What a pity you weren’t available here a couple months ago. A former commenter with an impressive stable of make-believe friends and acquaintances took a decidedly dim view of citizens with multiple “divided” loyalties. Your views are apparently a more moderate, reasonable version of some of her/his own so the dichotomy would have been amusing to witness.

Now, then,

Yes I agree that hezbollah was probably using the UN outpost as a shield, but I don’t see that as an excuse to kill UN officials who are exposing Israel’s brash moves.

I would like nothing more for the killing to stop and Israel live peacefully with its neighbors. hezbollah needs to be disbanded/put out of existence, but this is NOT the way to do it.

This fairly begs a couple questions, so here goes:

Why weren’t the UN “observers” removed from the situation? Or, barring that, why did they not remove themselves? The Israelis gave several days of ample warning, precisely targeting the area all around the UN observation outpost. It would take a man of unprecedented arrogance and stupidity to seriously think that because there was a blue UN flag flying at that outpost (likely right next to the Hezbollah flag) that the Israelis wouldn’t hit it. By all accounts, the UN personnel knew full well that they were being used as shields. So either Kofi and crew are some of the dumbest bipeds on the planet (certainly a possibility) or the most supremely arrogant.

For the Israelis to ignore their sworn enemy, clustered at that UN outpost would have been criminal irresponsibility of the highest order. IDF does not answer to the UN… nor should it. Nor should General Peter Pace or Scretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Which leads to the more important question (after all, those UN guys are still dead!) If you think that the Israelis are going about this all wrong, what is the better way to accomplish their objective? How would recommend that Israel idsarm and disband Hezbollah to that the terrorist organization no longer represents a threat to Israel… or to Lebanon?

Take all the time you need, Nik. It’s gonna be a longish war anyway.

Keeping in mind the israeli army’s history:

1) Attacking an US warship 20 years ago because they were observing israeli activities, then apologizing and saying they didn’t know it was a US warship, very shady…

2) Bombing lebanese TV stations few days ago critical to hezbollah, not wanting any information at all to get out to the world

3) Denying international access to the Jenin refugee camps when they were “purging” those camps few years ago

AND the circumstances for this one unfortunate event:

1) the UN post had been there for over 20 years, israeli army knew about it

2) the UN personnel at that post continually were in communications with the israeli army up to hours before the bombing tell the army not to hit them

Rob it is very hard not to imagine a scenario where the army could have had alterior motives in hitting the post… but you do have to keep that possibility in mind given the israeli army’s historical behavior as well as this specific case’s points.

So no I don’t think Kofi is a liar, given the current facts on the ground he’s making a comment that could be true. And the israeli army’s response has been very canned and cold, along the lines of “oh we’ll investigate and get back to you”, not satisfying at all. Israel’s military capabilities and intelligence rates as tops in the world, I find it hard to believe that bombing a 20-year old UN outpost could be a pure accident. what do you think?

Nik

If you really want to take out Hezbollah, you don’t bomb civilian infrastructure in lebanon. First you take out their legs by taking away their popular support, then you take out their blood by going after the regime in iran.

Ah, send the lebenese flowers. What you don’t get is that they hate the jews too. Getting the lebanese to like the Jews ain’t going to happen. Welcome to reality.

You could go after the regime Iran. However the Israeli’s don’t have the muscle. We are a bit busy. The rest of the world is useless to say the least.

Israel and the US have either been unwilling to do this, or just really don’t know how to do it. This is what will win it for us, NOT bombing civilian infrasture and leaving hezbollah with their moral/financial backing.

Maybe you could let them know a sure fire way to do this. The Muslims have been attacking the jews there for over 1400 years. Apparently you had the answer all along.

Example: after 9/11 the world was on our side and we really could do ANYTHING we wanted to

And when we did what was necessary (not what we wanted to do) the rest of the world put up roadblocks. Many of our so-called allies chose Saddam over the US. That tells us where they’re coming from.

Assuming Kofi wasn’t listening to the CBC, it’s simply reflective of his worldview that he’d believe it an “apparent” deliberate attack.

It’s illuminating, and completely false, but I don’t think it’s a lie.

Now it turns out that this statement from Annan was a bald-faced lie.

What? I thought we were supposed to wait for the investigations to conclude before we make pronouncements. You’re really confusing me.

A “one-sided foreign policy” must mean a U.S. foreign policy that is beneficial to the U.S.

The more Israel alienates the world by its brash actions, the more the US will suffer.

“Brash actions” must be any Israeli actions that respond to terrorism after they have been hit for years and years.

Yes I agree that hezbollah was probably using the UN outpost as a shield, but I don’t see that as an excuse to kill UN officials who are exposing israel’s brash moves.

In other words: fuck you Israel. We’re going to position our people with the full knowledge that your enemies will use us as pawns. If you try to kill you enemy, we’ll pull out a major double standard and blame you instead of the enemy positioning himself amoung civilians.

hezbollah needs to be disbanded/put out of existence, but this is NOT the way to do it.

I guess they should just send flowers to Hezbollah and ask to be left alone.

I said before, is one of the best trained/equiped/best intelligence in the world

I’ve been musing, trying to come up with a country whose Democracy is more reselient than that of Israel, which has only existed since 1948 and always in a precarious situation. I haven’t come up with any other country.

I believe Israel to be the most resilient democracy this world has. This is particularly remarkable given the fact that Israel exist in an area not exactly known for great democracies, ..democracies of any kind, for that matter.

sorry to pull the rug out from under you, but I am in fact middle eastern, spent some good time in the middle east lately, and have quite a few degrees thank you very much. I know people from tel aviv and love them, and know people from lebanon and love them too. So ya in fact I know as much if not probably more than you do about the middle east and the US’s policies there.

AS someone with a US passport now, my loyalties lie with america. And it is quite painful to watch our government have one-sided foreign policy to the point of alienating the entire world. If you travelled outside the US you’d come face to face with a blatenly obvious fact: good guess that about 4 billion people on the planet right now have ill-will towards the US because of its policy towards the middle east. The more Israel alienates the world by its brash actions, the more the US will suffer. This policy of collective punishment that the US and Israel love to have is counterproductive don’t you think?

Bat One hey whats up. the 1967 incident and the UN bombing to me do have one thing in common: israeli army has no bones about trying to hide its brash actions, even to the point of hurting its allies. Yes I agree that hezbollah was probably using the UN outpost as a shield, but I don’t see that as an excuse to kill UN officials who are exposing israel’s brash moves.

i would like nothing more for the killing to stop and israel live peacefully with its neighbors. hezbollah needs to be disbanded/put out of existence, but this is NOT the way to do it. israel is only creating more enemies for itself , and the US is being dragged along…

damn, sorry for the long response guys…

Nik

I thought we were supposed to wait for the investigations to conclude before we make pronouncements. You’re really confusing me.

MikeA,

No doubt you intended this remark for Kofi Annan… correct?