I guess a better question would be, if you are dropping bombs that you WOULDN'T let your kids sign, aren't you a hypocrite?

PS- Spell my nick right.

To: stutefish

I'd reply to you, but in order to do so I would need to wear lead shoes in order to sink to the necessary depth of stupidity. And I'm all out of lead shoes.

To: stutefish I'd reply to you, but in order to do so I would need to wear lead shoes in order to sink to the necessary depth of stupidity. And I'm all out of lead shoes.

Oh, snap! The master has put me in my place! Guess I better prepare myself for the wet noodle!

Honestly, does anybody besides your wife think that's a valid rebuttal?

Outside of the third grade, I mean?

No, I'm not a parent.

Honestly, I find war itself to be pretty sick.

I find it sick to have anybody signing bombs, in that I find bombs themselves to be pretty sick.

I don't think you're wrong to find it sick to have children signing bombs, but I also don't think the Israelis are wrong to have their children signing bombs, if that's what they feel is necessary to raise their children properly in a place where bombs go off in their neighborhoods on a regular basis.

I think you're underestimating the difference between parenting children in America and parenting children in a place like Israel that has been a war zone for generations; even more than I'm underestimating the difference between not-parenting and parenting.

---

Edited to add:

I mean, Israeli parents don't have the luxury you have, TW, of teaching their children that war is a violent and horrible sickness, that only ever happens very far away, and that they can grow up in total ignorance of. That "very far away" to you is "right here at home" to them, and for the survival of their nation and their people, they can't really afford to let their children grow up in ignorance of it--if that were even possible.

The effect of hypocrisy, written in the flesh of the residents of Qana village in Lebanon. The current incident is referred to in Lebanon as 'Qana II' - since that village was previously attacked by Israel in an earlier conflict. The words of politicians, and of upstanding moralists such as the whimpering puppy BakerStreet, stutefish, and UBoB, written in dead flesh.

Enjoy, gentlemen. As I said before - after all, you're paying for it.

To: foreverserenity

You have a simplicity and directness of language that I cannot approach and which I am learning to appreciate. Thank you for your comment.

To: stutefish

Despite the effort it will cost me to sink to the level of moral ignorance and political incompetence that is involved in speaking to an insect such as yourself, I find myself unable to resist the neccessity of refuting you. However, let me say at the outset that I consider you to be among the vilest of the vile, an espouser of corrupt nonsense, a traitor to the entire history of the moral evolution of the West, an advocate of the most fatuous political expediency. If you are an American then you are utterly unworthy of that Name. May the evils that you espouse be visited upon your head. If you have children may you see them die: God curse and abandon you, for the moral filth that you are.

Since it is a fundamental principle of terrorist doctrine that war encompasses the civilian population, and that ideological conflict recognizes no innocents, I wholeheartedly approve of the entire Israeli populace (which recently came under Hezbolla's gun, not just their soldiery) engaging the enemy on the enemy's own terms.

How is it, worm, that you, having been privileged to grow within a framework of liberty and individualism, in the aftermath of two world wars waged to defeat the forces of tyrrany and exploitation, can advocate a position that is the entire antithesis of the basis upon which those wars were waged? Every moral ambition of the West, its every moral endeavour in relation to the question of war (and what cultural entity in the world is there that has waged such horrific wars as the West?) has been to ameliorate the impact of war upon civilians, upon those who are without arms and are subject to the caprice of those who possess them.

You, however, vile and despicable as you are, would make of the most abominable attacks upon the most helpless a virtue. You are the epitome of arrogance, the acme of an expediency that denies the commonest element of human solidarity. You have no children, you say - then may you watch all that you hold most dear destroyed. And when you have, come tell me again how right it is, how proper, for those with power to collaborate in that destruction.

And it is right and proper for Israel's allies to give them some means with which to express that willingness.

May you live long enough to understand what it is you have said.

To: BakerStreet

You cringing cur, you stinking filth.

Our soldiers sign our bombs. These Israeli children live in fear of Hezbollah, and those Lebanese kids aren't a damn bit more precious than the Iraqi ones we blew up with bombs reading "This one's for you, Saddam" and such. Lebanese and Palestinian kids are out there with their hateful signs during every protest.

You equate the folly of the morally ignorant with virtue and proselytize the betrayal of the very virtues which constitute you as an American. Because such things are done does that make them right? No. It marks only the ignorance and under-development of those who do them. You reeking hypocrite, would you say that it is right that children be used as the tools of propaganda if they were your children? If you say yes then you condemn yourself as a moral degenerate. If you say no you condemn yourself as a gross hypocrite.

I believe you to be an American. If that's so then you grew up in a land dedicated to the idea that tyrrany should not prevail, that tyrrany should be resisted at every turn and at no matter what cost. Will you now tell me that those who hunt men with Gunships, that those who carve up lands that are not their own to suit their own advantage, that those who bomb the unarned and the helpless are not tyrants?

Yes, probably you will.

Who gives a damn about Lebanon, a nation where the people are either too cowardly or to complicit to even ATTEMPT stop Hezbollah from killing Israeli children. Too cowardly to even call Hezbollah terrorists. The missiles falling on Israel are 'from Lebanon with love', they are just too cowardly to sign them.

I 'give a damn' only to this degree - that I will not collaborate in hypocrisy, which is an assualt upon the soul of Man. I will not sit idly by while those who presume to consider themselves legitimate authorities engage in the most egregious deceit. Given my choice I would kill all of them, from Tehran to Damascus - but I would do it in one fell swoop and with complete honesty, recognising my own evil in doing so.

You, though, stinking coward that you are, would hide behind a moral relativism that excuses the worst excesses of an idiot political pragmatism that denies that those you pretend to oppose (would you shit yourself or go blind if you met an actual terrorist? - I'm prepared to stake money on the fact that you would shit your pants and beg for your life) are exactly similar to those you defend.

The adult men and women who soldier for their nation have earned the right to treat their enemies with that kind of contempt. They have earned the right to hold in scorn the political 'reasoning' of those who so blithely send them to die in pursuit of agendas that history will laugh to scorn.

But you? What have you sacrificed, that gives you the right to mock the very principles that have established the comfortable conditions of your life? Nothing at all, I'd wager.

I allow you to comment on my blog only because my wife avers that you are not the coward, fool, and hypocrite that you appear to be. But my indulgence has its limits, and you have reached them. Be gone, you detestable betrayer of all that gives you worth.

No more of your cant will appear here.

While some folks can appreciate the creativity of your curses and insults, including myself, the average (and they are oh-so-average, aren't they?) participant on JU would be just as well served with a simple "fuck you."

No, we're more sophisticated than that, LW...we will not respond unless you append it with "and the horse you rode in on" or some other similar catchy phrase.

If'n it don't fit on a set of Burma Shave signs, it's probably too complex for most of us!