Israel at odds with itself STRATFOR report concluding Israeli indecision was so perplexing something unknown or ununderstood must have influenced the government. In the words of Mererhetoric.com, there are yet undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who'd have done a better job of leading the war. The right wing Jerusalem Post joins the chorus with The Olmert government must go (calling for mass demonstrations to facilitate the departure) and The countdown for Olmert has begun.

Positive views of the results are rare - the two I could find focus on Iran (The real blunder in Lebanon, Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce) whose terrorist supporting antics have been exposed and whose Lebanese deterrence has been spent.

In the mean time, the ceasefire is shaky. Hizballah obviously won't vacate the ground they fought to hold and have reached a deal with Lebanon's government to the effect that they won't publicly display their weapons. The IDF doesn't quite approve of that, while Debka reports France, Turkey and Malaysia won't deploy peace keepers unless Beirut guarantees to disarm the terrorist group.

Quote:Original post by Eelco

Quote:Original post by LessBread
Meanwhile, Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature

Quote:
...
In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.
...
Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”

Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather “a state within a nonstate, actually.”

Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.
...

i knew you would post this. but what do you think about it?

surely it would have been an outrage if say the US stepped in only to help the christians there (hint: they are not getting any money from hezbollah). if the US used its filthy oil money (look where all this money is coming from) to win hearts and minds for their dirty millitairistic goals (look how the money is spent)?

i bet you would have had a lot more to say about it if that were the case.

I think Nasrallah's moves are to be expected. He's using the opportunity to increase his support base by extending it beyond the Lebanese Shia community. I think it will be difficult for US money to counter his efforts because Bush sat on his hands while Israel bombed the crap out of Lebanon for weeks and the Lebanese know it and shouldn't have any reason to believe that the US is a friend of Lebanon. I think the appropriation from Congress, if it comes, will come late since it has to wind it's way through a Congress enthralled to Israel and that also means the money will come with all sorts of strings attached. I also think that in the larger picture Israel's war wasn't thought through and has actually made the situation worse.

As for the rest of your diatribe - whatever. Once again you've missed the bigger picture.

Quote:Original post by vNistelrooy
Fucking shit, Syria were pissing their pants when this started, and now they dare to threaten us. Motherfuckers. Olmert, Haluz and Perez deserve to be shot, this was the most pathetic and amateur military operation Israel has ever carried out. Half of Syria should be bombed into oblivion for each and every threat like that.

LOL. When everyone was telling you that, you pretty much said it was justified and well-deserved. Poor you. In fact, the fact that you even bothered to mention bombing another nation shows you've learned nothing from this particular war and deserve to be with Olmert, Haluz, and Peres. [headshake]

Like I said before, stop being bad-ass bully and help your neighbors and you'll won't need to worry about rockets crossing your border[attention]

Quote:Original post by Diodor
Israel at odds with itself STRATFOR report concluding Israeli indecision was so perplexing something unknown or ununderstood must have influenced the government. In the words of Mererhetoric.com, there are yet undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who'd have done a better job of leading the war. The right wing Jerusalem Post joins the chorus with The Olmert government must go (calling for mass demonstrations to facilitate the departure) and The countdown for Olmert has begun.

Positive views of the results are rare - the two I could find focus on Iran (The real blunder in Lebanon, Tehran Takes Gloomy View of the Lebanon War and Truce) whose terrorist supporting antics have been exposed and whose Lebanese deterrence has been spent.

In the mean time, the ceasefire is shaky. Hizballah obviously won't vacate the ground they fought to hold and have reached a deal with Lebanon's government to the effect that they won't publicly display their weapons. The IDF doesn't quite approve of that, while Debka reports France, Turkey and Malaysia won't deploy peace keepers unless Beirut guarantees to disarm the terrorist group.

I wouldn't agree with the hyperbole about undiscovered Amazon tribes (and such a comment smacks of racism actually), but the Stratfor analysis is solid. I haven't come across any lefty speculation about what that unknown something might be, but I'm also behind in my reading. Debka makes some interesting points. If Iran gave Hezbollah those weapons with the belief that they would use them against Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran, and instead Hezbollah used them to retaliate for IAF attacks on Lebanon, it makes sense that Iran would be upset about it. However, to flip Sy Hersh's article around, Iran now has evidence with which to judge the performance of it's munitions. Perhaps this entire affair was simply a dry run for attacking Iran, but I don't know that US officials would be that smart about it.

Meanwhile:

Disarming of Hezbollah emerges as obstacle
Hezbollah Balks At Withdrawal From the South
Israel plans to leave Lebanon in under 10 days
'Israel troops could stay in Lebanon for months'

And here are a couple of opinions that will never be expressed in the corporate media in the United States.

Neturei Karta rabbi to Iran newspaper: Israel will cease to exist
Israel should pack up and go

Kudos to the Israeli press for having the courage to even breach that subject. That's not to say that I agree with it, but simply that it's quite something for a newspaper to challenge the premise on which the nation it comes from is built.

And I forgot to include this: FACTBOX-Costs of war in Lebanon and Israel

Quote:
(Reuters) - Lebanon and Israel counted their losses from 34 days of fighting as a truce between Israeli troops and Hizbollah guerrillas held for a second day on Tuesday.

The Israeli military said the air force had attacked about 7,000 targets in Lebanon and the navy had fired 2,500 shells during the conflict, while 3,970 Hizbollah rockets hit Israel.

Here are some facts about the losses on each side:

LEBANON

* CASUALTIES - Around 1,110 dead and 3,700 wounded, the vast majority of them civilians. The death toll includes 35 Lebanese soldiers and police, as well as five U.N. peacekeepers. In addition, Israel says it killed about 530 Hizbollah fighters. Hizbollah has acknowledged about 80 dead.

* DISPLACED - More than 900,000 Lebanese fled their homes. At least 60,000 foreigners were evacuated via Cyprus or Turkey. Many thousands more found their own way out.

* ECONOMY - Lebanon's Council of Development and Reconstruction put bomb damage at $2.5 billion to the end of July. More damage was inflicted in the last two weeks of the war, when major road bridges were destroyed in the north.

- The total includes: roads, bridges, ports and airports ($404 million), power ($208 million), telecoms ($99 million), water ($74 million), industry ($190 million), military installations ($16 million).

- The Beirut Stock Market closed for two weeks after prices tumbled 14 percent and the Central Bank spent more than $1 billion in foreign currency reserves to keep the pound stable.

- Lebanese economists have cut growth forecasts to zero or below from 5-6 percent. Some say the economy could shrink by 2-3 percent, with the tourism sector particularly hard hit.

- Hizbollah estimates more than 15,000 homes have been completely destroyed and many more damaged.

* ENVIRONMENT - Some 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil spilled onto Lebanon's coast after Israel bombed a power station south of Beirut, causing the biggest ecological crisis in the country's history. The spill will cost at least $100 million to clean up, the environment ministry estimates.

ISRAEL

* CASUALTIES - 157 dead, of which 40 were civilians killed by Hizbollah rocket fire and the rest soldiers, most of whom were killed in fighting inside Lebanon. Some 1,000 people were wounded in rocket attacks in Israel and 450 soldiers were hurt in fighting in Lebanon.

* DISPLACED - Some 300,000 Israelis fled their homes in response to rocket attacks on northern Israel.

* ECONOMY - The Bank of Israel has put economic damage in lost tourism and industrial activity at 5 billion shekels ($1.5 billion), or up to 1 percent of projected gross domestic product. Israel's Manufacturing Association puts the cost to northern industries at 4.6 billion shekels and estimates that projected GDP may fall by 11.5 billion shekels, or 1.9 percent.

Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes

Quote:Original post by vNistelrooy
Fucking shit, Syria were pissing their pants when this started, and now they dare to threaten us. Motherfuckers. Olmert, Haluz and Perez deserve to be shot, this was the most pathetic and amateur military operation Israel has ever carried out. Half of Syria should be bombed into oblivion for each and every threat like that.

LOL. When everyone was telling you that, you pretty much said it was justified and well-deserved. Poor you. In fact, the fact that you even bothered to mention bombing another nation shows you've learned nothing from this particular war and deserve to be with Olmert, Haluz, and Peres.

What? I think that the campaign was justified, all I said was that it was amateurishly executed. Poor you, misunderstood me... [headshake]

Quote:Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Like I said before, stop being bad-ass bully and help your neighbors and you'll won't need to worry about rockets crossing your border

Oh yeah, I will remember that. Don't worry, I will be nice and throw myself into the sea tomorrow morning.

Quote:Original post by Lessbread
I wouldn't agree with the hyperbole about undiscovered Amazon tribes (and such a comment smacks of racism actually)

Yeah, it obviously is a gross exaggeration. It accurately describes how a significant minority in Israel feels about this. I disagree about the racism bit - this is strictly about the inadequacy of stone age cultures in the modern world (as the undiscovered bit makes clear). It does smack of the idea that cultures are not equal, but that's just common sense.

Quote:Original post by Diodor

Quote:Original post by Lessbread
I wouldn't agree with the hyperbole about undiscovered Amazon tribes (and such a comment smacks of racism actually)

Yeah, it obviously is a gross exaggeration. It accurately describes how a significant minority in Israel feels about this. I disagree about the racism bit - this is strictly about the inadequacy of stone age cultures in the modern world (as the undiscovered bit makes clear). It does smack of the idea that cultures are not equal, but that's just common sense.

It's the kind of comment that leads me to think that the person that thought it up was a pompous asshole. If he wanted to make a stone age comparison, he should have made a stone age comparison. Looking over the exact quote from mererhetoric.com: Seriously, there are undiscovered tribes of pigmies in the Amazon who have never even heard of Israel who could still do a better job as Defense Minister than Amir Peretz. - I think my remark about racism was spot on. In addition to being culturally elitist, he mispelled pygmies (in a way that suggests pigs ie. lower life forms) and misidentified the places that they come from - Africa and Asia not South America. And that is coming from a guy excited to particpate in a conference call with Netanyahu and who carries a Michelle Malkin link on his blogroll...