Very thought provoking! I wonder what moderate Muslims will think of this - if there are such people, that is.
interesting article, and very insightful. It portrays your breadth of knowledge. I agree with you 90%. I think that the radical islamo-fascism must be stopped. however, it is a misnomer to call this fighting against fundimentalism "war on terror." Can there be a war on poverty? And also do not forget the terror that the west perpetrated on the east. if you ask me who produces more terror? I would say, islamists. but if you ask me who is bloodier? I would say that the western countries are just as bloody if not more: american in iraq, idf in gaza - they kill more innocents.
Shimshon,
Both Americans and Israelis don't send out suicide bombers and others to blow up people in busses, pizza parlors, shopping malls,etc., not to mention flying airplanes into buildings!
Israelis have ahad enough of this, and Americans have had a lot of it in
Iraq and formerly in Viernam
Well, I agree with you, but suicide bombings are religious fanaticism. It is frightful in the West because how could someone want to die and kill others for 72 virgins. The West is much less religious in this sense, although you do get some lunatics here and there like the guy in Virginia. My point is that however one kills people, people are still dead and if you compare by the numbers who kills more in wars, such as for example in the Second Lebanon War last summer, the Israeli military machine (a superpower in the region) killed many more people. If you consider Israeli estimates that it had killed 600 Hitzbollah terrorists, and subtract that from the total of 1,000 people (the lowest estimate), that would mean that Israel has killed ten times as much of people. Would you consider using cluster bombs, when they are illegal, terror? I would.
Because of what happened, including the use of cluster and 'smart' bombs, both the IDF Chief of Staff and defense minister have been replaced. Only one thing that is a bit disturbing with your comments, Shimshon. And that is the fact that Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israel last summer with absotutely no regard as who or what they hit. That's also true for the Kassam rockets the Palestinians have fired into Sderot and surrounding areas, including kibbutzim. It is also known that Hezbollah have been resupplied with even lorger range rockets capable of reaching much further south than Haifa or Tiberius.
If those examples arn't murder, what is?
That is true, which is why we should deal with Islamists who fire those rockets as much as we can but the military way should be our last resort as we learned from last summer's war. Israel had an oppertunity to join hands with Egypt and Saudi Arabia for the first time ever, including the entire international community, to put tremendous pressure on Hitzbollah, and it let it slip away (discuss this in my newest blog entry). But we have to also have in mind that the outcome is not necesserily how one fires the weapon, but how many innocent people die. And even though perhaps Israel tried to not fire at civilians (and of course Hitzbollah and Islamic Jihad does) but Israel did not do a good job and as we have learned from many reports that Israel actually fired upon civilians with no regard for them. Also, even though Ketusha and Kassam rockets are dangerous, the same amount of people approx. live in Galilee as in South Lebanon and from over 4,000 rockets 43 people died whereas from 12,000 Israeli shells 1,000 people died. The outcome over the Lebanese border is much worse; Israel is much more destructive.
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