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Originally Posted by abaya
The "right" to be in Lebanon? According to whose definition?
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I meant it in the sense of identifying and acknowledging the official armed forces of a sovereign government. Where hezbollah is a separate militia operating independently from the official state armed force. I was speaking in political terms not moral terms.
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Some people might say that no one has the "right" to be in power unless they are fairly elected in a democracy... but oops, oh wait, the Palestinians elected Hamas. Never mind about their "right" to be in power... Americans don't think Hamas has the right, so that's that. Forget all that stuff about being elected in a democracy as granting "right" to a person or party. If we don't like 'em, they don't have rights.
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There are many strings attached here because without outside assistance (and not just from the US), Hamas doesn't have the financial resources to run a government properly; they rely on outside money to the point where they are paralyzed without it, yet they want to be the ones setting the agenda, and I'm not sure things work like that when others give you money. In return for money, Hamas was told to moderate their views - and they started to - when the kidnappings occured. Some claim that Israel carefully planned this latest fighting from the start, because there is public evidence (of sorts) that Israel had a military contigency plan in case of hostilities from the north. I don't believe this is true because many different armed forces of the world make contigency plans for many different scenarios of conflict.
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The important question is what the people of Lebanon think about Hezbollah... and there's certainly not unanimous agreement there. But I can tell you that every day this conflict goes on, people who never would have supported Hezbollah before, even in their wildest dreams, are starting to see Hezbollah's right for existence. Which probably seems totally counter-intuitive to us armchair observers, but who can say what those people are going through, and how it is shaping their opinions? We cannot.
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Well said. I agree that Israel is running the risk of empowering hezbollah even further. Also, there are some who say that a potentially nuclear Iran is trying to widen its sphere of influence through this conflict, which brings even more issues to the table - valid ones in my opinion. There are questions over how involved radical Islamists from other groups, such as al-qaeda, might become, whether they see this conflict as an opportunity to expand their operations. I also think it speaks volumes that many governments have taken an extremely diplomatic stance on the issue of the Israeli counteroffensive, with some arab nations even speaking out against hezbollah.