Yesterday I posted my opinions and commentary on the Israel-Lebanon conflict. I realize that to a lot of people any civilian casualties are unacceptable. The truth of the matter is that unless we can get the terrorists to agree to wear special ID chips or tell them to stand out in the open there is simply no way to stop these attacks that continue on Israel without "collateral damage" as they call it.

Over at In Search of Utopia, David Anderson is saying that this is properly defined as a crisis. I still don't see it this way. A crisis is something that occurs that was unforeseen. To anyone who is living in a country that allows terrorists to control their destiny they are only fooling themselves if they believe that it would not eventually end in attacks and deaths. Another argument against the crisis is the advanced warning that Israel has been giving since day one. The same people complaining now would be condemning the air bombing in Germany during World War II.

Here is my full response to David's post where he also lashes out at those who found it telling that photos were found of Hezbollah members in civilian clothes launching missiles so that they could then quickly disperse into the population. He particularly took offense to a post by Kim Priestap over at Wizbang where she properly concludes that we'll never know how many of the dead in a bombing were actually civilian and how many were terrorists. The reality is that some of those "civilians" that Hezbollah and Lebanon are counting as being killed quite simply could be terrorists. There's no way to tell and rather than simply blaming Israel for defending themselves, let's remember who the real evil is -- the ones who fire and then run into civilian buildings to hide behind women and children.

Nobody wants to see kids die, but should everyone just throw up their arms and let evil people succeed?

Here is my full response to his post:

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I still feel the Lebanese need to stop playing the victim card with every attack. When you let a group like Hezbollah grow without anyone stopping them then you can't complain when they get you into trouble.

Now not to play the Nazi card here as I'm not comparing them to Nazi's -- but to use the Nazi's as an example -- the population in Germany allowed them to flourish and take control of their destiny. So of course during World War II it was a travesty when civilians in Germany were killed on bombings because of the actions of the Nazi's. There were innocent Germans who were just going to work and raising their kids and could have cared less about the Nazi party, but the aggression and evil needed to be stopped and unfortunately the tactics of Hezbollah by hiding in civilian populations puts them at further risk.

Let's not forget who is the real blame here. A terrorist group (sponsored by countries calling for the elimination of Israel) that is attacking a country that is not looking for expansion. Israel isn't going on an offensive and trying to take over the Middle East. It is the terrorist groups that want to eliminate Israel here. So far, by judging the media reports, they seem to be getting the upper hand with sympathizers of the Lebanese people actually condemning Israel for attempting to defend themselves.

I simply can't put the blame on Israel for this. It sounds callous, but there is no other way for them to get to these launching sites without having to attack civilian areas. If there was another way to eliminate Hezbollah without killing civilians I'm pretty sure Israel would take that route as these attacks don't make them look good to a lot of people, but there's just no way to negotiate with these terrorists. They will continue to attack the civilian population in Israel until they are totally eliminated.

A cease fire would simply allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm for more attacks in the future as has been shown time and time again in the past.

- Digger