Inside Hezbollah | Party of God

[kandrathe]

...
It seems to me that the Israelis in the present Lebanon fracas -- to a different extent than the American political leadership in Iraq -- have fallen into the mental trap of an FPS, of WoW raid style thinking, of attrition and physical warfare as a solution to a problem. For reasons that puzzle me, Mr Ohlmert's team have been unable to see past the dust of the battlefield to pursue a short term, and possibley long term, path to resolving their border security problem. (No, it's not easy.)
...

I always view the Isreali response to conflict from the view point of "An eye for an eye". To me it always seems that the biggest Isreali weakness is that they will always respond in kind to any attack with at least an equal if not bigger response. If anyone gives them a punch in the nose, no matter what the consequences or how inappropriate the response might seem you can bank on them to retaliate quickly and in kind. So, the Sun Tzu in me respects their strength of conviction, but not their weakness of predictability.

Whereas, the USA seems to be somewhat shizophrenic and do the "bully thing" or the "ignore them and walk away" thing depending on the mood of the party in charge. Lately it's been more "Give me your lunch money or I'll beat you up after the Security Council meeting." Maybe that is the scary part about the USA, in that the only thing you can really count on is that for solving problems eventually we get around to using that one big hammer in our tool chest.

Back on topic; I don't quite understand the world press's position of watching unfazed for years as Hezzbollah attacked/attacks Isreal with rockets daily, but when Isreal responds and tries to bomb the rocket launch locations they start parading human tragedy of the displaced and dead "civilians" in front of cameras. I'm not buying that propaganda. Just who owns the media that they want to spin it that way anyway?

If Quebec seperatists made repeated raids south from Thunder Bay killing people, and the US told Canada to do something about it and they whined "Oh, those hosers are so uncontrollable... we can't stop them Frenchies." Would we be justified in going after them? Yer' darned tootin' we would.

It kind of reminds me of when I was very young and lived in the city, this dog used to walk down the road and take a dump on our lawn every day, until my mom got fed up with it one day and blasted it in the rump with bird shot (she being a very good shot). From that day on, that dog crossed to the other side of the road before passing our house.

Or, this bully that used to pick on me in high school. Every day for three months he would go out of his way to do something to tick me off, until that one day when I had enough and instead of turning the other cheek as I was taught, decided to break his ribs with a baseball bat. We avoided each other fine after that day. When I saw him at our 10 year class reunion he apologized for being such a jerk. I accepted and bought him a beer.

Hezzbollah wants/needs a middle east war in order to further their cause of evicting Isreal, so the correct response from Isreal should have been a massive extremely painful blow to Hezzbollah over about a week, followed by an immediate workable offer to deal with the legitimate Lebonese Government for peace. With a caveat that, if the uncontrollable Hezzbollah militia launches more rockets at Isreal, they will bomb any valuable infrastructure in south Lebanon until the rockets stop.