Britain Criticises Israeli Tactics

That's war. The UK Foreign Secretary should understand civilians in war are the first to pay the price. Israel did not ask to have her soldiers abducted and her cities to come under attack. She has the right to defend herself with all the means at her disposal and as for the shopworn cliche she show "restraint" - well Israel will show exactly the same kind of restraint Britain showed the Argentines in the Falklands - none. Then again the UK was never attacked by Argentina. Its time for the British government to understand the blame for what is happening in Lebanon rests squarely with one party and one party alone - the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em, Down Hezbullies. )

the thing is our leaders were exiled and/or jailed and were only released recently since the removal of syrian forces in lebanon. the christians were technically disarmed after the war but we still have all our weapons. You have to udnerstand the political situation here is very fragile, the christians hate hezbollah but the last thing we need right now is an escalation of violence into a civil war, many here have had enough and people here also dont trust the international community after they (U.S included) turned their back on the christians. Actually at the end of the war when we were fighting the syrians we had to rely on saddam hussein to obtain weapons. If the christians were to turn on hezbollah now then the shiites would band together and start hitting christian neighbourhoods and as the last civil war, muslims from every arab country will enter lebanon to do jihad and the west will turn a blind eye to what goes on.

First off, the killing by Israeli bombing of the Christian communications engineer you mentioned was a tragedy. And unfortunately, there have been and will be other innocent deaths caused by the Israelis.

The difference is that the Israelis, if they had their druthers, would not shed one drop of innocent blood. Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran, on the other hand, are prepared to kill infinite numbers of innocents as a primary means to achieve their ends. In fact, they relish in it. It is how they define themselves.

You talk about how the West abandoned the Lebanese Christians. The tragedies of the current war will be for nought if the West has not changed. But it has, thanks to President Bush.

You talk about Jihadis flooding into Lebanon once again. Except now, they will be torn between going into Iraq or Lebanon. And in Iraq, they are being killed in great numbers and facing opposition from a native force that is increasingly professional. This is what would have happened in Lebanon if the U.S. had been able to stay the course in 1983.

Hezbollah was none too happy when the Lebanese people rose up last year and forced, backed by the implicit threat of U.S. action, the Syrians to leave and a truly Lebanese government to take its place.

But the Muslim fanatics are cunning in their understanding of Western psychology and how to manipulate our media. Iran and Hezbollah saw the opportunity to have the best of both worlds: they would continue to build up an aggressive force against Israel in the south of Lebanon, and they were confident that the Western powers would tie Israel's hands in Lebanon to fight back against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah would truly use the entire nation of Lebanon as its hostage.

The Israelis are pretty smart too, and have also had a lot of experience sizing up the psyche of their enemies. That is why they took the attack first to Beirut, to show the enemy that they would not be so constrained, as well as to exercise the "Powell Doctrine" of using overwhelming force to take advantage of their technological and brute force edge.

It is not clean and surgical. But it is the course that the democratic nation of Israel is 100% unified in believing will stave off what is reality was the beginning stage of a war of annihilation of Israel.

That is the moral calculation that Israel is balancing off against the deaths of innocents and the risk of creating enemies among Lebanese who are or could be its friends.

Let us pray that the Israelis can destroy Hezbollah soon so that the healing and true liberation of Lebanon can begin, that this be the last war fought on its soil caused by its enemies.

But even this great resolution will never be able to erase the tragedies of innocent deaths. All we can do is win to prevent them from happening again.

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