Well played Israel, well played...

[fishtaco]

Originally Posted by reefraff
http:///forum/post/3275949
You are right there. Mr. Transparency Obama who is looking quite Nixonian at this point, Mr. tax fairness Rangle who dodged paying his own taxes, Mr. Loan fairness Chris Dodd who took a sweetheart loan deal then opposed the Bush plan to increase oversight of banks. I find their transgressions as being much greater than a person who preaches family values then falls short in their personal life. Marc Foley was preying on underage pages so his was a different deal. Of course in the 80's when Jerry Studds was caught taking an underaged page out of the country the Democrats punished him by re electing him like 5 more times.
I guess we will just have to disagree then, although all far far short of the moral values of the average American regardless of how religious they are. I am pretty uptight about morals though because my father was such a worthless excuse for a human being and it made me probably go further the other way than most people and regardless of other views my stance on morality is very hard-core and I have zero tolerance for people who fall short in their personal life if they are a public figure who preaches otherwise.
Fishtaco

 

[reefraff]

Originally Posted by Fishtaco
http:///forum/post/3275953
I guess we will just have to disagree then, although all far far short of the moral values of the average American regardless of how religious they are. I am pretty uptight about morals though because my father was such a worthless excuse for a human being and it made me probably go further the other way than most people and regardless of other views my stance on morality is very hard-core and I have zero tolerance for people who fall short in their personal life if they are a public figure who preaches otherwise.
Fishtaco
My old man was a POS too but I'd a whole lot rather have a leader who falls short in their personal life than one who abuses their office. Doesn't mean I like what they are doing. Hypocrisy is Hypocrisy but when has a direct effect on my life I dislike it a whole lot more.

 

[darthtang aw]

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.
But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.
Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.
Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?
But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.
(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.
Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.
But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.
Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.
The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.
(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

 

[darthtang aw]

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?
Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.
What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
letters@ charleskrauthammer.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060304287.html

 

[mantisman51]

Well I'm off to work on my property. Before I go, I would like to pose a question. The American left-you know the Democrat Party-is blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. So why are (by most polls) American Jews so overwhelmingly Democrat? Is it self-loathing? Is it liberal guilt? America's conservatives are overwhelmingly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, yet American Jews like Pinchy Solsberg (owner of the New York Times) regularly paint us as racist. I don't think Israel has to be destroyed in order for Jesus to return-that's a warped doctrine. I do believe in the promise of Abraham and feel that Jews and Christians alike are commanded by God to defend Israel and God's chosen people-the people who started the entire concept of civilization and the only civilized nation in the Middle East. So there ya go Lefty's, have a field day, I'm ready.

 

[stdreb27]

Originally Posted by mantisman51
http:///forum/post/3276163
Well I'm off to work on my property. Before I go, I would like to pose a question. The American left-you know the Democrat Party-is blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. So why are (by most polls) American Jews so overwhelmingly Democrat? Is it self-loathing? Is it liberal guilt? America's conservatives are overwhelmingly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, yet American Jews like Pinchy Solsberg (owner of the New York Times) regularly paint us as racist. I don't think Israel has to be destroyed in order for Jesus to return-that's a warped doctrine. I do believe in the promise of Abraham and feel that Jews and Christians alike are commanded by God to defend Israel and God's chosen people-the people who started the entire concept of civilization and the only civilized nation in the Middle East. So there ya go Lefty's, have a field day, I'm ready.
Regardless of your religious views, we as a nation have a responsibility to defend democracy. And well that is the only country in the middle east (until Iraq) that has free elections (Turkey doesn't quite count, geographically).

 

[darthtang aw]

Originally Posted by stdreb27
http:///forum/post/3276190
Regardless of your religious views, we as a nation have a responsibility to defend democracy. And well that is the only country in the middle east (until Iraq) that has free elections (Turkey doesn't quite count, geographically).
Explain why we have this responsibility.

 

[stdreb27]

Originally Posted by Darthtang AW
http:///forum/post/3276196
Explain why we have this responsibility.
The same reason you don't walk by someone getting mugged. It is the decent thing to do. If you accept the founders premise that all are created the unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, shouldn't we (relative to the rest of the world) as people who are enjoying those rights, defend a people or nation attempting to follow along a similar path?

 

[mantisman51]

1) As Reef has mentioned, they are the only true democracy in the Middle East, a region that we need for energy. They provide stability in the region as the counter-balance to countries like Iran and even our "ally" Saudi Arabia.
2) Religiously, we are commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Only when Jews(and Britain for a short while) have had control of Jerusalem, and by extension, Judea in general, have Christians had unfettered access to the "Holy Land".
3) If Israel wasn't needed as a strong ally in the Middle East, I would find it my religious duty to support the land of Abraham. Not necessarily from a governmental support, but a personal perspective.
4) (Maybe #1) As a man who believes in the rights of all mankind, Israel should be defended as a home for the Jews so that never again can a dictator or government seek to exterminate the Jewish race. That is why you will find I use the phrase "Never again!" frequently.
5) American democracy is founded on the ideals found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy: the personal rights God grants His people, as well as the personal responsibility needed to sustain such freedom. Israel has proven that in the thousands of years of their history that civilization is possible-that needs defended.

 

[reefraff]

We are not obligated to support or defend any country based on religion. While our nation is steeped in Judea christian values we are a secular nation so while religion might (should where applicable) play a part in how some politicians develop their moral compass it doesn't play a role in official government policy.
Any nation who was a member of the UN when Israel was formed has a legal and moral obligation to defend them from foreign attacks. That doesn't meam we should look the other way when they cross the line but nor should be ignore the violence against them lest we offend a muslim. They are using the obsession Americans have with political correctness against us. I've known Muslims from the middle east, Somalia and the US (Russian decent) and they had no problem discussing their religion and their heads didn't explode if you said something negative about Mohamed
From a security standpoint Israel is our only solid ally in the region. There are friendly countries there but they have shown time and again when the chips are down they are going to side with Muslims against us, right or wrong.