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Den makes a point about intellectual laziness, me leaving some of the heavy lifting to other more informed posters, but to be honest, I actually thought Sharon's good service to his country a given, and even a cursory glance at various websites proves it to be true: this man, from before the birth of Israel, fought for Israel - left the military and was called back again to fight in 1967. He's been active politically - having started and headed the Likud - and so on and so forth. I'm no fan of Sharon's - he's a conservative Bushie who blundered big on Lebanon. But Den is blind to history: George Washington made his reputation slaughtering Indians - Nelson Mandela headed a group known for killing it's opponents by burning rubber tires over their heads, Kennedy kept us in Vietnam (with all those implications), Clinton dropped bombs and supported the murderous sanctions on Iraq and bombed Africa - his wife supported the so-called illegal war in Iraq and still does. Sharon was a soldier for most of his life - and with all that killing, horrible mistakes were made, and will be made again, I'm sure, by someone else and as I first said, it's easy to sit in judgment, safe in your home, your country made secure and rich by the brutalization of someone somewhere at sometime (particularly if you're European or American) - so I guess, as Den said, I'm a bad person. But I'm an honest bad person who enjoys the fruit of my nation's brutality - while recognizing that brutality - and fair enough and aware enough to separate the Bundys from the Nixons from the Sharons and from the Hitlers.
