Chicken or egg? It's a long enumeration of back and forths between inhabitants of the region, all the way to precedents dating back centuries ago.
Who struck first is a negligible blame factor by now, and never was a sufficient criteria to settle the conflict. I mean, do we all move back to Africa and hand back the rest of the planet to animals or what?
Make no mistake, I don't back either the IDF nor Hizbola. I don't have a stake in either "side", I do agree any possible option to negociate should be taken up, like is Norway's habit.. They've gotten flak for that in the past and it's a good show of integrity.
But widening the scope to Iraq.. what are you saying? What about the rest of the "innocent" homo sapienses on the planet? You either include all of em, or consider some more prioritary than others.
You definitely can counter reference sources to sort out facts from suggestions or fabrication.. but that's still just armchair speculation. It's been true for a long time, and still is by the looks of things like the recent blatant AP & co fakes.
I don't have time to do that, and anything short of professional grade research on this particular matter wouldn't do the Truth justice. That's just work and I have enough of that at my job. That the media is so full of it, the selling out for exposure etc, that corruption's on the same page as corrupt politicians and every other blunder of that sort.
They buy into the business of war just as the crook politicians and terrorists.
Killing people without a just cause is absolutely wrong, make no mistake in my beliefs there... but I always get the feeling that these tirades against open war reflect a social glitch in human nature. People, save for a few exceptions, don't really care for morality.. they just want rules to fit their habits of comfort.. a blind adherence to "rules" doctus cum libro for a clear conscience.. they want some other guy to fight for them..
It's not that I'm pro military, but I know that in life you only get what you deserve.
Polishing your comfy leather sofa in your pretty home while others fight for what you enjoy is cowardice. I've yet to see a war I know oughta be fought, and have the opportunity to be there, but if tomorrow there was one, I'd enlist instantly.. no double standards there.
And before you imply something like it, yes I know there's other useful things besides martial action like what Hankstar is doing. I was >< this close to making a career out of "Medecins sans frontieres", but chose to do something else in the medical field that I'm better at.
I think something should be done to educate the public about the specific critical details of the issues at play, before they're voting or voicing their opinion on the matter.. because eventually it's all a matter of demographics. When you've got a big lump of effectively stupid people voting, proportionaly equal stupid things happen by action or inaction.
Erosion of american civil rights is a good example, but that's in the US, and no one here on this forum cares about the US, except to blame them for everything that's wrong in the world. The anti-american bias on this board just sticks out like a sore thumb, it ain't even funny.
The only country in Europe I have any experience in is France, and I could write a whole freakin novel about the moral inconsistencies in the "integration" between foreigners and natives there.. in just about any aspect of everyday life. Both sides are to blame for everything that happens there.
It's just easier to point at someone directly involved in a war and call him/her a freak than to acknowledge any fault as a "medics/UN don't hurt people" proponent.
I mean that you getting irate on a bbs about a war has little impact on those innocents' lives. Singling out one actor playing his/her part in the play is disingenuous, whether it's the IDF/Hezbola, Israel/Lebanon, USA/Syria/Iran or other indirect players.
On topic:
There's no simple answer but here is a very quick and dirty summary of how I would maybe go about it.
1. Encourage political and economic liberalisation in as many Arab states as possible. By this, I don't mean *forcing* democracy on them. That has to develop as a natural consequence of the liberalisation process or else it risks implosion. One of the elements most fundamental for a secular liberal democracy is a large and prosperous middle-class, which is a natural consequence of economic development. This is why there are so many problems in Iraq today, because the Ba'ath Party had largely co-opted the secular, professional classes, who then lost all their social status when the regime collapsed. This was the biggest single failure of the Iraqi operation; what we should have done was allied ourselves with the Ba'athists; not the Saddams but the mid level professionals, soldiers, civil servants, all the people who make a modern state function. Iraq is an unknown quantity now; the best we can hope for is that it remains stable long enough for civil society to take root again. Nevertheless, this should be the attitude to take with regard to places like Syria and Egypt. Economic development is what the west and the USA in particular does best; prosperous people don't turn easily to extremism, so focus on incentives that help raise the lives of ordinary people.
2. Kill as many of the extremist leaders as possible but do it quietly and without fuss. Don't go announcing our intentions on CNN or Fox, and don't claim credit when we kill one. The west holds all the aces when it comes to special forces, so use them. Otherwise train secularly-inclined muslims to kill them for us. I would also look at killing-off all of the Wahabist clerics in Saudi Arabia and I'd serve notice on the Saudi Royal family that the good times are over and unless they liberalise the Kingdom, we arm the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Egyptians and let them loose on the Sauds. The Saudi Sheiks are probably one of the most despised groups in the region; the other Arab states wouldn't need much encouragement, and most importantly of all, the rest of the Muslim world would see it as an internal arab matter and not the west imposing it's will on the muslims. This is important.
3. Get used to expensive oil. It isn't going to get any cheaper with a liberalised middle-east milking extraction for tax revenue. It's going to run out sooner or later anyway, so get used to using less or even better using alternatives. Stop propping up corrupt local elites for the purpose of guaranteeing cheap oil. That is one of the main causes of today's problems.
4. Cut the link between the hardcore of extremists and the masses from which they recruit. This means removing the percieved injustices with which they rally support. If they can't recruit they will whither and die. Solve the Israel-Palestinian problem once and for all. Use some of the $billions currently being spent on a Iraq to compensate all the jews displaced from arab countries and the arabs displaced from Israel. Stop worrying about who started the conflict and instead focus on what is needed to end it. This would undermine people like Hamas who depend on arabs being rat-poor and desperate for their popular support. As well as undermining the Islamists massively, it would also hurt the few the Israeli ideologues who like to keep a low-level conflict going in order to maintain their colonisation of the West Bank under the pretext of security. Both these groups want the conflict to on for as long as possible, so deal with it ASAP.
5. Recognise that when dealing with the Arabs, perception is everything. The main message of the jihadis is that Islam is under attack by the west. Unfortunateley, we have a habit of acting in ways that confirm this message. At every step of the way, it must appear that change is being driven internally, and that if blood needs to be shed, it must be presented as a muslim vs muslim affair.
6. Offer the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran in return for the ending of their nuclear program. The resulting economic stimulus would spell the end of the mullah's stranglehold over the urban poor and the impoverished middle-classes and you'd see genuine internal regime change there within a decade.
7. Have faith in western culture and its power to spread into the lives of these people, but don't force it down their throats. They must feel that they are adopting our ways of their own volition.
Like I said, quick and dirty, but It's Saturday eve and arguing this is boring me now.
