Isn’t Israel occupying Palestine, attacking American war-ships (I hear), selling missiles to China and other such ‘Axis of evil’ stuff?
I imagine Israel have & are still developing WoMD so where does America stand on this - it seems to be one rule for one and one for another.
Someone please tell me why the US is bent on war with Iraq and ignoring the mess in Israel and the west bank?
Strongly recommend you get yourself a more recent newspaper. One that doesn’t publish ludicrous bs would be a good start.
Er, well, Monty, some of it’s based on fact. Sort of. 
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/17/china.plane.weapons/index.html
So that’s just enough of a kernel of truth to make the conspiracy theorists happy, who magically transform it into “Israel is selling [present tense] missiles to China!”
And 5 seconds with Google gives me the kernel of truth to “Israel is attacking American warships!”
http://www.fas.org/news/israel/e20000619israelmakes.htm
Not going to touch “Israel is occupying Palestine!”–Bibliophage can move this to GD and they can take it from there.
And as for “Israel is developing WOMD!”, well, no need to Google that, as Flapcats admits he’s imagining it.
And if anybody didn’t notice the premise for debate, it’s apparently, “Posited: That the US should invade Israel and bring about a regime change.”
Monty - Strongly recommend that you at least try to answer/dispute his questions.
I don’t think that anyone argues that Israel is occuppying at least a part of Palestine (otherwise they’d have been incorporated into Israel proper). I’m not saying that theat’s right or wrong, just that it is the case.
US warships. Well, there was the USS Liberty in 1967. It’s all in the intent though. Israel did not mean to blow up a US ship. There have also been a number of near misses (or at least small scares) with Israeli missiles being test fired near US ships. The most recent that I can find was 06/04/00. I hardly think that these constitute attacks.
Israel has for most of it’s short history been fighting tooth and nail for its existence. Therefore (again, without judging them), they have been forced to team up with people that the rest of the world tends to avoid. I see that DDG has found a link to the Chinese. Israel has also been tied to South Africa back when it wasn’t flavour of the month (no link - if people dispute this then I wade through the anti-Israel crap to find some evidence).
Israel has nukes (again, I don’t think that anyone disputes this, although I may be wrong). You can bet that they are working on improving their efficency. Not too sure about the other types and I imaging any googling will merely swamp me with dross. I would expect Israel to not have any biological weapons, as if they have to use such a weapon, a nuke says “Go away” better and with less political fallout (this is based on my personal perception that nukes have gained an element of acceptance/normalcy, whereas biological weapons have not). They may have chemical weapons, but I would expect any situation that made them consider using chemical weapons would probably make them think of nukes too.
I think that that last part is important. Even if the US wanted to attack Israel, they wouldn’t because they have nukes. Even if they don’t have the range to hit Washinton, would you want to take the risk that they might just load them on a commercial plane (or other non-standard delivery method)?
Iraq OTOH does not have nukes yet. They are also far more likely than Israel to cause trouble outside of their existing borders if they had an effecive deterrent (again, not getting into the rights and wrongs of the Israel/Palestine thing). Finally, Iraq is not friendly or even indifferent to the US and might well try to harm (or help those that will harm) the US from behind it’s deterrent. Israel would not.
You might just as easily have asked why the US doesn’t attack Pakistan over Kashmir. It is not the US’ place to right all wrongs. As a recent convert to the “might is right” approach, it is the US’ place to ensure that a potentially dangerous enemy either adheres to the terms of it’s surrender agreement or is forced to through attack and regime change.
Despite the fact that the “facts” in post suggest that it is in fact meant to be inflammatory and no a quest to dispel ignorance, I’ll give it a go before it gets moved to GD. (Welcome flapcats- one of the nice things about this message board is that there’s a place for almost any post. It’s recommended that newbies check out the descriptions and rules for posting.)
Well, I don’t even have to address the validity of the first part* of the post to answer the latter question. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Israel doesn’t pose a military or terrorist threat to the US. It doesn’t support terrorists and it has never used weapons of mass destruction (Iraq has- on civilians). Just a few of the differences.
PC
*The answer is ‘no, it isn’t.’
I don’t know how old you are, but surely you have read about post WWI, Hitler, and WWII. In the Treaty of Versailles, Germany agreed to limit their military. Hitler ignored the covenant and the feckless League of Nations did nothing. No nation was in a position to unilaterally do anything. England, through its PM, Neville Chamberlain, sought appeasement, a sign of weakness which ruthless psychopaths like to see.
History repeats itself because we fail to learn from the lessons it tries to teach. Iraq lost the Gulf War and agreed to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and allow unfettered inspections to guarantee it does so. It has reneged on its promises. Iraq had just about finished its nuclear capabilities in 1981 when Israel “dismantled” them. To our surprise, during the Gulf War, we discovered that Iraq had just about completed reestablishing its nuclear arsenal. If it takes about 10 years for it do so, it is just about finished again.
We are not thinking about invading Iraq because it has weapons of mass destruction, per se. Many other countries also have them. But it is ruled by a psychopath who has reneged on its promises. Ring a bell? Weakness and appeasement are not the solution.
When Hungary and Czechoslavakia rebelled against Communistic rule in the 1950s, no body lent a hand to help them. The Soviets crushed the uprisings. Stalin, too, was a ruthless psychopath. Although he died in 1953 and Hungary’s uprising was in 1956, his mentality still pervaded the Soviet politics. It took several decades, until a Gorbachev and a Yeltsin came along to change things. When Germany dismantled the Wall in 1989, Gorbachev said OK. This caused the hardliners, jerks from the old school, to oust him. Fortunately, the good people of the Soviet Union, along with Yeltsin, prevented that from happening.
I dread to think of the consequences if Stalin did not do us all a favor by dieing in 1953, when the Cuban crisis occurred a decade later. Kruschev, although he pounded his shoe on the table and said that he would bury us, was a sane person. He was also, IMHO, one of the first to wean himself away from the Stalin mentality.
Hussein has shown that he will use his weapons of mass destruction and has done so against Iraqi Kurds. After the Gulf War, Bush Sr. intimated that we would help the Kurds if they tried to change the regime. They tried, but again we did nothing. They felt betrayed.
If you take the selfish view that Hussein may attack his neighbors but certainly won’t attack us, with our greater material superiority, you again fail to learn from History’s lessons. Hussein is not a rational human being. Like Hitler and Stalin before him, he is a ruthless psychopath.
Hussein is ignoring the UN’s mandates and the UN is showing its fecklessness. Sound familiar? Weakness in the face of ruthless psychopaths is not the answer.
Yeah, and Britain has weapons of Mass Destruction as well. As does France, Germany, Russia, China, Pakistan, India…
The difference is that these countries fit into the classification of “Modern, civilized nations”. Israel also fits into this category. Israel is also a democracy.
THe difference between countries like this and Iraq is that Iraq has a history of flouting international law, attacking its neighbors, defying the U.N. to the point of war, etc. In short, it’s too dangerous to the world to have an Iraq with weapons of mass destruction.
There are other countries with WMD that are ‘on the bubbgle’ in terms of whether the world can tolerate them. High on the list is Pakistan - not because it has any plans to use them, but because of its instability. If the Musharref government fell, I think you’d see the U.S. elevate Pakistan into the ‘critical’ category.
In fact, the U.S. has already prepared rapid-response teams to secure nuclear weapons in countries like Pakistan, should they become destabilized.
It’s all about the correct response to the threat of WMD. In the case of countries like Russia, Britain, and Israel, who can be counted on to behave logically and responsibly, the correct response is to draft bilateral agreements, mutual defense pacts, trade agreements, and other legal mechanisms to ensure that the interests of the two countries coincide. In the case of the Soviet Union, the proper response to that threat was Mutual Assured Destruction and containment.
In the case of Iraq, the original attempted response was to force them to comply to inspection regimes and other hard tests to make sure they are not a threat, because Saddam could not be trusted at his word. Eleven years of failed attempts at inspections and control of his WMD has ended in failure, and Saddam’s response has been to accelerate his attempts to gain access to nuclear weapons. That’s why Iraq is in the crosshairs while countries like Israel are not.
Er, ‘On the Bubble’. A bubbgle is a totally different kind of thing.
And Israel is not occupying Palestine. The West Bank originally belonged to Jordan, which lost it in the Six-Day War of 1967. In 1988, King Hussein severed all ties with the West Bank which I guess means he gave up title on the land.
The same thing happened to the Gaza Strip, except that it was under Egyptian control.
And, no, the US is not ignoring Israel. Considering that its enemies are being financed by the Arab nations, Bush is taking a more direct approach to settling the issue.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip was originally given to Arabs to form a Palestinian State at the same time that the land which Israel occupies was given to the Jews to form the state of Israel, by the UN mandate in 1947. The Arabs had no intention of doing so because they figured they’d soon be rid of the Jews. So Jordan occupied the land now called Palestine and Egypt occupied the land of the Gaza Strip. At the behest of fellow Arabs and terrified of the upcoming initial war to rid the Jews from the land, the Arabs living in Israel fled (most of them, anyway). Since the other Arab nations did not admit them, they became refugees in what is now called Palestine and the Gaza Strip. A few did find refuge in other Arab countries.