The Changelog

I was surprised by the reactions to my story Saturday on Israel and Lebanon. Several pro-Israel posters are apparently in complete denial about what the Israeli military forces are doing.

Today, the American network ABC reported that Israel had bombed a Kleenex manufacturer, numerous farms, and all the major roads out of Lebanon. And they showed pictures of all of these during their evening newscast.

I find it highly unlikely that ABC is making this up.

One person asked, essentially, "do you really think a democracy could do this?" Yes. It's happened many times before. The United States and Britain did this sort of thing when they destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed over 25,000 people, most of them civilians, in the bombing of Dresden. The United States also was responsible for the nuclear bombs dropped over japan, killing 140,000 people instantly and countless more due to the effects of the atomic weapon.

Being a democracy is no guarantee against extremism. Some Israel supporters need to take a hard look at what their military is doing.

As I explained, none of this is to defend the attacks against Israel, which of course are also terrible.

But I think Israel's strategy is going to wind up costing them -- they are creating huge numbers of angry Lebanese, that perhaps didn't have the motivation to attack Israel before, but now do. (Of course, the same error could be attributed to their enemy)

And both sides are catching innocent civilians more than military targets.

It's very sad.