The U.S/Israel leaders

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Ultimately, and to some Unfortunatley, whomever has the bigger gun will often be the big man on campus,
Take for example the large charecter and big muscle of the Jocks, ogre, in the Nerds and revenge of the nerds series. He is an idiot and often forces the Nerds to think of a alternate strategy to get back at the jocks for their wrongdoing's.

So unless soome of us are in the presidential seat, or in charge of a large country, there is practically nothing we can do, unfortunately.

I could be wrong, and correct me if i am

I lost several blood kin in WW2. Such is war, such is life.

ruveyn

If terrorists choose to use mosques or hospitals to store muntions in, as safe houses, or to stage operations out of, then it is THEY who are responsible if that building is the target of an air strike, shelling, or any other attack to clear it.
The blood of the innocent is on THEIR hands, not on those fighting the terrorist.
You obviously cannot have a successful campaign against any enemy if they can be allowed to safely use facilities like that with impunity.
It’s a tough deal no matter how you look at it but you have to keep in perspective the objectives of the campaign and the willingness of and level the terrorists will stoop to.
You have to take the gloves off and beat them at their own game.
Word War II is a good example of taking the gloves off and it appears to have worked.
Wars must be treated as wars and not police actions or peace keeping efforts.

WWII was a fundamentally different conflict from what we're seeing now, Raptor. It was clear who our enemies were, and they were uniformed and formed a conventional army that we could fight. That is not the situation now, and to pretend it is goes beyond foolishness.

Orwell wrote;

I had originally wrote right after the WW2 comparison that it was a different kind of war but deleted it out before I posted it since I thought it would be too obvious.
Well, apparently it’s not obvious to some of us. My bad.

The gist of what I was trying to say has to do with rules of engagement and their crippling affect on the ability to win a war. Of course it should not be legal to mow down innocents just for existing or reprisals against civilians. What I’m talking about is the freedom and ability to ferret out and eliminate the enemy wherever they live or operate from.
This will mean friendly casualties and I’m not going to even try to tap-dance around it.
It’s either take the friendly casualties now and deny the terrorist safe harbor, one cell at a time, from otherwise off limits targets or continue to try and work around the rules of engagement and have the terrorist factions perpetuate their acts for years or decades.

A good analogy would be peeling off a Band-Aid either slow or fast. Either way it’s going to hurt but at least with the fast way it won’t hurt for as long.
Yes, that grossly oversimplifies the situation but on the other hand that’s pretty much what it boils down to.

You all can kick this around all you want but I’ve said my piece and I’m done with it.

The issue is that "taking the gloves off" has no meaning in this context. We have no idea who our enemies are; where do you want us to attack? You're tying to aim a cruise missile at a gnat. The conventional (brute-force) method of warfare in this situation is not only ineffective, it's stupid. Our problem isn't that we aren't fighting hard enough, it's that the nature of a guerrilla war makes the mightiest armies in the world completely impotent. Do you really think the Soviets went easy on the Mujahideen? Of course not. It's just damn near impossible to actually win a guerrilla war.


Well, that's essentially what we've been doing. Even by conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the invasion and occupation. On top of that, millions of Iraqis have been displaced from their homes.


Terrorism by its nature can not be defeated. Any disillusioned individual can become a terrorist- and we are creating angry, bitter families with every Iraqi we kill.

Anyways, I'm not sure "terrorist" is an appropriate label for the people fighting us in Iraq. I'd call them guerrillas, but "terrorist" seems to be the popular name for any of our enemies nowadays. The distinction is semantic but it has important implications for how we react to the problem.

Your casual acceptance of what is euphemistically labeled collateral damage is taken under the assumption that innocents are somehow responsible for the situations in which they find themselves killed and that assumption is totally unwarranted.

People should understand that the Israelis set out when their state was proclaimed to start a war between the United States and the Arabs in general. This is why Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sept 11 2001 that "it's very good". This campaign included the trickery of the Lavon Affair in 1954 when the Israelis bombed some American targets in Egypt in a bid to have Egyptians blamed and provoking an incident. Later, the Americans entered Lebanon to hold the land for the invading Israelis. After they were drawn in fighting against the Shi'ite and Druze forces, their Marine barracks were bombed. A former Mossad official says that the Israelis knew about the hit to come but kept quiet. Naturally this bombing served to whip up anger and hatred towards Arabs in the United States. Israel is also responsible for framing Libya for the La Belle disco bombing used to bomb Libya and kill Qaddafi's daughter.

September 11th 2001 was Israel's masterpiece, the culmination of over 50 years of work.

You only label hamas terrorists because they are Arabs, Muslims. No one else can be terrorists, especially Israeli soldiers because the US would never associate with terrorists. Be honest the only reason you say that hamas are terrorists and should be held liable is because you are too stubborn to admit that any ally of the US can do anything wrong. You just wont accept it because you are led to believe that only Muslims are evil enough to be terrorists.

You need to get a lesson in both history and geography. Israel is an Aparthied state, the first and only illegal state ever to be endorsed by other governments. If you were to lok at Gaza itself you would realise, especially since it is blockaded by Israel, that if any fighting were to occur all Palestinians whether or not Hamas uses public buildings to fight, will be injured or killed. If Israel shows any aggression the people have nowhere to run or escape any violence.



Where the heck are they supposed to go. They are not allowed to flee in to Egypt. The ports are cut off by Israeli soldiers. They are sitting ducks. Israel knows full well that any aggression will kill huge amounts of civilians. Blaming Hamas is just a cowardly excuse to defend unwaranted aggression.

Where's Hamas now? How come you don't hear about them? If they were a real threat they would still be sending missiles into Israel at this very moment, but instead they very conveniently only start firing from hospitals, mosques and nurseries when it's election time.


Why doesn't anyone answer the above?

I guess you're right, nothing will ever change. If you have power you will abuse it, and because people are fearful of your power they will believe any justification when you clearly abuse that power. The world has two types of people. The ones who take power and the ones who follow those who take power. I've tried my best to get my point across and to make people see things differently. Abuse of power cannot be tolerated. I've had my say, and that's it. I guess most people will never learn.

Goodbye.

I think it is technically possible by killing everyone, but that's hardly a desired solution. And it would be a strain to call it a victory.

I'm not even going to touch the actual topic of this thread, I don't really see the point, but I'd like to make a quick interjection for the benefit of a few of the participants; passion does not equal persuasion. Angy, abusive posts do nothing to further a point of view, and in fact detract from it in that they make it seem that the poster either doesn't have a valid point or is incapable of making one, and has resorted to emotion laden rhetoric instead. Most people aren't effectively swayed by being beaten over the head, just a thought to keep in mind.

Yes you are 100% right. I apologize to anyone if I was too hot headed in making my point. I too apologize if I offended anyone in anyway. I know my views may be different and at times unorthodox (sorry no pun intended).

For anyone who knows me on WP, will know that I do not show any types of aggressive or derogatory behaviour. The last few weeks have been a bit tough on me, as I take human suffering personally. I guess I shouldn't have been so blunt with the way I constructed the subject heading.

My initial reason for starting the thread was to help others see that abuse of power should not be, just brushed under the carpet.

Again I am sorry for being so blunt. I should have constructed my argument in an orderly adult way. Again my apologies. This behaviour is totally out of the ordinary for me.

One of your better posts, imho. Quite apt and well said.


M.

You are mixing up your Security Council resolutions. The "all means necessary" resolution used as a cover to attack Iraq was done to remedy a specific situation - the invasion of Kuwait. After Iraqi troops no longer were in Kuwait, the resolution's function had been implemented. This "cease fire" of which you speak was a matter of finalising this... the cease-fire was only concerned with matters of cleaning up the battlefield, dealing with prisoners, ending the fighting.

This was followed by a new and different resolution - the "weapons of mass destruction" resolution. This was not at all connected with the ceasefire. Now, prior to the "all necessary means" resolution, an older resolution had been implemented calling for trade sanctions on Iraq until time that Iraqi troops left Kuwait. As this resolution's conditions were satisfied, the sanctions should have ended at once. However, the U.S. arranged that this new resolution be passed stating that these trade sanctions will remain in place until the "weapons of mass destruction" matter is cleared up.

There is a myth that has been strongly propagated by the Right that states that the U.S. had the right to march to Baghdad under the Security Council Resolution authorising "all necessary means", that the war option was "live" until "regime change". The U.S decided to not exercise this "right" in exchange for Iraq promising to give up its WMD. Therefore, if the Iraqis didn't comply with the WMD issue, then the U.S. had the "right" to charge to Baghadad. They then said that as the U.S. was not satisfied with the WMD situation in 2003, that it exercised its "right" to charge to Baghdad and needed no other UN authorisation.

This is total nonsense. As I said, the WMD issue was linked to trade sanctions. A new resolution was promulgated to maintain the trade sanctions because the original trade sanctions resolution was linked to the withdrawal from Kuwait, and as this withdrawal was effected, the U.S. required some other excuse to maintain the sanctions, and so they passed this resolution making additional demands on Iraq. Iraq never agreed to any disarmament, this was ordered unilaterally through the Security Council. Lastly, the original "use of force" resolution was to get Iraqi troops out of Kuwait and out of Kuwait only and did not give to the U.S. the right to march to Baghdad or the option to march there in future.

I don't take sides on Israel-Palestine. They're both in the wrong, and trying to blame one side over the other is not a productive way to move towards peace.


You say something this absurd and have the gall to tell someone else they need a lesson in history?