Agreed

It's a very complex situation over there. It's the poor bloody Lebanese civilians who are copping the worst though.

Arguably the Lebanese gummint should have done more to control the south of the country and get Hezb'allah out or at least under control. Hezb'allah, of course, is a front for Syria (our mates from the Gulf War, remember them?) and Iran (bad-guys-no-good-guys-no-bad-guys-again). But it's hard for a relatively poor middle eastern state like Lebanon realistically to act against what everyone knows is a front for more hardline states.

Equally it's entirely clear that Israel is going to respond when provoked and I have a hard time blaming them for that. Where we've got to now though is such a vast and tragic overreaction - which doesn't even appear to be achieving its military objectives, from what little we can discern "out here" in BBC-reading-land - that even Israel's staunchest friends should be telling them to just stop. Fuck all this "well we're not mutually agreeing a ceasefire because that would elevate terrorist organisation Hezb'allah to the same level as a nation state" - they've dealt with them before wrt prisoner exchanges and the like and must do so again now.

Israeli kids painting/writing on shells is nothing that didn't happen here in WW2 and happens everywhere in conflicts. So I'm not that exercised about it. What I am exercised about is the indiscriminate targetting of mainly civilian areas based on what appears to be ropy intel identifying Hezb'allah sites. What I am also exercised about is the vapid unsophistication of US foreign policy - unchanged in principle in decades (identify "the good guy", arm them, then be surprised when they turn on you - Osama Bin Laden used to be a "good guy" and was trained, funded and armed by the CIA, as did the mujahadeen, as did...). This approach has not worked or come remotely close to working in any one single theatre that I can think of.

Bottom line: this has to just stop, and the only diplomatically acceptable way that's now going to happen is that a strong UN force with a strong mandate and the ability and will and multilateral political backing to act if it needs to (no more Srebrenicas, thank you) gets in-country right-the-f**k-now, kicking the Israelis south and any identifiable Hezb'allah north.

I also think the risk is high that this area, sooner or later, will go nuclear. "Duck".

Posted By: Partial Angler, Aug 1, 12:47:33