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[bucheon bum]

Apparently Hezbollah was starting to feel jealous of Hamas and all the press it has been getting. To bring the spotlight back on itself, hezbollah decided to copy its Palestinian brothers.

Yahoo News article

Now if I were a lebanese person I'd be pretty pissed off. Thanks to some wack job shi'ites Israel is going to come in and blow up the country (again). What else is Israel to do?

Hezballah really screwed up this time.

[Gopher]

[bignate]

The Israeli's have now called up reserves, and are preparing for a broader escalation, this is going to get severely messy...they have essentially threatened to set the Lebanese infrastructure back 20-50 years...

In the end, do you figure that the Israelis will trade? I mean, they have before...it seems like they are going in to soften Hezbollah up a bit, and to perhaps make Lebanon think a little bit harder about the usefulness of Hezbollah. Also, with the statements made by Nasrallah, that the hostages are away from the front...it could be tough to regain them by force.

[Gopher]

Here are some facts to help bring the larger context into sharper focus:

(1) Hezbollah participates in Lebanon's govt;

(2) Hezbollah's policy is not to coexist with Israel but rather to destroy Israel;

(3) Both the U.S. govt and the Israelis characterize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization;

(4) The U.S. govt identifies Syria and Iran as Hezbollah's patrons (money, weapons, advice, training, and intelligence liaison); and

(5) Many critics and postmodernists allege that it is Israel who is the terrorist and, of course, the U.S. who is the state sponsor of terrorism here.

Here is a link to some useful data:

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

What remains in the background is Syria and Iran's probable complicity in any of this, although my understanding is that Rice has already started calling them out.

[Octavius Hite]

I agree with the fcat that Israel must get its soldiers back and must be strong but they seem to be playing right into the hands of the Islamists.

Byenetering back into Gaza the Israelis are now engaged in street fighting and Hamas is trying to bring the tactics from Iraq and Afghanistan to bear on the IDF. Now with Lebanon being invaded (again) Israel is in a two front war and I suspect the Mujhadeen would love for them to invade Syria, that would be perfect for bin Laden because then it would prove the US/Israel conspiracies and we could see the start of a gulf wide insurgent based war. Israel can't win trying to occupy Lebannon or Syria and the Islamists have a huge PR victory already. I think its time to start rethinking the startegy here because the Islamists are winning.

[bucheon bum]

Before this, I thought calling Hezballah a terrorist organization was wrong. I thought it was merely fighting Israel and its allies (the US and France when they were there in the 80s). Its tactics were rather inhumane and brutal at times, but hey, it did manage to "motivate" Israel to leave southern Lebanon. But now? Gotta agree with the State Department's assessment. There is absolutely no valid reason for Hezballah's actions this time.

[Gopher]

We may as well christen this the war thread, as it is clearly a large-scale war now.

I must say, from a stricty military perspective, I have always admired the way the Israelis simply just do not play. Looks like air traffic in and out of Beirut has been shut down...

[Octavius Hite]

What concerns me about this is that it has the potential to spill out of control into a World War very quickly. We are facing a very big cliff and Hezbollah just pushed us closer. If Iran or Syria makes a move it will be all out war. We should be concerned and Bush should be in the freaking middle east trying to stop this from happening.

[bigverne]

[Octavius Hite]

I wasn't criticisizing as much as suggesting that the Islamists knew this was coming and were counting on it. What they have learned in Iraq they have brought to Afghanistan and vice versa. I believe that they now want Israel to invade Gaza and Lebanon and then Syria. This is what they want, so they should try something new. What would I suggest?

1. My consistant idea has been to return to the 1967 borders, fence off the new Palestinian state and give Jereulism (sp) to the UN and have it designated an International city open to everybody and patrolled by an indepedant force.

2. If you wanted to take the tough line, I would declare Palestine persona non grata (sp) and expell all Palestinians from the terrotories. Move in and push everyone out of Gaza into Egypt then seal the border then do the West Bank and then be done with it, no more Palestine and thats it.

Either of these would be better (I think) than what is happening right now because I believe that this is a very well coordinated plan trying to draw Israel the the West into a broad (and very difficult) war throughout the Middle-east

[Junior]

Israel hands back gaza and the islamist response is to kidnap their soldiers?

[Gopher]

[Gopher]

[Junior]

[otis]