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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197727)	8/17/2006 10:30:01 AM
From: SARMAN	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

And from listening to the Lebanese President and Prime Minister over the past couple of days outright praising Hizbullah, the Israelis will be quite justified in equating an attack by Hizbullah as an attack by the Lebanese government. Hmmm. You seem to know everything about ME. Do you know why they are praising Hezbo? Do you? It does seem that you don't. The Lebanese government is trying to avoid a civil war at any cost. Just think about that. Your way of thinking is in line with US FP and that HAWK is a major justification for 9/11. I am not saying 9/11 was right thing to do but was justified. The US FP does not treat Arabs or Muslims like decent human being and always tries to destroy them. It is time for the US policy makers to change in its FP in the ME, the US will suffer more 9/11's. But unfortunately, the American policy makers have a big ego to realize that 9/11 was of their own doings. And they ask why do they hate us? They do not hate the American people, they hate the American administration. Collective punishment is the pride and joy of the US FP and it was use on them the administration did not like it. What did the US do in return? Bombed Afghanistan, killed innocent people, collective punishment. Invaded Iraq, (there were no justifiable reason except weak excuses), collective punishment. People in the US, today, can not take a piss without looking over their shoulder. Why? You can’t even sell cell phone bought from Walmart without being accused of being a terrorist. "They hate our freedom" what a stupid thing to say that statement came from a stupid president and what is funnier is that people believed that statement. HAWK the US days being a supper power are numbered. And what is taking the US down is its foreign policy.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197727)	8/18/2006 2:49:54 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Then I guess we're all the way back to 1991." Things are steadily getting worse for Israel. There basic problem is that they can't return to status quo ante anything. 1991 is a dream to them. Re: "If Hizbullah won't disarm, then Israel is unlikely to leave." They're already getting ready to make a prisoner exchange. They're already ignoring Hezbollah rearming. This administration, at least, looks to be leaving too. Re: "It all depends upon if Hizbullah, while pulicly proclaiming itself the winner, privately realizes that the next time, Israel won't be so lenient." I would think that wearing rose colored glasses would interfere with your ability to properly site your weapon. A few days ago even Nadine admitted that "military men knew that Hizbullah was dug in, well trained, and would be tough", so why didn't you warn us about it? Instead, you were going on about how Israel was getting ready to mount a massive invasion and the reason I couldn't find information about a massive call up of the reserves was because of "opsec". In fact, every one of Israel's decisions was painfully made public and telegraphed before they did it. I agree that Israel was not thrown out of Lebanon militarily. Instead, they quit shooting because they were tired of having rockets dumped on them. And they were still taking casualties from places they'd already "cleaned out", so there was hardly any reason to think that going all the way to Beirut (recall it took 2 days in 1982) would cut either the rockets or stop the military casualties. With those sorts of choices, they chose to quit. I think that there is a good chance that the people of Israel will refuse to face the facts and will blame the defeat on their leadership. I think that that is what many in the neocon ranks will do as well. But I think that we may be as little as one war away from the majority of people on all sides in the Middle East having an understanding of what the true nature of the balance of power is in the area, and that means that I am optimistic that we are only one war away from a more permanent peace. In short, I think you, and others like you, have to see Israel lose one more time before you will understand the true situation there. The US had no rational reason for invading Iraq and it has very few rational reasons for staying in a losing situation there now. We're still there largely because it's relatively bloodless (at least for us). Israel is 40x smaller than us, so losing over 100 soldiers in 30 days was a bit of a shock to the system. But Israel lives in the Middle East. They should have a higher tolerance for death, if their country's survival really is at issue. Every now and then I hear an idiot claim that the US pulling out of Iraq would cause the US homeland to fall to Al Qaeda, but in Israel you could make the case a lot easier. And yet, here it is just 30 days of mild conflict and Israel begs the US to get a cease fire that appears to have no chance of giving them any of their war objectives. You and I both know what kind of casualties a real "total war" would cause in the area. Is Israel really ready to take those kinds of casualties? Are they really ready to dish them out? I think that the evidence suggests that the answers are no. And if the Israeli public isn't willing to fight a real war, the hell do you think that the American public is going to sign on to even an occupation of Iran? Remember that I never said that a US occupation of Iraq was impossible, I said that the butcher bill would be too high and the US public would never agree to it. That's also the problem for Israel. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197727)	8/18/2006 3:53:22 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; If you want to know what really happened in Lebanon, click here: Because of the crash, we did not receive the supplies as planned, a serious development considering that we were down to out last canteens of water. In the few frantic hours before daylight, planes parachuted crates of water to us, but we were unable to find them in the rough terrain, and as dawn broke we retreated back to our previous positions before the Hezbollah snipers and mortar men emerged from their bunkers. ... I was released from the hospital a few hours ago after being treated for severe dehydration and exhaustion. I just wanted to let everybody know that I am fine. Sorry if I made you guys worry too much. blogcentral.jpost.com In short, Hezbollah has so many anti tank weapons that Israel went to infantry, (who could not have been physically up to the task) and then couldn't resupply them. Going farther north into Lebanon would have made their supply line problems that much worse. Sucks to not have armor and to have your resupply helicopters shot out of the sky. Certainly it's not how Israel is used to fighting. Or the US. If Israel had not agreed to the cease fire, it appears a lot of their soldiers would have ended up in trouble with dehydration and exhaustion, largely due to lack of supplies. I think that you're a complete idiot but perhaps some of the other readers will learn from this how Hezbollah has rewritten the rules in the Middle East. The problem with the war was not due to leadership, it was inherent in the details of the conflict on the ground. Israel didn't advance very far because they were walking rather than riding. The first new rule is that Israel can't just roll over a neighbor. The second new rule is that Israel can't bomb a neighbor without having its own cities rocketed. In short, the region has reached a certain sort of stability. -- Carl