Tomgram: Air War, Barbarity, and the Middle East

At last a clear description of the hypocrisy involved in accusing one party of "Terrorism" for killing civilians when the accuser is committing the same atrocities on a much larger scale, often 10 or 20 times or more the damage inflicted byt he "Terrorists". I have also noticed that the only coherent descriptions of the Middle East conflict must include history. Any commentator who tries to tell you the Lebanese conflict started a few weeks ago with the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier is suspect as a propagandist. We ignore the history of the conflict in the Middle East and the history of our own attitudes towards war and terrorism at our own peril. Finally read John Steinbecks description of this same problem in WWII, written in the Sea of Cortez in 1944. A magnificent and devastating condemnaiton on war fought from the remote vantage of an aircraft.

One last question: Would providing Hezbolla and the Palestinians with air power like the Israelis have convert them from Terrorist to a legitimate participant in war? I don't hear any other criteria for calling them a terrorist than their tactics. Possesion of modern weapons like our own and those of our allies would undoubtedly end the suicide bombings. They would then be following our (supposedly legitimate) example of how to wage war, raining death and destruction from the air. There would certainly be a more equal number of Israeli and Lebanese dead civilians today.