I believe you are mistaken. You are very generous to the Israelis in your deciding which missiles they can be attacked with and which are not acceptable to you. Gaza has a humitarian crisis because they elected murderers to office. The Arab world like the American Left seems to believe their are no consequence for their actions.

The two Israeli soldiers who were murdered and the one kidnapped by Hamas were in Isreal not occupied territory. It is your rhetoric that is meaningless. Olmert made it clear that Israel was open to negotiation and the Gazan elected terrorists.

You generousity with the lives of others is most impressive and its morality very questionable.

Shorter Rosenberg: Hezbollah must disarm.

Yep, good thinking. And the insurgency in Iraq has to stop.

140K US soldiers can't do the latter and the IDF lost its last war against Hezbo, but hey why let reality get in the way of a good plan.

Note to Rosenberg: Hezbollah is there to stay. Get used to it.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Hizbollah is not going to disarm and the freely elected government of Palestine is not going to become concentration camp capos for Daniel Greenbaum.

 Something much ominious is happening...

 Friday, July 14, 2006


Iraqis Condemn Israeli Attacks

Both Sunni and Shiite clerics and politicians condemned the Israeli attack on Lebanon on Friday. The Friday sermons were thunderous. Money and resources will likely flow to Hizbullah and the Palestinians. More later.

posted by Juan @ 7/14/2006 11:34:00 AM

Why would it be a problem for Iran to win the full scale Middle East war, that Israel appears to be precipitating?

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Open your eyes and it is so damned easy to see what Israel is up to.  Richard Haas to his great credit, knows what none of our America Abroad experts seem to. Last night on CNN he called for direct and unlimited talks with Iran on all regional issues and said it should have been done yesterday.

Now it may be too late. The Israelis are nobody's fools

The Israeli offensive against Iran – until now, purely polemical – morphed into military action the moment the IDF crossed the border into Lebanon and took on Hezbollah. As our regular readers know, this turn of events was predicted in this space three months ago:

"War with Iran will probably not begin with a frontal assault by the U.S. and/or Israel on Iran's alleged nuclear weapons facilities, or even a skirmish along the Iraq-Iran border. Look to Lebanon and Syria for the first battlegrounds of this developing regional war. The Israelis know perfectly well that Iran's nuclear ambitions, if they ever materialize, are not an immediate threat: their real concern is their volatile northern border, where their deadly enemies – Hezbollah – are an effective obstacle to Israeli influence. The Israelis are also looking to exploit growing opportunities to make trouble in Syria, where the restive Kurds are their reliable allies, and the brittleness of the Ba'athist dictatorship is an invitation to regime change."

This is insanity, defined as repeating the same act over and over, achieving the same failed result each time--how well did this strategy work for Israel the first time? Did their last power play in Lebanon not in fact create Hizbullah? How many more war crimes will be committed against the non-Shia majority in Lebanon in retaliation for Hizbullah's misdeeds?

The fact is that most Lebanese do not support Hizbullah, but as the article correctly points out, they don't have the means to do so--meanwhile, this matters not to the Israeli government, who resort to operating on a level of terror in their impotent rage. Thus, my family in Beirut, who have no love or support for Hizbullah, are being forced to evacuate as, once again, Israeli bombs blow up non-military targets, and take out innocent civilians in their continued policy of 'ten eyes for an eye.'

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Knowing Why Not To Bomb Iran Is Half the Battle  

By Martin van Creveld
April 21, 2006

Original URL: http://www.forward.com/articles/7683 
Republished with permission of The Forward

One of my teachers, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, used to say that going to war is not like asking a girl out on a date. It is a very serious decision, to be made on the basis of carefully crafted answers to even more carefully crafted questions.

Some serious questions, then, about whether the United States should bomb Iran's nuclear installations.

The first and most obvious question is whether it is worth doing in the first place. Starting right after Hiroshima, each time a country was about to go nuclear Washington went out of its way to sound the alarm, warning of the dire consequences that would surely follow. From 1945 to 1949 it was the Soviet Union which, once it had succeeded in building nuclear weapons, was supposed to make an attempt at world conquest.

In the 1950s it was America's own clients, Britain and France, who were regarded as the offenders and put under pressure. Between 1960 and 1993, first China, then Israel (albeit to a limited extent) and finally India and Pakistan were presented as the black sheep, lectured, put under pressure and occasionally subjected to sanctions. Since then, the main victim of America's peculiar belief that it alone is sufficiently good and sufficiently responsible to possess nuclear weapons has been North Korea.

As the record shows, in none of these cases did the pessimists' visions come true. Neither Stalin, Mao nor any of the rest set out to conquer the world. It is true that, as one country after another joined the nuclear club, Washington's ability to threaten them or coerce them declined.

However, nuclear proliferation did not make the world into a noticeably worse place than it had always been — and if anything, to the contrary. As Europe, the Middle East and South Asia demonstrate quite well, in one region after another the introduction of nuclear weapons led, if not to brotherhood and peace, then at any rate to the demise of large-scale warfare between states.

Given the balance of forces, it cannot be argued that a nuclear Iran will threaten the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fulminations to the contrary, the Islamic Republic will not even be a threat to Israel. The latter has long had what it needs to deter an Iranian attack.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

I want my Hizbollah TV!!! Listening to it via CNN....seems it is banned in the good Ole USA...Why does the USG hate our values so?

Are you suggesting that Israeli agents ARE NOT active in Iraq? LOL!! Israel is ALWAYS the INNOCENT VICTIM, right?

You raise some good points, but don't expect anything but a hostile reception here. In fact you can see it in the 2 earlier replies to your comments. The cryptic insult "Go fight yourself" and other ad-hominems is really indicative of this.

Its either agreement or the highway with these people. They prefer echo chambers.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Which is more appalling:

 1. The statement of the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament a key figure in the "unity" government.

or

2. Dianne Feinstein (CA-Likud)

Relations between the United States and Israel are crucial to stability in the Middle East, where the road to peace and prosperity continues to be fraught with many obstacles.  In this regard, Congress has placed considerable importance on the maintenance of a close and supportive relationship with Israel.  At the same time, Israel must take all measures to ensure the protection of innocent Palestinian lives in its fight  against terrorists.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

7For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it.

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

The Infernal Whine of the Eternal Vicitims

Finally, there seems to be a sense of guilt among some American Jews living in peace and prosperity in the United States that leads them to believe they owe unstinting support to their co-religionists living in greater peril and less opulence in the Middle East. Rather than make literal aliyah (ascent to the Holy Land), they content themselves with making political aliyah through uncompromising support for the Jewish state. “American (Jews) have this apocalyptic sense of danger in regard to Israel, more than Israeli Jews,” Columbia University professor Todd Giltin told the San Francisco Chronicle. They therefore “feel a certain guilt that they are American. ... They write the checks, but the Israelis have to fight.” One consequence of this, as George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg observed, is the “idea, which persists ... that it was better to keep quiet than to criticize Israel. Doing otherwise, the argument went (and still goes in some places) is no less than giving aid and comfort to Israel’s antagonists.”

Prophets in Their Own Land

By Michael C. Desch Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

 He's no "leftist" Greenbaum. He's no Likudnik and that bothers you doesn't it?

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

Fuad Seniora PM of Lebanon is tired of all that Israeli hogwash about "controlling Hizbollah"

Get rid of the problem and there is no problem with Hizbollah.  They become a political party only.

For those who believe that Israel's actions have anything to do with kidnapped soldiers other than pretext for their predatory actions

J. McCutchen "JmacSF"

San Francisco. CA

America's Ally

There are 25,000 Americans now at risk and unable to be fully evacuated thanks to our "ally".

The Holy See just condemned Israel's aggression against Lebanon - the very resolution that Bolton vetoed and where's W?

Eatin pig in Germany....a puppet on Israel's string

Zealous Israeli hardliners are always quick to play the 'anti-semite' card against anybody who would dare to question the Israeli government's tactics, thus, conveniently ignoring the large percentage of Israelis and Jews worldwide who disagree with the hardliners' stance.

The correct term is 'anti-Zionist.'

Is it too much to ask that if you disagree with some of the comments here or that you wish to accuse some of the commentators of anti-semitism that you do it by responding to their posts directly instead of tarring everyone with the generic some. That's what the reply function is for. If it is too much trouble to respond to them individually, then list them in a single response. Anything else is hardly fair to the posters here, nor is it fair to your own views as well, because it leaves the impression that you're tarring anyone who disagrees with you as guilty of anti-semitism.

Mike

Just floating a semi-idea:

For 50 years the Palestinians have been living like an animal in a cage. They are confined to a small space and people keep walking by and banging on the bars. The result: the entire society is in a permanent state of stress.

For 50 years the Israelis have been living like an animal in a cage. They are confined to a small space and people keep walking by and banging on the bars. The result: the entire society is in a permanent state of stress.

People and animals under stress lash out at those who approach them. The stress makes them behave irrationally. There is a need to "de-stress" the situation. The question is who is banging the cage? And, what do those who continue to promote the status quo get out of the situation?

Without understanding who gains from the current conditions there is little chance of meaningful change.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

The original poster does seem to be inserting a bit of drama about "missiles". Katyushas are light (82mm) or medium (132mm) unguid