Check out Technocrati. The Blogs are beginning to notice. Check out the mass media, the pundits are beginning to say it out loud.
"The war isn't working." That is the U.S. and Israeli goals for this 20 day reign of insanity have failed. Hezbollah is not about to be eliminated from Southern Lebanon.
They can't be eliminated unless one eliminates the population of Southern Lebanon.
Oh you say, Israel did not mean eliminate Hezbollah, the largest political party in Lebanon. They were speaking of eliminating Hezbollah's military capacity. They used eliminate Hezbollah, but they meant Hezbollah's fighting capacity. But it should be clear by now that military capacity won't be eliminated by air strikes. When has that worked in the last five decades? Isn't insanity doing over and over and over what has failed in the past.
Paul Krugman observes in his column this morning:
For Americans who care deeply about Israel, one of the truly nightmarish things about the war in Lebanon has been watching Israel repeat the same mistakes the United States made in Iraq. It's as if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been possessed by the deranged spirit of Donald Rumsfeld. [...] What Israel needs now is a way out of the quagmire. And since Israel doesn't appear ready to reoccupy southern Lebanon, that means doing what it should have done from the beginning: try restraint and diplomacy. And Israel will negotiate from a far weaker position than seemed possible just three weeks ago. [...] Again, Israel has the right to protect itself. If all-out war with Hezbollah becomes impossible to avoid, so be it. But bombing Lebanon isn't making Israel more secure. [...] The hard truth is that Israel needs, for its own sake, to stop a bombing campaign that is making its enemies stronger, not weaker.
Violence begets violence. Olympia Brown taught our spiritual ancestors this:
"We can never make the world safe by fighting. Every nation must learn that the people of all nations are children of God, and must share in the wealth of the world. You may say that this is impracticable, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are appointed to do. Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we must learn this great lesson."
To which the faithful say, "Amen."
And to which the infants say "but Johnny hit me first." Yes he did. So. Handle it like an adult.
You're right-if we had learned this lesson 50 years ago, and made peace with Nazi germany and Imperial Japan (and they were willing to negotiate a separate peace), we would indeed have no trouble with Israel today. There would have been no European Jews to move into Palestine, so there would have been no cause for war.
Joel, go and learn some history.
The US and Britain supported the rise of the Nazis and did not oppose their anti semitiism. They could have used political power to stop Naziism well before 1937.
I am arguing that we can break the cycle of violence, try to learn from the wisdom of the worlds religious traditions and stop repeating the cliches that you get from Fox.