I don’t have time to properly do this. I’d like to give supporting quotes from major players, but I just have to say what seems not to be said very much: Israel has a stupid strategy, and they need to just stop it.
Israel’s avowed strategy is to make the government of Lebanon as a whole disarm the Hezbollah who attacked and kidnapped a single soldier. Never mind that this government only came to power when the pro-Syrian government was embarrassed out of office. Never mind that the peace process had been unable to disarm Hezbollah, never mind that the government itself is outgunned by Hezbollah. Rather than attack Hezbollah in a full force, Israel would rather play dueling barrages and then bomb unrelated parts of Lebanon in an attempt to “pressure” the rest of Lebanon to do something about Hezbollah.
Sure, at the same time they bleat about Syria and Iran ending their support, but they aren’t bombing Syria or Iran. They’re bombing Lebanon, and not just Hezbollah possessions. They’re basically undoing the good that has been done since Lebanon finally achieved real independence following the assasination of Rafik Hariri.
Yes, Israel, you’ll be a lot more secure if you make Lebanon more like it was in 1986 than it was in 2006. Brilliant. You’re actually managing to make Bush look smart by comparison.
Sandy Smith 
I TOTALLY agree with you on this, and I think most people do. Bombing out Lebanon is not going to get rid of this minority terrorist organization, and it’s going to destabilize the Lebanese government even more. What are they thinking, seriously? I really think the U.S. is going to have to have a talk with Israel about this one.
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Read this:
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm
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Seriously, what the fuck is their actual agenda here? Do they even have one? How is tearing Lebanon apart, just when they were making the first few steps towards being a real country – arguably one of the only/few real countries in the Arab world – back to the coal age, if not the stone age? How exactly will that accomplish anything that Israel could rationally have as a goal?
It sure as hell won’t get their two (there were two, not one – it was Hamas that only got one) soldiers back.
It sure as hell won’t erode support for Hezbollah, which doesn’t exactly look sane, but don’t look particularly insane by comparison to Israel’s massive and seemingly indiscriminate bombing campaign.
It’s not going to weaken Syria’s influence. The forces of anti-Syrianism have taken nearly as much of a pounding as Hezbollah, and they’re making Lebanon look weak. Admittedly this didn’t take much, as Lebanon IS weak, but they’re certainly showing that starting down the path of liberalism and sanity is no protection from Israeli bombs.
Seriously, I really want to go to the Knesset and shout “WHAT THE FUCK?” at the top of my lungs. I’m as big a fan of bombing assholes as the next American. Shit, baby, it’s what we do. But as bone-headed as some of our bombing campaigns have been, this one takes the cake.
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I say bomb the ever living crap right out of them. Countries seem to do little irritating terrorist activities to Israel, not enough for war but just enough to make them mad. They bomb a bus here, bomb a shopping center there, and so on until after a few years someone kidnapps a couple of soldiers and that breaks the camels back (no pun intended.
Lets take a look at Egypt for example. Egypt finally pissed off Israel enough that Israel declared war on them (for six days I believe). Now let me see, I don’t believe that we have heard anything from Egypt ever since then have we.
Yes, go for it Israel. Let them have it once and for all. Let them know that you are not to be messed with, let us see if they will get the message. Let us see if Iran will get the message also, after all, their statement was, “We will blow Israel off the map”. Maybe Israel won’t be the one to be blown off the map.
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I have zero problem with Israel going after Hezbollah, or even the Iranian or Syrian sponsors. But they’re going after a third party who is also opposed to Hezbollah, but hasn’t the power to do anything about it.
As for your grasp of history, Israel defeated Egypt in six days in 1967. Of course, they fought another war with Egypt in 1973, so in fact they did hear something from Egypt again. Want to know when they stopped hearing things from Egypt? After Carter got them together and bought Egypt off with vast sums of aid (which we are still paying to this day). So by your argument, the people the Israelis should be bombing for not doing anything about Hezbollah like they did Egypt is the USA.
Or–here’s a thought–they could actually support the government of Lebanon in disarming Hezbollah by attacking Hezbollah and only Hezbollah instead of attacking Catholics in the north of Lebanon.
Yeah, look it up: northern Lebanon is home to a whole bunch of Maronite Catholics who hate, hate, hate Hezbollah and are actually fairly pro-Israel. Or rather they were until Israel punished them for something they didn’t do.
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