HEZBOLLAH AND ISRAEL WIDEN THE CONFLICT

Surprisingly good article for you patchy, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea, too (excluding your idiotic commentary, of course. :wink:)

Bill, I can't imagine why you would think that you, being in agreement with Tico, should constitute anything remotely approaching a consensus on any issue.

Further, you didn't even read my posting wherein I said and I quote,

Quote:

The "blame America first" crowd is ever on the lookout for creative ways to make the US look bad. Sure, base your analysis on "percentage of GNP," and go ahead and ignore that most of the charitable giving in this country comes from private donations, not from Governmental aid, contrary to most other countries.

Now, if you'll just address the facts in those links, some of which I repeated for you, perhaps we can chat again about "avoidance".

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Surprisingly good article for you patchy, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea, too (excluding your idiotic commentary, of course. :wink:)

Your ad hominems are showing, Bill.

But you're right, this is a good idea. There are many many good Americans out there, people who can honestly embrace and deal with the fact that their government and some of its soldiers have, at times, been guilty of criminal behavior, including war crimes.

But you Bill just want it to go away with not even a slap on the wrist. All you and the blind portion of the America first crowd wantis a free ride all the while posturing and whining about the butchers and dictators of the world who happen to not be in your camp.

The crimes of Vietnam call out for redress. There are many more examples, but you, in your heart, know that so we needn't go further.

Ya just can't be this hypocritical. It's losing its cachet. Many are no longer willing to simply accept what America says.

Why is there this continuing attitude that the USA has done nothing to cause these problems when your own intelligence people tell you there is? Why do you think you can meddle endlessly in other countries' affairs and not suffer any blowback?

How can you be so naive? Of all the peoples of the world, I'll suggest that USA citizens would tolerate this the least if done to them. Steve was right. You have no ability to empathize.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Surprisingly good article for you patchy, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea, too (excluding your idiotic commentary, of course. :wink:)

Gee, I don't remember asking for your opinion, cheesehead :wink:

What semi-intelligent articles have you posted lately? Anything from 'My Pet Goat' that you'd like to share?

Bill

JTT wrote:

Bill, I can't imagine why you would think that you, being in agreement with Tico, should constitute anything remotely approaching a consensus on any issue.

You're shadow boxing, arguing against your imaginary friend or pretending an obvious Straw man may have some effect. Nope. I made no such claim. I simply stated my agreement with Tico's assessment and briefly touched on why.

Further, you didn't even read my posting wherein I said and I quote,

Read it and dismissed it since it totally ignored Tico's original point... which shouldn't be hard to find since it's been repeated so often (initially by you). Here, I'll heighten the words a little for you.

TICO: The "blame America first" crowd is ever on the lookout for creative ways to make the US look bad.

Sure, base your analysis on "percentage of GNP," and go ahead and ignore that most of the charitable giving in this country comes from private donations, not from Governmental aid, contrary to most other countries.

... the other issue also is whether personal remmittances can be counted as American giving, as people point out that it is often foreign immigrant workers sending savings back to their families in other countries. Political commentator Daniel Drezner takes up this issue. "Americans aren't remitting this money?-foreign nationals are," he notes.

Finally, Drezner suggests that Adelman is not necessarily incorrect in her core thesis that Americans are generous, but "lumping remittances in with charity flows exaggerates the generosity of Americans as a people."

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp#Sidenoteonprivatecontributions

Now, if you'll just address the facts in those links, some of which I repeated for you, perhaps we can chat again about "avoidance".

I've little quibble with the facts in those links, beyond the misleading way they exclude the major American private donations in an attempt to paint the U.S. ugly... and your over-eagerness to accept partial truths as comprehensive assessments.

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Surprisingly good article for you patchy, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea, too (excluding your idiotic commentary, of course. :wink:)

Your ad hominems are showing, Bill.

I in no way attempted to weaken Patchy's argument with a personal attack... and, in fact, concurred with what he'd quoted. My description of his commentary was an opinion about his commentary, not his person. No ad hominem there. A better example of ad hominem would be your frequent comments about the beloved cheese I'm wearing in my avatar.

Below, you demonstrate your penchant for erecting 'straw men and 'poisoning the well' which makes debate with you rather unattractive (Looking up terms you don't understand is a sign of intelligence :wink:)

But you're right, this is a good idea. There are many many good Americans out there, people who can honestly embrace and deal with the fact that their government and some of its soldiers have, at times, been guilty of criminal behavior, including war crimes.

But you Bill just want it to go away with not even a slap on the wrist. All you and the blind portion of the America first crowd wantis a free ride all the while posturing and whining about the butchers and dictators of the world who happen to not be in your camp.

Prove it. Show me where I even addressed the feeble positioning you're ascribing to me.

The crimes of Vietnam call out for redress. There are many more examples, but you, in your heart, know that so we needn't go further.

Prove it. Show me where I even addressed the feeble positioning you're ascribing to me.

Ya just can't be this hypocritical. It's losing its cachet. Many are no longer willing to simply accept what America says.

Correct IMO, I'm not that hypocritical... though you're not even doing a good job of explaining why your straw man can't be either.

Why is there this continuing attitude that the USA has done nothing to cause these problems when your own intelligence people tell you there is? Why do you think you can meddle endlessly in other countries' affairs and not suffer any blowback?

Here again; you pick an idiotic string of ideas out of the air, ascribe them to me, and then strike your straw man a mighty blow.

How can you be so naive? Of all the peoples of the world, I'll suggest that USA citizens would tolerate this the least if done to them. Steve was right. You have no ability to empathize.

I'm not so naive. I will neither defend your imaginary friend's positions, nor continue to be talked down to by one who argues like a child. There is no profit in it for either of us, since you refuse to learn and seemingly have nothing of value or the wherewithal to teach me. Stick with beating on this guy:

FYI, I've had very similar debates (topic-wise) with members who frame their arguments very well that resulted in little mutual agreement... but still infinitely more than I could reasonably expect to reach with you.

Go ahead and enjoy framing fallacious argument after fallacious argument and the mutual back-slapping from your equally inept peers that will no doubt accompany it.

I couldn't agree less, Finn...
Horribly anecdotal evidence being offered now:

Last year I dated a girl who was scared out of her wits (just an expression) that I'd bounce one of her friends off a wall. She was under the impression it was permissible, or even natural for men to slap/pinch/grab the ass of a female, whether they were seeing each other or not. Quite normal in Cedarburg, apparently... or used to be. I thought long and hard about this obvious cultural difference… and ultimately decided NO. If you're going to see me; than every last person in this town needs to grow the F-up. It took way less time than I thought it might; since I accidentally bounced one man (who believe me, needed it), off a wall before I realized there was a pretty large, fancy mirror behind him… which naturally shattered. That part was truly an accident… but I've little doubt the "phone game" story about it saved me a lot of heavy lifting. Ultimately, it only took 2 examples before word got around that the rules had changed.

I think world affairs are a bit more complex that the situation you describe above, but let's stay with your analogy: By putting a stop, through force, to other men's inappropriate contact with your girlfriend, you accomplished a very narrow objective, but hardly cleaned up the town. In addition, I doubt that there was anyone in the town, with the possible exception of the miscreants, who did not think you were 100% justified in putting a stop to the behavior.

What might have been the results, though if you decided that your forceful ways were needed to right all the wrongs in the town? Would the townspeople have all welcomed your campaign? Is it likely that no one else who you confronted would put up a fight? Perhaps you could overpower every miscreant in the town, but isn't it likely that one or two would injure you in retrun, and perhaps seriously? What happens to your resteraunt while you are engaged in cleaning up the town? I doubt the effort could be limited to your lunchbreak. Finally, what happens if and when you leave the town to move on to another town that requires your help?

As strong and righteous as you no doubt are, I don't think the odds favor your successfully sustaining a campaign to either clean up all the sins of one town, or clean up all the towns in your county.


Don't get me wrong. I fully understand that nation building is as necessary as A-hole removal. However, I think financial aid (think Marshal Plan), to those who walk the straight and narrow covers this. Carrot and the stick. Our trade should be systematically limited to countries that share our most basic philosophies, more and more until all rogue nations are excluded entirely. The dynamic of our financial strength is such that our military prowess should/would be a secondary concern to most offenders.

Consider Iraq. We easily won the war against Saddam's regime, and we, happily, put that monster out of commission, but the country is not a model of stability despite all of the billions of dollars we are pumping into it. This is not to say that the objective of establishing Iraq as an arab bastion of democracy within the region is futile, just that it is an enormous undertaking.

If we were content with merely obliterating all rogue nations and oppressive states, I'm confident that our military could achieve that end. If on the other hand we accepted the responsibility of replacing the dictatorships with stable and democratic governments, I have absolutely no confidence that we could accomplish the mission. An Iraqi style effort in North Korea and Iran alone would tax our military and economy to the breaking point, if not actually breaking them. The rest of the miscreant nations in the world are hardly likely to fall in step because an utterly exhausted USA rattles its dulled saber in their direction. After all, our invading Iraq doesn't seem to have chastened Syria or Iran, and they both reside within the region.

As for economic strength, we indeed have it in spades, but in no way to the extent you seem to suggest. What effect has our punitive trade policy had on Castro? A fair argument can be made that it has helped him, not hurt him, and trade sanctions against Iraq did virtually nothing to bring down Saddam, nor would they have ever. As long as a dictator has sufficent funds to keep himself in luxury and to pay the wages of his military, how much can he really be threatened by trade sanctions. Instead it is the innocent civilians of the nation who suffer. North Korea is a perfect example.

Naturally, we might eventually run up against a Russia and or China… but I think they would have long since jumped on the bandwagon first. Neither could survive a pre-emptive strike and I'm pretty sure both are well aware of it. Both are quite mature and I believe both would recognize there is no profit in attacking the U.S. In my favorite global-clean-up scenario; Putin is convinced to become our partner in the effort by way of major incentives. The world's only superpower, teamed with the next runner up, has an irresistible ring to it, no?

I think you are well oversimplifying the matter. It is unimaginable that the US would engage in a nuclear exchange with Russia or China simply to further a goal of "cleaning up" the world, and without nukes what possible threat can we present to either country? Do you really believe that we would ever invade either country for the purposes of democritizing them? At some point in this crusade the leaders of both Russia and China are going to believe our leaders to be bent on world domination if not outright insane. It is every bit as feasible that they would join forces and launch a massive first strike against us as it is that they would meekly capitulate and reform.

pachelbel wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Surprisingly good article for you patchy, and it seems like a pretty damn good idea, too (excluding your idiotic commentary, of course. :wink:)

Gee, I don't remember asking for your opinion, cheesehead :wink:

What semi-intelligent articles have you posted lately? Anything from 'My Pet Goat' that you'd like to share?

And here we can see why I don't generally bother answering Patchy... Though this was a stronger, more powerful argument than most of what he offers.

Rewarding Depravity
Worse is always better for Hezbollah.

By Rich Lowry


All the world lamented the Israeli airstrike in Qana that killed dozens of innocent children. All the world, that is, except Hezbollah. The terror group angrily denounced the attack, vowing revenge, but surely it celebrated over the horrifying collateral damage: Every dead child was of priceless propaganda value.

It is for Qanas that Hezbollah conducts its operations among civilians in the first place. It hopes that Israeli attacks will cause civilian casualties so that the Jewish state's offensive will be delegitimized. It thus depends on a perverse logic whereby a civilized military force attempting to avoid civilian casualties at the cost of the effectiveness of its own operations is considered barbaric and is pressured to end its campaign ?- and the world perversely reasons right along with it.

This is one of the greatest asymmetries of asymmetric warfare. For a guerrilla force, worse is always better, even though the worse comes at its instigation. It seeks a widening gyre of death and destruction. "Promoting disorder is a legitimate objective for the insurgent," David Galula writes in his classic study of insurgency warfare. "Moreover, disorder ?- the normal state of nature ?- is cheap to create and very costly to prevent."

Lebanon is a case study in this insight. How much energy and money were expended on rebuilding Lebanon after its decades-long civil war, for it all to be thrown away in one morning by Hezbollah in a reckless act of war? The resulting destruction is Hezbollah's responsibility, but it gains from it. Hezbollah wants a weakened Lebanese state so that the terrorist organization will have more freedom to work its will in the country, while it is Israel that needs strong Lebanese institutions that can squeeze Hezbollah's private army out of existence.

It is easier, however, to destabilize a weak government than it is to bolster one, which is one reason the Bush administration's Middle Eastern ambitions are being ground into sand at the moment. Bush wants to create something new, but the act of creation is tricky and onerous. Destroying is not. Pro-Iraq-war hawks used to say that the insurgency there was of limited appeal because it has no positive political program. Well, so what? It needs no agenda besides promoting a civil war. Mindless bloodletting in Iraq will block the creation of anything new, and that's enough.

Lebanon was a fragile success story of the administration's promotion of democracy. All the more reason for Syria and Iran to arm a private army there that has succeeded in fomenting war and threatens to bring that fragile project crashing down. For our enemies in the Middle East, destruction is good, brutality is useful and violent nihilism is the one true philosophy.

Defeating a guerrilla force ?- as Israel aims to do in Lebanon and the U.S. in Iraq ?- has been hard enough throughout history. But it becomes much harder when the terrorist insurgents are accorded the status of a legitimate army. It wasn't long ago that insurgents and those aiding them were treated as pirates with no legal protections. In his forthcoming book Dangerous Nation, a diplomatic history of the U.S., Robert Kagan recounts what happened when an American ship running guns to rebels in Spanish-controlled Cuba was captured by the Spanish in 1873: "The Spanish colonial authorities swiftly executed the expedition leader, the ship's American captain and an additional 51 passengers."

At the same time that terrorist insurgents around the world are spectacularly demonstrating their depravity, the West has acted to give them more rights and to tie its own hands with unrealistic expectations of strictly limiting collateral damage. The Supreme Court has granted Geneva Convention protections to al Qaeda, part of a push to wipe out any moral and legal differences between civilized armies and terrorist bands. The outcry over Qana is directed entirely toward Israel by the "international community," rewarding Hezbollah for deliberately endangering civilians.

Down this road is defeat for the West, and victory for the only people in the world hoping for more Qanas.

?- Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

Israeli commandos (paratroops) now active NW of Beirut, near the Syrian border, according to our TV news tonight.

Typically bold move, I hope it pays off for them. They are trying to neutralise Hezbollah in short order, but I hope this does not draw the Syrians in.

I check the end of times website www.raptureready.com periodically to see how the religious fanatics are doing. This week on the message boards you will find a kind of bizarre voyeurism; vultures standing around speculating how all this carnage predicts the Second Coming. There is nothing of the Prince of Peace to be found here, only a kind of salivating over the ?'necessary' suffering of innocents. They can't wait.

By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 56 minutes ago

Olmert criticizes Syria, defends Bush

JERUSALEM - On a table facing his desk, Ehud Olmert keeps photographs of three Israeli soldiers whose capture by Islamic militants in Gaza and Lebanon sparked the latest Mideast crisis...

Yahoo News

Israeli soldiers Kidnapped in Lebanon? I think not.
Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2006-07-30 10:04. About ImpeachPAC | Impeachment Blogging

News by Ran HaCohenJoshua Frank did an important job in bringing two competing stories about the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah: the main-stream story which says they were abducted on the Israeli side of the border, and the alternative claim that the soldiers were captured by Hizbollah on Lebanese soil. I am afraid, however, that this is one of these rare cases in which the main-stream (and Israeli) version is the credible one. Note that the Hizbollah itself, so it seems, never claimed the alternative story was true: it's not Israel's words versus Hizbollah's, but the general media versus unclear sources. Let me try to show why.(1) As for the main-stream story, Frank writes: "Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory."-Not quite. The precise story is: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing three and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. Following the kidnap, an Israeli tank crossed the border into Lebanon and was destroyed, in which four soldiers were killed, bringing the number of casualties to seven. Some of the confusion seems to have been caused by these two separate events, which are sometimes conflated in the reports.

From a very "liberal" site...

Quote:

Israeli soldiers Kidnapped in Lebanon? I think not.
Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2006-07-30 10:04. About ImpeachPAC | Impeachment Blogging

News by Ran HaCohenJoshua Frank did an important job in bringing two competing stories about the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah: the main-stream story which says they were abducted on the Israeli side of the border, and the alternative claim that the soldiers were captured by Hizbollah on Lebanese soil. I am afraid, however, that this is one of these rare cases in which the main-stream (and Israeli) version is the credible one. Note that the Hizbollah itself, so it seems, never claimed the alternative story was true: it's not Israel's words versus Hizbollah's, but the general media versus unclear sources. Let me try to show why.(1) As for the main-stream story, Frank writes: "Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory."-Not quite. The precise story is: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing three and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. Following the kidnap, an Israeli tank crossed the border into Lebanon and was destroyed, in which four soldiers were killed, bringing the number of casualties to seven. Some of the confusion seems to have been caused by these two separate events, which are sometimes conflated in the reports.

Submitted by davidswanson on Sun, 2006-07-30 10:04.

pachalbel wrote:

Quote:

I check the end of times website www.raptureready.com periodically to see how the religious fanatics are doing. This week on the message boards you will find a kind of bizarre voyeurism; vultures standing around speculating how all this carnage predicts the Second Coming. There is nothing of the Prince of Peace to be found here, only a kind of salivating over the ?'necessary' suffering of innocents. They can't wait.

I rank these folks about three drawers below child-molester.

Under this pathological ideology, carnage becomes a good thing, a desired thing. The more carnage, the better. Carnage as righteousness.

And the motivation or rationale which drives such sentiment isn't the eradication of "evil" in the world (the most childishly idiotic version of utopianism imaginable) but rather it is the prayed-for establishment of themselves as unique and special, as better than others after all. The poor marks in school or the inability to shine on the football field, the woman who left them, the humiliations...all will be overturned. It's now they who will be on top, they and god watch the pleasing sight of smoke rising from where those bad people are burning.