Bring It On!

By Lazy Iguana on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

Yea. How awful to suggest that militants should not kill civilians. Either with laser guided bombs or bombs strapped to people. 

By Craig R. Harmon on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

Yeh. I guess you’re right…terrorists and US military are just the same…actually the US military, having the capability of killing many more people, are far, far worse.

Bah! 

By Craig R. Harmon on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

Or is it Israel that’s just as bad as the terrorists trying to wipe them out?

By Craig R. Harmon on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

In any case, no one is suggesting that Israel can’t be criticized. They are suggesting that a former president of the United States shouldn’t change history by making shit up and leaving shit out of the telling of it to criticize Israel.

Not a crazy suggestion, if you ask me.

By Lazy Iguana on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

What is he making up or leaving out? Both sides have blood on their hands over there. No question about it. Someone needed to point that out. But when it was pointed out, Carter was attacked on a personal level. I do not think he is racist or anti-semitic. 

The problems over there run very deep. When you have two sides that both think “God” gave them the same parcel of land you are going to have a war. In modern times that area was Arab. Then WWII happened, and western guilt caused the nation of Israel to be created. The Jewish people who went there, wasted no time building a powerful army, using the latest weapons from the USA. And can you blame them? What happened to them in WWII was horrible. I would want some really good guns too after that!

But what seems to have happened is that they were content to displace the Arabs who were there “first”. And building a powerful army kind of freaked them out. So - surprise surprise - a war breaks out. Israel cleans the clocks and takes land. Then keeps it. And the Arab people on it? Screw them!

So they resort to terrorist tactics, being unable to fight a conventional war. Israel responds to terrorist attacks with air strikes and guided high explosives that take out the building they think the terrorist is hiding in, as well as all the buildings next to it that may or may not contain people that had nothing to do with anything. So the people whose family were just killed get pissed and become the next terrorist. And so on.

How to get this to stop? Who knows! The roots run very deep. Thousands of years deep. Religion is in the mix, and with religion comes extremists on BOTH SIDES - not just one.

So here is the million dollar question. How do you get someone who really believes that God sees things their way, and any other view is an offense to God, to lay down their arms and accept another view as valid? You figure that out and you can end a lot of wars. Certainly you would end terrorism and being stability to the Middle East! They would have to retire the Nobel Peace Prize because you would win it every year for the next 500 years. Or better yet, make up a new peace prize and name it after you.

By Craig R. Harmon on Jan 27, 2007 | Reply

Lazy,

If you wish to discover the “making up” and “leaving out”, investigate it here and here if you’re really interested. Once you’ve investigated and discovered that the argument isn’t at all what you are making it out to be, you’ll be in a position to comment intelligently on it. Until then, you’re simply arguing against a straw-man position that simply no one is arguing.

Again, exactly no one is arguing that criticizing Israel is off limits. If you wish to have that argument, you’ll be arguing alone. What is at issue are specific arguments advanced by Carter in his latest book and made in public statements in commenting on his book.

If you wish to join THAT debate, I welcome you to it. We’re having it over on my diary post entitled “This One’s for Dusty: How Carter Errs”.