Monday, July 24, 2006

Foreign war fatigue

At this point, I am going to stop reading columns analyzing and breaking down the Israeli-Lebanese-Hezbollah conflict. It's a trying trifecta of guilt, greed and religious fervor that I just can't take anymore. Thinking about all of the in-depth analysis is making my frontal lobe twinge, and I'm not even reading about it!

It's gotten to the point where up is down, left is right and Israel is acting like an Eastern European despot, but Lebanon refused to take care of the southern border, which has become deeply entrenched with Anti-Israel, Anti-America jihadists, fighting under the yellow-and-green banner of Syrian and Iran-sponsored violence.

But, why is Israel going medieval on Beirut? That goes beyond defense into willful distruction. Now, many are saying that Israel will create more terrorists than it can kill, Israel, by all intents and purposes, is now fundamentally recruiting for Hezbollah by traipsing across southern Lebanon.

But, when is it too much? When do you just get so sick of it that you don't feel guilty for ignoring it? When do you throw in the towel, and say that they should duke it out in a winner-takes-all deathmatch? When do you just plain give up as an activist and believer in peace.

I think many people feel like this; embattled with our moral obligations but just plain tired of the tit-for-tat fighting. We're sick of the kidnapping, the beheadings, the murder and the missiles. We're tired of the more-than-macho attitudes and these wars waged in the name of God, and I'm pretty sure that He's not too happy with all this, especially with that whole "love thy neighbor" diatribe falling on deaf ears.

But it makes me ill to even think about it.

Hezbollah said that this year they would return foreign captives to their native soil. That was the logic behind grabbing the two Israeli soldiers and breaking for the border. But, the timing is terrible -- escalating violence with Hamas and Palestine has forced Israel's hand. They're playing like it's all-out war, and they're playing for keeps.

2 comments:

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MattJ said...

To be honest, I don't buy the 'forced Israel's hand' line. It's an excuse they've been using for about 50 years and it's never washed with me. Israel has a long and bloody history of disproportionate responses siomply because it is pretty much allowed to do whatever it likes, whenever it likes.

I know I sound anti-Israel but it's only because it makes me nauseous to hear the disparity in language when atrocities are reported - Just listen objectively and you'll hear a very marked difference betweeen the language used when Palestinian extremists murder innocents and the language used when the Israeli Military indiscriminately bomb civillian targets.

It's at a point now where neither side is defensible - some Palestinian extremists have been attacking Israeli civilian targets for many years. The Israeli response since about 1956? Blow the shit out of High Population Density Palestinian civilian targets.

Military intelligence - oanother oxymoron?