Dammit Freelancer you beat me to it.
I remembered yesterday how Israel pulled everyone out from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank last year. Not just the military, but they made all the Israeli citizens move too. Now it would seem that this action was done in anticipation for what is happening now. Israel says these attacks are in retaliation and to get their two soldiers back and to deter Hezbollah attacks, but I think they anticipated and prepared for it to grow to a much larger scale in order to force the situation to a head, be it all out war or intervention from outside nations.
Side note: true democracy is a rarity in this world. I'm not trying to be technical, but honestly the 'democracy' in the US is only an intricately constructed system that ensures the power remains where it has always been. Not anyone can become president, and not everyone's vote matters. The only thing this representative republic has over a dictatorship is the flexibility that allows it to evolve and hold onto control over the people more efficiently than earlier governments. It's less about self rule and more about better ruling. Is this a bad thing? That depends on your individual set of morals.
The fact remains that modern governments are not democracies, in the truest sense of the word, and that you have to be very careful when throwing the word around. Democractic governments are not the virtuous, philanthropic institutions we would like to believe, and not all democracies are created equal(especially those set up by outside nations).
What's the point of all this talk? It's that in this situation, this war, the fighting is beyond democracy and dictatorship. The hatred originates from the people, not the governments, and that's always been the most difficult to resolve. I don't think the fighting will stop, and I don't think it will remain between Israel and Lebanon. It's come to the point now where all of the middle east and the powers of the world will have to deal with this.
Here's what pisses me off the most. After WWI the allies split up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and created countries like Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Then after WWII, they designated the area of British controlled Palestine to become Israel. The country was created, and the British pulled out, leaving Israel to fight for themselves.
Because of the US and the USSR's rivalry, Vietnam was separated into north and south. North and South Korea were made simply by looking on a map and choosing the 38th parallel. The chastised Germans came back from WWI, with help from their military industrialization to escape depression and encouragement from a zealous leader, to invade first Poland, and then the majority of Europe. After that there was war in Korea, war in Vietnam, fighting in the Middle East between Israel and it's neighbors, war between Iraq and Iran, war with Iraq in Kuwait, war with Iraq in Iraq. Countless small conflicts scattered across the region, including this most recent one.
Are the allied countries of the world wars and the US and USSR of the cold war to blame for all this fighting? No. This hatred has been around forever. But we certainly are doing nothing to help them, nothing to stop the fighting, and are taking advantage of the situations at all costs to human life. Conflict in the Middle East means the big countries get to exert their power without getting their hands dirty. Enforce policy with no reprocutions. And hey, why not? Besides 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, it's not us whose dying is it? Five thousand Americans in exchange for influence over the governments of some 190,000,000 people and over half the world's oil reserves. Seems like a low price to pay to maintain world dominance. Warfare certainly has changed. Why fight when you can have others fight for you? Crule, yet very smart; very efficient.
But it always seems to come back to bite us in the ***. Now we're having to deal with our ****. Terrorism, as has been painfully made clear in recent years, the rising oil prices, and rogue nations like North Korea where
atrocities are being committed and the people being controlled beyond reason. The price of trying to rule the world is retaliation and war, a price that is too often paid by innocent bystanders.
Of course, these days no one is truly innocent. No matter who 'wins' this fight, Israel or Hazbollah, neither side is right. Neither are Syria, Iran, Great Britain, nor the US. No matter what we say or do, in this fight, everyone loses.
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