Middle East Continued Again...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Everyone is in the government (that is the point of a Unity government after your country has been ruled by another country for decades), but to think Hezbollah has any say in it with their 2 ministers out of 30 is just ridiculous... and the Lebanese military recognizes them as the de facto "Army of the South" because the de jure forces can't exercise any power.

[notyoueither]

Indeed.

And the people of Lebanon haven't lent any legitimacy to Hezbollah that have them in the government and ruling the South?

At some point a nation has to accept responsibility for choices.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Indeed.

And the people of Lebanon haven't lent any legitimacy to Hezbollah that have them in the government and ruling the South?

At some point, a nation has to accept responsibility for choices.

Wouldn't that also mean that people who didn't vote for Hezbollah have no reason to be bombed? Yet Christian areas have been bombed.

And, hey, if Lebanon has to accept responsibility for Hezbollah being a de facto power of the South (which happened because of ISREAL's actions, both in the occupation and how they left it), then Isreal has to accept the responsibility for their overly aggressive regime getting pelted by rockets and suicide bombers by their neighbors.

[notyoueither]

Hezbollah was tolerated in parts of Lebanon, and encouraged in others. Perhaps that will change with the price being demonstrated.

Responsibility doesn't lay on just one side, Imran, despite your 'everything is Israel's fault'. It doesn't work that way.

The Israelis have to live with the consequences of what their governments and fanatics do. I don't see why Lebanon should be exempt from similar responsibility.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Oh yeah... hey, if your country isn't strong enough to deal with rebel groups and you are just starting to get your legs out from under you, you should attack at full force so that you can rip your country apart and have no chance at progress . Yeah, that's a real solution... Please.

It doesn't matter what is right Imran, it only matters about the individual circumstances each country finds itself in. There have been plenty of times in American history where other countries have been pissed off because our citizens went around doing things but they could do nothing about it because of their position. Lebanon is next to Isreal who has a history of bombing the **** out of it and the GOL should have damn well knew better than to think Isreal would sit and take it. But they chose to tolerate a group outside of its control anyway (actually Isreal may have given them that feeling with past prisioner exchanges)

That's the American way, right? Hey, hey, don't try to get a stronger, better government, you have rebels still in your country! Get fighting them so you can delay having a functional government at all!

Like I said the American way was to put the biggest issue of it's history off unitl we were torn apart by a civil war. If we would have had the misfortune of being next to countries more powerful than we were, we my have been ****ed.

I guess our War on Terror is ****ed because Iraq has terrorists and rebel armies it can't control in its borders. If they bomb Turkey, I guess the Turks can just come sweep in and bomb the entire country, right? Or Pakistan, our ally in the WoT, probably has Al Queda in the mountains. India was just bombed by some fanatics that may have been from Pakistani areas of Kashmir, right? Well, oops... guess another ally in the WoT get obliterated.

You damned right the Turks have a right to be pissed and do something if the American forces and Iraqi forces there can't control the borders like they need to. The US can't cheer Isreal but tell Turkey that they need to restrain themselves. Will they bomb? Probably not because their situation is different than Isreals. How much slack with they give the US in getting Iraq under control? I don't have that answer since they have different things to consider than Isreal.

You always have this zero sum attitued that if someone attacks the precious muslims that they must automatically support everything Isreal does. I have already said that if Isreal wanted the GOL to step in and deal with Hezbulla they have already made that impossible unless something with international troops can be worked out.


Can you not find any blame at all for the GOL or is it all Isreal's fault?

[notyoueither]

There was once this country called Afghanistan. It had a long, sad history. There was this group that came to power by killing off the rivals for power. They were the Taliban.

The Taliban invited these other guys called Al Quida to come camp out. These AQ guys were bad-asses. They planned and staged an attack on a much larger group of bad-asses called Americans.

The normal Afghani never even had a vote. Never had a choice. How many innocent Afghani's do you think the bad-asses in the USA and their crew known as NATO wiped out in driving the Taliban out of power and AQ from the country?

Were you opposed to the American and NATO response to 9/11 in Afghanistan? Some twit could argue that it was out of all proportion.

[notyoueither]

You live in a less than rich country that has had its ass handed to it many times by a richer, rowdier neighbour. You vote for people who pledge to make war on the richer neighbour who has demonstrated a better ability to kill you and yours than your guys can do to them on more than one occasion.

Are you ****ing retarded?

[Ramo]

There was once this country called Afghanistan. It had a long, sad history. There was this group that came to power by killing off the rivals for power. They were the Taliban.

The Taliban invited these other guys called Al Quida to come camp out. These AQ guys were bad-asses. They planned and staged an attack on a much larger group of bad-asses called Americans.

The normal Afghani never even had a vote. Never had a choice. How many innocent Afghani's do you think the bad-asses in the USA and their crew known as NATO wiped out in driving the Taliban out of power and AQ from the country?

Were you opposed to the American and NATO response to 9/11 in Afghanistan? Some twit could argue that it was out of all proportion.

That's inane. The Taleban protected AQ. The gov't of Lebanon certainly isn't protecting Hezb, since they simply lack the capacity to project force in the South. The appropriate analogy here is if the US decided to bomb, say, Iran, to motivate them to take control of any AQ occupied territory in the region.

The Lebanese gov't's fault lies with its failure to tackle the current confessional system that ended its civil war, granting the Shia political power in Beirut commensurate with their adult population. But if Lebanon were to do that, Hezbollah would likely become the most powerful party in the entire country, and I doubt that the usual suspects would be very enthusaistic about that situation.

[notyoueither]

Hezbollah is actually worse than AQ. Hezbollah is there because many of the people of Lebanon want them to be there.

There's the responsibility.

[Ramo]

You live in a less than rich country that has had its ass handed to it many times by a richer, rowdier neighbour. You vote for people who pledge to make war on the richer neighbour who has demonstrated a better ability to kill you and yours than your guys can do to them on more than one occasion.

Are you ****ing retarded?

You're a dirt poor Shia farmer who just lost family members and maybe a limb in a brutal civil war that lasted decades. One of said members was killed by Ariel Sharon. The parties in Beirut don't give a **** about you or your village because the system is rigged against people like you. But even though Hezbollah fires some rockets off to Israel every once and a while giving you something of a headache to liberate land that you see as occupied (the Shebaa Farms), it actually does care, providing you and yours with vital social services.

No, there's a relatively rational choice here.

[notyoueither]

If you are buying that crap, you have literally bought the farm, and I'm not crying for you.

[Ramo]

If Lebanon were to forcefully take control of the South, there would be a huge bloodbath lasting for years. I suppose that it's pretty easy to take responsibility for that when it's not your blood being spilled.

[Ecthy]

Has one of you actually looked up those Shebaa farms on a map? I think the smallest problem the Middle East has is who those farms belong to and who they're occupied by.

[Ramo]

Not saying that I care, but it's part of Hezb's narrative.

[Ecthy]

You mean like Kosovo for the Serbs?