Afghanistan (where the local religious right richly deserved removing) was bombed back into the stone age. Local resistance to the occupation army continues.

The US invasion of Iraq on the pretence that Iraq was a military threat has greatly encouraged local resistance to the occupation forces.

Remember Korea, Vietnam, Ireland, Algeria.

The only time Israel will bring peace to the Lebanon by present means will be when nothing at all moves there.

You do not make friends with a population by destroying its homes, its families, its land, and all trappings of civilisation. At most you subjugate it.

Once, not long ago, I supported Israel's defence and even its occupation of the Golan Heights and the West Bank. But here and now in the Lebanon and in Gaza Israel is trampling people and countries who have not been the assailants of Israel. The people in the refugee camps without water are not Hezbollah or Hamas - yet. The destruction of the hopes they had been laboriously building may yet make them so. The power stations bridges and roads destroyed served many indeed mostly those who were not Hezbollah or Hamas.

Israel's brutality here and with its armoured bulldozers has turned this previous supporter into a critic. What it has achieved across its borders seems likely to be more extreme.