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IMO, if the "conflict" could be reduced to the first sentence in your bulletpoint <b>"1."</b>, in the "real world", you might have made some important points in your post.....

But.....you don't get to frame the discussion based solely on where you decide, for the sake of your argument, where <i>"a current armed conflict"</i> begins. The "conflict" is influenced by the history of the region, and that history contains everything in my post here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=21

I could ask, with what I've supplied in that post, how two "terrorists"
could be allowed to "set up shop" in the office of the Israeli PM....ever? Could such a thing happen in the U.S.....could the POTUS be a former terrorist leader???

You fail to mention that Israel has responded in the past month to two incidents where armed opposition, not officially sponsored by either of the elected governments of it's two neighbors, staged attacks on Israeli military positions and killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers, by launching large scale attacks on civilian infrastructure in both of those neighboring jusrisdictions.

If I post that the "current armed conflict" began in 1983, when more than 250 U.S. soldiers were bombed to death in their barracks in Beirut....an attack that Hezbollah is said to have taken "credit" for, would that justify U.S. military intervention in Lebanon now?

Israel has "tolerated" sporadic attacks of a few "dumb" rockets per incident, fired into it's territory from southern Lebanon for at least the last six years. Has invasion of it's neighbors and large scale exertion of force, brought lasting peace to the region inhabited by Israel, in the 30 years since official armies of sovereign neighbors have ceased attacking Israel? What is the goal that you believe will be accomplished by Israel's disproportionate use of force, this time?

You hold the "Lebanese goverment" responsible. How can you expect a fledgling government of a poor nation with a small army, a government tentatively knit together that is comprised of several opposing elements of both religion and nationality, to control Hezbollah, when Israel, with it's mighty IDF, occupied that region for 18 years and could not eliminate or signifigantly reduce Hezbollah?

The U.S., many times more powerful militarily than Israel, has no success in controlling illegal entry at it's own southern border, or the insurgency in Iraq.....yet you give Israel a "green light" to collectively punish all of Lebanon, and I assume, all of Gaza, too.

I see a new "game", here. A game where, in a new era of popularly elected political factions of "terrorist" labeled insurgents, the voters themselves become "fair game", in order to justify disproportionate military responses....like Israel's on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

By that measure, are all of the U.S. voters who backed Bush/Cheney 2004, "fair game" for Queda or Sunni "sleeper cells" in the U.S.

Where is the collective voice against all violence, beyond defense?
Pre-emption seems to be a spreading disease. Was diplomacy so flawed that it is to be abandoned in favor of whipping up the discredited cycle of violent retribution? Take the U.S. for example.
Has our government's violent response to "terror", in Afghanistan or in Iraq, or by abondoning the "peace process" in the M.E., made us "safer", or wealthier? Are there less "terrorists today, that "hate us for our freedom", than there were in the autumn of 2001.

Can't we stop picking sides, stop the madness of the cycle of violence, and talk ourselves to death, face to face with our adversaries instead? It will happen anyway, but the question is, how many will die in vain before it falls to diplomats to attempt what could have been tried, all along? Empty finger pointing to justify killing that accomplishes nothing for those who allow themselves to be caught up in it, and escalate it, only obstructs the path to peace.

Taking "sides" is only useful if the plan is to exterminate all men of fighting age on the "other" side. Is that the plan?