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Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I do understand your position. I agree with some of it. Disagree with 5. Don't really get the last part -- I am hardly in the "my country, right or wrong" camp. Particularly with respect to the middle east, where I think Bush has gotten it pretty much all wrong. (Incidentally, I spent some time today, unsuccessfully searching for one of My Favorite Bilmore posts -- where he chastised Ty for not giving the Bush Doctrine II enough credit for bringing peace and democracy to Lebanon and Palestine.)
My position? I believe in a policy of fierce retaliation against terrorists, including countries and populations that willingly harbor and support them. This is why I believed that attacking Afghanistan was right, despite the civilian deaths. But attacking Iraq was wrong -- sort of like Israel invading Detroit, or Berkeley, on the grounds that the population and even the leadership there agree with the people who attack Israel.
Lebanon has been directed by the UN to disarm Hezbollah. It has failed to do so -- and failed because Lebanon is too beholden to Hezbollah, and to Syria, to do so. The attacks will never stop until Lebanon realizes that the cost of not doing something outweighs the cost of doing something. And that realization will never come -- apparently, and very sadly -- without strong military action by Israel.
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Had the IDF gone into Lebanon and moved against the Hezbollah Camps, or had they conducted their bombing campaign against the Hezbollah camps, I would agree with you. However, where we part company is that while you view our invasion of Iraq as wrong and what Israel is doing as right, I see them as fairly equivalent.
Lebanon's government is fragile and somewhat inefffective at this point. However, it is also democratic and anti-Syria. By attacking not just Hezbollah but all of Lebanon, you are attacking people for the actions of those who are beyond their control. I find that somewhat analogous to holding the people of Iraq to task for the actions of Saddam Hussein.
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I was commenting on the last part, which seems to me to be historically inaccurate (terror tactics go back many centuries -- and if you accept Ty's definition include all warfare from the beginning of time), factually inaccurate (Arab terrorists have introduced some new elements), and irrelevant ("so what?")
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My point here was that one man's terrorists are another man's freedom fighters. And terror tactics don't really go back hundreds of years. The sacking of villages by Vikings was not quite on a par with the political strategy of engaging in violence with the aim of forcing the existing leadership to take such extreme measures to control violence that it alienates its populace. That is what was done in Israel in the 40s and in Algeria in the 50s and 60s. The political element was a new twist, and one that has been escalating ever since.
I'm not an apologist for Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm simply pointing out that the Palestinians call that same land home and have for centuries. In a post-colonial world, I don't think Israel can realistically take the position we have with the Native Americans, that "we stole it fair and square and we're keeping it."
