Monday, July 24, 2006
Raffie's Rant (the middle East Conflict)
The following is posted on behalf of my friend Raffie.
My thoughts on the situation in my father's home country.
The basic version: it blows ass
The Raffie cynical version: might is right in this world my friends. Israel is the mighty so they can do what and as they please and the US is mightier and they support Israel so that compounds it.
The advanced version: the fact that the exercise is pointless and never going to achieve the (politically) stated objectives is moot, to start with.
So Israel says it want s to protect its borders by neutralizing Hezbollah right? My first premise is then what they should be doing is destroying Tehran (Iran) and Damascus(Syria) and not obliterating a defenseless country....not that Lebanon is exactly defenseless....it has 75000 ground troops, some helicopter gun ships, a few armored vehicles....but now Hezbollah is a real army more or less...populated by LEBANESE....yeah I said Lebanese, there may be a few Palestinians Syrians, and Iranians etc but essentially it is a militant Shiite Lebanese group that formed in the after math of the PLO leaving Lebanon in the 1982, the last time Israel went on an all out offensive inside Lebanon. Like then, all this current action will achieve is to push more Lebanese to hating Israel and thus give Syria and Iran more stupid asses to do their front work for them. Ironic how vicious the cycle actually is.
Which goes to my second premise, Syria and Iran can achieve their objective of attacking Israel without direct danger to them by using groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel can fool their population by saying they are defending them by then attacking these nicely set-up puppets (Hezbollah and Hamas).
Who benefits? Well Israel can remain a military state, the USA can continue to defend their support of Israel against “terrorists” and Syria and Iran continue to be heroes to the Islamic world.
Who suffers? In all of this it is Lebanon and the Lebanese people being punished by their own hate of Israel, no matter how justified, the stupidity of Hezbollah for not seeing that Syria and Iran are using them, the malice of Syria and Iran for using them and the cowardice of Israel for not attacking the true source of their worries...Syria and Iran. All that remains is to realize that the true powerbrokers in all of this remains the USA who actually have the power to fix all of this but then again that does not fit their current foreign policies.
And the average American voter/citizen/ accomplice by association had the nerve on 09/12/01 to ask “Why did they attack us? What did we do them?” Maybe it was “What we did not do for them?” to be asked.
Comment please.
My thoughts on the situation in my father's home country.
The basic version: it blows ass
The Raffie cynical version: might is right in this world my friends. Israel is the mighty so they can do what and as they please and the US is mightier and they support Israel so that compounds it.
The advanced version: the fact that the exercise is pointless and never going to achieve the (politically) stated objectives is moot, to start with.
So Israel says it want s to protect its borders by neutralizing Hezbollah right? My first premise is then what they should be doing is destroying Tehran (Iran) and Damascus(Syria) and not obliterating a defenseless country....not that Lebanon is exactly defenseless....it has 75000 ground troops, some helicopter gun ships, a few armored vehicles....but now Hezbollah is a real army more or less...populated by LEBANESE....yeah I said Lebanese, there may be a few Palestinians Syrians, and Iranians etc but essentially it is a militant Shiite Lebanese group that formed in the after math of the PLO leaving Lebanon in the 1982, the last time Israel went on an all out offensive inside Lebanon. Like then, all this current action will achieve is to push more Lebanese to hating Israel and thus give Syria and Iran more stupid asses to do their front work for them. Ironic how vicious the cycle actually is.
Which goes to my second premise, Syria and Iran can achieve their objective of attacking Israel without direct danger to them by using groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel can fool their population by saying they are defending them by then attacking these nicely set-up puppets (Hezbollah and Hamas).
Who benefits? Well Israel can remain a military state, the USA can continue to defend their support of Israel against “terrorists” and Syria and Iran continue to be heroes to the Islamic world.
Who suffers? In all of this it is Lebanon and the Lebanese people being punished by their own hate of Israel, no matter how justified, the stupidity of Hezbollah for not seeing that Syria and Iran are using them, the malice of Syria and Iran for using them and the cowardice of Israel for not attacking the true source of their worries...Syria and Iran. All that remains is to realize that the true powerbrokers in all of this remains the USA who actually have the power to fix all of this but then again that does not fit their current foreign policies.
And the average American voter/citizen/ accomplice by association had the nerve on 09/12/01 to ask “Why did they attack us? What did we do them?” Maybe it was “What we did not do for them?” to be asked.
Comment please.
# posted by Skratchy @ 4:35 PM 
