Think Friedman would write the same column if it was Russia or China suppressing a harassing neighbor with the same tactics?

No, me neither.

in Israel and Gaza: link at sig

Thier point was wrong but thier frustration now understood.

10 civilian deaths over decades caused by animals is indeed hard to bear.

Speaking of bears, there have been 25 murders committed by bears in North America alone, just since 2000.

How do we tolerate this? We need to kill the bad bears until they stop these attacks.

link at sig

"Israel does not target civilians."

So what you are saying is that ALL PALESTINIANS are not CIVILIANS, but rather COMBATANTS.

The nerve of those militant terrorist combatants, hiding behind diapers like that!

Those toddlers should take off their diapers and fight like REAL MEN.

Nazis were amateurs. They only did their thing for 7 years. Israel has been doing it for 60 years.

How does it feel to be number one?

that Israel does not want peace with the Palestinians. They know that indisciminate bombing has never cowed any populace into surrendering. It only makes them more determined to resist.

The Israelis want them to resist, because then they can propagandize that the Palestinians can't be a peace partner as they will continue to harass Israel if given their own state.

The 'goals' of the Gaza incursion are twofold:

1) Help election prospects of current Israeli govt.

2) Keep Palestinians radicalized & thus 'not Finns' and therefore unsuitable for peace negotiations of any sort.

Quite a cynical policy.

Bravo! TF's every solution is "overwhelming force."

DB: So it's safe to assume you're not all that worried about a deficit?

TF: I am worried about a deficit, but I'm much more worried about another d-word, and that's depression.

I think we need not only a bailout, I think we need, to put it in Colin Powell terms, overwhelming force. There's a crisis of confidence. Dump money from helicopters on this economy. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/11/thomas-friedman-we-need-o_n_142809.html

AMY GOODMAN: So, how did you get information about his whereabouts?

MATTHEW ALEXANDER: Well, the things that we used in Iraq is we took the methods that had been used prior to our arrival, and we changed them. The methods that the Army was using were based on fear and control, and those techniques are not effective. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/3/us_interrogator_in_iraq_says_torture

TOM ENGLEHARDT: In this sense, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the various neocons in the administration were fundamentalist idolaters – and what they worshipped was the staggering power of the U.S. military. They were believers in a church whose first tenet was the efficacy of force above all else. Though few of them had the slightest military experience, they gave real meaning to the word bellicose. They were prejudiced toward war.

With awesome military power at their command, they were also convinced that they could go it alone as the dominating force on the planet. As with true believers everywhere, they had only contempt for those they couldn't convert to their worldview. That contempt made "unilateralism" their strategy of choice, and a global Pax Americana their goal (along with, of course, a Pax Republicana at home). http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=14003

SCOTT HORTON: So does the New Mexico investigation tell us that the charges of politicization in the Department of Justice are a mirage? Hardly. It does show that a newspaper editor in New York can whip up a mirage in the pages of his paper if he wants to. http://harpers.org/archive/2009/01/hbc-90004170

When Lawyers Are War Criminals

Scott Horton

Remarks delivered at the ASIL Centennial Conference on The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, Bowling Green, OH, Oct. 7, 2006

http://www.nimj.org/documents/Horton-When_Lawyers_Are_War_Criminals.pdf

To the memory of Helmuth James von Moltke

"In France, innumerable summary executions occur, even as I sit here writing. Each day certainly more than a thousand people are killed, and thousands of German men experience murder as a matter of routine. And yet all of that is child's play compared to what's going on in Poland and Russia. Can I learn about this and just sit at the table in my heated apartment and drink tea? Don't I establish my complicity simply by doing nothing? What will I say in the future, when someone asks me: and what did you do during this time?" - Helmuth von Moltke, in a letter to his wife, Oct. 19, 1941

Conclusion

The legacy of Nuremberg and the solemn undertaking that Justice Jackson gave for the United States at the opening session, are under assault by the Bush Administration, which has embraced a radical world view that rests on a cult of power and a disdain for law. And fundamentally, this Administration has a notorious allergy against accountability in any form. But this conference is evidence that the spirit of Nuremberg has not been extinguished in the United States. And indeed, the flickering candle that was lit at Nuremberg has developed into principles which form the heart of the international legal order. We bear witness to those principles with this conference.

[Sh**ter]: Careful people, you are teetering on the edge of examining reality, and most aren't going to like it.

Other than the fact that Friedman is advocating these actions for an actual state rather than a "subnational group,"

But that's the substantive difference here isn't it and aren't you trying to evade that distinction? If that distinction weren't there, every national participant in wars from the dawn of time would be "terrorists." Duh.

Translated from Republican into English:

"When an empire does it, that means that it is not illegal...."

No charge.

Which gives another twist to the phrase "asymmetric warfare" as well.

Cheers,

... why I've stopped reading the New York Times. They've become too provincial. Instead, people should check out news sources like the Guardian, the BBC, and (yes) al-Jazeera's English-language website.

The definition of "terrorism" is certainly the best I've come across in my decade-plus study of it:

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant (1) targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. . .

Except this overlooks what's known as "State-Sponsored Terrorism". You usually see it in Latin America and various African regimes, where the machinery of the state itself undertakes politically motivated violence of varying degrees against its own citizens or some segment of the populace.

I also don't think you appreciate the fullness of Friedman's point:

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large.

We can debate the efficacy of Israel's strategy in Lebanon all we want. Ultimately it doesn't change the fact the IDF and IAF are employing what borders on "scorched earth" tactics, which by their very nature and definition cannot be the sort of surgical strikes that avoid civilian targets altogether.

It also doesn't alter the fact that we're talking about a completely different operation here, one that quite clearly is targeting both 'military' and civilians equally.

You finish with:

That is one key difference between Israel and Hamas, and is but one reason why both US political parties line up behind Israel. Because they know that Israel's actions are in accord with the best American ideals in the worst possible situation.

I can't find a way to reconcile "the best American ideals" with what's happening in Gaza. And please, don't trot out the reduction of Dresden in 1945, or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the bombing of Hanoi in 1973; the first couple were acts of officially declared war against a clearly-defined enemy, the last an act political stupidity ordered by an unstable President which served no purpose and no ideals.

What's happening in Gaza is monstrous, and should be a caution against future such operations. It should not be held up as anything else.