Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Israeli troops try to kill the snake by cutting off the head

They're really trying to blow the crap out of Hezbollah...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A wave of Israeli warplanes blasted a bunker in south Beirut thought to hold Hezbollah's top leaders Wednesday, intensifying an offensive against the guerrillas despite mounting international pressure and an appeal from Lebanon to spare the country further death and devastation.

[...] The Israeli military said warplanes dropped 23 tons of explosives late Wednesday on a south Beirut bunker where top Hezbollah figures, possibly including leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, were thought to be located.


Damn... 23 tons... hopefully something there was of the bunker busting variety. Of course is Lebanon wanted to help out a little with any of this, it might make things safer for its citizens, it'd help the Israelis get their kidnapped soldiers back, and just overall make this whole war go a lot smoother...

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, whose weak government has been unable to fulfill a U.N. directive to disarm Hezbollah and put its army along the border with Israel, issued an urgent appeal for a cease-fire. He said his country "has been torn to shreds" with about 300 people killed, and pointedly criticized the U.S. position that Israel acts in self-defense.

"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?" a stern-looking Saniora asked a meeting of foreign diplomats including U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. "Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?"


No this is the price you pay for allowing your democracy to be strongarmed by a terrorist organization and doing nothing to stop it. Terrorists are using your country as a base of operations and a safe house holding two Israeli soldiers hostage there. Israel has every right to try to save their soldiers and take out the perpetrators. Being a democracy doesn't mean you're given carte blanche to do whatever the hell you want and the rest of the world has to say, "Well they are a democracy. That means they're above judgement and any responsibility for their actions." What would you expect if South Africa elected an apartheid party back into power and immediately started passing laws making blacks second class citizens? Should we just allow that? They're a democracy afterall. What if Germany elected Nazi who immediately reopened the concentration camps to racially cleanse Germany of Jews again? Should we just sit idly by and do nothing? The Germans elected him, fair and square.

That's a bunch of crap. If that's how democracies worked, then why the hell do people get to criticize the US? We elected Bush and he's enacting policies for the safety and security of the nation. What gives the rest of the world the right to criticize? Well, fortunately, it doesn't work like that. The rest of the world is free to give their opinions, and we're responsible for our actions. We're not in this business to make the rest of the world like us. We're acting to protect ourselves. To borrow a phrase from Dennis, the left thinks inequality is evil and the right thinks evil is evil.

So hopefully Israel got Nasrallah and his evil companions...