Dummies guide to removing thorns

Doves know war seek peace

When the Iraqi War was being planned in the first term of the second Bush presidency, it was quite interesting to see that the only dove of the hawkish belligerents was a general who had been to war.

Blood, guts, men killing men, men maimed for life and unspeakable things that make flashbacks a horrific reminder of your survival - war marks men, in some cases it makes demons of men and it other it makes them that loudest advocates for peace and diplomacy.

Colin Powell exemplified that reality, the reality that war only brings peace when one side has been completely exhausted of the resource of men, weaponry and the will to continue.

Then we look at those who have made the decisions for war in this day and the worst that they have seen of the horrors of war is probably out deer hunting like Dick Cheney and he almost killed off a man in that setting.

Runners but not gunners

However, none, not Bush or Blair have seen real combat though politically they have the power to send young men into war to yield their lives to a cause that suffers continuous contentious debate.

Now, we have in the leadership of Israel a Prime Minister and Defence Minister who have no credible military experience setting alight the Middle East in the search for 3 soldiers - there is no telling where this would end but the picture looks nasty.

In both Gaza and Lebanon, the logic has been to blow up bridges and other transport channels like the airport runaway with the intent that this would stop the militants from moving the captured soldiers out of reach of the Israeli search missions - if any.

What price for release?

Unfortunately, I am yet to be convinced that these extreme military incursions which definitely would not have happened if the occupied areas had equivalent weaponry and manpower would yield the captured soldiers in any form than in body bags.

The fundamental that Israel has not understood is that their might in military and manpower terms might destroy live and property in Palestine and Lebanon, but that same might would not secure life, property or the peace for Israel.

The solution is a settlement agreed between the sides involved in this conflict and ut is a shame that America continually loses its moral muscle to bring this to bear by continuously blocking every sanction of Israel at the UN and still failing to exact the requirement of restraint on Israel.

Thorns and splinters need careful extrication

For the sake of analogy, Palestine is like a thorn in the flesh of Israel and the Hezbollah is like a big splinter, in both cases, no matter what power tools and equipment you have got, if you were a carpenter you would not use a hammer nor would you use a shovel if you were a farmer to extract that thorn or splinter.

Rather, it would gentle prising away of the skin with a sharp pin or a small pair of tweezers to extricate the foreign object without causing too much damage to the host body-part.

So also is this Israeli-Palestine issue, all the big guns and massive military firepower and incursions are like taking a hammer to the thorn, it can only cause greater hurt for Israel. The whole concept of defence has been stretched beyond reasonable acceptance to the context of a chess game where attack is considered the best form of defence.

Armageddon kindles as G8 filddles

It can be argued that the best defence for Israel is really within the borders the of same country limited to where those lines were in 1967 - that is a fact that needs to be looked at in a matured acceptance of the reality of the conflict.

If, in fact the bomb that landed in Haifa yesterday did not come from either Gaza or Lebanon, the next possibility is Syria, now, that would be the tinder box to Armageddon.

And what do we have, whilst the world burns, the G8 leaders are fiddling in St Petersburg. History has a way of repeating itself.