mysteryman wrote:Set said...
Quote:The right-wing don't want to face the truth, which is that Olmert's government screwed up, and not only over-reacted, but failed of their objective. There is no doubt that Hezbollah is a criminal organization. But Israel is hardly able to take the moral high ground on that issue so long as they fail to honor their commitment to release Lebanese incarcerated in Israel for which no evidence has ever been found that they participated in Hezbollah, and so long as they continue to occupy the Shebaa Farms. By all means, they should keep Lebanese prisoners for which there is a reasonable accusation of having attacked Israel. They do themselves no favor, though, to keep Lebanese imprisoned without trial and without evidence, and they do themselves no favor by keeping territory which they illegally seized in war, promised to return to the Lebanon, and continue to occupy.
First off,you have no right to speak for me,because you have no idea what I or other conservatives think.
Actually, this is a classic case of "if the shoe fits." If you don't hold those views, than you are an exception which proves the rule. As for having an idea of what conservatives think, i've been reading this thread from the outset, and it is plain what many conservatives here think.
Quote:All you know is what people write on here.
Which is precisely to what i refer--although i understand that you're attempting to make a claim to the contrary, the evidence is both in this thread, and in the Op/Ed pages of any number of conservative rags. You protest too much.
Quote:I dont think that anyone is actually saying that the Israeli govt didnt screw up,because they did screw up.
They did fail in their objective,and they did not destroy Hezbollah.
The should have ground Hezbollah into the dust,and they failed.
On that there is no disagreement.
Read the thread again, there is plenty of disagreement.
Quote:Territory they "illegally seized in war"?
Define that.
In the specific case of the Shebaa Farms, it is territory which lies between the Lebanon and Syria, which was never a part of Israel, was never a part of the historical Palestine, and most to the point, territory which Israel promised to evacuate, and which it has not evacuated.
Quote:Did we "illegally" seize the islands we conquered in WW2 when we took them from Japan?
Some of those islands were trust territories which we were given the control of after the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Others of those islands became trust territories given into our care by the United Nations after the Second World War. Certainly the UN then was just an Alled rubber-stamp organization, but the islands to which you refer do not constitute American territory, except for the ones we stole from the Spanish in 1898.
Quote:Did we "illegally" seize the original 13 colonies when we defeated the British?
Duh . . . no, "we" already occupied the territory in question--this is one of the stupidest things i've ever seen you post, which is quite an accomplishment.
Quote:Did we "illegally" seize the Phillipines when we defeated the Spanish?
Yes, which is why the Huks and Moros fought us in an insurrection which has never really ended. We granted the Philippines "independence" when it became too costly to continue to fight the insurregency. By then, though, we had killed enough women and children to have crippled the insurrgencies. But the Huks only stopped fighting when they negotiated with the Philippine governement in the mid-1960s. The Moros have never really given up, but now we call them "al Qaeda," and claim that they are "islamo-fascists."
Quote:Did we "illegally" seize Texas, California and the rest of the southwest when we defeated Mexico?
Texas was annexed, not seized in war. As for the rest of the southwest, yes, we seized it illegally. Now folks like you whine about illegal immigrants. You're funny.
Quote:To the victor go the spoils,in any war.
So, if after we leave Iraq, the Persians seize the nation with the consent of the Shi'ite majority, and destroy the Sunni opposition in an invasion, you'll be OK with that? If they then overrun Jordan and occupy Palestine, you'll be OK with that? Read the United Nations Charter sometime, a document to which the United States was the first signatory, apart from having been the instigator of the organization.
Quote:As for the Shebaa farms,Israel might have agreed to give them back,I dont know.
As far as I know,Hezbollah has used that area to launch rocket attacks against Israel
http://www.meib.org/articles/0105_l1.htm
Yeah, that's the problem with discussing anything historical (i.e., occuring sometime in the last 20 minutes) with you--you don't know. But you're admirable--you don't let mere ignorance deter you.
Quote:Also,if the Shebaa Farms was truly Lebanese territory,then why did Israel take it away from Syria in 1967?
Why were Syrian troops in Lebanon fighting Israel?
What is now called the Shebaa Farms is territory long disputed between the Lebanon and Syria. The Lebanon did not participate in the 1967 war. Syria has agreed with the Lebanon to cede the territory to the Lebanon, contingent upon negotiations with Israel, which were in progress before this latest "war," and that is probably one of the prime motivating factors for Hezbollah. They were out of the loop, and if Israel had agreed to evacuate the Shebaa Farms and Syria turned it over to the Lebanon, one of Hezbollah's prime beefs with the Israelis disappeared. This is also one of the good reasons to believe that Hezbollah was not encouraged or abetted by Syria in their decision to snatch members of the IDF. You don't pay attention, do you?
Quote:Also, On a fact-finding visit to the region Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy to the Middle East, cast doubt on the validity of the assertion that the Shebaa Farms were Lebanese territory seized by Israel during the 1967 war, pointing out that Lebanon was not a party to the 1967 war and that the 1923 Anglo-French demarcation and the 1949 Armistice line clearly designated the area as Syrian territory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_Farms
So,until the matter of who actually owns the Shebaa farms,Syria or Lebanon,then Israel has every right to control that area simply because they took that area in a war,one that Lebanon was NOT part of and one that had Syrian troops and the Syrian govt claiming that area as their own territory.
Your basis for asserting an Israeli "right" is specious. I can read Wikipedia as well as you can, and i notice that you conveniently ignore that the territory in question was disputed as between the Lebanon and Syria since the 1923 French mandate, before Isreal existed.
As for Syrian troops in the Lebanon, they were "invited" into the Lebanon in 1976 by Suleiman Frangieh, the Lebanese President, who basically blackmailed them by saying he would close Beirut to Syrian imports and exports if they did not intervene in the war between the militias. Syrian troops were in the Lebanon, at least ostensibly by invitation, long before Israel launched "Operation Litani" in 1978, when they invaded the Lebanon.
You have consistently demonstrated historical ignorance in these fora, and this was poor even by your pathetic standards. In this case, i strongly suspect that you'd never heard of the Shebaa Farms, and ran off to look it up after you read it here.
I give you an F- on this essay.
