Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Northern Ohio's Ninth Congressional District, is currently serving her twelfth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the senior-most Democratic woman in Congress and is one of only 82 women out of 535 members of the 109th Congress.
Her mentality is best referred to as: equilateralism. In her warped mind, Hizbollah's bloody fanaticism is no different from Israeli security preparations in face of 300 million hostile Arab Muslims.
HON. MARCY KAPTUR OF OHIO
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2006
 ...The situation is worsening. War is an abandonment of reason,
| No, it's not, Congresswoman Marcy. One can abandon reason in the course of war, but that's dependant on one's grasp on reason. War itself is conflict, whether in pursuit of national goals or in defense against someone else's pursuit of national goals. In some rare cases it's conflict for the fun of it — like the Iraquois and Algonquins used to engage in — or a continuing grinding violence out of societal habit, like we see in Paleostine. Rational states engage in conflict for rational goals. |
and it is critical for Members of Congress to stand for a path to peace,
| Certain of our founding fathers pointed out that there are some things more important than Peace™, to include life, liberty, and sacred honor. |
especially at a time that we witness and the world witnesses more killing, more death, more carnage escalating around us, escalating around those directly involved in the Middle East.
| The killing, death, and carnage originate in a few distinct areas, from a few distinct mindsets within a particular religion for the most part. The violence is being carried out as a matter of national policy (see the above description if you've forgotten already) in the pursuit of a specific goal. That goal, to whit, the Islamization of the entire world, happens to be inimical to our national interest. |
It is especially essential to be a voice for peace when others believe that escalating the military option without serious and equal emphasis on political and diplomatic efforts will yield calm and resolution.
| Why? Isn't it possible that one side is right and the other wrong? I know we live in a postmodern world of shades of gray, where there is no right and wrong, but some shades are markedly darker than others, and some are considerably lighter than others. Hezbollah, for instance, has a long history of warlike truculence, beginning prior to the killing of 242 Marines in Beirut and continuing to the present day. In the current situation, they've formed a state within Lebanon that's out of the control of the Leb government, and acting in a manner that's opposed to the interests of Lebanon. They're busy carrying out acts of war against a sovreign state — not through some loss of reason, but in pursuit of goals established in Teheran. The sovreign state that was attacked is acting quite reasonably, holding Lebanon responsible for the actions of major state actors within the country, just as you would be held responsible if your dog bit someone. |
Ghandi instructed us that an eye for an eye will leave the world blind,
| I just did a quick count and I've got two eyes. If one's gouged out, that leaves me only one. If the other's gouged out, that leaves me, personally, blind. If one is gouged out, then I'll be particularly assiduous in defense of the remaining eye. Being averse to pain, I prefer to be assiduous in my defense of both of them, thank you. You, Congresswoman Marcy, can give up one or both, if you prefer. It's no skin off my fore. But my eyes are my personal concern, not yours. So piss off. |
and physics reminds us that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think in this latest conflagration between Lebanon and Israel there will be more than an equal and opposite reaction...
| The Muddle East has grown a situation in which action and reaction is pretty continuous. Everybody's riding around on cycles of violence. The single clear thread running through it all has been the abhorrence for personal liberty among the Arabs in particular and the Muslim world in general, coupled with their desire to export their ways to the rest of us. Lebanon has a parliamentary system, with elections, though its actual government is an oligarchy made up of hereditary pols and business interests. After its civil war it's been an economic success story, marred by Syrian occupation and the growth of Hezbollah. Hezbollah represents the "impoverished Shiites" of Leb — yet it's obvious spent a hell of a lot of money on weaponry and military training that didn't go toward developing the Shiite areas like the Sunni, Christian and Druze areas have been developed. |
But the unnecessary slaughter of innocents, whether by Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, American forces in Iraq or the Israeli defense forces, is always wrong, and should never be tolerated.
 Of course we should tolerate it. All corpses may smell the same, but they don't get in that condition in the same manner. There's a false equivalence between Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda on the one hand, and American forces in Iraq and the Israeli defense forces. The former is in the habit of using innocents both as shields and as targets. The rockets raining on Haifa aren't targeted at military formations or military targets; they're aimed at the city in general, with no concern for who might be standing under them. Hamas has in the past boomed bar mitzvahs and discos and pizza parlors, none of which is by any stretch of the imagination a military target. One of the Islamic Heroes™ Hezbollah wants released in return for the men it's kidnapped killed a father and his 4-year-old after invading their apartment as they were watching the teevee. Those are matters of policy. The U.S. and the IDF take a different tack, trying to root out the very sort of men making up Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda and kill them. There is no mark on a map that sez "Hezbollah be here!" They hide among the populace — Mao's dictum on guerrilla war is "the guerrilla is the fish, the people are the sea." In the present case, Hezbollah is holding the entire country hostage. We consciously try to avoid killing innocents, sometimes erring on the side of caution, other times not. |
So civilized people cannot in good conscience stand by and silently watch as hundreds of innocents are killed and thousands more threatened by the spasm of destruction unleashed by Israel in Lebanon... |