Not getting with the program

Wow, this is one of your worst anlyses _ever,_ Rod. First, the "Fort Dix terrorists" were a bunch of hapless guys with no real plan or intentions until they were lured into a real, intended plan by a government agent. Second, you demonstrate your utter ignorance and lack of humanity by demanding that the AIPAC line on Hezbollah and Hamas be followed by everyone. How _dare_ you try to impose your easy, self-righteous judgments about the Palestinian and Lebanese struggles on all parties with interests there? Arrogant.

"As Buchanan often puts it, "Why must our war on Al Qaeda expand to include Israel's war on the Arabs?" Far be it for me to correct Buchanan, but shouldn't this be "the Arab's war on Israel"?? Last I checked Jews are not strapping on explosive vests and blowing up buses in Damascus. We have the ability to put a stop to this quickly. The story in the news a few days ago about the Purdue professor with applications to DoE to develop aluminum/hydrogen fuel - we as citizens need to demand that this be tested and rushed to production as fast as possible. Getting fossil fuels out of our cars makes Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Hugo Chavez and all the other Middle East oil barons irrelevant, and powerless, almost overnight. Come on, Washington, figure it out..... Phil

I'm just curious, have we ever apologized to the Japanese for using weapons of mass destruction on hundreds of thousands of their civilians? Are we proud that we are the only nation in world history that has actually used nuclear weapons and used them to kill civilians indiscriminately? So much for being a Christian nation. (Sigh.)
The Allies had already crossed the moral line about killing large numbers of civilians with the firebombing of Tokyo, Dresden, etc. In this context, the use of the atomic bomb by the summer of 1945 simply crossed a technological line, not a moral one -- i.e., it was just using one big bomb to do what the Allies were already doing with lots of little bombs. Given the behavior of the Japanese in Nanking, etc., I don't think the Allies lost too much sleep over the bombing of Japanese cities. Besides, in a total war like WWII, what really was the difference between "civilian" and "combatant"? If you are, say, a 30-year old woman with children who has a war-related job working in a munitions factory, and you support your country's war effort in other ways (buying war bombs, taking part in scrap drives, etc.), are you a civilian or a combatant? I would say that if you are contributing in any way to your country's war effort, you are a combatant, and the other side has every right to treat you as such. And, before someone brings up Al-Quaida, etc. and asks whether I think that they are justified in regarding civilians as legitimate targets, I believe that, given their view of the world and their construction of their war against the West, I believe that, from their point of view, they are.