried to unseat him. The way Mexico has never disputed the borders with California or Texas. The way Texans don’t still occasionally act as if/wonder whether they don’t need the Union.
If you’re thinking “OMG he sides with Hezbollah” – WRONG. But blatant lack of empathy for anything that disagrees with us or our assertions and opinions even slightly is wy do they want us all dead. Remember – the current territorial situation is as absolutely unacceptable to the Jewish faith as it is to the Muslim faith. However: One side has been achieving their goals with the help of the USA while the other side has been suffering losses.
And the USA has fallen into the notion that you can fight terrorism by fighting terrorists, which is just so eerily similar to the notions behind the acts of terrorism that we insist are incomprehensible. If you allow yourself to think this way, you justify the actions of those assholes who crashed into the WTC.
Do you think the guys who flew the planes on 9/11 thought Osama wouldn’t gladly have taken their place? Do you think that killing him will deter them? If you do, then you need to really think hard on what I’m talking about.
I’m not saying he deserves to live, only that we need to make sure the wool is not over our eyes, that we do not allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that his death will be final like killing Hitler at the end of WWII.
What is the solution? The solution is for us to be riding Israel not to make itself the bad guy in this by killing massively more Lebonese civilians – the one attempt at a Western-friendly democracy over there. We need to be unwilling to wholeheartedly and absolutely swallow everything Israel says and does in this conflagration, without denying her our support, but without supporting the destruction of Lebanon because there are bad eggs in its basket.
As for the destruction of Israel slogan that news reporters find people shouting when they go into the contested area… How many times have I heard Westerners calling for the obliteration of Afghanistan during that war? Or Iraq when our troops started dying there?
Which brings me back around to my topic. I believe that we are missing key facts or aspects of the conflict because of vested interests that fail to see the harm they are doing in either allowing or not challenging various misdirections and clouded issues.
I’m not saying Israel should sit and suck it up. I’m saying that the first action in this war was conducted against a military target – who was kidnapped? And Israel responded with an action that can’t help but be primarily anti-civilian.
And what I’m saying about vested interests… I watch Larry King (or any of various other anchors/reporters) and see him give short-shrift to Christiane Amanpour when her on-the-ground experience disagreed with that of the official Israeli pronouncements, I see him end his short conversation with the Lebonese minister/ambassador abruptly and without a goodbye, and then I see him stop turn unusually bleeding-heart on Shimone Perez and barely stop short of offering him felatio.
It’s hard not to notice that this is emanating from the Zeigers and Blitzers of the newscasting world, while the Amanpours and O’Briens still seem to actually be asking questions to get answers rather than to prove their points.
I realize this is thin ice here, so I’d best stop trying to say what I’m trying to say and let someone better qualified say it. Read this BBC article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5246790.stm
If you’re formulating the opinion that I am just a thinly-veiled anti-semite, best you read that article all the way through.
I think the news media is allowing itself to do Israel a disservice.
What Hezbollah did is unacceptable. And in this war on terror, its going to be dealt with. But for Israel to do what its doing is also to take all of the responsibility and blame upon itself, to risk putting the response in the grip of people personally and emotionally affected by the situation and risk erring in their response – to risk poking the hornets nest instead of the termites.
And if the media is being biased in its portrayal, then we become duped into complicity in making this egregrious mistake and pushing Israel deeper into conflict.
My family was decimated by the Holocaust. My mother’s mother sold herself to escape the camps, leaving my mom in her grandmother’s care. Gramps refused to give the salute, and was taken to a concentration camp, and when it was discovered she was Jewish, both her legs were smashed. My mother was placed in a Catholic children’s home where the nuns risked theirs lives and the lives of all the orphans by concealling her identity, and never saw Grandma. Out of 30 members of her immediate family, only my mother, one of her sisters, her brother Willie and 4 cousins survived. Only she and Uncle Willie survived the Russians who’s antisemitism was veiled as purges of the propertied classes.
This isn’t the Holocaust, this isn’t a nation brainwashing its people to hate a race based solely on inferiority, and Lebonese being taught Israeli’s are sub-human is a typical expression of the corruption of reportage by vested interests, it is a corruption of the Muslim perspective that they superceed Israel as the children of god.
This is a Land War, heck its the continuance of one. Religion is only [being] involved as propoganda.
What an interesting question. Given that I didn’t once use the word “hate” in anything I’ve posted on this topic. To some people words are quite important and they choose the words they use for a reason. I chose not to use the word hate and yet that is what you read.
Read what I wrote. Not what you think/expect me to write.
So “x wants to destroy y” is not even remotely comparable to “x hates y”?
Yeah right, as the Tui ads say. Welcome to “Semantics By Morons 101”.
Good thing everyone knows Wikipedia is completely unreliable on all subjects:
And completely by chance I came across this interesting post by Cory Doctorow:
Cowboy, I didn’t suggest you had said those things. Perhaps I was overly subtle in what I was saying with the changing of that word, to imply that there is something simpler and more crucial to all this than whether or not Hezbollah want to destroy Israel. It’s more basic than that, they hate Israel, and that – as well as why – has to be factored in to designing a response. Just like you have to know what kind of fire you are fighting before you throw water on it.
Israel are responding to terrorism by enacting war on Lebanon. It’s easy for us to say that the Lebonese people must be supporting Hb for them to be there. Again: Does the existence of the maffia prove that you or local officials support them? Hb’s presence in Lebanon is largely its “nice face”. Its a very smart move by them because it means that Lebonese refugees are getting aid, food, shelter, comfort and transport from the organization that Israel is telling them they intend to destroy.
Imagine if bombs started going off in your neighborhood and then someone told you that *you* are being targetted because *you* have actively supported the Red Cross, and then a Red Cross ambulance turns up and offers to transport you to safety.
It sounds like a stretched analogy only if you are ignorant of what a broad organization Hb is, and how small a portion of them the military wing is generally considered to be.
I also chose to say ‘hate’ because I don’t think anyone can argue that Hezbollah hates Israel for the land that it “invaded” and “stole” (their perspective). The “destroy” word, though, introduces a whole new deck of cards that I touched on separately.
I think KF’s position is that “terrorized” nations almost never make the right political/ military descisions to end the terror and that you really need a 3rd party (allies) to advise you on what to do.
America’s response to 911 thus far has been completely insane. Homeland defense is a joke, the military is seriously hurting, and more people hate America than ever before. What is really tragic is the “go it alone” mentality of the White House which has effectively cut off any sound outside advice.
Isreal has utterly lost its mind in this current conflict. Nobody believes these attacks will hurt Hezbolah or achieve anything positive. All of this started in Gaza with the killing of 2 soliders and a kidnapping of one – not exactly a suicide bomber on a bus killing 40 civilians. This little attack was just to provoke Israel and it worked – they rolled into Gaza with major force.
Up till then the peace process was moving along nicely. Israel unilaterally was pulling out of OCCUPIED territories and world public opinion was on their side against Hamas and Iran/ syria
ALso, the number of arabs around Israel that want to see it destroyed WAS going down. How many of the 600+ dead Lebanese civilians would ever have actually crossed the border in a war to exterminate the jews?
Trout
Actually, Hezbollah endeavoured to prevent it’s own civillian population from fleeing southern lebanon at the beginning of the conflict, which is one of the reasons why their civilian casualties were so much higher than the Isreali casualties in Northern Isreal. I’m guessing not all those Lebanese that were heald in southern Lebanon in a war zone viewed Hezbollah in the same light as the Red Cross.
And you guys are proving my point. Isreal had withdrawn from southern Lebanon. They had withdrawn from Gaza and it *still* didn’t acheive peace. What does that tell you?
And kfsone, there is a big difference between the islamo-fascist problem and what was going on in Northern Ireland. As far as I know the Irish didn’t want to destroy Great Britain – they just wanted their own independence. Basically all that was needed for peace was GB pulling out of Northern Ireland and letting them have it…which is exactly what Isreal has done many times but with a different outcome, because the problem is not the same.
These are not people who simply want to be free. Their enemy is not just Israel. The problem won’t simply go away if Israel capitulates or ceases to exist, because their fight isn’t against just Israel.
It has spread to Europe, India, the far east, the old Soviet Union, and the Americas. It is nothing like the Northern Ireland conflict. It isn’t even a conflict.
And Kfs, Hezbollah isn’t an “organization”. They provide social services for a reason and isn’t some charitable or noble notion. You guys keep talking about a Terrorist organization as if they were a sovereign nation and you seem to forget this is the same group that killed 384 soldiers from my country in 1983 while you lecture us about how my country didn’t know terrorism prior to 9/11. My country actually has more of a history with this kind of terrorism than yours does.
1. I’ve not tried to imply the IRA/Hb situations are the same on all grounds. Certainly the IRA has made various statements in the past about eliminating Northern Ireland, as have other Irish terrorist organizations.
2. If Hb isn’t an organization with a military/terror wing, what is it? Don’t go reading any love for them into what I’m writing, I’m merely trying to disect the beast. How the heck did you infer that I even remotely consider Hb to be its own nation? Maybe its because I don’t see them as a complete abberation within the area like Alqaeda, but as an extreme yet representative edge of the populace there. Making it worth our time to understand so that we know for sure which end is the tail and which is the head before we start “lopping”. And I believe this is the advice America would have given pre-9/11.
3. I’m not trying to say your nation knows nothing of terrorism – you certainly never experienced anything like it on your own soil until 9/11, and if we’re going to start counting enemy actions outside of our own soil, our experience goes back all the way back past your revolutionary war where your early settlers were labelled as the contemporary equivalent of terrorists.
You did just manifest exactly what I’m talking about on that topic though. Pre-9/11, most Americans would acknowledge that countries like England had (largely brought upon themselves) comparable or more experience of terrorist actions against them abroad and absolutely at home. Given: when actions occur against America, the head counts are usually bigger per-action.
All I’m saying is that this is exactly a symptom of being stung by terrorism within your own backyard and being terrorized.
England is a nation of unarmed police. When it became clear that the IRA were bombing us with frequency and impunity, we started to see pictures of police on our streets with sub machine guns. That was scary. But at the time, I was still safely tucked in a little island pocket of our country.
Then I moved to London and actually saw my first explosion, and the next day, saw my first ever armed policeman wearing a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon.
And I nearly wet myself on the spot. I was terrified. I was terrorized.
The day of my flight out to Texas to meet CRS, I was on the phone to MO from Victoria Station when the alarms went off and a few moments later the ground shook as a bomb went off.
All I said to Mo was, “I’ve gotta go before they lock the gates and I miss my plane”. When I got to the US, the explosion hadn’t killed anyone so it hadn’t made the news.
I care less whether we decide England, America or the Banana Republic of Biltonstein has more experience at being terrorized, what riles me is the people who, since 9/11, rate all other experience by anyone as irrelevant or negligible.
England has finally made great strides towards peace in its primary hostility – thanks to American intervention and impartial advice.
But who would give that same advice to us today? If England launched into Southern Ireland today to wipe out the IRA, to disarm it and all the other terror organizations over there, and to destroy them in order to put an end, once and for all, to the destruction of churches, schools, shopping malls, etc, both in England and in Northern Ireland.
I understand Israel’s sitaution is different, but I think how different depends on how terrorized you are.
Don’t confuse ‘terrorized’ with ‘afraid’.
Don Rumsfeld has a “snow flake” (an idea/question memo) to the Pentagon asking if America is creating more terrorists than it kills/captures. That is the correct question. I don’t know the answer.
Hezbollah simply benefits from the chaos as its governmental style organization “helps” the civilian populace from the destruction that Hezbollah brought upon them. Israel gets blamed; Hezbollah brings in food and bandages and passes it out door to door. There is no penalty for deaths. This is VERY MUCH the strategy of North Vietnam against the French and Americans. Asymmetric warfare/guerrilla warfare: Mao said the revolutionaries must swim amongst the population like fish in the sea. Hezbollah has done that. Like the communist North Vietnamese government, let the population have Hezbollah full-time…and they will become less popular.
I agree with your premise, KFSONE, bombing terrorists in the middle of civilian centers doesn’t work. Don’t bomb the proxy. Surgically strike Syria and Iran from the air, reducing their military and civilian spy control points, allowing the home population’s dissenters to gain strength. Leave the civilians and proxy revolutionaries alone. The civilians will hate their new masters soon enough.
S! to all our brave men in harm’s way, no matter what the policy though.
It’s a good thing these muslim terrorists came along at the time they did. Without them the UK doesn’t have a bogeyman
/cynic
Terrorism isn’t new. Back in 1998 the US saw this with the bombing of the embassy in Africa. It didn’t hit the radar as on the whole it wasn’t Americans killed. This is understandable, one is only interested by ones bigger interests.
The UK has lived under the shadow of terror for donkey’s years. I remember going to London at Xmas and seeing the bomb scares ruin peoples itenerary (not day, as we got on with our stuff around it). And this is the difference:
Terror is not killing people. Terror is scaring people. We have forgotton this.
I believe that the word “terror” has been thrown about so much as to lose meaning. One now believes that terror equals death. This is not the case. Terror is disruption. One may disagree with this when looking at the 9/11 or 7/7 or Madrid or Bali bombings. But to the masterminds behind the terrorists, the kill count is mainly irrelevant (though to the individual terorists I believe the number of dead is relevant to their thought; but they are drones and this is a different discussion altogether).
It is the strategic disruption as opposed to the tactical mayhem for which terror is aimed. We have lost site of this fact.
Having one terrorist attack per x number of years is a tragedy, but it is manageable. Having a terrorist attack every day, near enough, is not. And here lies the difference between the situations between the West and our western counterpart Israel…
ah but remember Defting, the strategies of the terrorists have changed in recent years. terror as you so aptly described it is no longer their only tactical aim. they are also looking at economics and frankly – body counts.
people don’t talk about it that much, but 9/11 had a catastrophic economic impact. Terrorists pursuing WMDs (a term even more tiring in many respects than terror) *is* something that has to be considered – not panicked over, but considered because it is part of the changing tactical thinking of terrorist groups.
Nicely put, Defting.
Overall there is just something gnawing at me about this fight, starting from when the media rewrote the timeline a mite to be kidnap, rockets, retaliation. I don’t meant to apologize for the kidnapping, but I think its a major consideration that Hb took military prisoners and that Israel then fired upon major urban civilian infrastructural points.
Listen, in England we were being terrorized by the IRA, but they’re not the only terrorist organization. Then a political group emerged, called Shin Fein, who were basically members of the IRA who were willing to talk. But we wanted nothing to do with them. A ban was put in place prohibiting him being shown or quoted on UK TV.
Eventually, talks occured, things progressed, but some members of the IRA still refused to put down arms, and splintered into the “Real IRA”.
I’m not saying that is the situation in Lebanon. Israel had been making progress at its own cost, but it had been making progress. And this was not an attack on civilian targets.
I don’t mean to suggest I know what their response should [have] been. But something about this fight makes me itch, and has ever since the timeline was rewritten from kidnap->relaliation->rockets to kidnap->rockets->retaliation.
The very last people we should want to be going into Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah is Israel. Gasoline. Fire. Maybe this is the UN failing yet another nation, maybe this is the Global War On Terrorism being busy at the moment so, In Case of Emergency, Please Shell your Neighbors into Oblivion.
Maybe Israel started this campaign hoping that it would bring international action, and then the rockets started coming back and Israel found itself in a corner it can’t back out of. And the international community is sitting back and saying “serves you right for not waiting” and glancing askew at America while politely coughing “*cough*raq*cough*”.
And there’s always the conspiracy theory: that after miminally complying with the UN withdrawl resolutions, they’re back in there already after a very short period of time. These, er, types point out that the Lebanese army wasn’t operating in the area where Hb is yet because Israel had refused to provide information on the minefields they left in the area, making it a hazardous area to operate for an army but perfect for a militia like Hbs military wing.
All you need to know kfs1 is here.
http://memritv.org/subjects.asp
Don’t bullshit me with pacifist rhetoric. The psychos want to kill, first jews, then anybody that supprts the jews, then the rest of the non muslim world. Not necessarily in that order.
“I think its a major consideration that Hb took military prisoners and that Israel then fired upon major urban civilian infrastructural points”
THis is a VERY key point that serves to shift public opinion away from Israel and towards Hezbolah. Nobody will remember HB’s past atrocities, nor Israel’s past wars and their rightious defense. Israel is using old doctrine that is now entirely out of place in the modern world.
Right NOW, Israel is acting like the bad guy. If HB was REALLY smart, they would stop rocketing Israel and pledge never again to target civilians. They will always have PLENTY of IDF targets to go after, especially if they want to cross the border again.
Apparently there are people in Ottawa (I’m canadian) flying HB flags and the jewish/israel lobby are calling for them to be arrested. I cannot believe these people want to prevent freedom of expression in CANADA – effectively telling ME that I must pick THIER side in the conflict, shut up if I dont, or go to jail!
Trout
Holy-bagels this is an old post … But here I go nonetheless …
Okay, in May/June 2006 Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas was prepared to begin the process of ratifying the so-called “Prisoner Agreement” — which would have The Palestinian Authority (remember, run by Hamas) recognize the State of Israel as a country. This would have opened the doors to the “two-state solution”.
Hamas’ military wing, “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades” (yeah, I had to look up how to spell it, so what!), launched a series of attacks on southern Israel rather independently of Hamas’ political wing — typically just called “Hamas”. This is not unlike the problems Shein Fein and the IRA had as the IRA’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world decreased and Shein Fein began to take over a greater role in directing the course of the movement. The Hamas Military wing did not want to Abbas to ever recognize Israel.
Hezbollah seizing on the situation and likely threatened by the fact that Hamas had basically taken over control of determining the outcome of the Palestinian State, and who knows, maybe in coordination with al-Qassam, launched its attacks. The Gaza situation was relatively under control and it looked like things were going back to normal. But Hezbollah has always known what buttons to push with Israel. That invasion basically killed any forward momentum Abbas had in proceeding to the two-state solution.
Abbas moved forward before he had secured the allegiance of Hamas’ military wing — not unlike Shein Fein’s early mistakes. Israel got baited into a fight and went running on in.
Hamas lost big, Israel lost big, the “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades” reasserted their sway over the course of Hamas, Hezbollah has a good chance of winning a significant number of seats in the Lebanese parliament (I think that election is this year), and Iran is a major middle-eastern player again — the result of which is that the whole Sunni-vs-Shiite issue is back on the table and being played out as part of any discussion over the course of Israel.
As much as people bemoaned the election of Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, I don’t think anyone really predicted that this would be the outcome. Then again, who could have predicted Abbas being moderate enough to accept the Prisoner Agreement (aka The Saudi Plan) — albeit under significant economic duress.
Although maybe it could have been predicted. Henry Kissinger got pulled out of his hole February 2006, saw his shadow, and predicted another 6 years of fighting amongst the Semitic people (don’t forget, Palestinians and Israelis are both Semites).
Oh, and Trooper, Hamas is not “backed” by Iran. It was not until Hamas was elected to the Palestinian Authority that Iran gave them any money. But lots of countries donate to the PA, the EU is its largest sponsor. Hamas has also reached out and received support from Fatah. The Iranians were supremely pissed when Abbas started showing he was a moderate.
@PlummerX Afghanistan: Uncheck
Iraq: Still not checked