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<body><BR>> From: <A href="mailto:sethackerman1@verizon.net">sethackerman1@verizon.net</A><BR><BR>
>I don't even buy that this is your real view. You wouldn't protest Hiroshima with the slogan "we are all Hirohito." You certainly wouldn't protest the bombing of Dresden with "we are all Nazis."<BR><BR>
It is my real view, and your response to it accentuates why it needed expression. Hezbollah are not Hirohito or Nazis. They are an Islamist organisation who have cooperated with leftists and supported leftists in international struggles. Hirohito was the aggressor; Hitler was the aggressor. Hezbollah are not the aggressors.<BR>
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>You've lost the thread of the argument. Of course the oppressed should not be expected to live up to some idealized liberalism. Their legitimate rights must be defended even when they fail to do so. But there is no requirement that one embrace or identify with a detestable ideology, for god's sake, just because it has been adopted by some subset of the oppressed. There is nothing in Hezbollah's ideology that is worth dirtying one's hands with.<BR><BR>
This would be more impressive if you hadn't totally refused to grasp the thread of my argument. I have not said that I identify with Hezbollah's ideology: I am not an Islamist. In fact, I specifically stated that I did not share Hezbollah's ideology. The business about identification is a contextual one. By no manner of means do I go round every day thinking "I am the Party of God". But when I am faced with brutal, racist imperialism being deployed against Lebanon under the guise of attacking Hezbollah, and a huge flurry of Orientalist dispensations (some of which you appear to have bought) to support it, and when I am standing next to people who have relatives fleeing for their lives at the moment, then I do, out of sheer defiance and a determination to stand with those who are fighting that aggression, say "We are all Hezbollah".<BR><br /><hr />Be one of the first to try <a href='http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d' target='_new'>Windows Live Mail.</a></body>
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