So what is your solution?I can admit when I am wrong can you?Are you ideologically blinded ?Smear and bomb throw?That's right you have no solution just as I suspected.

"How do we get out of this circle of depravity??"

Simple.

We lift ourselves up by our bootstraps.

For those of you who voted for Obama, you cannot do that. Go ahead and put on some boots, stand up, reach down and grab the bootstraps and try to lift yourself up! I know it is hard to believe, but it cannot be done.

BELIEVE!

It still cannot be done.

Omooex....if all Palestinian Arabs had your frame of reference, I would not object to a unitary state (not that it is my decision to make). However, history has inflicted wounds on both populations which makes a Democratic state in Palestine unachievable at this time. Would only that religion, tribalism and nationalism could be eliminated all over the world....but before I start singing Lennon's "Imagine", we have to get real. Arab Muslims have to develop their own pluralistic democratic state anywhere before I would have the confidence to enter into a pluralistic, democratic state with them, especially one in which my group would be a minority in short order. Just one---anywhere. Until that time, it is not fair to analogize to European states, which have a democratic tradition....even there, tribal conflicts keep coming out and destroying countries, such as Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and currently in Belgium. Let's hope that a cease fire will be obtained shortly and all parties can head to the negotiating table with the US making a constructive contribution, for a change.

Aimlessly shooting rockets towards civilians (as Hamas and Hezbollah do) and dropping bombs from 35,000 feet that you know will slaughter many civilians while viewing that slaughter as a strategic benefit (as Friedman advocates) are acts that have far more in common with each other than differences.

Left unmentioned by the dispassionate and objective Glenn Greenwald, who is not a slave to his emotional biases, that Hamas practices, as strategy, the deliberate hiding in civilian areas.

This action is done in the hopes that Israel will slaughter innocents and therefore draw global condemnation from the likes of Glenn Greenwald.

Yet to GG, Hamas is not complict in these deaths, and the false equivalency of Hamas rockets and Israeli relatiation cements itself just as the Neo-Cons made our invasion of Iraq the "natural" reaction to Saddam Hussein "gassing his own people" (20 years earlier).

It's amazing what propaganda tricks you can achieve if you remove chronology from the discussion.

What a disgrace Glenn's post is. The only nugget of truth is that the right wing chickenhawks are, as usual, unhinged. But this is no more proof of the justification of the inherent actions than is Osama Bin Laden supporting Glenn's sympathies that the people of Gaza are under attack from an America-Israel "war on Gaza."

Again, I haven't caught up (and may give up, I can't read as fast as people are posting). The rules on white phosphorus are from the U.N. 1980 Geneva Treaty on Certain Kinds of Conventional Weapons (often called CCW).

Protocol III of the treaty deals with incendiary devices. Article 2 of that protocol contains the relevant language:

1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.

2. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

3. It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

Note: This treaty was signed and ratified and the Protocols were signed and ratified as separate acts. Israel is not a signatory to Protocol III on Incendiary Weapons as far as I can tell. Neither is the United States.

The only question I have is, do you still consider yourselves Americans or Westerners anymore or are you just visitors here awaiting the big jihad.

Strong words coming from an obvious America hater such as yourself.

"In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas ..." - Friedman

When the U.S. Founders declared their independence, they declared the reasons and causes which impelled them to the Revolutionary War. Israel apparently feels no such respect for the opinions of mankind, when even her staunchest defenders don't understand the purpose of the war they applaud.

Platitudes about "peace" and "security" don't cut the mustard. If the object was, as stated, to end the random mortar attacks, there were ample military resources for doing that. If the object was, speculatively, to end the importation of such weapons, there were many tactics that could have accomplished that with relative ease.

Instead, what we witness is a concerted military invasion, whose only reasonable object is to destroy the democratically elected (however malicious and incompetent) government of Gaza. But, we can only guess, because the Israeli government has never explicitly stated its objectives.

Given that disdain for the "opinions of mankind", Israel should not be surprised at the disdain that its extreme actions have engendered.

Thanks for the correction. Elsewhere I said "many" but sometimes the fingers don't go as fast as the head ... mea culpa. I am well aware that there is great diversity of opinion amongst the citizenry of the USA. It is one of my criticisms of your government that it does not in any material way reflect this.

Yet I would like to take up your main point. Obama is a former consitutional lawyer, is he not? Of all people, especially one who is claiming to aim to set things straight, he should know there exists no Constitutional authority for signing statements and executive orders. So too should his much-lauded-here-and-elsewhere OLC designate, but I will bet you personally 100 of your American dollars that she will never challenge him over these matters.

(By the time I might have to pay up, 4 years from now, that will be about 5 Euros :-))

I understand, none of us want to face the possibility that our political insitutions are irredeemably corrupt. I didn't. But, sadly, I believe they are.

I completely grok that you may have a different point of view, but I put it to you that the US' lonely position on Israel is NOT a consequence of being more pure than every other nation on earth (to return briefly to the topic).

Regards

SM