The words of a Canadian United Nations observer written just days before he was killed in an Israeli bombing of a UN post in Lebanon are evidence Hezbollah was using the post as a “shield” to fire rockets into Israel, says a former UN commander in Bosnia.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=37278180-a261-421d-84a9-7f94d5fc6d50

May I take this one TomY?

http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/povrace.html

I did? Where exactly did I do that?

Care to explain why you equate poor people with blacks and immigrants TomY?

THIS is all out war:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hamburg_-_1944-45.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dresd_4.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tokyo_firebombing.jpg

This is not:
http://voanews.com/english/images/ap_israel_lebanon_strikes_14jul06_210.jpg

Paul continues is idiocy with “Nobdy in Lebanon gives a fuck that Israel is using  smart bombs”

Uh, yea, see my links to dresden above as to why, if what you say is true, the lebanese are complete and utter idiots. Or they just listen to the american leftists too much and actually BELIEVE what israel is doing is “all out war”.

So lets dispense with this historical revinisism and the lunatic left’s supposition that the “right believes that the only choice is between total war and utter ruin.” Talk about cartoonish, Paul. No, the right believes israel should smash hezbollah, and do it in a fashion that prevents as many civilian casualties as possible. Because at the end of the day, we recognize who the real terrorists are, and who they target, somthing that escapes Paul, Ollie and the rest of his gang of appeasers.

Are you going to ban me now ollie? Or maybe just release some of my personal information to try and shut me up? Just curious….

Abacha, General Sani Nigeria
Amin, Idi Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo Bolivia
Batista, Fulgencio Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal Brunei
Botha, P.W. South Africa
Branco, General Humberto Brazil
Cedras, Raoul Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo Honduras
Christiani, Alfredo El Salvador
Diem, Ngo Dihn Vietnam
Doe, General Samuel Liberia
Duvalier, Francois Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude Haiti
Fahd bin’Abdul-’Aziz, King Saudi Arabia
Franco, General Francisco Spain
Hitler, Adolf Germany
Hassan II Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez El Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko Zaire
Montt, General Efrain Rios
Guatemala
Noriega, General Manuel Panama
Ozal, Turgut Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza Iran
Papadopoulos, George Greece
Park Chung Hee South Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto Chile
Pol Pot Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios Guatemala
Salassie, Halie Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. Nicaragua
Smith, Ian Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo Paraguay
Suharto, General Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas Dominican Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed Pakistan

That should do it.

Well let’s get the second part out of the way first: Pedro, you’re an idiot. Phew. It feels good to finally get that off my chest. Now for the actual argument.

Dershowitz has, followin much of the right wing, distorted the UNs position to attack a strawman rather than, you know, actually address the argument. The UN is not taking Hezbollah’s side over and above Isreal’s, neither is it comparing one to the other. The UN is arguing on behalf of innocent civilians who have suddenly found themselves caught up in a warzone. Dershowitz and the rest of the right wing would love to deny these people their status as citizens so that we can let the carpet bombing begin. Why not firebomb Beirut? It worked in Dresden.

Because, as I said above, the right believes that the only choice is between total war and utter ruin. They just can’t understand that it is the total war response to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah itself that leads to the inevitable failure they hope to avoid. Nobdy in Lebanon gives a fuck that Israel is using “smart bombs.” Do you think anyone on the ground looks at the body of a dead family member and thinks, “Well, at least Isreal tried.”? No.
Some of them will mourn and try to move on with their love but just enought of them will turn to follow the first asshole with a gun and an ideology of revenge who seduces them with false promises of reclaiming control of their lives through death. And the cycle goes on. And even as you idiots argue for total war, Israel understands what it’s set in motion.

Israeli officials are now trying to scale back expectations and pull themselves out of the rhetorical hole that the radical conservatives have dug for them:

With the fighting in its third week, however, Israelis are being told that Hezbollah can be weakened but not eradicated, that Israeli forces will not be able to police the border zone themselves, and that Hezbollah’s rockets continue to pose a threat to Israeli towns.

“The target is not to totally dismantle Hezbollah,” said Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. “What we are doing now is to try to send a message to Hezbollah.”

Yaron Ezrahi, a political analyst at Hebrew University, said that “the rhetoric from the political establishment was extremely overheated in the early days” of the confrontation.

“Now they are trying to calibrate people’s expectations, bring them more in line with what might actually be achieved,” he said.

Over here in the states, the rhetoric only ratchets up as the right wing desperately tries to land as many body blows on the left as it can before, god forbid, calm breaks out again. The right has done nothing but present a cartoonish scenario and cartoonish solutions and anyone who disagrees with them, well, they must be anti-semitic appeasers. The right wing doesn’t give a fuck about Israel or Hezbollah or the Middle East. All of them are just another means through which to attack their real enemy: Democrats.

How do I know that? Because it doesn’t matter to conservatives that the vast majority of Dems and progressives agree that Israel has the right to defend itself. No, to satisfy the right wing you also have to cheerlead for the most extreme response that the right can think up otherwise, say it with me, your an anti-semitic appeaser.

What really makes me laugh, although maybe it should make me cry, is that the first guys, like Dershowitz, to yell the loudest for bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East, are the quickest to turn right around and argue that democracy and freedom are what make the West so weak in the face of terrorism:

THE HEZBOLLAH and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists can exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.

It’s the old argument “They use our freedoms against us so maybe it’s time to consider that maybe we’re too free.” If only we got rid of such quaint notions as human rights and freedom of the press we wouldn’t be in this situation, Dershowitz argues. If only the press would say want we want them to say and promote the idea of total war, if only we could replace human rights with a “sliding scale” definition of civilian that slides at our convenience. Yes, indeed, let’s kill them all and make the world safe for New and Improved Freedom and Democract Lite.

Why is it so hard for lefitsts to actually ADDRESS the argument, instead of constantly attacking the person who made it…?

If the UN cannot  or will not  distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

If the UN cannot  or will not  distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

If the UN cannot  or will not  distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Well, sure. That’s the Democratic’s that hold the power baby! The rest of you are, from what I’ve been told, are “working Americans” getting their pockets picked by us rich “Rethugs” all the time.

Or are we supposed to be poor blacks or immigrants who are too stupid, stunted and irrational to understand that Republicans have our best interests at heart?

Hmm. I didn’t say anything with regard to race or ethnicity when talking about poor people. I guess you think all blacks and immigrants are poor. Bigot.

Most of us have no problem criticising the UN.

I’m sure you don’t. The problem is, liberals have a propensity to lecture people to take the UN seriously, buy into all their idiotic treaties (Kyoto, Ballistic Missile, etc), and generally heap upon the institution praise it does not deserve in any way, shape or form. It is a completely USELESS body that is bureaucratic to the core. It coddles dictatorships and other awful regimes. Think about it for a moment. Name a time when the UN reacted to the actions of Robert Mugabe in a similar fashion they react to what Israel is doing. Can you explain rationally how in bloody hell the UN allows the Sudan to sit on the UN Commission on Human Rights?

The entire thing is a joke. Therefore, your proclamation that you have no problem criticizing them really doesn’t mean much.

What, if hezbollah does it, it s terrorism, but if Israel does it, it s not.

Well, I’m not sure if you’re serious, but in case you are: Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets into Israel, and has been for weeks. They do not know (or care, one has to assume) where they will hit until they blow up. Israel, on the other hand, has been using aircraft (extremely accurate) and artillery (less accurate but still pretty dang good) to target the launch points of these rockets. The difference is significant and obvious to any objective observer.