“Is Israel doing anything that the U.S. would not do in the same situation?”
I enjoyed this comment on MetaFilter enough to post it on my blog. In response to the question:
Is Israel doing anything that the U.S. would not do in the same situation?
God, I'm so sick of this idiotic argument.
Get this into your head: Israel is not the United States, and never will be. Israel isn't even Korea. When Iraq unilaterally invaded Kuwait under some BS pretext, 500,000 soldiers and the largest bombing campaign in history smashed the country into submission. It never recovered. Israel is basically imitating the tactics of Iraq circa 1990.
Here are some thing the US did with respect to Iraq that Israel never did with respect to Lebanon:
* Israel never put on their case before the UN.
* Israel never asked the UN to try to negotiate a peaceful resolution (the US forced the inspectors back into Iraq, if you recall)
* Israel never consulted publicly with other nations having an interest in the matter before acting.
* Israel has no plans to stay and rebuild the civilian infrastucture of Lebanon.
* Israel has no plans to train the Lebanese army.etc.
These are all things the US has done, or tried to do, or did poorly, but it still did them. The US could have invaded Iraq unilaterally on 9/12/2001 with no stated reason whatsoever and nobody would have done a thing. But the US didn't do that. Bush bashing aside, they at least tried to court world opinion.
And, the downward comparison is bogus even if the situation was the same, which it isn't.
The U.S. gets to do things that Israel doesn't get to do, because the U.S. is a superpower, becasue the U.S. economy drives the gloabal economy (including Israel's), because it gives Israel money and military support every year, and because the US will be ultimately responsible for the middle east mess anyway, regardless of who is and isn't involved. Lebanese are blaming the US for the Israeli invasion, and the US had nothing to do with it. Thank you very much Israel. The Arab world clearly didn't hate us enough already for the stupid things our president did, now we have to put up with your nonsense. At least we can elect a new U.S. president. How do we get rid of your lunatic?
posted by Pastabagel at 11:41 AM PST on July 31