[Target]

Syrians coming to Lebanon's aid? Japanese bomb N. Korean missle site? Indian Hindus Slaughter thousands of muslims? All around, the fit hits the shan on Friday.

Better the pride that resides
in a citizen of the world,
then the pride that divides
when a colorful rag is unfurled.

The whole wide world, an endless universe,
yet we keep looking through the spyglass in reverse.
Don't feed the people but we feed the machines,
Can't really feel what international means.

Bosses keep actin so tough,
and if that wasn't evil enough,
they get the drunken
and the passionate pride
of the citizens
along for the ride.

~lyrics by Neil Peart

[furball]

Scary stuff. Israel has mad too many concessions to the Arabs in the region. Pulling out of Lebanon a few years back was a huge mistake. Hezbellah attacked today with no provokation. Israel needs to take down the regimes in Syria and Lebanon and destroy Hezbellah and the Syrian military.

[handclap problematic]

Originally Posted by furball

Scary stuff. Israel has mad too many concessions to the Arabs in the region. Pulling out of Lebanon a few years back was a huge mistake. Hezbellah attacked today with no provokation. Israel needs to take down the regimes in Syria and Lebanon and destroy Hezbellah and the Syrian military.

I don't want to take this thread in a different direction, so I will just say that I will have to definately disagree with your thoughts on Israel......for many reasons......
However, some of these are very scary developments, and especially the tensions between Japan and North Korea. I am not sure what Japan is thinking on this one. Japan may be more advanced technologically, however, I am not sure they know what they are getting into with the North Koreans. North Korea's military is definately nothing to scoff at.

Prunetang

[hoojacks]

****. There goes my plans for the next year.

[hoojacks]

Wow. Israel just bombed Beirut's airport and installed a naval blockade. This goes way beyond Hezbollah. This sucks.

[Target]

Originally Posted by hoojacks

This goes way beyond Hezbollah. This sucks.

All the way to Hamas?
I wonder if a palestinian or two are regretting their vote.

[MARIS61]

I wonder what children's story our emperor will be reading when it all goes down?

[yakbladder]

I'm definitely more concerned about the Middle East right now than N. Korea. N. Korea has a huge army, yes. But they also have a "ally" in China who would cut off all of their fuel supplies if they ever did anything too dumb.

The Middle East doesn't really have a big check. I'm afraid Israel is going to start making attacks on Syria, trying to get to the military leader of Hamas. They then would be taking on the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and the Syrians. At that point I'm 50-50 as to whether Iran would jump in the fray, seeing an opportunity, and forcing the hand of the U.S. if we were to choose to defend them OR Israel dropping a nuke, either of which would be a lose-lose scenario.

Things could get really ugly, really quick, if everyone doesn't take a step back.

[Oil Can]

Originally Posted by yakbladder

Things could get really ugly, really quick, if everyone doesn't take a step back.

True words....

No matter where you sit politically.

[furball]

This crisis will never end if the world continues to let leaders of soverign nations continue to hide behind terrorist organizations ala Hamas in Palestine and Syria and Hezbellah in Lebanon and Iran. Hold the entire nation accountable for the actions of their leaders. If they continue to support their leaders, the should reap the punishment like Germany, Italy and Japan endured during WWII. Cruel? But war is cruel and dirty and ugly. If you want to have an armed world, that is the reality. Civilians will suffer. It sucks, but that is the only way a war can be won. Political correctness just gets US soldiers Killed. We haven't won a war since WWII and that is because we have a govenment run by polls. Would polls have approved of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[yakbladder]

Originally Posted by furball

This crisis will never end if the world continues to let leaders of soverign nations continue to hide behind terrorist organizations ala Hamas in Palestine and Syria and Hezbellah in Lebanon and Iran. Hold the entire nation accountable for the actions of their leaders. If they continue to support their leaders, the should reap the punishment like Germany, Italy and Japan endured during WWII. Cruel? But war is cruel and dirty and ugly. If you want to have an armed world, that is the reality. Civilians will suffer. It sucks, but that is the only way a war can be won. Political correctness just gets US soldiers Killed. We haven't won a war since WWII and that is because we have a govenment run by polls. Would polls have approved of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

And how would you take care of all the governments...oh, and the majority of the people there who support this action?

The problem you face is that you're dealing with historical issues that are not all of the Palestinians' fault. No one is free of blame, but there's plenty of finger pointing going around. Simply bombing everyone back into the stone age doesn't solve the problem.

Nevermind the fact that you have most of your armed forces now completely exposed in one little pile right smack dab in the middle of the place.

[Stepping Razor]

Originally Posted by furball

This crisis will never end if the world continues to let leaders of soverign nations continue to hide behind terrorist organizations ala Hamas in Palestine and Syria and Hezbellah in Lebanon and Iran. Hold the entire nation accountable for the actions of their leaders.

But it's not the leaders who are instigating the violence, it's small and virtually ungovernable groups of militants. Punishing all Palestinians for the bad acts of a few has been Israeli policy for decades now, and it should be pretty obvious that it doesn't work, but only perpetuates a cycle of retribution. Anyone who thinks Israel has been too soft on the Palestinians knows nothing about Middle Eastern history.

If they continue to support their leaders, the should reap the punishment like Germany, Italy and Japan endured during WWII. Cruel? But war is cruel and dirty and ugly. If you want to have an armed world, that is the reality. Civilians will suffer. It sucks, but that is the only way a war can be won.

Fine, if that's the world you want to live in. But is this not the exact same rationale that Osama Bin Laden used to justify mass murder of our innocents? There's no endgame to this scenario.

Political correctness just gets US soldiers killed. We haven't won a war since WWII and that is because we have a govenment run by polls. Would polls have approved of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

This is just historically ignorant. We have won wars since WWII -- Gulf War I, anyone? To say nothing of the myriad small wars/incursions we have won (Kosovo, Grenada, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc., etc.) nor the various, extremely dirty clandestine wars we have won (Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Congo, etc., etc.).

In the one war we clearly lost (Vietnam) and the one war we are well on our way to losing (Iraq), our problem certainly wasn't too much restraint due to political correctness. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all of WWII, and 2 million Vietnamese died in the conflict. We won the military part of the conflict; we lost the war because we never came to terms with the politics: The vast majority of Vietnamese, North and South, were loyal to Ho Chi Minh's communist/nationalist movement, not our puppet govenment in Saigon. Just killing more people wouldn't have done anything to help us in that regard.

The situation facing us in Iraq may be taking on a similar dynamic.

And as for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, polls DID approve of nuking the Japanese.

Gallup Poll, August 1945:
"Do you approve or disapprove of using the new atomic bomb on Japanese cities?"
Approve: 85%
Disapprove: 10%
Unsure: 5%

Stepping Razor

[MARIS61]

Originally Posted by Stepping Razor

This is just historically ignorant. We have won wars since WWII -- Gulf War I, anyone? To say nothing of the myriad small wars/incursions we have won (Kosovo, Grenada, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc., etc.) nor the various, extremely dirty clandestine wars we have won (Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Congo, etc., etc.).

In the one war we clearly lost (Vietnam) and the one war we are well on our way to losing (Iraq), our problem certainly wasn't too much restraint due to political correctness. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all of WWII, and 2 million Vietnamese died in the conflict. We won the military part of the conflict; we lost the war because we never came to terms with the politics: The vast majority of Vietnamese, North and South, were loyal to Ho Chi Minh's communist/nationalist movement, not our puppet govenment in Saigon. Just killing more people wouldn't have done anything to help us in that regard.

The situation facing us in Iraq may be taking on a similar dynamic.

And as for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, polls DID approve of nuking the Japanese.

Gallup Poll, August 1945:
"Do you approve or disapprove of using the new atomic bomb on Japanese cities?"
Approve: 85%
Disapprove: 10%
Unsure: 5%

Stepping Razor

While I agree with you most Americans approved of winning against Japan by any means necessary, it just doesn't compare to this situation.

There was no threat of us getting nuked in return, Japan declared war on US, and the danger of worldwide annihilation did not exist then.

As far as our myriad of embarrassing defeats, you see the glass half-full and, well, everyone here knows I'm a glass is half-empty kind of guy, especially when my family's safety is concerned.

I see all of those illegal invasions as losses because they lowered the world's opinion of the US drastically, each one of them. We gained little to nothing positive from them.

Panama now owns the canal we built for our defense.

Haiti remains the dying rat-hole it was before we attacked, as does the DR.

Kosovo is so devastated it is of no use to nobody in particular.

Grenada made us the laughing stock of the world.

I can't fathom how you find victory in our tangles with Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Congo...

Oh, you left out Korea, who we're about to be spanked by again.