Silly and Sad

Like many, I found myself sitting in my comfortable arm chair trying to decide if Isreal over-reacted to the kidnappings and if they have been using accessive force in responding to the rocket attacks from Hizbollah.

Of course, my idle musing are pure sillyness. The problem is the tens of thousands of rockets given to Hizbollah by Syria and Iran. The real problem is that segments of the Arab world are infected with an "us v. them" ideology that has bear rearing for war. I am certain that the problem cannot be solved through war.

I do understand the neocon view that when you are standing against an ideology set on war, it is better to have the war on your terms ... rather than waiting for a Pearl Harbor to precipitate the war.

The big problem is that war tends to spawn more war. The righteous v. gentile ideology starts the division. The attrocities of war carve the divisions created by our ideologies into the cold stone corners of our hearts.

The real provocation for the current Israeli action was a concerted effort on parts of the Arab world to arm a terrorist group in Southern Lebanon. I see Israel's action as a lunacy. It is reaction to action.

The true path to peace is to support efforts to support ideals of compassion and peace. The skiff between Hizbollah and Israel simply highlights the results of the ideology of division. Hopefully, people in

Arabs for Israel is an interesting site that does not see support of Palestinians and support of Isreal as mutually exclusive.

I think promoting classical liberal ideals is a good path to peace. Such ideals focus on the individual. When you consider Palestinians, Lebaneses and Israelites as individual people, you end up finding more commonalities than differences. The intractible conflicts that occur when you consider them as "peoples" disappear.

In other words, the class of thinkers who divide every one into classes of people are the bad guys. The class of people who see people as individuals are the heroes.

Oh no! By making my analogy, I accidentally included me in the bad guy category.

I guess that is the danger of this silly war game. It is far to easy to blunder from the good guy into the bad guy category.