Shybird....I was impressed by your daily patrol, until I read: dailymirror.co.uk :rotfl:

By the way...my patrol list is all pron..thought everyones was :oops:

well... one thing for sure Isreal shouldn't do is bomb civilians in an attempt to establish
a buffer zone to protect them against missile launches by the hezbola...

first off, you are gonna cause civilian casualities... innocent civilian casualties (eg. the canadians that got killed)...

second, the hezbola will simply use longer range missiles... as they have just done.
the current missile they're using has a range of about 100km... (or was it miles)...
this sorta invalidates the entire goal of the Israeli military plan... i mean, pretty soon
the buffer zone will extend all the way to Paris...

third... Israelis, of all peoples, should be keenly aware of the immorality of blanket retribution... need i remind you of the consquences many of their grandparents had
to suffer at the hands of the nazis in wwii when they decided to retaliate in against
civilian populace for an attack on a single soldier...

now i hear that they're shelling the banking institutions that they suspect are complicit with terrorists... as if that's gonna actually stop the flow of funds...


now i don't pretend to have the answers... and surely the terror bombings that have
been going on must stop... but surely this sorta blanket response is not the answer...

it has already failed... and without a doubt, in the next few days, it will fail to a degree
that i'm afraid to imagine...

and don't respond that the terrorists are doing it, so it's justified... that simply lowers em to the level
of those they wish to irradicate...


it's like watching something that has already happened taking place, and not being able to stop it...
it's like deja vu... like i've been here before... one morning i will wake up and turn on the news... and the unimaginable will have happened...

i pray that i'm wrong...

**added**

one thing that i do find quite interesting, is the apparent vulnerability of hi tech defensive systems to relatively low tech intrusion... the attack on the Israeli frigate (?)... the impunity of the missiles being aimed at Israeli civilians...


--Mike

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

But all of those examples were/are dissident groups internal to the nation in question. Ok, the Irish aren't English but they still were part of Great Britain and therefore still somewhat an internal national matter.

The Isreali/Hezbollah/Hamas situation is the complete opposite of all of those.

These aren't disaffected or rebellious Israelis we're talking about, we have a foreign group making continued deadly attacks, operating from the soil of a neighboring nation and funded by yet another neighboring nation.

So what are the Israelis to do?

For that matter what would Canada do, if foreign outlaw groups operating out of Greenland or the US started lobbing rockets at Canadian towns and cities, kidnapping Canadian citizens and in general conducting a never ending guerilla war against her? And lets not forget doing all that with the stated intention of driving every Canuck out of your own country.

I know what the US would do.

I back August. The comparison of the ME conflict and those conflicts you mentioned does not work, Scandium. Totally different stories.

Hezbollah fires rockets at an Israeli town and kidnaps two soldiers. Israel retaliates by levelling Lebanon without warning or consideration for the tens of thousands of foreign nationals there who its actions, in bombing ports, roads, bridges, and the international airport have cut off from escaping the country - for a week - that they have turned into a warzone, killing 8 Canadian civillians in the process and severely injuring several others. By their own standards, this is an act of war against Canada, and an act of callous disregard by any standard.

But is Canada mobilizing for an all out war with Israel in kind, or even any kind of relatiation? No, we are just trying our best - within the limits imposed upon us by Israel and the IDF - to get our people out. Our own PM even diverted his own military A330 Airbus to Cypress to pick up as many stranded Canadian refugees as possible.

Meanwhile the US has finally landed 1,200 marines into Lebanon to get its own people out - all of this a week after events began, events that - without warning of any kind - turned our citizens into trapped refugees who are at the mercy of the IDF.

Meanwhile 500 German nationals are being evacuated to Syria.

You know, I don't have the solution to what Israel should do, but unlike you folks I'm not going to applaud this callous treatment, and killings, of my own fellow Canadians whose only fault was unknowing being in a place Israel decided without warning to level, trapping them there in the process and putting their lives at risk as it bombed and shelled the country.

While I applaud my PM's personal efforts to get some of our people out, I find our government's otherwise apparent apathy and indifference to Israel's conduct disgusting. I no longer consider them any ally of ours.

And for you August, it is even more ironic given that its your own country's weapons and $3 billion/year subsidy to Israel that is being used to hold your citizens hostage in a foreign country turned warzone by the IDF. And not even a heads up to your embassy in Lebanon before hand so that you might get your people out first; no, instead the warning comes in the form of the bombing of the International airport trapping them there.

That the US has to send 1,200 Marines in a week later to rescue its people from the threat posed to them by one of its, supposedly, close allies and puppet states doesn't bother you August.

Personally I see this and I have to wonder which is country really the puppet state, and which country - just like its citizens - is the one held hostage to events of the other's making.

So to come back to your question about a solution to Israel's problem - why should I give a damn about them or their problems when they so blatantly could give a damn about Canadians only just this week killed 8 of them? I don't, not any more. The hell with them as far as I'm concerned.

So, in other words you have no solutions. You're just another monday morning quarterback, critiquing the actions of others from the safety and detachment of your living room back in the land of maple syrup.

Nice try at minimizing the problem, but it won't work. The Hez attacks of last week are only the latest in a series that has been going on since the 1970's. Your solution to all this seems to be that the Israelis should just sit back and take it, so your countrymen can travel safely and freely though the Arab world, when the Arabs aren't taking them hostage that is, which i'm sure is somehow the Israelis fault in your eyes as well.

To hell with the Isrealis? To hell with you sir.

So are you. So am I. So are Sky, Neal, tycho, Mike, and even the now-banned Kurushio. None of us have answers for problems without solutions.

I think Isreal is doing what they need to do to answer their problems. IMO they have been way to soft on these killers for too long.

Ok, Scandium doesn't have solutions to the Israel-Lebanon conflict. But Israel bombing (and maybe invading) Lebanon is a solution to the problem of rockets hitting Israel?
I don't think so.
Hystorically, Israel already invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied its southern half (roughly from the southern border up to Beirut) in order to counter the PLO that was using the country to fire rockets at Israel. The occupation lasted almost 20 years. More or less one could say that Israel is adopting the same kind of response today as it adopted 24 years ago. Since it doesn't seem that the 1982-2000 occupation as done any good to Israel (well, instead of having PLO firing rockets you now have Hezbollah firing rockets), I don't see how a new invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon (or the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure) could benefit Israel today. Hezbollah would retreat in the Bekaa Valley and fire rockets from there. The IDF would move in the Bekaa Valley and Hezbollah would retreat into Syria. Then things would become interesting (provided that a full scale conflict doesn't erupt before IDF reaches the Syrian border). IMO, if all parties involved in this conflict mantain a hard line, without diplomatic interventions, the only end will be a full scale conflict between Israel and Syria (and possibly Iran).

Interesting self image. Reminds me of South Africa in the pre-Mandela years.

Maybe so, but what other choice do the Israelis have? If they do nothing then the Hez rockets continue to get fired from the right on the Leb border, and therefore reach much further into Israel than if they've been pushed back away from that border, however temporarily.

The diplomatic route gains them nothing as it seems the rest of the world is quite happy to let groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and others continue to kill Israelis.

It's a nasty situation to be in and i firmly believe Israel is doing the only thing she can do.

Strange feeling to agree with August so often in such a short time. :lol:

As I've said previously, more then bombing Lebanon into the stone age, IMO it would have been more productive to hit directly Syria, who is supporting Hezbollah and who has pushed its own anti-israeli agenda in Lebanon for too long already. In my view Lebanon has been victmized by Syrian interference and is now victimized by the violent Israeli reaction to Hezbollah. It is true that Hezbollah is a Lebanese movement but let's not forget that it is Syria who's behind it and given Lebanon proven inability to control its own territory after years of civil war and foreign occupation, the actual turn of events seems to be like a further irony of fate. As I said before, if Israel wishes to proceed with the iron fist approach, sooner or later a full scale war is bound to happen. But since ultimately the problem is between Syria and Israel, I think Israel should have retaliated against Syria rather than Lebanon. It is a scary perspective but at least it makes more sense. At least to me.

Well I agree that Syria should be the ultimate Isreali target but before that can happen they would have to reduce or eliminate the Hezbollah presence on their flank.

Those actions killed, without warning or provocation, 8 Canadians who had no more idea this was coming than anyone else outside of Israel. So yeah, you know I think that gives me the right to be critical. And who do you think I am to come up with solutions, and why do I have to come up with solutions when I'm not the one doing the killing on either side?

Minimizing events? I stated precisely the events that happened to which the Israeli PM stated were "an act of war" even as, on the same day of these events, Israel bombed the Lebanon International Airport and began the process of leveling the country.

I didn't say they should just "sit back and take it", that's a strawman and a false dichotomy, and Lebanon is not the "Arab world" and its not only 16,000-40,000 Canadians who were there, but also 25,000 Americans and perhaps upward of 40-50,000 Europeans, several thousand Australians, and thousands more from other parts of the world outside the "Arab world".

As to the issue of fault, if you know anything at all about the region then you should realize there is plenty of blame to go around on all sides, and that Israel's hands are far from clean - in Palestine alone its kidnapped 10s of thousands, most of whom have been held without trial, and killed 4-5 Palestinians, mostly civilians, for every 1 Israeli killed. In Lebanon its been killing, again mostly civilians, at a ratio of 10:1 for every Israeli killed (half of whom are civilian, half of whom are uniformed military) and is the regional power, not non-existant Palestine, certainly not defenceless Lebanon, and not even Syria or Iran could stand up to it. And this is not even taking into account the unconditional support it enjoys from its Super power ally that none of the other regions do. But leveling Lebanon without warning is the only possible response it could have taken eh?

Those are simple facts, you can spin them however you want but nothing the Canadians in Lebanon did warranted their deaths while Israel not only gave no opportunity for them to leave before they began leveling the place, they also deliberately cut off as many avenues of escape as possible, trapping them there and terrorizing them with a hail of bombs and artillery as the IDF systemically ripped the country apart and continues to do so.

That you are so indifferent to the shared plight of the 25,000 of your own Americans who were forced by the IDF to endure the same deliberate collective punishment and suffering Israel inflicted upon the Lebanonese simply amazes me.

Disagraceful.

It doesn't help that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Iran pay Top Dollar to the surviving families of bomber jihadists. Last time I had heard anything, the Saudi's had funneled $4 billion to Pali bombers in the past 5 years.

Paying someone to wage war for you, while being able to deny any involvement, and thus responsibility.

I'm getting tired of this non-state actor stuff. I'm ready to start holding countries accountable for the bastards that live within them, whether they want to take responsibity or not. I'm talking about the Mexican and Columbian drug cartels just as much as hamas and hezbollah.

I'm also getting tired of the old media interpreting "Allah" as "God". Yahweh isn't the same as Allah. The religions are actually different, regardless if liberal atheists want to equivalate all of them for sake of moral simplicity.

That's never stopped you from having a very detailed and lengthy opinion on what you think the Isrealis are doing wrong and why. It just seems to me that you should have at least an idea what they should do. If not why should anyone listen to your opinions at all?

Re minimizing events: You said " Hezbollah fires rockets at an Israeli town and kidnaps two soldiers" as if it were just a one time attack against a single town and those are the only two Israelis they've ever harmed. Well what you either fail to recognize, or in your bias refuse to recognize, is that this is something the Israelis have been dealing with for decades.

You can jab a stick at a bear for only so long before he turns around and strikes back at you. Anyone else who ignores this situation and puts themselves between the jabber and the bear has little justification to cry foul if they get hurt when it happens. No warning? They had 20 years of warnings.

You want to know what I find disgraceful? It's how people like your 16 thousand Canadians and my 25 thousand fellow Americans can go on vacation and work in a country like Lebanon which allows murderers and thugs to attack innocent civilians in a neighboring country.

Are you equally tired of people referring to the protestant and catholic object of worship by the same name, "God"? The differences between those religions are big enough to have been the cause of wars and massacres.

Be prepared to keep getting tired ad infinitum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religion

Because even people who do not claim to have all the answers are entitled to opinions. OTOH, many people who claim to actually have the answers, are airbags.

I hope that answers your question.