July 12, 2006

Israel vs. America In Blame War - Updated

Hatched by Dafydd

UPDATE: See below for a response to Yoni Tidi on Hugh Hewitt today.

Anent the deadly kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah in Israel's north, the United States properly blames Hezbollah's masters: Syria and especially Iran:

The White House condemned the Hizbollah attack and blamed Syria and Iran, which both back the Lebanese Shi'ite group.

But strangely, Israel itself (or at least one top general) seems to point a finger at Lebanon, of all places... the country that just successfully expelled Syrian troops and has worked the hardest to expel Hezbollah and the Syrian intelligence services:

GOC Northern Command [Aluf] Udi Adam told reporters that Israel plans to "push back" Hezbollah guerrillas controlling southern Lebanon, adding that the IDF has "no intention at the moment of involving Syria," which has great influence over Hezbollah.

"We think at the moment the debate is beween us and the government of Lebanon," he said.

With all due respect, I think Gen. Adam is nutty. (Assuming the quotation is not simply taken out of context by Haaretz.) We've already discussed Syria's connection with Hezbollah; this is certainly true, though the ultimate puppeteers are in Teheran, not Damascus. (And not just of Hezbollah but of Hamas as well, despite the latter being more or less Sunni.)

UPDATE: Yoni Tidi -- who blogs and phones in to Hugh Hewitt from Seattle, I believe, but who is a veteran of the IDF in the last Lebanese War -- suggests that it's reasonable to blame Lebanon because "Hezbollah sits in their parliament." This is true, Mr. Tidi... but is that by choice of the rest of Lebanon, which has done everything it could to drive Hezbollah out?

It is far better to work with the Christians and anti-Hezbollah Moslems in Lebanon to destroy that terrorist organization in the South, in the Bekaa, and wherever else it lurks in Lebanon, thus allowing real Lebanese also to boot out the Syrian Intelligence agents -- whose presence is only possible because of the protection they get from Hezbollah. Instead of lumping patriotic Lebanese in with their Hezbollah occupiers, it's time for Israel to discriminate between them; just as we have achieved great results in Iraq by discriminating and driving a wedge between the foreign terrorists and the native-Iraqi "insurgents." The latter can be co-opted; the former must be destroyed to the last person.

Hugh Hewitt suggests Israel launch a bombing mission on Syria, and I would certainly applaud such a move: if you cannot immediately kill the wolf, at least take down the pup. But at some point, Israel, the United States, and the rest of the West -- yes, even including Europe -- will have to come up with an actual solution to Iranian madness and bloodthirst.

It certainly need not be any "final solution," not only because democracies simply do not do such ghastly things but also because there is no reason to make war upon ordinary Iranians: the vast majority of them are not cheerleaders for the Mullahs and would shed scarcely a tear if Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the whole collection of Eaters of the Dead were to be sent on to final judgment.

But it's tricky to thread the Scylla of Iranian hatred of their hellish slavemasters and the Charybdis of Persian pride and patriotism. Somehow, we must get the population of Iran itself to rebel against their leaders, and then we can help them without being too obvious about it. Destroying Hezbollah, especially outside Iran, would be a tremendous leap in the right direction: none of the covert democrats in Iran have any love for Hezbollah, the "Party of God," who roam the streets of Iran attacking some men and especially women, betimes with acid in the face, for violating any one of the thousand and one intrictate, byzantine rules of the ayatollahs' version of Shiism.

But Big Lizards certainly agrees with Hugh that the first step is to crush the Syrian military, which will bring about the collapse of the Baathist Bashar Assad regime in Syria... thus not only helping out Israel but also relieving much of the pressure on Iraq, as Syria is the source of much of the support for Iraqi terrorists -- bombs, money, and especially ambulatory explosives (Syria is one of the primary conduits for suicide bombers into Iraq, though mostly from countries other than Syria).

Even if the collapse of the Baathists eventually brings more Syrian Islamists to power, it will take them some time to consolidate their power, and they likely will never wield as much power as Hafez al-Assad did or even as much as his "cockeyed ophthalmologist" younger son does today.

And during that period of consolidation, we can cripple Syria's ability to engineer death and destruction in either Iraq or Lebanon. And without Syrian governmental support, Hezbollah will be much more easily trapped between a Devil and a hard place of its own: the Israelis to their south and the Lebanese themselves to their north.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 12, 2006, at the time of 4:12 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: nk

I respectfully disagree. Israel made a horrible mistake the last time by allying itself with the Christian militias. They turned out to be just as big horrors as the non-Christians. Israel has her own character as an island of civilization in a sea of barbarity and should not pollute herself through association with the degenerate remnants of the Ottoman Empire. (I am a Christian BTW.)

The above hissed in response by: nk [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 12, 2006 8:35 PM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Tell you what monkyboy, if the Eskimos kidnap some Israeli soldiers and lob some missiles at Israelis civilians, maybe the Israelis should do just that.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 2:54 AM

The following hissed in response by: snochasr

Israel has long known the rules of this game, and have shown themselves to be quite adept at playing it. Their opponents have miscalculated yet again, and this time will hopefully pay the ultimate price. The concern has been that Israel will strike Syria and ignite the wider war. But if Israel can provoke Syria (say by attacking their Hezbollah proxies) into striking first, our troops may be able to come home from Iraq, through peaceful territory, to a Mediterranean port!

The above hissed in response by: snochasr [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 8:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: FredTownWard

Hopefully, Israel is FINALLY finished with the "Peace Process" so they can FINALLY get serious about the "War Process". It is patently obvious why these troubles continue -- because Israel, at times restrained by international idiots to be sure, has not killed its enemies in sufficient numbers to make the necessary impression.

When the cities and towns are leveled, when the bodies are stacked up like cordwood, lessons can begin to be learned and not before. It worked on the Germans; it worked on the Japanese; Hell, it even worked on my ancestors, the Confederates. Now being human beings, unlike their enemies, the Israelis should make what provisions they can to avoid killing innocent Lebanese, but there is a price to be paid for not doing enough to stop the criminals from taking over the neighborhood when the police finally come calling.

The above hissed in response by: FredTownWard [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 9:14 AM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Corporal Shalit is going to be this centuries Arch Duke Ferdinand?

The above hissed in response by: Big D [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 10:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: FredTownWard

Monkyboy, killing INNOCENT civilians solves nothing; killing ENEMY civilians in sufficient numbers can solve quite a lot. I notice that in trying to argue the point with regards to Germany you effectively CONCEDED the point with regards to Japan. As Walter Russell Mead has noted "In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians—not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki." During this time we were also conducting as ruthless an unrestricted submarine war against Japan as the Germans ever tried and firebombing Japanese food crops in the fields. Then we piled two atomic bombings on top of all this, and the most resolutely suicidal enemy the civilized world had ever faced until the advent of Islamofascism crumpled like a rice cookie.

Sometimes ruthlessness PAYS. At the very least it ought to be TRIED. After all if slaughtering recalcitrant would-be Jew-killers in hecatombs DOESN'T work, the Israelis can always try something else to deal with the survivors.

The above hissed in response by: FredTownWard [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 1:35 PM

The following hissed in response by: FredTownWard

Well, Monkyboy, if you are not conceding my point on Japan, you should because you just PROVED it:

"Japan had lost the war to America the moment they attacked Pearl Harbor."

How so? The Japanese thought they had WON, and battlefield results appeared to confirm this... for awhile. The only way you can argue that they LOST the war with the Pearl Harbor attack is to point to the way it aroused in us the grim determination to destroy Japan, using the very tactics you proceed to condemn as ineffectice.

"Our bombing of Japanese civilians didn't speed their defeat for a minute."

This is just plain silly because if nothing else, every man, woman, and child we incinerated with incendiaries and nukes was one less our troops would have faced armed with sticks and improvised explosive devices during the planned invasions. In fact given how ineffective our existing long range weapons were against what was left of the Japanese military, you could argue that about the only thing we were doing at that point WAS killing civilians whether by incinerating, nuking, or starving them. So either the Japanese surrendered because we were slaughtering too many civilians too easily at too low a cost to make waiting to die opposing the coming invasions appear hopeless, or they surrendered for no reason at all. I'm thinking it was more likely the former.

The above hissed in response by: FredTownWard [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 4:03 PM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

"Our bombing of Japanese civilians didn't speed their defeat for a minute."

Err...yeah. I can't even think of a response to such monumental stupidity. Or rather I can think of far too many possible responses. Decisions, decisions.

"...bet they'd be pretty pathetic against an actual army..."

Bwwwaahaaahaa. Monky, you just kill me sometimes. Maybe you should stick to commenting on things you know something about...oh wait...sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.

The above hissed in response by: Big D [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 4:12 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Fair Warning:

Future references to Israel "butching" "innocent civilians" will be deleted as running afoul of the Reptillian Comment Policy -- not the new rule 6 but the long-established rule 4:

Comments whose primary purpose is to derail, disrupt, or destroy the conversation, or to drive away other commenters, or to serve any similiar troll-like goal, will be deleted and the troll warned; subsequent violations -- or even a single violation for anyone on comments probation -- can result in permanent termination. The hosts are the sole judges. Squeals of "censorship" will be considered further abuse. While the hosts dislike having to institute this rule, we dislike even more seeing other commenters driven away by the abuse of the few (or in this case, the one). Reasoned dissent is welcome; verbal assaults and intimidation will not be tolerated.

Find a less inflammatory way to phrase your argument.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 4:44 PM

The following hissed in response by: dasbow

Targets civilians? I'd like to see one instance where Israel deliberately blew up a school or a pizzeria or a wedding or a hospital or a bus or a coffee shop or a ...

The above hissed in response by: dasbow [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 13, 2006 7:34 PM

The following hissed in response by: SDN

As usual, the poo-flinger is wrong: the fire-bombing and finally the atomic bombing are exactly what convinced Hirohito to insist on surrender... because he realized that the Americans could AND WOULD kill every Japanese on the islands by aerial bombardment, without having to invade, and the Japanese could do NOTHING to retaliate. The sole reason this tactic hasn't worked in the case of the Palestinians is that it has never been tried.

The above hissed in response by: SDN [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 14, 2006 2:43 PM

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