Can I use that doctrine while you're not using it?

Is there a price to be paid for harboring terrorists and allowing them to launch attacks from your countries' soil? If so should the price be high or low? Hizbollah was the only militia allowed to keep its arms and army after the Lebanese civil war. They have been elected to around 20% of the Lebanese Parliament. They hold cabinet positions in the government. They are as much a part of the government as any other group in Lebanon. In effect, they are the government. They were welcomed into the government. And it was their personal army that sent rockets into Israel and then crossed into Israeli territory to kill six soldiers and kidnap two. On the very day that Iran's response to the U.S. nuclear talks demand was due. What a coincidence.

So you have the government of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, sending rockets into Israel and killing and kidnapping an IDF soldier. You have Hizbollah, the de facto government of Lebanon, the power behind, or rather the gun to the head of, Lebanon's Prime minister Fouad Siniora, sending rockets into Israel and then invading Israel to kill six and kidnap two soldiers. And the problem is Israel's "disproportionate" response? The discussion always starts, "Is Israel going to far?" rather than why are these governments invading Israel? Why is Hamas killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers? Why don't they just give the hostages back? Why has Israel not acted with force before to prevent heavily armed terrorist armies on their borders from carrying out acts of war against it? No. The useful idiots on t.v. and on blogs all focus on Israel as if it had a real choice.

If Mexico were controlled by Al Qaeda ask yourself what the U.S. would do if rockets were landing in Dallas and Houston. Then on top of that Texas is invaded by terrorists to kill and kidnap army troops. Add to that Hizbollah has 20% of the elected seats in Canada's legislative branch along with a couple of cabinet positions and uses its private army to shoot rockets into Seattle and then invades to kill and capture U.S. troops. I wonder what the U.S. or any other country would do under those circumstances. I know what they would do, they would do worse.

Russia, which has leveled Chechnya and Grozny, criticizes Israel. China, which occupies and oppresses Tibet, criticizes Israel. Car bombs go off in Iraq everyday (41 dead today, 26 yesterday) and not a word of protest from anyone. But when Israel responds after two invasions and two acts of war against it the question isn't who started the war but rather Israel shouldn't finish it. The only difference between these situations is that Jews are defending themselves which troubles the world.

In World War II Jews had no country to defend them. Jews spent the next 60 years building a country, learning how to make the desert bloom, educating their children, learning how to fly F-16s. On the other side of the border the last 60 years were spent preaching hate and intolerence for Jews and Christians and infidels. Sixty years of rejecting Israel. Sixty years of terror attacks on school children and Olympic athletes. Sixty years of selling fantasies that Israel would soon be destroyed. And the fantasies continue. The biggest one is that Israel is acting disproportionately. If anything they haven't acted enough.

In the last sixty years, Israel has defend themselves in war after war visited upon them by people consumed by hate and seeking nothing less than the total destruction Israel. Forgive Israel if they choose once again to not go quietly into that goodnight. They have a national interest in their goals. They committed suffiecient resources to win. Their objectives are clearly defined. They will sustan the commitment. They have a reasonable expectation that their people and government will support the operation. They have exhausted other options. They have a clear exit strategy. As long as the U.S. isn't using the well-thought out Powell Doctrine in Iraq, the Israelis might as well use it in Lebanon.