I have been so frustrated (disgusted) at the coverage I've been seeing and reading of the current Israel-Lebanon 'unwar.' I know the number of Israeli citizens 'slaughtered by terrorists' better than I know my own heartrate thanks to perpetual news flogging of that information, but I can barely even find two sources that agree on the number of Lebanese civilians lost thus far. I know we're all soft and wet for victims of 'terrorism' right now, but when did we stop caring entirely about collateral damage?

This conflict- the latest in a seemingly long line of 'unwars' (conflicts, disputes, actions, football matches - whatever you want to call them, if you're shooting at people in the street, using tanks and missiles, it's pretty much a war) is so grossly disproportionate. While human suffering and death is always sad (just you wait and see how much every man's death diminishes us...), I can't help but notice that virtually all of the Israelis killed so far have been soldiers, aka fair game in the middle of a conflict. On the other hand, all of the Lebanese civilians killed have been - wait for it - CIVILIANS!! You know, those people whom it's against international law to target deliberately, those people not involved in the conflict and not posing a danger to anyone.

I know full well that the Lebanese government isn't a bunch of lovely, koombaya-singing internationalists whose greatest concern is global serenity. In fact, I even suspect that they have problems with corruption, intimidation, and major armed groups influencing government. Holy shit! That sounds like a freakish anomaly - or, most of the world. It's a bad thing, this helping people who wish others harm hide out and conduct operations, but when did it become acceptable to bomb the shit out of a nation's civilian population in order to try to end it? Are we really buying the myth that the population of Lebanon is like
"Hey-ya Hezbollah, oh how we love you all-a, please keep manipulating our government-a and making us scared to let our kids play outside-a. Hey-ya Hezbollah, we don't really need any democracy-a, more guns and missiles, that's what our region needs-aya!"
and therefore somehow culpable in this whole mess?? The thing is, what makes terrorism so insidiously sinister is their targeting of civilians. Hmmm.

So do the math. human=human. israeli human=lebanese human=american human=french human=roughly a dolphin (kidding, okay)=nmibian human=kiwi human=0.5 canadian human (okay, kidding again). You get the point. white israeli jew=brown lebanese arab. The killing of both is unacceptable. (Unless one's a soldier and the other's a civilian. That's just how international law works).