If you labor under the delusion the George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Don Rumsfeld learned from the mistakes they made in Iraq, think again. Only this time, they are screwing the pooch with respect to the U.S. policy toward the latest Israeli-Lebanese war. Two of their greatest fantasies are:
1. Insisting that Syria is somehow behind the decision of Hezbollah to kidnap the Israeli soldiers because they want to reoccupy Lebanon.
2. Buying into the Israeli nonsense that they can “secure” southern Lebanon with only an air campaign.
News flash for the chuckleheads–Hezbollah’s principle sponsor and benefactor is Iran. That has been the case for the last 24 years. While Syrian leaders have been extra careful to have a positive relationship with Hezbollah, there is substantial evidence that Hezbollah has done more to protect Syria than vice versa. For the moment Syrians are frozen with disbelief. They cannot believe how quickly events have erupted into war and that they are being blamed for it.
The latest flare up in violence has more to do with Iran’s broader strategy to spread U.S. strategic resources and bog us down in other conflicts than it does with Israeli security. And the icing on the cake? Iran is portraying itself as someone willing to mediate a diplomatic end to the conflict. They may be Persian but that, my friends, is chutzpah!
Israel and its most stalwart U.S. allies are still spouting the bullshit that they can get things under control with simple use of airplanes, drones, and bombs. Oh yeah. Let’s make a list of wars that have been one exclusively through the use of airpower.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING) That’s right. NONE. ZERO. ZIP. Israel has every right to insist that it not serve as the drop zone for Hezbollah missiles. But, they will not be able to bomb their way out of this problem. That can only be done with troops on the ground. I’m betting they won’t be able to resist the temptation. If Israel’s takes Iran’s bait, then Israel will find itself battling an Iraq-style insurgency and Tehran can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of watching the United States try to salvage a democracy in Lebanon while supporting Israel, who is destroying its democratic neighbor to the north, and rally a distracted international community to punish Iran who is busy consolidating its control over the militia, police, and intelligence service in Iraq. Got it?
For another great perspective on things, check out Pat Lang’s latest at Sic Semper Tyrannis, Peace for Galilee 2.
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A poor, sorry leader who is not able to protect it’s own citizens by making the wrong choices and refuses to negotiate. The last heroic feat by Israeli forces was the Entebbe raid in 1976.
Israel's last hero - Yoni Netanyahu"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
So what is the international community going to do about it? Most everybody with good sense was opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is still going strong. The US congress passed just overwhelmingly passed a resolution giving Israel an unqualified endorsement to do whatever it wants to and says that the Lebanese have nobody but themselves to blame. The UK government is dutifully following orders. Where is any EFFECTIVE opposition going to come from?
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called U.S. Congress.
Meanwhile, the European proposal for a humanitarian air corridor and temporary end of the Israeli naval blokkade of Beirut has been accepted.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I would reckon that European opinion is turning massively against Israel, and if it blossomed into a full-scale boycott of Israeli products and people, it would mean something. The EU is not likely to impose one, but it could come from the bottom up. The latent anti-Semitism in many of these countries will also start to blossom.
Heckuvajob, Olmert.
Even if that did happen to a far greater extent than it has already, as long as the money keeps comming from the US Israel wouldn’t feel that much of a pinch.
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BRUSSELS/TEL AVIV (Christian Science Monitor) Dec. 3, 2003 — The agreement will enable the EU, Israel’s largest trade partner, to distinguish between exports coming from Israel – entitled to customs exemptions under a free trade agreement – and those from the occupied territories.
Supporters of the decision said there was no choice because the EU, unsure where the products originated, had started to assess tariffs from exporters inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders also. The estimated $7 billion in Israeli exports to Europe were thus being endangered by the nonlabeling of the $120 million in exports from the West Bank and Gaza, they argued.
The issue has political as well as economic implications, reflecting deep-seated differences between Israel and the EU over Israel’s borders and its construction of settlements on land the EU envisions as the heartland of a future Palestinian state.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour criticized the rising toll, saying the shelling was invariably killing innocent civilians.
“International law demands accountability,” she said in Geneva. “The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
AIPAC should find this very useful for fund raising propaganda in the US.
at least in western countries that is true. If a disconnect between people and governemtn occurs over time governemnt will change policies. This is not likely in the US where so many people deify Israel, but is doable in Europe.
Good diary Larry and thanks for the link to Pat Lang’s blog..reminded me to head over there and do some reading.
Another good one Larry. You know what it the most disturbing about the Bush inspired chaos in the Middle East. The country with the best strategic thinkers is not the United States, it’s Iran. The incompetent and petulant Bush is a better ally that Iran could have ever dreamed of. He’s created a fanatic Shia Iraq, and apparently is encouraging Israel to do the same with Lebanon. And in spite of his incompetence, his and Cheney’s petro dollar stock options just keep going up.
the bunch of clowns running our country.
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Iraqis staged an anti-Israel protest with banners reading “Shiites and Sunnis unite” in the city of Samarra, where the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February brought the country to the brink of civil war.
Earlier this week, about 4,000 Iraqis answered the call of Shiite clerics to rally in the holy city of Karbala in protest of Israeli attacks, raising Iraqi and Lebanese flags. On Friday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Sunnis and Shiites to unite so Muslims could defeat Israel — even without weapons. He predicted the Jewish state would collapse just as the World Trade Center did in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Members of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army march with a Lebanese and an Iraqi national flag during a protest denouncing the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, Iraq. AP Photo/Karim Kadim“We promise you all that we will not forget our people in Lebanon despite our suffering from the American occupation. I will continue defending my Shiite and Sunni brothers and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons. I want to remind you of a very important thing. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers in America” was almost five years ago, al-Sadr said. “The same way America’s idol collapsed, another idol will fall, and it is called Israel.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki— a Shiite — also condemned the Israeli destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure. “I call on the Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.”
Thousands of Shiites demonstrated in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain in support of Hezbollah, two days after some 300 prominent Saudi Shiites wrote to the Bahraini government urging support to the Lebanese Shiite group. Both moves were seen as an assertion of increasing Shiite solidarity across the Arab world.
Fears of Increasing Hezbollah’s Popularity
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY