Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The final toll

A little over a month ago, a group of criminals in southern Lebanon snuck across the Israeli border and kidnapped a couple of soldiers.

In retaliation for the action of a small group of criminals, Israel invaded Lebanon, spent approximately $2 billion dollars to do $2.5 billion dollars worth of damage to Lebanon's infrastructure, displace a million Lebanese civilians from the lower 1/3rd of the country (Lebanon is the only country in the Middle East that is more densely populated than Israel), killed over a thousand Lebanese civilians and over a hundred Israelis (more Israeli soldiers than civilians, ironically -- if Hizbollah was targetting civilians and Israel was targetting Hizbollah guerillas, both have bad aim), forever tarnished Israel's reputation in the non-Arab world thanks to the steady stream of gruesome pictures of dead women and children that Lebanon's media-savvy newspapers made sure got pumped onto the wires non-stop, and for what? 15,000 Lebanese "soldiers" on the border to "disarm" Hizbullah as called for in the new cease-fire agreement? As World Nut Daily (a fervent supporter of Israel) points out, the Lebanese "army" doesn't even *have* 15,000 "soldiers" -- remember, Lebanon's "army" was a few thousand border patrol guards, rather than a real army in any sense of the word. These "soldiers" are likely to be Hizbullah guerillas with spiffy new uniforms.

This has been a disaster both for Israel and for Lebanon. War usually is a disaster, thus why it is something that should be engaged in only reluctantly and if there is no other choice. If a group of criminals kidnaps a couple of your soldiers, the solution is to go after those criminals with commando teams and other means, you don't destroy another country just because those criminals have taken over a part of it. Hell, if that was a sane thing to do, we'd be invading Mexico right now, because the drug gangs have taken over most major towns in northern Mexico and regularly export their violence into America.

As for the brave warriors of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders who've risked all (well, risked carpal tunnel syndrome anyhow) with their rabid support of war, they're busy cleaning up their mommy's basement. All those wads of crumpled Kleenex are starting to reek a bit, y'know...

-- Badtux the "War sucks" Penguin

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