Top 10 doublespeak definitions for the War in Lebanon
1
Cease-Fire: Can’t be done, impossible, no way, how dare you even suggest it, are you friends with Mel Gibson?
2
Sustainable Cease-fire: We’ll give your boys another 10 days to decimate Lebanon after it had just managed to recover from the last time you invaded and raped it, as long as it is sustainable.
3
48 Hour Ceasefire: Doh, the army has killed a lot of kids this time, we need 48 hours for the media to focus on something else so we can get back to it.
4
Self-defense: Taking an eye for most of your face, including blowing up your home, economic crucifixtion and group punishment. Plus burning down any of your pets homes, you never know how many pets later become Hezbollah agents.
5
Justified Response: Bringing a laser guided phosphorus bunker busting missile to a knife fight.
6
Hezbollah Target: This can be anything from bridges, apartment buildings, grain carrying trucks and Flour mills. Oh and apparently bunkers filled with children and UN peace keepers count as well.
7
Pathology of war: Either The Israeli self-image of rationality, self-confidence, restraint, pragmatism, and marshal moral superiority are delusions and myths, constructed to protect the Israeli psyche, manipulated by the state to keep alive the specter of existential terror in the Israeli public and to disguise the state's raison d'etre, expansion and ethnic cleansing in Palestine OR This is all about the return of two kidnapped soldiers.
8
UN Posts: Even if you’ve called our friendly 0800 ‘Your bombing me by mistake’ Israeli Defense hotline 10 times screaming for us to stop aiming at you, I’m afraid you could be a camouflaged Hezbollah Target. And the last thing we need when we are committing a dirty war on the flimsiest of excuses, is the international community.
9
UN Resolution: To be ignored and belittled and labeled as unbalanced, bordering on anti-Semitic. Put out press releases suggesting Mel Gibson wants to replace Kofi Annan
10
International condemnation: To be shrugged off with the same disdain the United States showed the world when it invaded Iraq. Suggest Mel Gibson has something to do with it.
posted by Bomber @ 12:18 pm
11 comments
11 Comments:
I will post a comment I made last night in an earlier blog, that is not getting the attention anymore. It has been edited - and please play the ball not the man
***
The only thing that has kept Israel viable has been its ability to make surrounding countries think that if they were to engage Israel militarily, they would lose. This is a significant moment - Hezbollah are the first Arab "organisation" not to crack immediately under Israeli air assualt.
Consider the ramifications is a ceasefire were to occur now. Hezbollah is still intact. It still maintains its operational ability to strike. Israel would have failed in its ability to deal to an Arab army.
In 56 Israel defeated the Egyptian army, and again it won in 67. Thus the geopolitical calculations in the region has been that the Israeli defence forces were the most powerful. Yes there has been low intensity conflict - terrorism etc, but the assumption was that the Israelis had a conventional advantage.
I believe that this is the reason Israel will, and must, engage Hezbollah - and we will probably see a ground offensive. A ceasefire now would mean a political victory for Hezbollah - and a fundamental shift in the politics of the middle east.
Israel can not let this happen. As much as the left tries to portray them as innocent, the surrounding countries want Israels destruction.
Hezbollah will not stop the rocket attacks on Haifa until they are made to by Israel. Israel wants to push them back, and will try to do so
The cease fire announced this morning is on air strikes only, and I suspect Israel is gearing up for a ground offensive.
Remember, Clausewitz wrote that War is politics by other means. This is another example of real-politik and to be understood objectively, it should be viewed through this prism.
Interested in your thoughts....
SDM.
Red - surely by Israel stopping military action BEFORE putting Hezbollah out of action would be disastorous. Politically, the Israeli government has to act, particually with Netanyahu on the sideline (and notice how quiet he has been?!?!)
Fact is, I dont think either side wants to stop yet. I think Hezbollah wants to drag Israel into Lebanon, portray it as occupiers ala Iraq , and adopt insurgency tactics.
Israel will want to go in, deal with them and get out. It does not want to engage Syria - it has nothing to gain by doing so.
Israel will have to walk a narrow line here, it needs to push Hezbollah back sufficiently to protect Haifa, but it can be seen to occupy....
Scott
Exaclty, which is why I am surprised that Israel hasn't gone in on the ground yet - I think they will, but we all know that military campaigns cant normally just be won by the air...a ground assualt will follow
And lets be frank about another thing, Hezbollah are trying to exploit the civilian casualities as a way of winning the propaganda war - and this is why they do hide their rockets in hospitals - hezbollah dont give a shit about the casualities apart from the political capital that can be gained.
SDM
You could well be right - but I still think Israel will go in sooner rather than later. It has to, otherwise the rockets would keep raining down with the IDF impotent to do anything about it.
Hezbollah has not cracked under air or SF land engagement. In time it will, particually if Israel puts more units on the ground - and the calling up of reserves indicates it will do just that
As I said before, Israel stopping now would render the IDF as being weak. Previously, they have been viewed as the supreme power in the middle east, and I suspect that Hezbollahs greatest achievement has been to undermine this.
Be sure of one thing - my analysis does not come at this issue from a moral or a humanitarian perspective (normative). Whilst those two frameworks are important, I am looking at this through a realist perspective, and make comments accordingly
SDM
UN Resolution for Israel's right to exist: To be ignored and belittled and labeled as unbalanced, it is all a Zionist plot.
UN Resolution for Hezbollah to disarm: To be ignored and belittled and labeled as unbalanced, it is a Zionist plot.
Start firing rockets supplied by Iran into Israel at civilian targets to cause the most civilian casualities possible, and cross the border and kill and kidnap citizens of another country and hold them in indefinite detention (I think it's called rendition).
....................................Sigh - no Anon - We all agree that firing rockets at people isn't very nice, but you can't pretend that there are some long standing issues in the region, so don't play the victim here - and while we are quoting UN resolutions, 242 jumps to mind doesn't it - but that hasn't stopped Israel running the West bank as a prison has it?
While on the surface Israeli reaction to Hizbullah provocation can look over the top, I wonder just how the howlers criticizing Israel would behave if they were surrounded by nations avowedly hateful of their country, repeatedly espousing the destruction of same and teaching virtual babes to hate as well. Where ever Muslims, Moslems, Islamist have gone in the world they take their distorted view of history with them and invariably shower their hosts with violencs. Their history is one of bloodshed, from the time of Mohommed till now, and thus they will continue. Whereas Bush and Blair lied their way into Afganistan and Iraq, Olmert have every right to whack the Hizbullah madmen. In absolutely every military conflict it is always the innocent civilians who suffer. And Israel has the greater historical claim to the land, Palestinians are Arabs, ethnically, and have huge tracts of land ie Jordan, and most of the ME, but all these countries know what murderous bastards these so-called Palestinians are, and don't want a bar of them. They were dumped from their rightful home Jordan after "Black September". They are in most part the architects of their own misery. And that corrupt org the UN is of no help whatever.
Geronimo
"....can look over the top."
Coffin count (current conflict):
Israel: 55
UN: 4
Canada: 8
Lebanon: 750
".....murderous bastards these so-called Palestinians"
121 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 763 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000
"Israel has the greater historical claim to the land"
Which particular epoch are you referring to?
-The thousands of years before Moses got stoned on tablets and saw God giving him the deeds to the ranch?
-The post-Moses period when the Hebrews occupied a very small tract of what is now Israel and went about slaughtering the neighbours trying to get more?
-The last 1926 years since the Romans sent them packing?
(My family has been in this country since 1841. Anyone coming up my driveway with a bulldozer and an eviction order better be able to dodge a rocket.)
"Their history is one of bloodshed...."
Whose is not? Ever hear of the Crusades, Sitting Bull, My Lai, Guatemala, Chile, ummmmmm.... World Wars one and two????
SomaliaRwandaTheBalkansEthiopiaOrakauPaSouthAfricaCongoSuezAlgeriaVietnamKoreaSriLankaMalayaTasmaniaZimbabweTheBoerWar100yearsWarWarsoftheRosesPeloponesianWarCullodenHastingsSinoSovietWarAfghanistan and yes.....Iraq.
"have huge tracts of land ie Jordan"
Eh??? The Palestinians who ended up in Jordan were forcibly evicted from the Land that Israel now occupies around 1948. By your logic I guess that gives them a "greater historical claim" to vast tracts of Jordan.
There are differing opinions as to why Jordan acted. One of the more obvious was the threat of a war with Israel if they did not. Now that has a familiar ring to it doesn't it. You see, the Palestinians went to Lebanon didn't they. And Israel.......oh what's the use.
Yeah you’re right. The Palestinians should just stop all this nonsense and go home to.......
And yeah, that corrupt U.N. should rescind those 65 declarations against Israel and give the Palestinians at least one.
Nice post Brewerstroupe. It's a tragedy that the West has let this happen to Palestinians and the Lebanese.
I'm interested to hear where gerinimo gets his facts from.
The one things he got right is:
"And that corrupt org the UN is of no help whatever."
With a veto wielding member like the US, the UN is truly of no help whatsoever.
I wonder if they change the rules that govern the UN Security Council.
..........................I love how when Brewer brings out his little bag of numbers, the posts attacking his position just dry up - you can't argue with the picture those numbers paint out! Karlos, you are right about the US on the UN - I once saw a list of all the things the US has vetod - jesus it is an eye opener - did you know the US was the only country to Veto the old Southy African apartheid regime from gaining nuclear weapons - who would want those nazis owning nukes? Apparently the Americans!
an 86 year old friend of mine once stood on a beach somewhere on the gaza strip, he was 19 years old and a british soldier of the cheshire yeomanry,his orders were to shoot all refeges as they came within range and ashore an order he was dreading,the ships that bought them from europe were then scuttled and to his great releaf the order to stand down was given.
He now tells me he wished the order was reversed because he played a part in doing to gaza and gouland what hitler did to europe .
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