The Middle East
Moms View Message Board: The Kitchen Table (Debating Board): The Middle East
Is anyone else as apprehensive - frightened, actually - as I am by what is going on in the Middle East. By which I mean Lebanon, Israel, Gaza Strip, Iran and Afghanistan (for now).
That would be a *yes* from me............
*raising my hand* I really think that this has the potential to turn into a world war or that WMD could be a real threat with this conflict. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what we can do except stay as informed as possible.
and pray!!!!! I find that my anxiety about this whole mess is something I wake up with, go to sleep with, and any time my mind is not fully occupied during the day, there it is.
VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Just once, let them fight till someone loses
War is horrible. It kills and maims and orphans the innocent along with the combatants, who themselves are not always there willingly. It is to be avoided whenever possible.
(For instance, Lincoln had no right to invade the South, which in no way threatened the North -- especially given that he'd promised the Southerners they could keep their slaves if they stayed in the union, proving that emancipation was not one of his casi belli. Also, this nation had no right to invade Iraq, which had done us no harm.)
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But there are two major exceptions.
Rather than live as slaves, rather than watch our loved ones picked off one at a time while we stand by and do nothing, it is better to risk our lives -- and to kill as many of the enemy as humanly possible, by whatever means -- until such danger is decisively eliminated. It is better to respond to aggression by going to war. Not "going to social work." War, as in, "If everything around you is exploding, that's probably us."
But when?
When did World War II begin?
Most would point to the German invasion of Poland in the fall of 1939. But is that to say the fascist conquest of North Africa -- where the Italians invented the modern "concentration camp" -- and the brutal conquest of Manchuria and Korea and parts of mainland China by the Japanese, both dating back into the early 1930s, were "A-OK"? What about the German annexation of Austria and proudly independent Czechoslovakia?
It's typical for those who crave peace to try compromise and appeasement. These rarely work, merely emboldening the aggressor. What works are tanks and really big artillery pieces and stubble-faced G.I.s doing the thankless job of winning the war 50 yards at a time. But America didn't do that in 1936, or even in 1939.
America, craving peace, waited till our fleet lay in smoking ruins at Pearl Harbor. Not that the rape of China had gone unnoticed. The Roosevelt administration embargoed oil shipments to Japan. The Japanese didn't want to conquer America; they wanted to seize the oil-rich islands of the South Pacific. But they knew Roosevelt would come to the aid of the Dutch and British there if they tried.
So, declaring the oil embargo an act of war (as though we had some obligation to sell our oil to anyone), figuring they had to "use their fleet or lose it," they struck first, at a time and place unexpected.
When did the current war in Lebanon begin? When Israel attacked? But Israel was responding to the murder and kidnapping of its own soldiers in its own territory, as well as to the endless and intentional Hezbollah missile barrage against its civilian populace. Did it begin when Hezbollah snuck across the border, killing three Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two more, three weeks ago?
But that would be to say that the failure of the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah and stop these wild-eyed fanatics from committing such acts of war -- demanded under Security Council Resolution 1559, and part of the deal under which Israel withdrew completely from southern Lebanon years ago -- was "A-OK."
Imagine now that America, finally stirred from her lethargy, had fought through that miserable year of 1942, American boys desperately throwing away their lives at places like Wake and Midway as they took on a superior foe while equipped only with inadequate pre-war weapons and supplies.
Now, in 1943, the tables are finally starting to turn. We have finally driven the Japanese from Guadalcanal. Our factories having run at full pace for a year, we now have enough materiel to start slogging our way up the island chains toward Japan ... when some vastly superior coalition of nations steps in and says, "Your response has been disproportionate. They only sank a handful of your ships and killed a few hundred sailors at Pearl Harbor. Look at the pictures of the suffering your bombs and torpedoes are causing. This is barbaric."
Imagine that a three-year cease-fire had been imposed, during which Imperial Japan had time to rest, refit and re-arm. Then, in 1946, when Japan was ready, they attacked us again, unexpectedly, sinking more of our ships in Australia and in San Diego. Back to war we go.
But no, on the evening of our planned 1948 landings at Okinawa, again we're told "Time out. This is awfully disproportionate. Your B-29 bombings of the civilian populace in Japan are probably war crimes; you'll have to stand trial at The Hague. Have you seen the photos of the burned and bleeding children? The whole world condemns your barbarism. We need a three-year timeout." And so on, over, and over, and over.
If war is evil, how much more evil is it to impose on anyone an endless stop-and-start war, which the righteous and aggrieved victim is never allowed to pursue to a victorious end -- the aggressor always allowed to rest and refit and then to come again at a time of his choosing, pecking relentlessly at the victim's liver?
Some will say Israel has committed aggression simply by existing. But to say that is to violate the U.N. charter, which guarantees the right of all member states to exist.
"But the Palestinians have no state!" the war-lovers cry.
Sure they do. It's called Jordan. In fact, the Palestinian Arabs got by far the larger part of the old British protectorate of Palestine -- and no one attacked them for daring to set up an essentially one-religion nation where Jews find scant welcome. The masses now huddled around the borders of Israel were kicked out by King Hussein in 1972 after they tried to overthrow him. How is that Israel's fault?
The defeatists cry that "Nothing can be accomplished by violence; war only breeds more terrorists who will fight forever."
Really? Sixty years later, is America still under attack by the aggrieved suicide-belted grandchildren of the Germans and Japanese whose cities we flattened and burned to rubble in '44 and '45?
No. Because wars usually do resolve these issues -- if one side is allowed to fight to a decisive victory. It's just that the pink petticoat gang shriek hysterically and threaten to faint dead away when confronted with the reality of how real wars really end.
Someone raises a white flag, and promises to fight no more if only you'll give the survivors some food and water and stop burning them out of their holes. Many of the conquered women marry the conqueror's soldiers and move home with them, giving up their native dress and learning to drive Buicks.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah is nowhere near ready to surrender. To end a war which has now been dragging on for 58 years, somebody's ••• has got to, finally, be whupped.
Who is that more likely to be? Do you hear anyone calling on the Hezbollah guerrillas to show more "restraint" as they overrun large portions of Israel?
Not now, you say? When better? After Iran has started supplying Hezbollah with nukes?
Today, Hezbollah and Hamas have a problem. All their planning was based on the fact that the world and the United States have never allowed Israel to really win a war -- they always call a cease-fire after a maximum of 20 days.
Can anyone see the terrorists looking around now, wondering when they get their next three years off for rest, refit and resupply? "Hey, it's been the full three weeks. Guys? Anyone? Hello?"
We started out saying war is horrible and is to be avoided whenever possible. But there is a corollary doctrine. If you want a generation of peace, those who launch wars have to be shown this, good and hard.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the new novel "The Black Arrow," which has made the short list of nominees for the 2006 Prometheus Award. See www.LibertyBookShop.us.
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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
Mr. Suprynowicz says "let them fight till someone loses". OK, and what happens if the conflict in Lebanon/Israel/the Gaza Strip spreads. What happens if it spreads to Iran? And/or Syria? What happens when someone sets off a really big bomb?
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. I have no doubt of that. And the goal of Hezbollah and Hamas (and Syria and Iran) is to wipe the State of Israel off the map. I have no doubt of that. The reason Hezbollah and Hamas send rockets into civilian areas is, simply, to terrorize.
Do I think Israel is wrong to try to stop Hezbollah? No - they are terrorists. But why does Israel send rockets and bombs into civilian communities? Yes, Hezbollah units site themselves in villages and town in Southern Lebanon. But not in Northern Lebanon, and not in Beirut.
I don't know if there can be any winners in the current chapter of this struggle. I do think that there is very little we - the U.S. - or the U.N. can do about it that will bring it to an end, or even a temporary halt. And I am very frightened about what it would mean to us - by which I mean the U.S. - if/when it spreads. That part of the world has been a powder keg since, probably, the late 1930s, and more so since the 1950s. The problem with powder kegs is that it only takes one spark to make the whole thing blow up - and then what??
Mr. Suprynowicz equates the terrorists of Hezbollah and Hamas (and Al Quada and the Taliban) with the armies of Japan and Germany. There is a really major difference - Japan and Germany had governments and heads of government, and clear supply lines and clear targets. When those targets were hit and the heads of those governments were made powerless, the war ended. The terrorists have no government, no head, and if we were to capture Osama Bin Laden tomorrow, it would make no more difference than it made when Zarquwi was killed. We threw the Taliban out of power - and they are recovering power, terrorizing the villages of Afghanistan, and killing coalition force members and Afghanis every day, with no sign of a letup and every sign of gaining strength.
Mr. Suprynowicz is very glib about allowing people in that section of the Middle East to kill each other until there is a clear winner. That might make sense, if it would only affect the Middle East. But it will affect so much more, including us. And, bluntly, I am scared by what could happen.
I don't believe that violence never proves anything, and I do believe that some wars have to be fought.
But, the whole Western world was involved in a devastating five years of war caused by the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo, and 115,000 U.S. military were killed (and at that, we lost fewer than any other nation involved in that war). What will be the result of the kidnapping (and probably deaths) of an Israeli solder by Hamas and of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah?
I don't know who is right or wrong in this conflict right now - although by and large I am a firm supporter of Israel and its right to exist as a viable state. I don't know if we or the U.N. or anyone else has the right to tell Israel to stop, or the power to make the terrorists top. I only know that every day I become more and more depressed and more and more frightened of what will happen next.
I, too, am very apprehensive. However, while it may be the "ostrich effect", I don't follow a lot of what is going on. I can't take hearing about another young person who has lost their life. I, personally, can't do anything about it, and if our time on Earth is getting short, I'm not going to waste what time I have worried and frightened. I grew up, as you did Ginny, during the Cold War. We lived with the threat of nuclear war constantly. We were the generation of "bomb shelters" and "Twilight Zone"'s parodies of everything from nuclear annihilation, to alien conquest, to a totalitarian government. We had "duck and cover" drills in school, where we naively hid under our desks in case of nuclear attack. The Cuban Missile Crisis put us literally days away from war. I have always wondered if my life would end as a result of World War III. I DO believe that there are hard times coming, and that oil will be at the center of it.
Even during the Vietnam War, I only half paid attention to the news. A young person recently asked me about the Kent State shootings, and I do not know a lot about it because I tried to stay somewhat detached.
My life and death (and yours), has been planned by God. I don't know how I will die, but I know that God will see me through it. I try to follow the admonition of Paul in the Bible, when he says to "think on that which is lovely and of good report".
Some would say that the prophecies of the Book of Revelation are coming to pass. MAYBE. In any event, it is out of our hands. In some ways, the world, and especially the United States, is becoming a very God-less and immoral society. Pornography, child molestation and abductions, and all manner of other terrible things abound in our land. I certainly could understand how God could be fed up and say "Enough".
Don't worry or fret. Live each day to the fullest. Tell your family that you love them. And most of all, always be mindful of your blessings.
I'm sick of dealing with these people. They have been in the news my entire life (and I'm sure well before I was born) for fighting over everything under the sun. I don't think they will ever stop fighting, and we keep sticking our noses into it. I personally couldn't care less if they bomb themselves off the map, I'm that sick of all of it. In the meantime, I'm taking the ostrich approach as much as possible. I don't think I could survive a military lifestyle otherwise, living in constant fear of the next "conflict" that will spread our soldiers even thinner, kill more of our men and women, and ruin lives of Americans who have no business being involved. So sue me, I've stopped caring about these countries, to he11 with all of them.
I wish that it were as simple as leaving the other countries to do what they will, but the world we live in is getting SMALLER by the day and, unfortunately, everything that goes on has a ripple effect somewhere else.... I try not to obsess about it, and to enjoy each day to the fullest, but there is always an underlying uneasiness....
I am also frightened.Everyday in the papers another soldier is coming home dead.We the little people have no say with whats going on.My DD just the other day said at school they talked alot about bullying and how its not allowed.There is no hitting/pushing/ or name calling tolerated at all.They should learn to talk and resolve there problems appropriatley.How do I explain to a 7yr old that our country believes in war? I think the whole thing has gotten out of hand and it will never resolve,it just causes more anger.
Crystal- DITTO! I feel the same, although I do know that I should be more concerned because it might/does/will have the "ripple" effect mentioned. It just gets old. I'm very bad about reading about it, I admit, but it's because I feel the same as you do Crystal. I'm just sick of it. When I hear of trouble in the Middle East and now since this has started, I just think "what's new?" and move on. It's a sad mentality on my part, but that's my honest feeling.
It is too bad that the one country in the Middle East that doesn't hate us (Israel), has no oil. If we could find a way to become free from the need for petroleum, they could all all take their oil and drink it. No one would care.
I DO blame our own government for not making it mandatory for energy companies to develop alternative fuels. And , the money we spend to wage war could be better spent on research. I remember in 1972, lining up for gas on the base where we lived. It went by the first letter of your last name. Our day was Saturday. I would bring my knitting, and books are Cheerios for my DD, in the car seat. It was nothing to wait an hour for your turn. That was THIRTY FOUR years ago! Certainly in that time, we could have been working on energy solutions. Venezuela, for instance, uses FlexFuel. It is manufactured from agricultural by-products. You can burn a combination of that and regular gasoline. It costs 27 cents a gallon!! AND, it burns clean.
Too many people in "high places" in this country have become extremely wealthy because of oil. They don't want to kill their "golden goose". However, the price to be paid is our national security, precious human lives, and ultimately our very survival.
I, too, am tired of being held hostage by people that know that they have a commodity that we desperately need.
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