Deal

One of the most effective training methods employed by sports coaches and drill instructors is the "group responsibility" concept, where as every one in the group is held responsible for the failings of any one member. Once the group discovers that every one of them will suffer for an individuals lack of commitment, they will take it upon themselves to see to it that the individual responsible for their collective misery will be "encouraged" to get his shit together. Wether or not those who do their best to succeed think having to pay for the lowest common denominator of the whole group is fair is beside the point. It works. Ask any Marine.

I think the time has come to apply this method on a universal basis. Even now the Lebanese people are discovering what happens when those who share their territory take it upon themselves to invite the retribution that is guaranteed to follow their acts of aggression upon the state of Israel. I cannot say that countless individuals and cultures do not have a legitimate bone to pick with the State of Israel. However, there are also numerous communities within the State of Lebanon who do not deserve to have the ire of a persecuted and reactive people such as the Jews visited upon them at no fault of their own. It's bad enough that Hezballah was created almost entirely as a satellite puppet of Syria and Iran, manipulated by those two enemies of Israel as puppet fodder to cause "remote-control" pressure on the Jewish state without having to suffer direct responsibility for their actions. Well, maybe it's time to call a spade a spade and hold them directly responsible for every katusha rocket that has been lobbed into Israel from the middle of civilian neighborhoods, the "human shield" tactic favored most by cowardly terrorists who have no morals to boast of.

I imagine how nice these representatives of Allah himself must have seemed as they set up social services, health clinics, educational facilities and the like in the south of Lebanon in order to endear themselves to the locals. Along with such charity I'm sure came a good dose of propaganda and dogma, ensuring that those that would someday find themselves in harms way would think it was all worth it. How cheap such loyalty seems to be these days. Slowly but surely the spotlight had been focusing on the overkill that Israelis were bringing down upon the palestinians in response to their bad behaviors prompted by such horrible treatment as an occupied people. Given the time and patience already demonstrated as the ultimate weapon against injustice as practiced by Martin Luther King, the Palestinians would eventually have won their homeland, in much the same fashion that the Jews had eventually won their own homeland in the midsts of a harsh and unwelcome land where they now thrive. But Islamic fundamentalism could not allow that to happen, at the risk of making moot their desire to wipe out the Jews altogether and forever, just one step along their path to world domination, no different than that of the Soviets.

I fear that sane civilizations' only answer to this cancer is as I stated above, the collective responsibility doctrine. Only when the world body politic enforces an understanding that you as a culture, a nation, a people, are responsible for the actions of those within your midsts whom you allow to operate and further their causes within your sphere of influence, can you find value in ridding yourselves of these threats to your own peace and security. The United States even now is not facing up to the harsh reality that Iran is enforcing it's own will by proxy via such Shiite entities as the Marde Army and other Shiite dominated institutions within Iraq. If bomb for bomb, rocket for rocket, was visited upon Iran for every one that was detonated in Southern Lebanon and Iraq, I think perhaps fewer rockets and IED's would be exported from that place with such impunity. There are enough people in that country who are thirsting for good jobs, the ability to support their families, and plain, ordinary peace and security, to put a stop to this hatred-by-proxy that the Iranian Mullahs enjoy today.

Pakistan is a country claiming to support democracy and the war on terror, when in reality a good portion of it's populace is actively engaged in this war, and protected by various institutions within this declared Islamic republic. Like I said before, a spade is a spade, and only when this government is told in no uncertain terms that it has a choice to make will it ever make the hard choices. If the Pakistani armed forces truly cannot handle the job of enforcing the rule of law in all it's territory, I am sure NATO and other interested parties would have no difficulty helping out in that regard. If remote villages can be persuaded by demonstrations of force AND reward that turning over terrorists is actually in their best interest, I think they will fall all over themselves seeing who can do it first, rather than having their whole village wiped out because they harbored an Al-Quida cell that crossed over into Afghanistan to attack coalition forces. It works in basketball teams and marine boot camps, no reason it can't work on the world stage.

The idea of civilian casualties has always been one thing that civilized societies have trouble stomaching, quite understandably. The idea of the warrior throughout history was one in which the person willing to take up arms against an enemy did so openly, proudly, wearing the uniform of the state he wished to defend. There has always been a certain honor attached to the sacrifice of the warrior. However, with this recent advent of Islamic fundamentalism, the portrait of the warrior has been sullied, with persons who under any rational set of rules would be considered nothing but a common criminal now claiming to be a warrior furthering a cause. They have even included such cowardly and despicable tactics as dressing like civilians, hiding amongst civilian gatherings, and even hiding behind a shield of women and children. Then there is the remote and suicide bomb attack, which usually kills mostly innocents in large numbers. I'm sorry, but the definition of self defense dictates that one defends against attack by ANY method, and if the only way to defend against attack is to take out an attacker who cowardly hides in the midsts of innocents thinking some moral code they don't even respect will protect them from retaliation, then so be it. The fact that some of these "shields" fully realize the danger they expose themselves to by allowing themselves to be used in such a fashion is all the more reason to hold them responsible for the consequences. A civilized society that hopes to survive cannot allow it's own moral codes to be manipulated and used against it.

You might get the idea that I am an apologist for Israel, but I am not. I am rather pissed at the idea of my tax dollars being sent to Israel to fund it's oppression of the Palestinian people. However, the State of Israel exists, and is not going away. These people have a wholly reasonable fear of persecution and attack, as history has demonstrated, and thus it is reasonable to expect them to reply strongly to any attack against them by people who wish them all dead. Al Quida wants US dead, and no one is concerned that we hunt them down wherever we can find them and kill them on the spot when we can. So, I think it is necessary to take a balanced view and understand why the Lebanese are suffering so. They are expendable as far as Hezbollah and their Masters in Iran are concerned.

Personally, I would solve this problem once and for all by selling Israel the state of Utah, and moving the Jewish state lock, stock and barrel out of the middle east, thus guaranteeing their security once and for all and giving the Palestinians their home back. Then I would withdraw from the area altogether, and let them at each other, with the promise that if one terrorist, one missile, ever makes it's way across the ocean, a major middle Eastern city ceases to exist. We need to wean ourselves off that oil once and for all, relying on our own and other supplies to get by while switching over to alternative energy sources, which we are fully capable of doing,

Then, one day, when the dust settles, and a plaintive voice pleads over the radio for an exchange of diplomats (what, you think Fundamentalist Islam would survive any longer than Soviet communism? People put up with such shit only for so long), THEN we can talk, rationally. Till then, a spade is a spade and it's time those cards were dealt accordingly.