Comments on: Advice for Hezbollah: How to Win Over the Pro-West Opposition

By: runasim

runasim — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:24:30 +0000

Daveinboca makes the same msitake hawkish defenders of the US and Israel make.
They mistake tough talkk and threats with actual power to tilt things in thier direction.

The crisis in Lebanon was precipitated by Israel's invasion of Lebanon as much as by the evil intents of Hezbollay, Iran and Syria. It gave Hezbollah the cover , the excuse, for doing what they're doing now.. At the same time, it made it impossible for non-Shiites to cooperate with the US or Israel, even if they wnted to.

The hawks dug the grave for Lebanon. Instead of learning lessons about strategy from the experience, they now call for more graves to be dug.

It may be too late to undo the damage, but at least an attempt to do so makes more sense than calling for the repetition of the same mistakes.

Lesson #1: No enemy can be defeated with threatening rhetoric.

By: Don Quijote

Don Quijote — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:15:17 +0000

Do you think Hezbollah, Hamas & Iran's anti-americanism came out of thin air?

or maybe that the US backed coup that overthrew Mossadeq and put the shah & his US trained SAVAK in power might have something to do with the Iranian Leadership's anti-Americanism?

Or that the Invasion of Lebanon by Israel might have something to do with the fact that Hezbollah exist and is not all that grateful to the people who supply Israel the weapons used to kill them and their fellow Lebanese Shiites?

As for Hamas, did you expect them to be grateful to be kicked out of their country by a bunch of Europeans backed with US weapons & moneys?

Iran must be stopped from building a nuclear device, because these fanatics will find a way to explode one in Israel.

And if they don't the US will start bombing their country prior to invading it, wouldn't want all that Oil to go to the people who own it.

By: daveinboca

daveinboca — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:17:35 +0000

I studied Arabic for a year in Beirut at the Foreign Service Institute, served in the State Dept in the Middle East for four years and can attest to the virulence of the hatred that the Umma has for people outside the Umma. It's visceral, but of course not all Arabs or Muslims are members of the Umma in their own mind. The people outside the Umma live in the Darb al Harb [House of War] and the strict believer in the Umma holds them as having sub-human status---something like Hitler had toward the Jews.

To underestimate the malevolence of the small but powerful leadership of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria & Iran would be a grave mistake, but when I see a candidate like Obama calling for negotiations, I just can't believe what a naif this fellow is. You don't negotiate with terrorists, and Ahmedinejad was a hostage taker terrorist who mistreated two of my FSO friends at the US Embassy in Tehran, one of them a woman who he threatened to beat for rolling up her sleeves.

Yeah Obambi, go ahead and negotiate with this specimen of violent reactionary hatred of the West and the freedoms it stands for, just like Neville Chamberlain did with Adolph.

Iran must be stopped from building a nuclear device, because these fanatics will find a way to explode one in Israel.