WAR in the Middle East - Causes and Consequences

The Israeli military is involved in a major fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is the biggest Israeli operation is Lebanon since 1982. The Israeli army launched the massive attack after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers about a week after Hamas had captured a soldier in Gaza. Many muslim nations were disappointed in Hezbollah for starting the fight, the Israelis also saw this as an opportunity to clean out parts of Southern Lebanon to stop rocket attacks.

I believe Israel had the right to invade Lebanon to rescue their soldiers and also to help protect their people. The counter argument is that Israel has Hezbollah and Palestinian prisoners, but Israel is not the one who provokes them everytime, it is the terrorists. Everytime you here about an attack by Israel, it is usually in response to an attack on them. The people in the region have to realize that Israel is not going to disappear, it will not happen. They need to work together to create two countries, Israel and Palestine. If they want to go back in history, then the Mexicans can claim Texas and the Indians can claim all of Pakistan.

The terrorists are always going to find a reason to fight. First they claimed it was American presence in Saudi Arabia, now that we are gone from there, they claim Iraq, once we leave Iraq, they will hate us for our support for Israel. It will never end, because once people have power, they want to keep it. The Taliban claimed they wanted the King of Afghanistan back in the country once they united the warlords and disarmed the country. Did that happen after the won in the 90s? Once they get their power, no one wants to give it up. Some terrorists claimed they were mad at America because we abandoned Afghanistan once the Soviets left, but if we had stayed, they would have said we were meddling, and since we left, they blamed us for leaving. Why did the other muslim nations not stand up and support Afghanistan if they cared so much? The terrorists are the ones who always want to keep on fighting. The attacks this week in India show how even though India has not started a single war in her history and does not use terrorism, the terrorists still strike the civilians of India. They claim they want Kashmir, if they ever got it, then they would have a new claim, because without it, they would just disappear.

The way to fix the root cause of terrorism is to fight poverty and lack of education in those countries. The people who are willing to take arms against the most powerful militaries in the world are total idiots, I can understand in Iraq and Palestine because some of them believe they are fighting for their freedom, but a lot of them are being recruited in other Arab countries either because they believe the BS or they just want to get paid. Educated and well paid people generally would not go kill themselves.

Back to the Lebanon conflict, it has a greater chance of widening into a regional war if the Israelis target the Syrians who have been backing Hezbollah along with the Iranians. It was reported that Israel has severed transportation in Lebanon because they had intel saying Hezbollah wanted to take the soldiers into Iran. Another interesting news item today was a drone packed with explosives hit an Israeli ship, I would think this definitely shows evidence of government backing for Hezbollah. The US estimates Hezbollah has received neary $1 billion in aid from Iran and is supported by Syria to keep control over Lebanon politics.

Even though moderate Middle Eastern countries are working to achieve peace, their people are urging support for their fellow muslims, if any of these nations decided to join the fight against Israel, it could complicate matters heavily, especially since the United States would protect Israel if it were truly threatened. I doubt the U.S. would need to get involved militarily with the history Israel has had in these conflicts, we would generally be providing intel and weapons. The way it would hurt us most is our troops in Iraq, with a larger angry population in the Middle East, it could lead more people to resort to terrorism and target US troops in Iraq.

While the US has been supporting Israel, they need to help find a way for all the parties to back out of this. One of the main things would be to put pressure on Middle Eastern governments to pressure Hezbollah and Hamas to return the kidnapped soldiers, which could greatly reduce tensions. They also need to take a more active role in Israel's peace process with not only the Palestinians, but the Lebanese government. Though the Lebanese government has been told to reign in Hezbollah and disarm them, they have yet to do so most likely due to lack of power. The US should ask other nations in the region to help the Lebanese government.

It is in the interest of everyone to have this conflict end as soon as possible, once the Israelis either find their soldiers or they get released, Israel should pull back to avoid any added condemnation and show that they were the victims in this event, not the aggressors.

Comment to let me know what you think and how you feel about what it going on, it is always nice to learn new things.

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Bombing Iran

It was reported this week that senior commanders in the military warned their would be serious consequences if diplomacy with Iran failed and led to a bombing campaign or war. They were also against an idea that the war could be done on the cheap, they said economic and military ramifications need to be considered along with items such as the threat to oil supplies and long term backlash from Europe and the Middle East. The article mentioned another problem would be our soldiers in Iraq who would become immediate targets from missiles coming from Iran and attacks from Iraqi Shiites who are loyal to Iran. The Iranians are also moving facilities into urban areas, which would lead to higher civilian casualties.

Our allies in the gulf including Israel would also be targets of Iran and if Israel decided to retaliate, it could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. The current Israeli situation with the Palestinians over a kidnapped Israeli soldier is already putting pressure from the people on Middle Eastern governments to help the Palestinians. This has led Middle Eastern governments like Egypt to try and find a peaceful solution immediately before the people become more discontent and demand action.

I believe bombing Iran would not work that well unless we went in with a large ground force to secure the country and find the nuclear facilites since our intelligence about their locations is weak. Of course this would mean we are locked into another long and costly war along with more international backlash, but the good side would be the nukes are secured. Also our lack of credibility from Iraq makes it tougher for other nations to believe our claims. The leader of Iran might be crazy, but that does not mean he already has WMDs. Just a bombing campaign would also not work since US intelligence is not even sure of all the locations of Iran's nuclear program and hitting facilities in civilian areas would bring international condemnation upon us.

I know some of you may be thinking, "who cares what the other countries think?". It is important how other countries feel about us. The longer we look like the bad guy in the Middle East, the more terrorists it will bread. I know the President likes to say we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here. That is not a valid argument since their is not a finite number of terrorists, they will continue to be more terrorists trained as we kill them in Iraq. We need to fight the root cause that leads them to be terrorists and show them that America is a beacon of hope again, not the big bad bully (which is how the currently feel). They have to not hate America and feel hopeless. A lot of suicide bombers volunteer so their families can get payouts letting the family live a decent life and they also believe they are doing the right thing. If the people become more educaetd and got jobs, it would lead to less people becoming deperate and falling for the bs that they are told. Bombing Iran does not help protray us in a positive light. It may not be our fault that they hate us, but it is in our interests to change their views

Our image in Europe is also poor, we rely on Europe for the continued strength of our military, if we did not have rights to bases in Europe, it would have been much harder to move troops into Iraq. We also want to be on Europe's good side over the continued oil prices. Russia has been bullying countries in Western Europe for favorable oil contracts and the Europians are becoming more anxious and more willing to sign oil contracts with Russia and make better deals with them. If Europe does not think of us as a true friend and security partner, they will be more inclined to side with Russia to protect their own oil supplies. This is important since right now we see how countries are not willing to side with us in the UN so they can protect their oil from Iran.

I do believe that if diplomacy fails and we did gain strong evidence of a WMD program and really fealt threatened, then we should rally the international community to go to war, and I am not talking about how we did it in Iraq. In Iraq our evidence was weak and trumped up to justify the war and we did not even give the UN a chance. Many people said the UN had 10 years and did nothing, but that is false, as we have seen after the war, the UN had been pretty successful in removing old WMDs. As the military commanders have said, it shouldn't even be considered that the bombing can be done on the cheap. We need to plan for realistic scenarios, like oil shortages and widespead violence in the Middle East, Iran is not Iraq, their military has been building up for the past 20 years while Iraq's was withering away under sanctions. Of course we can defeat it, but is the cost worth it, will be the question that our leaders have to answer. It really should be the last choice, not an option along with diplomacy.

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Minimum Wage - Does it Help or Hurt?

Today the minimum wage bill from Senator Kennedy (D) was shot down in the Senate (article).The bill wanted to increase the minimum wage in incremental steps to $7.25 an hour after a little more then a year once the law would have been enacted. It was known the vote would lose, but Democrats had brought it up as an election year issue (like the gay ban for the republicans), it gives them ammo to use in campaigns.

I always wondered which side of the argument had more merit, whether increases in minimum wages helped low income workers or hurt them by causing small businesses to lay them off. Senator Enzi (R) had a proposal that would raise the minumum wage by $1.10, but give businesses tax breaks.

Supporters of the minimum wage says it helps workers since the increase in income will mean more buying power (the republican philosophy on tax cuts is the same, more tax cuts means more people buying). They also say it encourages low wage workers to complete or return to school. Opoonents say it takes away jobs and decreases the field of available low wage workers. It also increases the burden on the government due to layoffs.

After doing a bit of reading, I would have to support the minimum wage increase. While the bill Senator Enzi brought was reasonable middle ground, it is not good at this point due to the massive budget deficits we currently have. Taxes will eventually have to go up somewhere to pay for all the debt our country is in. We are already seeing the change at the local level in many of the states where aid is being cut and taxes are going up to pay debt and make up for a lack of federal funding.

The argument that opponents make saying less low wage workers will be available with a raise is very poor in my book. Their should not be any person who is paid that low a wage. Paying someone $5.15 an hour is pretty much free work in today's economy and the argument that workers laid of will be a burden on the government is poor, since those workers are already a burden due to their income, most are probably on food stamps and MedicAid, if they had a decent income, they would have more buying power and would need less from the government. I cannot see how even two parents making minimum wage would be able to support a family or themselves, the combined income would be about $21-$22,000. A single person would not even be able to pay rent for an apartment, they would be making $824 a month before taxes were cut out.

In a lot of states they have already taken the initiative to raise the minimum wage. It has not been raised in 8 years to even stay up with inflation. In this time, politicians have received nearly $30,000 in raises. If we make the argument that it will hurt small businesses, then when will we finally raise it? That argument cannot be made forever.

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