Saundrie

After much prodding by other bloggers, I set this up for my own writings. The name is in honour of the two women that mentored me throughout my life on politics and intelligence issues, as well as being wonderful family members, now alas deceased. I hope to live up to their standards at this site.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Moral Savagery indeed

James Wolcott has what I consider a very good article to read up here, and it is based in part on two other worth reading pieces by Robert Fisk here and at Counterpunch here. I never had a problem with the idea that Israel had to respond to the capture of it's soldiers by Hezbollah, my problem is that the response they mounted was way out of proportion to the initial offence and has ended up in the slaughter of many innocent civilians and the dispossession of what is said at this point to be another 500,000 civilians. This massive reaction serves the interests not of Israel in gaining peace but those like Hezbollah in further radicalizing their populations, increasing sympathy for their POV and increasing their recruiting. Creulty and collective punishment has a very ugly history and rarely ever accomplishes the goal it is supposedly trying to achive by those doing the punishing.

I am trying to find things to point out to from the Lebanese side not because that is where my sympathies lie but because that is the side which is not getting much air time. The Israeli government has shown just how effective it's ability is to control the message and dominate our public airwaves, me I am just trying to see that some slight attempt at balance is provided. Innocent civilians are innocent civilians and none of them deserve to be slaughtered needlessly, be they Israeli, Lebanese, Iraqi or Canadian. That is my POV.

I would also point to this post by Dr. Dawg regarding the lack of real attempts to minimize civilian casualties by Israel. I understand that collateral damage is inevitable in military actions, the question is whether all feasible attempts to minimize them have been taken, and that unfortunately I do not think has been happening. Dawg's post speaks to that.

*additional*

While perusing other blogs I ran across this article from the Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation that speaks to the point of civilian indescriminate targeting by the Israelis. Thanks to BigCityLib Strikes Back for the link in his post on it here.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home