Let me ask you right-wingnuts this question:
Why is it in the US's interest to block a cease fire?
This action is only strengthening Hezbollah and opposition to the US-Israeli position. It is weakening the Lebanese government which is needed to counter Hezbollah.
If the goal really is to weaken Hezbollah's miltary, they will fail. Forcing Hezbollah to revert to guerrilla warfare instead of conventional fighting plays to Israel's weaknesses and to Hezbollah's strengths.
If the goal is peace and stability... well, we know that isn't the goal. Otherwise, they would be promoting a cease fire, not blocking it.
I know it will be hard, but try not to answer the question as right-wing ideologues. Think about it from a tactical standpoint. How in the hell do these tactics make sense unless the goal is greater destabilization of the Middle East and the escalation of World War III?
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By the way, US envoy to the Middle East, Elliot Abrams is a convicted felon and a traitor to the United States.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_25.htm
You can only come up with criminal results when criminals are doing the negotiating.
The US interest in blocking a cease fire is simple: A cease fire would help Hezbollah regroup. Anybody interested in freedom on earth has an interest in Hezbollah's destruction. Isreal has tried a "cease fire" with Hezbollah for a decade or so, during which Hezbollah was supposed to disarm. That didn't work. Now Isreal is trying full war.
Nadir: What makes you think that a cease fire would promote "peace and stability"? Is that what existed prior to the war? What is it that you think Isreal wants by launching this war?
Hezbollah doesn't really need to regroup. I'm sure their forces are trained to understand that if conventional warfare fails, they become guerrillas. A ceasefire would only end civilian casualties on both sides.
And if we suppose your regroup argument is true, it would also allow Israel to regroup, as they have suffered their worst day of the war today (still only a fraction of deaths as compared to the Lebanese civilian casualties).
Again, it is the Lebanese government and its people that are taking the beating. Hezbollah will only be strengthened by these attacks. I think you're just singing the party line, Paul.
I don't claim to have military expertise in most matters. It would not surprise me if indeed this reaction by Isreal backfires on the prospects of peace, democracy, freedom, prosperity, etc. But neither would it surprise me that this war response would accomplish what the previous years of tolerating Hezbollah attacks has not.
History shows many examples of "peace" and "negotiations" leading to a worsening of tyranny, such as the century or so of concessions to the southern US slavers and the concessions to Hitler. History also shows us that some of the greatest periods of peace and prosperity resulting from the very worst wars, including the US Civil War and WWII, in which innocent civillians paid an even greater price than what we see now in Lebanon.
I am not certain which path here leads to freedom and prosperity. But I do believe that Isreal has tolerated these attacks for several years and that this has not led to an elimination of attacks from Hezbollah.
You are correct in your comparisons of the Israeli government to the Confederate States and to Hitler. Your assertion that by acting to appease the Israelis by letting them continue to attack innocent civilians in Lebanon we are repeating the mistakes of those times is a valid point. I completely agree with that.
I disagree with your position that innocent civilians in Lebanon are paying a lesser price than civilians who died in the US Civil War and WWII. Both of those conflicts lasted four years, and we are now only nearing the fourth week of warfare here. The comparison of scale is patently falacious.
The "peace and prosperity" that you praise that resulted from the Civil War would perhaps include the plight of formerly enslaved African-Americans who suffered second-class citizenship, defacto slavery and in some cases actual slavery for 100 years after that conflict ended. The United States became prosperous after WWII by rebuilding war-ravaged Europe and Japan.
We see this formula played out in Iraq. US forces destroy the infrastructure and government, and then US companies are paid to rebuild. US weapons manufacturers provide the bombs to create the war and then provide the ammunition needed to "keep the peace".
None of this is resulting in greater freedom for the Iraqi, Lebanese, Israeli or American people.
"Both of those conflicts lasted four years"
Incorrect. Both of those conflicts lasted six years.
Nadir: Prosperity came to the US south remarkably fast and included blacks... until Reconstruction ended, and the clock turned back. Then it took about 100 years to re-win the civil war; only then did prosperity return to the US south.
I don't know how you believe that I equate Isreal with the Confederate States or the Nazis. The Confederates, Nazis, Humas, and Hezbollah (among other islamic crusader groups) share the following with each other, but not with Isreal:
1. They want to expand their territories.
2. They are totalitarians, eliminating free speach and other personal liberties and democracy, and imposing rigid rules of personal conduct.
3. Appeasement over years did not work to quench their insistance on expanding their totalitarian state via force.
As for "not answering the question as an ideologue", I'm the one on this blog (perhaps Six also?) whose view has changed. I used to be just as adamantly anti-Isreali as you. And I even retain certain views from those days, such as considering zionism to be racist. So I don't think I deserve and lectures or assumptions about being a mere idiologue incapable or unwilling to critically examine my views in the face of facts and logic.
That's...not really true Paul. You could say I was a little more "undecided" at one time (yet still always more pro-Israel), but things are far more clear me to me now who's in the right the vast majority of the time and who is not.
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