As of today, 557 Lebanese civilians and soldiers have died and 2,128 have been wounded in the conflict, according to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.
Israel has reported 54 deaths, including 19 civilians killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks.
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Death, injuries, etc we all can agree on (I think) are never a good thing.
But war has its casualties. Is it right? No, but its bound to happen as sad as it may seem.
As most experts will say though, these types of enemies are not following the code of war. They hide in people’s homes, some were found hiding beneath cribs of babies. They live amongst women and children for this very reason.
Fact is war sucks.
yes, war has casualties and i’m not suggesting that they don’t… but i’m just dumbfounded at how lopsided the numbers are. israel’s “response” looks less and less like a response and more and more like an aggrivated assault… and for what purpose?
Hey, no blasted word anymore–good move.
As to this current war–Jason’s right–what do you do with an enemy that shoots at you from behind women and children? They have just shown that those UN people died last week because terrorist fighters were using them as a shield. This is a no-win situation. Of course the response is going to be disproportionate–a war on terrorism is not a pitched battle between two armies. We can’t just send out a memo for all of the terrorists to come out so that civilians can get out of the way like the UN wants Israel to do. Terrorism feeds on a world that has (rightly) grown tired and wary of all war. They take advantage of a current climate where no conflict can ever be viewed as justified. It makes me wonder (and I know that this is radical and heart breaking) if the only solution to really dealing with terrorism is total war. It was only after we removed restraint that we won WWII. It was restraint that ultimately lost us Vietnam. I don’t know…that’s not a good answer either–but no one has yet to propose a good answer to this world-wide problem. The best answer would be to cultivate an attitude of intolerance around the world to this type of radicalism–but that is a pipe-dream.
i understand that it’s hard to fight an enemy that doesn’t fight fairly (using women, children, innocents as human sheilds) but look again at the numbers and ask yourself who is fighting the most unfair. israel has killed 557 innocent people (yes the lebanese army/soliders are innocent if this is a war on terrorists), whereas hezbollah the terrorists have only killed 19 innocent people.
i know this statement to be untrue but my perception is that israel is becoming more and more the terrorists than hezbollah.
i would think that a more peaceable solution would be to make this a police matter rather than a military campaign. lebanon would have to allow the IDF to go into lebanon and go searching for terrorists one by one, going house to house and rooting them out. yes, they could run… but if they’re on the run, they can’t set up and cause the destruction they’re doing now.
just a thought.
love ya aaron, but i’m not a fan of this post. after shirking the simplistic dualisms of the right we dare not embrace the simplistic dualisms of the left. with your mind and desire to dialogue you can raise topics in a manner that both notes the complexities of any given situation and suggests some positive ways forward. in short, you are a new york times quality blogger, and this is a new york post uh, post.
let’s continue talking about and praying through these difficult issues together.
g
uh, i should have read the dialogue that is taking place in the comments before slapping up my opinion. please take everything i say with a grain of salt.
I go back to the original thought, that we were surrounded, literally by dozens of countries who would just assume wipe us off the face of the earth. Would we not defend it? Lebanon is no innocent country in this. They have let Hezbollah run their country even though they claim to be a democracy. They have allowed them to set up all over the country with no fight from the Lebanese govt at all. Syria, Iran, Egypt, they all have a hand in this as well. Every single one of those countries over there hates Israel with a passion.
Is Israel 100% right in all their decisions? Absolutely not. But I watched a MSNBC on the ground in Lebanon special, and some women were talking to a reporter. They started saying, just leave Israel be and stop attacking them. We want to be a peaceful nation. As she was saying this a guy comes running in, pushes her away and says long live Hezbollah, down with Israel then told the reporter to leave as he was yelling at the women.
The argument from the anti-war side is always sit down and talk. Folks, wrong or right, they have been talking since the beginning of the century. Fact is these people DO NOT CARE. They dont want to talk. They want to destroy an entire nation. Always have.
As far as “numbers” Aaron, numbers are like anything in life. They can be skewed anyway the person wants to hear them. There are plenty of numbers out there that suggest Israel has been very careful on when and who they bomb. The same cant be said for Terrorist. They kill first think about it later if then even.
Again bottom line is war sucks, death is obviously not the way of Jesus. But what do you do? Sit back and let them destroy your entire country with no recourse?
funny thing is this is exactly how lebanon is responding. they aren’t doing anything to retalliate against israel’s act of agression.
even if everyone wants to destroy a nation (in this case israel) it doesn’t mean that they are going to do so. they’ve talked and tried forever, but have yet to succeed. but this case was not an act of agression against israel by any of those nations. i think we’re blurring the line here between nations and terrorists. we think that the only way to deal with terrorists is to do the same thing back to them that they’re doing to us (eye for an eye). but military might is not going to destroy terrorism. terrorism is an ideology, and ideologies aren’t rooted out through military might. if that were the case, then naziism would have been destroyed after WWII, but instead we are left with crazies out there that still hold to those ideologies (same could be said of communism, etc).
ideologies must be dealt with differently, and sitting down to talk, although a part of the solution isn’t the sole solution… but as we’ve seen through history military might never is when dealing with ideologies.
Lebanon isnt sitting back doing nothing…they give millions to Hezbollah and they have allowed them to set up shop there…I do agree about the ideaologies need to change as well. The only way isnt bombing back that has been proven. Question is what do you do when the “enemy” doesnt care, truly doesnt care? Hey I come in peace, and blam you are dead.
i guess you could say that i’m a firm believer in law. if an “enemy” doesn’t care, if they are completely indifferent, then let them rot in jail. but you have to catch them first. i guess i’m coming from the assumption that what they are doing is no different than any other domestic-terroristic criminal. so, capture them and put them in jail to rot for the remainder of their lives. will this change ideologies, probably not–but i would think that it would save a lot of innocent lives.