Letters to the Editor
domini
Published Letters: 1053 Editor's Choice: 76
-
It's the aim that's a problem.
[Read the article: The "hiding among civilians" myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem is not where Israel is shelling. Other Lebanese acknowledge that Hezbollah has been using civilian areas in the south as staging grounds. That's undisputed by even the Lebanese government. It's the aim that is sometimes a problem. Sometimes the Israelis conflate areas where Hezbollah operates with areas (like CHristian areas) where Hezbollah does not operate. That's a matter of aim and information. Shelling the civilian areas where Hezbollah is known to operate is actually popular in the Sunni and Christian areas, because Hezbollah overreached, and is evil in the best of times to non-Shia. The concern is that the Israelis may not limit themselves to Hezbollah's areas.
The rockets today trace back to civilian areas. They have been for years. If Israel keeps the targeting tight and resists the urge to be indiscriminate, they will weaken Hezbollah enough to allow the Lebanese Army to punish Hezbollah for thuggishly starting a war without even CONSULTING the Lebanese democratic government. The LA can then actually remove Hezbollah from that area. Or the Israelis will have leveled it into such a moonscape it will be unusable for Hezbollah, allowing relif to Israeli areas regularly shelled by those rockets.
Israel is not he bad guy in this picture. Even the Arab world is sick of this crew of vicious criminals. When the Arab League won't help you, Syria disses you, and they all issue so muted a criticism of Israel it looks to many like an endorsement of the bombings, Hamas and Hezbollah have overplayed their hands. By encouraging radical unrest and attempts to overthrow Arab governments, Hezbollah, Hamas, and their sponsor, Iran, have made themselves an issue as big or bigger than Israel and the West.
The criticism of Israel is not anti-semtic, but it is ill-informed. Hamas is killing as many or more Palestinians than Israel. The Palestinians are screwed in that hamas has no wish for security and peace, and they misuse money meant for health and food on rockets and armaments. They are as corrupt as Fatah, but less inept than Fatah. Hamas' uprising was an excuse for Hezbollah to act a fool. Hezbollah claimed they were helping Hamas, but they really don't give a dman about the Palestinians or Hamas- neither the Arab states nor the Persian Iran cares. Hamas was a pretext, and as soon as the real Arabs were threatened, Hamas/Palestine was ignored by the Arab world.
The Arabs fear the Persians more than the Israelis right now. They are correct. By removing Hussein in Iraq, we took away the bulwark against Iranian/Syrian adventurism and attempts to export Islamism/anti-Western radicalism. Until Iraq stabilizes, we will have this problem. This is why taking out Hussein was unwise. But it is done now. We must reap this whirlwind.
If the US is smart, we will keep or big mouths shut for as long as possible. Syria probably got Hezbollah to provoke this in the hopes the US would restrain Israel and Syria could re-invade (a number of analysts think this). Syria and Iran did not think the Arab League would stand down the way they are, or that people would call them out so quickly. Syria does not want a battlefield fight with Israel; nor does Iran. If the US stays away, we might actually get an outcome we like: democratic Lebanon able to limit Hezbollah, with Europe and other countries footing the bill for Arab League and/or other peacekeepers to reinforce the Lebanese Army.
-
Besides
[Read the article: The "hiding among civilians" myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hezbollah operatives are unreliable sources.
I wish people like the Syrians would have called for a ceasefire when Hezbollah was intermittantly attacking Israeli towns from South Lebanon all of these years. It seems hypocritical for the Hezbollah operatives to talk in the article as if they were the victims.
-
Arabs are semites
[Read the article: The "hiding among civilians" myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Arabs and Israelis are Semitic. Iranians are Persian. These ethnic and religious groups have been historic rivals. The interplay of ethnicity and religion is volatile. Shia and Sunni traditionally are religious enemies; Arab and Persian traditionally are power rivals. Some Arabs are Shia (in Iraq, there are Persian and Arab Shia), Kurds are Sunni but hated for their ethnicity in some countries (Turkey, Iraq, are examples). If not for common enemies Israel and the US, the groups would have blown each other up by now.
Iran is Persian and Shia. Syria is nominally Shia (actually Baathist- communism with heavy geographic influence). The areas bombed in Lebanon are Shia enclaves. This leads to conflicting stories- Christian and Sunni applauding the bombings and bad mouthing Syria and Hezbollah, or pictures of them sunning themselves (on MSNBC.com, for instance), next to stories of pro-Syrian Shia refugees or Shia joining Hezbollah from the shelling. The population is diverse, and for now the shelling has been quite tight by military standards. So to some Lebanese, the shelling is popular; to some it is horrible.
Shia did give tactic support to Hezbollah and call them resistance fighters for years. Hezbollah in many ways resembles Sinn Fein/IRA- the residents don't necessarily know details, but they tactically support the rebels. Hezbollah has been known to run the targeted areas for years. These are legitimate targets. There is no rear in total war (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Tet, Hue, Algiers, etc are examples). This is total war.
-
By the way grubert,
[Read the article: The "hiding among civilians" myth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a military historian and a working analyst. If you really were reading media in other languages (Der Spiegal in German, for instance), you'd recognize most of what I discussed is mainstream in the national security community.
I would like to see a discussion here without knee jerk screams of anti-semitism or knee jerk Israeli bashing. That would be truly amazing.