With whom, exactly?clef at [unixtime wrote:1155491827[/unixtime]]Neither full scale invasion nor a “shock and awe” air campaign were even close to the most rational and moral choices for Israel to make in their recent predicament. Negotiations seem to most people to be the reasonable first step in dealing with a conflict of this nature. It’s not as if Israel has no leverage in the region.
So... the proportionate resposne to something unlikely to lead to your destruction is?It’s not as if the missile fire was an imminent threat likely to lead to the destruction of Israel in the near future.
It's also "possible" that Ben-Laden is going to wake up tomorrow and decide to accept Judaism and immigrate to Israel. What it's not, however, is likely.It is quite possible that working with the surrounding nations and the UN could have resulted in troops in Lebanon forcefully disarming Hisbollah and arresting and prosecuting those militants directly responsible for the kidnappings and attacks without nearly as many civilizians killed or displaced.
...Unfortunately, Israel generally believes that neither the United Nations, nor the Lebanese government, nor anyone else could have been trusted even a little with assisting in this matter. No doubt convinced by the rhetoric that the United Nations is useless and that the Lebanese government was completely powerless, their actions only work to ensure that these things continue to be the case.
It's the truth. If and when any of the above felt like being useful... they had years and years to act.
Don't be absurd. They had reasons and excuses before this, they'll have reasons and excuses after this, and anyone who claims to see an actual "you get X bloodshed for Y bloodshed" is full of it.They’ve certainly given the Arab world plenty of reasons to continue to hate them for hundreds of years to come.
My, that's a shocking an innovative conclusion.On top of that, the international reaction has not been nearly as positive and supportive as Israel might have hoped for.
The only nations still in agreement with Israel are likely to be the ones that were already on its side to begin with.
Ok, I searched the beginning of your post, feeling certain that you've contradicted yourself with that sentence, but I couldn't find anything direct... ok...Nor does it begin to examine how further emboldened Israel's enemies will be now that they are able to see how very "not invincible" Israel actually is given how much trouble a relatively small force wielding rockets can cause the nation.
You do realize that "a small rocket-wielding force' has been giving Israel trouble for decades, right? What people have seen is how Israel is capable of reacting to such a force, under certainjcircumstances.
Remind me, what could those actions be?Not when actions less prone to cause suffering and death could have been undertaken to result in the same ends.
This is interesting. The local rhetoric speaks the opposite. Care to expalin your position?We won’t know for sure until more time has passed and we see clearly what Iran and Syria do with their new found leverage