"In other words, the Jewish state, armed and backed by the world’s richest country, has maintained a ten-to-one kill ratio in the first fortnight of fighting."

Huzzah. When a nation embraces a terrorist group as their "National Resistance", life can start sucking when that organization starts kidnapping and killing people. Lebanon took the arrogant step of refusing to disband Hezbollah and ceded the border area to them to "resist" in. Lahoud isn't a fundamentalist Muslim, he's Christian politician who embraced Hezbollah so that they would fight battles that he didn't have to accept responsibility for.

The numbers are asinine, anyway, given the fact that Hezbollah fighters ARE civilians, and are counted as such more often than not. The only ones that get counted as Hezbollah are the ones that can't possibly be denied as such. They also soil their neighborhoods with their weapons and use their families as human shields. You get what you ask for.

Just because they suck at what they do doesn't make them morally superior. The winner in a war often kills far more civilians than the loser, simply because winning entails entering into their territory to subdue them. According to your standard, the vast majority of wars were won by the moral bad-guy.

I see, so the good guys aren't allowed to be the superior fighters. To be a 'good guy' you also have to be the underdog and have more casualties? Bullshit! That's trully far kukt logic.

but yet, OG, you conviently forget to mention the 15-20 civilian Israeli's here, the 25-30 civilian Israeli's there...and the 45-50 civilian Israeli's here and there, killed by suicide attacks nearly every day.

This is war...at least Israel had the guts to go to war....the terrorists just hide behind their "innocent" civilians to avoid war, but yet continue their cowardly attacks on civilians of Israel

Hi, O G San. Hope that you are well.

Today's fighting told a different story, with 8 Israeli soldiers killed and 22 more wounded in Bint Jbeil, a stronghold near the border. See link http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/26/mideast.main/index.html

The same story noted that Hezbollah has not released casualty figures since the fighting began, so we really don't know.

Israel's stated intention was to destroy Hezbollah's capacity to continuously launch Katyusha rockets across the border from both Gaza and Lebanon, so they have largely targeted the infrastructure. Of course, they have also targeted known headquarters, training camps and bases. Israel has continuously leafleted areas, warning the civilians ahead of time. The Katyusha rockets were developed by the former Soviet Union for use during WW II. They were notoriously inaccurate even then. They are not a military weapon of choice, but make an excellent terror weapon if you don't care what (or who) you hit. See Link for details.

The most unfortunate death of the four UN soldiers show the difficulty of trying to hit small, maneuverable and often camouflaged targets in a region that is mostly desert.

God, I don't know where to start.

Mythical Mino,

I am not forgeting suicide bombs in the least. They are appaling. But it is simply untrue to say that dozens of Israelis are being killed in this manner "nearly every day." The most recent suicide bombing which I could find was the Islamic Jihad attack in southern Tel Aviv in April.

UBoB,

My point is that there are no good guys.

Larry,

Southern Lebanon is not a desert.

Today's fighting did not tell a different story, it told the same story but more so. The proportion of Israeli military dead as a whole is even higher after the battle at Bint Jbeil.

Ehud Olmert stated when this war started that the aim was not just the destruction of the Katyushas but the disarming of Hezbollah.

As for the point about Hezbollah "cowardice", wind your necks in.

Hezbollah is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by the IDF. If, as some of Israel's friends seem to want, Hezbollah were to act like a conventional army and engage the IDF in pitched battle, it would be all over in five minutes.

Instead Hezbollah plays to its strenghts by enagaging in guerilla war, which means ambush and retreat. That's what the IRA did, what the PLO did, what the Stern Gang did. It's got nothing to do with courage or cowardice and everything to do with tactics.

One final thing which is pissing me off. What's all this crap about "Lebanon took the arrogant step of refusing to disband Hezbollah"?

Even assuming that the Lebanese government wanted to disband Hezbollah, how would this be achieved? The Lebanese army is not exactly a great fighting force. The IDF had 18 years to "disband" Hezbollah and couldn't do it. So how can an infinitely weaker army get the job done?

The reason that Hezbollah has not been disbanded is because it has a lot of support among the people. Again, guerilla armies are different from conventional ones, they can not simply be surrounded en masse and forced to throw down their weapons.

Hmmm, not sure that I agree about the geography part. I know that Tyre and Bint Jbeil are there, but from the comments of the UN commander who had been stationed there about the difficulties faced, my impression was that there was little else.

The UN forces had been stationed there to monitor compliance with UN Resolution 1559 which required "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." The government of Lebanon refused to do so. The UN forces were a joke. Hezbollah accumulated more than 10,000 missiles in the area. The UN forces first stated that the geograhpy made this almost impossible (hence the desert issue) and then said that it was not their mandate. (Huh? Not your mandate to enforce your own resolution?)

Lebanese MP Walid Jumblatt made the "protection of the resistance" a party plank during the last election, giving official recognition to the support of Hezbollah. Syria only left Lebanon after ensuring the continued support of Hezbollah.

Last night, Al Queda announced their support of Hezbollah, making official what has always been the case. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah received his training at schools in Iraq and Iran. Iran, of course, founded and supports Hezbollah.

I don't want to hijack your post, but given evidence that there is an internationally funded terror organization operating openly on Israel's borders, that the government of Lebanon refused to comply with a UN resolution to disarm that organization and in fact proposed to make it part of the Lebanese army, that Hezbollah crossed the border to attack and take hostage Israeli soldiers (usually deemed a cause of war)...what action would you have proposed instead?

Link to UN Resoltion 1559: Link

Link to Hasan Nasrallah's bio: Link

Hezbollah overview: Link

"The reason that Hezbollah has not been disbanded is because it has a lot of support among the people. Again, guerilla armies are different from conventional ones, they can not simply be surrounded en masse and forced to throw down their weapons."

God you make me sick, OG San. Hezbollah is a 'guerrilla army' as much as the beloved IRA was. You can't argue with people who don't live in reality. Guerrilla armies have something to fight for. Hezbollah hates the Palestinians almost as much as they hate the Israelis. Syria believes that not only does Lebanon belong to them, but Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories, too.

So, I'm glad you admit that Lebanon didn't want to accept UN Security Council Resolution 1559, but refused it not because they couldn't, but because they didn't want to. In so doing they made themselves a terrorist state, and are reaping the benefits of it. Seeing the cesspool of European opinion these days, I fear we'll be seeing the rise of terrorist states there eventually.

Seeing the cesspool of European opinion these days

Actually, we have quite a range of opinions. It goes with the territory of having democracies, functioning civil societies with unfettered discussion and a free press expressing diverse opinion. All things which America claims to believe in too - to the extent of believing the recipe can be exported universally.

You're usually smarter than this, but I suppose something must have touched a nerve and sent you off the right-wing deep end. There is something just a little bit histrionic in the way right-wing Americans reserve exactly the same degree of bile and venom for other western democracies as they do for Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda. Now, take a deep breath...

Larry,

I'm fine thanks for asking, hope you are well also.

"the government of Lebanon refused to comply with a UN resolution to disarm that organization"

Once again, explain the modalities of this to me. How exactly is the Lebanese army supposed to achieve this? The IDF couldn't achieve it.

Do you support all UN resolutions or just the ones which are in Israel's interests? I would very much like to see 1559 being implemented, but I'd like to see 242 implemented also.

There's no one thing that has set me off, Chak. This week has been a constant stream of condemnation from European bobbleheads towards Israel. Like the EU human rights guy that decided Israel is violating humanitarian law, and who never bothered in the last few weeks to make a statement about Hezbollah's constant infractions of such.

A swedish newspaper ran a cartoon likening Olmert to the Nazi featured in Schindler's List. Hezbollah in the last few days has been compared to the Dutch resistance of Nazi Germany. My position isn't the deep end of the Right wing, not by a long shot. People who consider it such are usually viewing it from so far to the left that they have no concept of where center is.

BakerStreet,

"God you make me sick, OG San. Hezbollah is a 'guerrilla army' as much as the beloved IRA was."

I very much hope you are not implying that I support the IRA. Anyone who knows me will tell you this is emphatically not the case.

"So, I'm glad you admit that Lebanon didn't want to accept UN Security Council Resolution 1559, but refused it not because they couldn't, but because they didn't want to."

Actually, I admitted no such thing. Lebanon is a deeply divided society. I'm sure there are many non-Shia who would gladly be rid of Hezbollah. But there is sure to be more support for Hezbollah across all communities in Lebanon than there was three weeks ago.

If, as I contend, the Lebanese government is unable to disarm Hezbollah, then the issue of whether or not it wishes to disarm them is entirely moot.

Yet again, I await your suggestion as to how the Lebanese army is supposed to disarm Hezbollah given that the IDF couldn't do it.

I would also echo the remarks of our esteemed colleague, Chakgogka, and suggest that you display less anger in your posts.

"Once again, explain the modalities of this to me. How exactly is the Lebanese army supposed to achieve this?"

Again, it is the doublespeak we constantly get. Somehow "diplomacy" will make the whole thing go away so long as people don't drop bombs, but somehow it would be impossible for Lebanon to foster an end to the attacks on Israel. Bullshit, frankly. They not only provide government resources to Hezbollah, but praised them as a national resistance and ceded the protection of their southern border to them.

As to 242 and the rest you'll find that in almost every circumstance Israel is asked to allow the international community to see to their security, and they never do. They are supposed to just sit back and tolerate the treatment they get from their neighbors and living under constant threat. Then, when they strike back, they are condemned.

Look at a friggin map. Israel isn't the huge nation imposing their will on all the poor stubby little Irelands of the Middle East. What technology they do have prevents the hateful nations around them, who vastly outnumber them, from crushing them. Nevertheless people will embrace any form of hate or terrorism to validate their anti-Israel position.

P.S. About the anger in my posts, there's no more anger there than the inflammatory crap you foist above. Condemning kill ratios and pretending that Hezbollah is 'resistance' instead of terrorists isn't any better than pointing out Lebanon's stated love of Hezbollah.

When I see any sort of neutrality in the anti-Israel rhetoric, I'll gladly tone it down. Until then, people who knowingly misrepresent murderers just because they don't like the murdered will draw ire.