Dipping my toes into the Political Pool

Hezbollah is the current (and by "current" I mean "terrorist of the weak") little whiny butt kid on the playground who is running around screaming and throwing a fit for attention. Meanwhile, in the background, there is someone who is much bigger, more organized, probably tougher, but perfectly content on letting the little people roar on his behalf, who is whispering in the ears of the Hezbollah "go fight that guy", "now go attack that guy", and so on. That big strong silent type, the true threat to the people of the world, is the guy we need to track down and take on, not the current group of people hopping up and down and waving guns.

However, I must digress a little from Tilam's point. I, and I have no proof of this other than my inherent cynicism of politics, have full belief that our government KNOWS this is a civilian war. As a matter of fact, THAT is the main reason they keep to their ideological dogma of the "war on terror". They KNOW that this war is losing support, yet they cling to that catchphrase to keep the civilian population behind them, keep their approval ratings, and otherwise garner public backing for this effort. THAT wording, stating "whooooo, this is dangerous to YOU Mr USA citizen, to YOU Mr John Q Public, this is a war on terrorists who target YOU", presents the fact that their propoganda war is internal as well, offering this reasoning to the american public, protecting their safety against the enemy via our "war on terror". So I think they know FULL WELL this is a civilian war, and while support is waning, they continue to hammer home that phrase as their rallying cry to the american people. Sometimes, when you hear about normal people subduing threats or identifying shifty people, it only seems that we regular shmoes are the only ones actually DOING anything concrete about it. :)

The american people need to see more results, not less. One of the big reasons that President Bush might be falling into liability, as Tilam states, is that truly, we have NO FIRM RESULTS of our "war on terror". Although Tilam might be able to summon some specific successes, I offer the following: we had Bin Laden and let him go, we continue to lose good american men in Iraq, Iran isn't disarming their nuclear program, and I won't even GO into China. Where are our successes? WMD? Where were they? We freed Iraq? No we didn't, least not yet IMHO. Hezbollah? Umm, well, not much there either. In the country of the long TD pass for a score, the long ball for a home run, the fast-break layup, and the power play, we are a society that needs constant attention and success, we hunger for immediate gratification, and this spills into all our phases of operation, sport or political. So what do we see? A game that is dragging on with what is perceived as little progress...

Tilam makes a good point about the Knesset and the IDF. We have laughed about the arab countries in that region, they just keep messing with the Israelis and getting their asses spanked. Israel is getting VERY good (or has been very good) as practicing what I termed in an offline conversation with Tilam as "Patton politics". If you remember, George Patton said "you don't win a war by giving up your life for your country, you win wars by getting the other dumb bastard to give up HIS life for his country". The terrorists and such are willing to give their life, so the Jews are happy to oblige them. And the result is "another 1,000 terrorists I killed who I don't have to worry about in the future". So on many fronts, this appears to take on a war of attrition, with the Jews killing terrorists at an astounding ratio because the terrorists are willing to die for their country. And by doing so, they fight and attack and act recklessly, thus making Israel's job almost easier by comparison. This underscores Tilam's point (and my paragraph above) that there is someone behind these flavour of the weak terrorist groups who is egging them on and using them as fodder or shock troops; it's almost like they are doing this more to make a ideological stand than actually take out any country or group of people. Because I HAVE to believe that if the terrorists REALLY want to attack the Israelis, it would have been a much bigger offensive. But to me, their actions almost indicate "see me, I'm here, I'm not going away, and I'm going to chip away at you like a gnat that you can't squash". If they had any real agenda other than "public notice", it probably would have been much more intense. Or so I think...