Why yes, like me. On the topic Churchill, Hitler and European pre-WWII politics I will be more than glad to act the smartass…
London_Calling, best I can tell you are engaging in some serious historical revisionism. I’d like to see some basis for your assertion that Sharon was “on a frolic of his own” in Lebanon. Besides being at odds with history as I understand it, it is also at odds with the conclusions of the commission which investigated the massacres, which blamed others (including Begin) along with Sharon.
Beyond this, I don’t see the relevance of internal Israeli politics here. In any event, as a practical matter it was a war.
Izzy,
You might not be, but the OP made an attempt at a biased jibe in the effort to compare the level of badness of sides.
Well, before the whole Sharon thing got out of hand the point was to show how wrong it is to do that with any of the ‘great guys’ that are heedlessly heading the opposing sides in the conflict under scrutiny.
I would agree that regular criminal law makes for bad comparison. War has to be tested against the conventions, rules and laws that guide armed conflict. IIRC Sharon was found to have skated up a little too close to that line, even potentially trespassed it and was hence considered a liability at the time.
Sparc
Don’t think I am. Nor do I think you’re suffering from a selective memory disorder so I’ll just remind you of the facts:
The Israeli cabinet met to approve sending ground troops into Lebanon. Defense minister Ariel Sharon briefed the cabinet on “Operation Peace for Galilee” a plan for a limited incursion of twenty-five miles into Lebanon to wipe out PLO positions in southern Lebanon and thus safeguard Israel’s population in northern Israel. The cabinet, including the opposition Labor Party, supported the plan for a limited operation.
Mr. Sharon and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, however, had a wider-reaching grand plan beyond that of destroying the PLO’s military power in southern Lebanon and the creation of a security zone there. They envisioned completely eradicating the PLO’s military, political and economic hold over Lebanon, evicting Syrian forces from Lebanon, and facilitating the creation of a Christian-dominated Lebanon which would sign a peace treaty with Israel.
<snip>
The larger objectives of the Lebanon campaign left a significant imprint upon Israeli society. Israel’s campaign in Lebanon was the first war Israel waged which provoked widespread debate within Israel. While many Israelis agreed with the limited objective of destroying the PLO’s power in southern Lebanon in order to protect Israel’s northern population, they disagreed with the larger objectives envisaged by Sharon and Eitan. These larger, unrealistic goals, they argued, had caused an unnecessarily high number of Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties in Lebanon. For the first time, Israelis took to the streets for anti-war demonstrations."
I didn’t raise the subject, just responding to your characterisation. He exceeded his mandate and turned a defensive, limited action into his own personal mission. That’s fact, isn’t it ?
“Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never.”
“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”
Courtesy of WLSC
For december:
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
For grienspace:
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.
From Sparc with love
“Oh, Lord. Why doest thou make me wait so long.”:rolleyes:
Wait, where have I heard that before? Was it William Calley, or Yasser Arafat, or Heinrich Himmler, or . . .
TOUCHE 
Excuse me, but I’m NOT a member of Parliament.
I’ll be the Duchess of bloody Kent, if you don’t mind.
Bags be Queen Elizabeth. As long as I don’t have to shag creepy old Phil.
Sparc, I realize that the OP was about the comparison. My post concerned only the specific issue that I addressed. Perhaps I should have been more clear about that - sorry.
As for your comment that Sharon “was found” etc. - I’m not sure who “found” this. Certainly he was found to have erred by the commission investigating the mater, but errors abound. The extent to which it might be viewed as a criminal act is not at all clear, and I don’t think any consensus exist. Certainly some people think it was - e.g. some parliamentarians in Belgium. But it is a complex issue, heavily tinged with politics, and I don’t see how a definitive statement could be made, absent a more substantive discussion of the underlying issues.
(One serious allegation is that Sharon may have given the “green light” to the Phalangists. This was the subject of the Sharon vs. Time Magazine libel lawsuit. Sharon won on the evidence, but lost on the “public figure” legal aspect. Whether you believe this allegation is probably heavily dependent on your pre-existing opinion of Sharon - once you make someone into an evil monster, there’s no crime too great to attribute to them. But I would note that as a practical matter, it would not require much intelligence to figure that the political and PR fallout from a massacre would outweigh any possible advantage that he might get from it).
London_Calling, thanks for the link - I did not remember this. Still, I do not change my position. I’m no expert on Israeli government, but my understanding is that votes by the Cabinet are not binding on the government, but are rather a function of politics, in the form of the coalition governments that are put together. In reality, each minister has the authority to run his own department, subject to the ultimate authority of the Prime Minister who appointed him (and the country’s laws). So if the Defense Minister runs his own show, with the support of the Prime Minister, the fact that the Tourism Minister and the Housing Minister et al don’t agree presents a political problem, but not a legal one.
I don’t think so, as above. But my interest here is not Israeli politics - I am interested in whether the responsibilities and moral aspects are judged by ordinary criminal law or by the code of conduct that applies in wars. And here I say that even if you were right that Sharon “exceeded his mandate” and was running an illegal war, the fact remains that he was operating his country’s military in a war. There are many many countries in which the military is not completely subordinate to the civilian leadership that officially has authority - I don’t think you would say that any war fought by these countries is not a real war and is governed by civilian criminal law.
Good post. I see that in addition to your self-appointed task of following december around to multiple threads to condemn and insult, you’ve also taken it upon yourself to provide a clear example of the vast gulf that separates december’s trollish and provocative posts from your own thoughtful, insightful, substantive, and to-the-point ones. Well done.
So where’d december go?
My opinion is pretty clear. What’s your opinion, Cervaise?
Actually, Lilibet didn’t marry Phil until 1947 after the War was over, and in his day, Philip was actually a rather good-looking man. Very handsome.
But I still want to be Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent. She kicked serious ass.
And she had the best jewelry.
I don’t see the point of beating this horse, december. I was just noticing that you seemed to have disappeared from your own debate, that’s all, and was wondering why. Now I know.
Fuck off, Izzy.
Good post. I see that in addition to your self-appointed task of following december around to multiple threads to condemn and insult, you’ve also taken it upon yourself to provide a clear example of the vast gulf that separates december’s trollish and provocative posts from your own thoughtful, insightful, substantive, and to-the-point ones. Well done.
On tonight’s Fox News Special Report, they showed brief videos of the boy’s bruised back and of the mother, when she was alive. I couldn’t tell how badly he was injured from the video.
The video of the mother was more moving. Despite her 7 children, she looked young and innocent. It’s horrifying that she was killed like this… just horrifying.
I wasn’t paying full attention, but apparently the tape was made available by a Palestinian civil liberties organization. There was a discussion of the lack of civil liberties there now.
That’s getting to be old news. Here’s todays allotment of dead and injured Palestinians:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=5&cid=578&u=/nm/20020829/ts_nm/mideast_dc_3524
Let’s at least hear the usual drivel about it being some sort of mistake again. Otherwise reasonable people might begin to get the impression that the civilian deaths are a deliberate policy of the Israeli government.