Lebanon, Reprise 7
During a slow patch at work today, I followed the breadcrumbs of the World Wide Web to this post. It provides an analysis of the military action in Lebanon far different from what we are getting in most news reports. I’m linking to it, not because I agree with it (that’s not the issue for me), but because I think it’s a useful perspective that may cast more light on what’s going on over there.
It’s a perspective which I suspect has escaped those who craft what passes for our American foreign policy on this issue.
Interestingly enough, Alan Deshowitz takes a somewhat consistent position, but cast in the light of nation-states. That is, he equates Hizbullah with Lebanon. This is somewhat different from equating Hizbullah with south Lebanon, as does the poster quoted above (follow the link to see the statement). The implications, though, as similar: Hizbullah is so interwoven into south Lebanese society that attempts to view them as outsiders are out of touch with reality.
“Out of touch with reality.” “George W. Bush.”
Oh, never mind.
August 7, 2006 at 7:04 pm
OK, I just read the whole thing… draw me a picture: what could anyone in the White House benefit by reading this column?
August 7, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Hmmm, maybe understanding that Hizbullah is not a puppet of Syria and Iran, though they certainly take advantage of the good offices of those states, could give the current Federal Misadministration a damned reality-check.
Maybe by realizing that, if one wants to influence folks, it helps to talk to them.
Maybe by getting an expletive-deleted clue that what they are doing and how they are doing it just isn’t obscenity working, in Lebanon, Israel, or Iraq.
(Oops. Sorry. Sounded like a Republican–Richard Nixon, to be precise–for a minute.)
And all the jaunty press releases in the world won’t change that.
On this I will express an opinion:
Hizbullah is an idigenous Lebanese movement. Syria and Iran could perhaps slow them down, but cannot control or stop them.
The finger-pointing at those two countries may satisfy the neocons who think that the exercise of American power in the Middle East is the solution for everything, but it’s not going to change a thing on the ground.
And the mounting evidence of the USA’s inability to pacify, or even control Iraq, destroys our influence elsewhere and feeds the violence.
Bush has sown the wind.
The world, and especially the innocents in the Middle East, Jew, Arab, and Christian, are reaping the whirlwind.
God forgive us.
August 7, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Innocent people getting caught in the Middle East crossfire didn’t start with the Bush Administration, though, and how much is really due to their policies is a matter of margin at most.
And I’m no longer sure what defines innocence in this battle anyway. When I listen to an interview with an Arab journalist, and at one point she says the Lebanese civilians are unfairly caught up in the war, but after the next break she says most Lebanese civilians see Hezbollah as freedom fighters and not terrorists, I wonder just how honest the Lebanese people are being with us.
Heck, as far as I am concerned, you can call all of the Hezbollah casualties civilian ones. They aren’t anyone’s government; they’re just a political party with a thug wing that gets away with what they can get away with. They’re all civilians, in a sense. And while they get a few seats in the legislature when they can, I really doubt many of them spend a lot of time worrying about whether the carnage they have cynically drawn their own people into will hurt them in the next election.
August 8, 2006 at 8:18 pm
You are probably right about Hizbullah’s concern with death and life, though I did read today (I don’t have the cite and am too lazy to look for it) that their fighters wear bullet-proof vests, despite the Jihadish martyr rhetoric.
I think the Lebanese government (which is as close to a spokesperson as the Lebanese people have) is being as honest as it knows how. That what it is saying does not fit into the neocon frame of reference denotes a problem with the frame of reference.
The reading I have done tells me that Lebanese tend to support Hizbullah because it is Lebanese.
Honestly, if you were being shelled by Indiana–for whatever reason, good or bad–would you turn to Indianans for help? Or to Michiganders? I suspect you would turn to your friends and neighbors in your state, which is neither Indiana or Michigan.
What really gripes my anatomy is this: For the last four decades, everyone, Eastern Bloc or Western Bloc, has done his best to keep the lid on the Middle East powder keg. It has been universally recognized, since the Six Day War, that the Middle East has been a conflagration waiting to happen.
Then comes the current Federal Administration, shrouded in lies and wrapped in falsehoods (all documented–we both know that), and throws a match in the powder keg.
Granted, it did not create the powder keg, but it sure as shootin’ set it alight, with a war conceived in deception, perpetrated in mendacity, and prosecuted with incompetence.
Now it plays the piano and clears brush while the explosions echo.
And people die. Real people. People who are not fighters. People with parents and sons and daughters and husbands and wives. Real people in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq. And elsewhere.
While the current Federal Administration plays the piano and clears brush.
I do not know how to put the fire out. But I can sure identify the arsonist.
It is to laugh.
Ahhhh, the hypocrisy, the arrogant, stultifying hypocrisy.
August 8, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Hypocrisy of the Hizbollah terrorists who launch rockets from residential areas, of their own volition, and say “Bush made me do it?”
There will be peace in the Middle East when the Middle East wants peace in the Middle East. If both sides refuse to fight, nobody will be able to make them.
I’m surprised American liberalism is split on this conflict. What other part of the world is there where a group can embrace religious extremism, see women as second-class citizens, openly advocate killing as a way of seizing power, and still have American liberals scratching their heads over which side to support? I’d love to see the U.S. Army pull out of Iraq, go into Lebanon and launch missiles into Israel aside Hizbollah. Who would Cindy Sheehan support then?
August 8, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Pointing out the evils of Islamic Fundamentalism (or any other fundamentalism, for that matter) does not do anything other than change the subject.
I do not hear anyone from Hizbullah saying, “Bush made me do it.”
What the current Federal Administration did was destablize an already unstable situation though its failure: its failure of analysis, its failure of vision, its failure of execution.
No one can argue, at least not with any credibility, that the War in Iraq has caused liberal democracy to bloom in the Middle East (My God, they turned out to vote, and Baghdad’s burning!)
Forget their words, my friend. Look at their deeds.
All the current Federal Administration has done is plant more poppies in Flanders Fields.
And for what? More $$$$ for Halliburton?
Sure. There are lots of bad guys over there. We can’t do anything about that–well, maybe we can, but we sure ain’t doing anything about that, except emboldening them.
We can do something about our own bad guys.
Assuming we don’t use Diebold voting machines.
August 8, 2006 at 10:39 pm
And as to your Michigan/Illinois example, Hizbollah’s rockets launched from Michigan would only get about as far south as the Chicago area, in which case we downstaters wouldn’t have a dog in the fight. Maybe Blago would come down here and seek shelter in the governor’s mansion, should he know anyone who could give him directions to get there.