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I know its old news but what really irks me about this article is that United Nations made a resolution condemning the attack against Hamas. I mean, Hamas is a terrorist organization and UN condemns attacks made to eliminate the head of the organization? I don't see United Nations bitching about United States attacking Bin Laden...

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Mojo_PeiPei

The United Nations is a joke of an organization in just about every respect. Furthermore in the context of this article, the UN has continuely been a base for the anti-Israeli agenda of both Europe and the Middle East on a scary level.

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mml

We took the right stand on this issue. Both sides are at fault and any condemnation should be bilateral.

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hammer4all

The U.S. has a long history of vetoing U.N. resolutions critical of Israel no matter how egregious the crime is. Is it any wonder why many middle eastern Arabs believe the U.S. is "controlled by the Jews" – as they sometimes put it?

http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html



http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

U.N. maps:

http://tinyurl.com/vma1 (pdf file)

http://tinyurl.com/3ez8m (pdf file)

Mojo_PeiPei

The rest of the world has in the past gone out of its way to make resolutions condemning Israel unfairly and out of context. Pick your poison.

Less suicide bombing/terrorist deaths since the implication of the wall as pointed out in other threads? .... hmmm coincidence?

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SLM3

Extra-judicial killings for everyone!


SLM3

Strange Famous

The US also attempted to assinate Saddam Hussain... would the UN be attacking them if they had managed it?

The hypocrisy is incredible, a killing is a killing - Bin Laden and Yassin are similar people, except Yassin has killed a lot more people of course.

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SLM3

You're right, the hypocracy is incredible. If any number of groups who have suffered at the hands of Ariel "The Butcher of Beirut" Sharon decided to assassinate him, would everyone congratulate them for killing a man responsible for thousands and thousands of deaths? Or would it simply be another evil terrorist plot?

This "we did it so it must be ok" mentality drives me nuts.


SLM3

Mojo_PeiPei

So let me ask you SLM is it all Sharon's fault? The evil zionist Jews as a whole? You seem to be very skewed and unobjective at best in your out look of the whole situation.

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Stare At The Sun

Is anyone really suprised? No. Didn't think so.

This is typical, and is politics. Though the resolution wouldn't do anything in reality, and is just fluff in and of itself, it still would be nice to see the US do more to Israel than slap them on the wrist and say "shame on you".

Mojo_PeiPei

Not to hijack the thread, by why should the US do anything to Israel? Let Israel handle themselves and their own business. What would be really hypocritical is how we conduct our war on terror... Israel lives with this bullshit everyday, let them handle their business.

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filtherton

If the u.s really let israel handle everything on its own it would have gotten the crap stomped out of it by the rest of the middle east a long time ago. The fact is that we subsidize them and their business with weapons, aid, and our international clout. Careful what you wish for.

Mojo_PeiPei

Israel was wiping the floor with the Arabs before we ever gave them aid (read: War of Independence).

Not to mention a lot of their "aid" is loans or money brokered from treaties.

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Stare At The Sun

^ Uh, that's laughable.

Without the US, the rest of the middle east would come down on them faster than you can say "ah shit".

We supply them with weapons, defense systems, tanks, money, aid, and our personal backing. If the US ever just said "screw you guys, we're staying at home" It would be chaos in the middle east very very fast.

Mojo_PeiPei

It might be laughable, but it is the truth both historically and currently.

Israel did a good job defending itself in 49". And after the fact when the rest of the Middle East was getting outfitted by the Soviet's was when we got in on Israel's side, so it goes both ways.

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Lebell

We vetoed it and rightly so.

The UN will condemn the assassination of a murderer but won't condemn terrorists that use children to blow up other children.

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Jizz-Fritter

Ok, the US once vetoed a security counsil resolution commanding all nations to respect international law. This is nothing surprising in the least.

Funny thing about John Negroponti, he was ambassador to the Hondurus during Reagan's terrorist war on Nicaragua. It's funny that the guy that was organizing terrorists and was using his embassy as the base of operations for terror, is now legging the war against Iraq at the international diplomatic level.

Reminds me of how Paul Wolfowitz praised Suharto while he was ambassador to Indonesia, and now he is the democratic ideologue for Iraq.

UN Resolution score card:
Iraq - 17
Israel - 60

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Jizz-Fritter

I think the point of the whole thing is that a nation should behave more responsibly than terrorists, which Israel does not.

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Publius

As I prepare to leave for New York tomorrow where I will be spending the next week at the UN dealing with this and other such topics, it occurs to me that most of you have no clue wtf is going on in the world. The UN is condemning the attack as a means of playing damage control. Let me make an analogy if I can to give you an idea about how the Arab world views the killing of Yassin. Yassin was not only a “terrorist” leader, he was also a spiritual and political leader. He was to the Arab world, (and here come the analogy) a mix between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I use these examples because Dr. King was a great spiritual leader as well as political figurehead in the civil right movement, while Malcolm X adds the militaristic portion of Yassin’s character (“By any means necessary!”) lacking in Dr. King. In addition to being the head of the terrorist organization Hamas, Yassin was viewed as a great spiritual leader fighting for the basic human rights of the Palestinian people (under Israeli law, Palestinians have very little if any rights) and his involvement with Hamas was seen as the “By any means necessary!” fight against the Zionists in Israel (for the purpose of this analogy, think of the Zionist as members of the KKK, as this is how they are viewed by most of the Palestinians that I have talked with). Now, while I will be the first to admit that this is by far not a perfect analogy, it should be good enough to give you some sense of Yassin’s importance to the Palestinian and Arab peoples.

Now I am in no way attempting to defend Yassin here, only give you a clue as the politics going on in this situation. What you also seem to fail to recognize is that Yassin’s killing was simply a political move by Sharon in an effort to take the spotlight off of his (Sharon’s) corrupt government which has come under heavy fire (from the Zionists, I might add, because he is working to pull out of Palestine) in the past few weeks. The UN’s reaction to this killing is one in which they are condemning Sharon’s action here, both because it was wrong (wrong because of the reasons for why he did it, not necessarily because it was wrong to whack Yassin) and because this killing will escalate hostilities in the Mid-East both against Israel and against the US for our involvement in Iraq. Had our administration been a little smarter, we would have signed onto the bill or at least have abstained from the vote, because in so doing we would have shown the Arab world that we are not merely puppets if Israel for one, and secondly this would have helped to reduce the resentment felt towards the US, which in turn would help with our situation in Iraq. To put this more bluntly and dumb it down for you all, by vetoing this resolution we have condemned more of our boys in Iraq to die at the hands of fanatical Muslim extremist. This is just the latest in a string of missed opportunities by our administration to patch up relations with other mid-eastern countries and the arab world. Like a good gambler, a good politician has to know when to hold’em and know when to fold’em. Unfortunately when it comes to foreign diplomatic relations our administration does not seem to be able to tell the difference between an Ace and a Joker.

filtherton

I think that is the most informative post i have ever read in the politics forum. Imagine that, someone who seems to actually know what the hell they are talking about.

Welcome!

Lebell

Welcome to the boards, Publius and thank you for the informative post.

I don't think however, that you have to "dumb" anything down here.

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Jizz-Fritter

**MODERATOR EDIT: Consider this a general warning to EVERYONE.

The sarcasm in Tilted Politics needs to be toned down NOW.**

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Publius

First, filtherton, I thank you for your comments, although I assure you they are much to kind. Also, if you take a look at my registration date, I have been a member of this board for some time, I just don’t post very often partly because of my very busy schedule and partly because I don’t want to take the time to write out an essay to defend my position, which leads me to Lebell’s comment. I hope I didn’t offend you by saying I was dumb things down. My intention was not to seem as if I was talking down to anyone, rather, it was for my benefit to put it into the simplest terms possible as I simply don’t have the time to write a 20+ page sourced paper explaining my position, hence the use of my very poor analogies in attempting to make my point. Anyway, I was just killing some time here as I’ll be leaving for New York in about an hour and I won’t be back to comment on this further for some time, so have fun, good luck, and see what everyone has had to say in about a week.
Cheers,
Publius

Lebell

Intent is always more difficult to figure out on the 'net.

Thanks for the clarification

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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pocon1

I did not read his "dumb it down" comment as referring to tfpers as dumb, I saw it as trying to explain things quickly at a level that would reach everyone.
Either way, it worked for me and I would like to hear from publius more.

seretogis

I have a hard time believing that any empty diplomatic gesture like this would save lives of our military men and women in Iraq. Fanatical Muslim extremists are just that -- I don't think that patronizing them will make them any less anxious to blow themselves up and take our soldiers with them. I am glad that we are not appeasing them by condemning Israel, but we've yet to do much to dismantle the cycle of hatred towards the US that fuels terrorist organizations.

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Publius

I agree with you in part and respectfully disagree with you in part. Yes "Fanatical Muslim extremists are just that", but so are extremist Zionist zealots just that. So long as we consider to take sides in this conflict our boys will die defending one side or the other. Now I am a realist (philosophically speaking) when it comes to international politics which means that I believe that there not nor can there be a supreme global sovereign. Each government can and should always act out of its own personal self best interests. This is basic Machiavellian principles of government. But based upon this, and this is something that everyone seems to have clearly forgotten, is Machiavelli’s fundamental principle that a good ruler will never let a smaller wicker country compromise and dictate what his national policy should be towards other countries. Unfortunately we are doing just that with our uncompromising support of Israel. If we were smart we would pull out of the middle east completely and let both sides sort it out themselves, then when the smoke had cleared, go back in and pick up the pieces, but I digress.

Just as a note of humor (well it was somewhat humorous to me anyway), this past week while serving my time at the UN, I was placed in the uncomfortable position of having to defuse a situation where the delegate representing Algeria was asserting, rather forcibly I might add, to the delegate representing India, that Hamas in spite of the fact that some of its members may have been associated with criminal activities, was non the less a respectable Non Governmental Organization (NGO) and as such should have the full support of the UN. Clearly I disagreed with him upon this point, but like a good mediator I was able to bring both sides to the table without further hostilities. The reason I am providing this little antidote is to further demonstrate just how lacking our understanding in this country seems to be over the problems facing the middle east situation. This problem run much deeper than I think most people realize or are willing to admit, and any amount of diplomacy that we can use should be used, even at the risk of pissing of Israel, if it will help bring back our boys in one piece

Cheers,
Publius

assilem

Just to drop a bit of info on you all. Guess how many resolutions the UN has passed condemning the terrorist acts of the Palestinians. Any answers. Well the answer is 0. That’s right folks zip, zilch, nada.

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Zeld2.0

Thanks Publius - great posts !

And I myself do take a realistic view and in my opinion, when we try to label ideology upon our political actions, frankly put, shit happens.

When we act out of self defense in our own interests, results have been far better. In Vietnam, our boys died for another country to which the United States had little reason to be paying blood for another nation's problems. In the Middle East, we shouldn't be sending our boys to pay with their blood over a nation we could care less about.

sprocket

Actually I had read that at one point, Israeli Hassad agents were in position to take out Saddam (as in all they had to do was pull the trigger) near the time of desert storm. Israel had checked with the US before taking action, and the US had asked them to back down. Interesting little bit of info, I'm not sure if its true, but I'll do some digging on it.

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