Civilian Casualties in Gaza

According to the mainstream media, international outcry is growing in response to Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm confident that I am being conservative when I say that statement should probably be qualified as "Liberal" outcry.

If one takes an honest look at what has transpired, Israel’s reaction is measured and reasonable. Consider that Gaza’s elected leadership has been overthrown and taken over by Hamas, a known terrorist organization. Since that time, Israeli soldiers have been kidnapped, taken into Gaza by way of secret cross-border tunnels, tortured and killed and/or imprisoned. Hamas has a history of firing rockets across the border into Israeli civilian targets and has done so steadily in the past few weeks. Israel has been under attack by an aggressor who's stated purpose is the utter decimation of Israel itself.

In response, Israel has flattened every known Hamas hideout and every Hamas weapons cache it can find. The problem is that what Hamas lacks in military might, they make up for in public relations savvy. Hamas, you see, has hidden their weapons and their leaders in mosques, private homes and schools. Israel, if they want to eliminate the threat against their citizens, is faced with targeting locations the destruction of which makes them look heartless, cruel or incompetent in the eyes of the international public (or, at least, the press).

In the past Israel has backed off of similar campaigns in response to this “outcry”. The result has been to embolden Hamas and allow continued terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. Clearly Israel has reached the more than logical end of their diplomatic patience. What Israel seems to recognize that the media does not is that Hamas’ placement of civilians around strategic targets is a weapon in itself. As horrible as it is to see women and children injured and killed, it is not a result of recklessness or disregard on the part of Israel. It is, in fact, evidence of the heartlessness of the Hamas leadership who have, by design, placed the citizens of Gaza in that position. Human pawns in a game of terrorist, Muslim extremist chicken.

Olbermann on Proposition 8

Keith Olbermann doesn’t understand. He states as much in his diatribe response to the passage of California Proposition 8. Olbermann says:

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Poor Keith.

What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

There is no law that says that homosexuals can’t marry, that would violate the notion of equal protection under the law. The law says that a person cannot marry someone of the same sex. As such, it applies to all people.

If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.

Allowing black people to marry white people did not redefine marriage. It extended the benefits of marriage to a subset of people who should have had it to begin with. Marriage remained a union of one man and one woman. That is the key difference that makes Olbermann’s argument groundless.

Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I don’t like to be told that I’m wrong. Nobody does. But if I am wrong then making me aware of it and standing in the way of my wrong direction is exactly what I’d want someone to “do unto me”. This duality, this notion that making another person uncomfortable is a greater wrong than any you may perceive is precisely the weak-spined moral relativism that fosters the very “impermanence and fly-by-night relationships” that Keith bemoans near the opening of his editorial.