Clive writes: "As a reaction to 9-11, the Bush Administration adopted several controversial extra-legal recourses including introducing “illegal combatant” status "

This is not correct. The category called "unlawful combatant" (AKA "illegal combatant") (US) and "unprivileged combatant" (UK, Aus, NZ) have been around for decades.

He also implies that the Bush administration was the first to use “extraordinary rendition”. This practice was actually begun under Clinton.

Throughout the world, we hold no sanctity of life. We are pushing out the mentally ill, the disabled, the poor, etc. While we are behaving like this, there is no prospect of peace without dropping the big one.

As for Israel. There is no diplomatic solution but a solution involving military action.

Kvasir,
While the Nazis had a programme to exterminate the Jews, the West knew about it and chose to look away.

Some boatloads of Jews looking for sanctuary in "the West" were turned away.

Some countries paid the Nazis to take their Jews off their hands, even offering a special family rate in some cases.

Of course this means the Jews can now pay everybody back in kind with impugnity and are now apparently making up for lost time.

Whilst Jewish refugees were turned away by many Western nations during the Nazi occupation, this generally occurred prior to the outbreak of war 1939 and any such occurences would have been rare indeed by the time Germany began its extermination efforts (which only began from around late 1942 I believe).

Shameful as this failure of Western nations was, they didn't know they were sending Jews to certain death. You trivialise the crimes of the Nazis when you equate their malice with the mere neglect of the West

The "West" (BTW what does this mean?) did not choose to look away at the slaughter of Jews. In the mid-to-late 1930s the West could see a demented dictator and a Germany sick to its core heading down a path that nobody could believe...was it wishful thinking, that if ignored it would all go away? This is the stage we are at again, this time with Islamic fascism. We think that it will just vanish with appeasement.

But anyway, Jews were escaping persecution and legal restrictions in Germany in the 1930s, escaping to Shanghai or America if they could, but at that stage they weren't being slaughtered in death camps. Auschwitz opened about one year AFTER the start of the War; then Birkenau, the industrial-scale annexe to Auschwitz, another year after that. As you can see by then, the "West" was already committed to destroying Nazi Germany, and in doing so liberating Jews from death camps. So Rache, I just don't understand your point...

Israel is acting entirely in self defence. But this time Jews face an enemy even more demented than Nazi Germany. I think the fact that the feeble UN chided Hezbollah for blending in among women and children when firing missiles says it all. And the fact that the Left reflexively sides with monstrous Islamic dictatorships and vile Sharia states has made me lose my Leftism.

I know people who were living in Europe before and during WW2 and hatred of the Jews was very widespread in several European countries. (What I collectively referred to as “the West” because the “Eastern Bloc” didn’t officially exist until the Cold War began)

Concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachenhausen and Ravensbruck were in operation and being guarded by the SS even before the war began. The severe oppression of the Jews was common knowledge throughout the world for many years.
Although some respite was given during the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Jews were still denied basic freedoms and rights. This was no secret.

Despite this knowledge, Jews trying to escape this oppression were usually turned away by other countries. The St Louis for example, was not even allowed to dock in Cuba or the US and the passengers were returned to Europe as the war began.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that, although the mass killing didn’t officially start until late in the war, the world was well aware of what was happening in Germany for many years but still failed to help. I would consider this to be knowingly turning one’s back on people in desperate circumstances.

The policy of appeasement was followed in spite of these circumstances and for other reasons.

The Jewish were a “problem” in many European countries because it was felt their allegiance was to their religion before the country in which they lived. Their religion was also offensive to many Christians, particularly some parts of the Talmud that described how Gentiles are to be treated in relation to Jews. (Does this sound familiar?)

Many would have liked to see them deported but there was nowhere to deport them to. During the war, a lot of the killing was actually done by European civilians while the Nazis simply looked on. (Lithuania for example).
That war wasn’t fought simply to “liberate” the Jews. Their plight was always considered secondary.

It’s somewhat ironic that Hitler’s rise to power was funded and supported by the same American Jews who bankrolled Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution.