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2006-08-12 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

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Posted by john 2006-08-12 10:43|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Hezbollah exists because of Iran. Period. Poor Lebanese Shiites can't support a terrorist group. Without Iran, no Hezbollah. And who brought Islamist Iran into existence? We have Jimmy Carter to thank.

Charles Glass seems to think that Muslims are a bunch of noble savages provoked by an evil West into righteous responses. The reality is that there are a lot of poor people in the world. Most of them aren't terrorists. What Muslims are doing isn't all that new - it's an attempt to exact tribute by means of carefully applied violence. Muhammad himself showed the way by organizing a bunch of caravan bandits into one of the largest empires the world has seen. These guys are just trying to expand the realm of Islamic empire and exact tribute from the non-Muslim rabble. Glass seems to think that Muslims are static actors responding to what the West does. The reality is that they are dynamic actors working to reshape the world in their image. Inside every Muslim isn't a Charles Glass struggling to get out.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-08-12 11:04|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-08-12 11:04|| Front Page Top

#2 After the PLO left in 1982 and the Palestinians of Lebanon were disarmed...

hmmmm...then who's shooting all the weapons (small and heavy) in Ein El-Hellhole? I call BS. Also, the Leb prisoners "illegally" transferred across national borders? If Lebanon were to actually, say PUNISH, criminals, perhaps the Jooooos wouldn't have Lebs in their jails. Nice moral equivalence.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-08-12 11:05|| 2006-08-12 11:05|| Front Page Top

#3 I think the fundamental problem with Charles Glass's analysis is that he views military prowess and endurance in battle by upstart forces as evidence of justifiable and righteous grievances. The reality is that military prowess has nothing to do with the justice of a cause, underdog or otherwise. Genghis Khan wasn't any better or worse than the potentates of the gigantic powers surrounding Mongolia. He was just a better military leader than they were.

The Chinese weren't uniquely oppressed or poor as people go when the Communists took over. The PLA was just stronger than Kuomintang forces, which had been shattered fighting a long, exhausting war against the Japanese. The fact is that a war is a contest between two sets of leaderships and peoples. Israel could not prevail in Lebanon because its people (and by extension, its leadership, since Israel is a democracy) were weak, not because Hezbollah was some invincible force given strength by justifiable grievances.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-08-12 11:38|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-08-12 11:38|| Front Page Top

#4 He's right, like causes have like effects. The question is the verity of the first statement. If the first part of a conditional statement is false, the overall statement is true regardless of the truth of the second.

Posted by Perfesser 2006-08-12 11:52|| 2006-08-12 11:52|| Front Page Top

#5 "Three years later, Israel attempted to put this right by invading southern Lebanon, but still it failed to disarm the Palestinians. In 1982, it went all the way to Beirut to expel the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Thus, a new enemy was born: Hizballah, who took up arms for the occupied Shiites of the south."

There is a tall assumption here that Hezbollah was entirely the fault of the Israel invasion into Lebanon. I might appear that way in hindsight, it is pure speculation unless one can show that warnings of this were issued prior to the invasion, any more than it is pure speculation to suggest Hezbollah would not have been created to counter the Palestinian influence in Lebanon.

We knew there was a Sunni Shiite schism in Iraq. Did we know how that would react in 2003? In hindsight, yes, but at the time, no.

Can we extract in either Lebanon or Iraq how much of this unrest is the work of third party outsiders who would be active no matter what Israel or the US does today or did do in the past?
It is a valuable discussion but placing blame in hindsight is just superficial.

Posted by john">john 2006-08-12 12:29|| 2006-08-12 12:29|| Front Page Top

#6 j: There is a tall assumption here that Hezbollah was entirely the fault of the Israel invasion into Lebanon.

This isn't just a tall assumption. It's a moronic assumption. Iran has been spending big money mobilizing Shiite terrorist groups throughout the Arab world. The attack on the Mecca's Grand Mosque in 1979 was carried out by Shiites with backing from Iran's mullahs. The problem with doing this in most Arab states is that they had well-organized and centralized security forces that could take down these terrorist movements even in cases where Shiites were the majority. Except in Lebanon, which was overrun with militias and occupied by Syria, which supported whichever terrorist movement would make the most trouble for the Israelis. Which is why Israeli invaded Lebanon. Funny how Charles Glass never mentions Syria's role in supplying both the PLO and Hezbollah as its cat's paw against the other Lebanese factions. But then again, he lives in a fantasy world in which Muslims are the good guys engaged in what he views as a holy jihad against the West.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-08-12 13:20|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-08-12 13:20|| Front Page Top

#7 ...his attempt to stage a pro-American coup Damascus in 1957 forced Syria into the Russian embrace.

I'm sure that the Soviets were just innocently hanging out, doing nothing when Syria just flew into their arms.

ZF: It's worse than assuming that everyone else is a static actor. These sorts of arguments presuppose that the US and Israel are the only sources of evil in the world. Everyone else lives in some sort of pre-Edenic paradise and any evil in their society must be caused by some ripple or another of American or Israeli action.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-12 19:46|| 2006-08-12 19:46|| Front Page Top

#8 He's right, like causes have like effects. The question is the verity of the first statement. If the first part of a conditional statement is false, the overall statement is true regardless of the truth of the second.

Perfesser, pardon me, but you're an idiot.

If any part of a conditional statement is false the entire statement is false.

That is a mathematical fact.

A-B does not equal A+C if A, B, or C=0

Like causes may have like effects, but more often than not they have dissimilar results.

A more efficient statement might have been as follows,

A attacks B, B fails to respond in a comprehensive manner and A continues their attacks, C decides that B does not have the resolve to suppress A ruthlessly (enough) and thus begins attacking B as well finally provoking a response from B. At this stage D decides that B's response has been "disproportionate" and that B must acquiesce to A and D's demands and calls for a ceasefire. E, who has been on B's side for quite awhile decides that it doesn't have the stomach to stand up to D, caves in, and forces B into a ceasefire effectively giving A and C a de facto positive resolution to the equation.

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg 2006-08-12 20:38|| www.fire-on-the-suns.com]">[www.fire-on-the-suns.com] 2006-08-12 20:38|| Front Page Top

#9 is the answer "B"?

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-08-12 21:12|| 2006-08-12 21:12|| Front Page Top

#10 DUH!

(Sorry, Fred. You already knew the answer)

Posted by FOTSGreg">FOTSGreg 2006-08-12 22:15|| www.fire-on-the-suns.com]">[www.fire-on-the-suns.com] 2006-08-12 22:15|| Front Page Top

#11 The real madness underlying our approach to fighting terrorism is the assumption that the terrorists' sponsors can hold us accountable for our foreign policies, but we can't hold them accountable for their terrorist attacks. The reality is that we can hold them accountable - and when we retaliate in a serious manner (i.e. kill significant numbers of people), they back off. The problem is that our leadership isn't wired for retaliation, it's always got be about "a new world order" (Bush I) or "freedom" (Bush II). Thanks to Bush II, we have gotten two democratically-elected Islamist governments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. What are the odds that elections will continue once GI's depart those respective countries?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2006-08-12 22:57|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2006-08-12 22:57|| Front Page Top

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