Here is what I don’t understand. If Tony Blair believes the following to be true, then he must think Israel fell for the trap.
[Tony Blair]…characterized the attack by Hezbollah on Israeli troops that set off the latest violence as a deliberate provocation, designed to induce “massive retaliation” that would inflame Arab and Muslim opinion against Israel and its Western supporters.
Is it possible that the Western leadership can see the Hizbollah attack as a deliberate provocation that would result in a massive Israeli counterattack that would result in the complete destruction of British and American credibility in the region, and actually support that massive counterattack?
Personally, I don’t believe it. Netanyahu when to Beaver Creek, Colorado and met with Dick Cheney in mid-June. Then he went home and met with Olmert, Barak, and Peres. Then they went apeshit on Lebanon at the next provocation. This looks to me like a pre-arranged plan that the British should have been privy to.
Meanwhile, the thumbsuckers keep making the same argument. They say that Israel must react to rocket attacks. They simply can’t just sit there and take it. Israel was not being hit by a constant barrage of rocket attacks until they launched their air war over Lebanon. They were receiving occassional, intermittent rocket fire. There were some rockets fired during the kidnapping mission as a diversionary measure.
Once Israel attacked, the rockets started coming like a steady rain. Now they can’t stop them. Now they are forced to reoccupy Lebanon. Now they will wait for some international forces to come in and relieve them of their duty. Will those forces materialize? Will Hezbollah welcome them with chocolates and friendly backslaps? Will it be long before that wholly American/French/British force (at best) is driving on Damascus to cut off their enemy’s line of supply?
Lord help us. All because Israel had to do something. They just couldn’t sit there. They had to fall for this trap.
Please…it’s sickening. Use your head once in a while. Don’t start a scrap you can’t finish and ask America to pick up the pieces. And we are supposed to support you for this?
Also, in a sidenote, watching Chris Dodd and Mel Martinez discuss Cuba this morning reminded me that there are 638 Ways to Kill Castro, only a few of which involve intestinal bleeding. Dodd and Martinez seemed to be advocating some kind of preemptive action regardless of whether Castro is yet dead. Good to know there is bipartisan support for messing with another sovereign nation this summer.
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Blair said it was too early to be clear what was most helpful for the situation, adding that whatever force was deployed should be capable of ensuring that the Lebanese people “vote in a democracy without outside interference from Syria or anyone else and without inside interference from armed militias.”
Blair said the West must win the battle of democratic values if it is to defeat global extremism. It also needed to work relentlessly “week in, week out” to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Unless we reappraise our strategy, unless we revitalize the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and … bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win.”
No mention by Blair of Israel’s incursions into Lebanon and extrajudicial execution of resistance leaders in occupied territories. His words sound more as to ease his troubled conscience.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Gosh I sure am glad you wrote this Boo as this has been on my mind for days and days.
Its easy to criticize Israel but what I’ve been struggling so hard to do is get into Olmert’s head. Was this all something pre-planned? Were there mistakes? If so, what prompted them?
Here’s where I am so far, and I’m not able to draw any firm conclusions from it:
Now… you’ve got Hizb Allah doing the predictable and Israel reacts predictably. The first surprise was the tank crew getting killed and the kidnappers GETTING AWAY.
So.. what I have yet to figure out is exactly what prompted the decision to massively ratchet up the assault on ALL of Lebanon. Pounding the shit out of Hizb’s bunkers etc in south Lebanon? Sure that would’ve “made sense”. But what the hell was all this crap about bombing power plants and bridges in Beruit etc?
I think this was a colossal mistake. It’s got to be. No way could the Israelis seriously think that the non-Shi’ite Lebanese would rise up in anger at HIZB ALLAH and not Israel. I just can’t see them being fooled that badly.
And Qana? Are you kidding me? It might be a trivial event in the west but every Arab person Ive ever met knew the details of the FIRST Qana massacre quite well. It isnt some forgotten piece of history.
So even if you posit that the original plan was a general destruction of all of Lebanon would turn the Lebanese against HA (sort of the “Cheney special”), there’s no possible way that attacking a RESIDENTIAL STRUCTURE in Qana would win over a single Arab’s heart or mind.
Who in the Israeli leadership gave the green light for that?
And what’s up with the deliberate attack on the UN post? What was that designed to accomplish?
Either this whole thing has been one string of mistakes by the Israeli leadership (which is possible) or else the plan all along has been to just make the Middle East so screwed up that all-out war is inevitable. This is what I can’t figure out, how does Israel GAIN from that? How does Olmert gain from that?
Anyway thanks again for posting this!
Pax
Netanyahu isn’t running the show. It appears more like Olmert is leaning on Barak, Peres, and Netanyahu for guidance. I don’t know what their inner counsels are. I just know that Netanyahu went to talk to Cheney in mid-June to coordinate policy over Iran and then we went back and relayed whatever Cheney had to say to the group of four. Also, Beaver Creek was an AEI convention, so there were all the neo-con players in attendence.
Then, AT THE NEXT PROVOVATION they launched this war. They could not have been under the misapprehension that bombing Lebanon back to the 1980’s would endear them to the Lebanese. That is not why they did it. They surely knew the Lebanese government could not be bullied into using their army because their army was inadequate for the job.
The only purpose would be to reoccupy the south and then turn it over to a coalition of some sort.
Bombing the UN outpost may have been deliberate. If it was, it would be to prevent the international community from agreeing to provide troops. If this is what the plan is, it is essential that the effort to get peacekeepers from the UN or NATO fails. Then the Europeans will be blamed for their pacifism and ineptitude. Americans will go in, get attacked, and move on Damascus. I can’t see any other logic to this.
What does Israel get out of it?
Well. America already owns the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Saudi Armies. We have bases in the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait. Iraq is broken and unable to project outward force and we own their army. Lebanon is broken and unable to project force. And once we take away Iran’s beachhead in Lebanon and southern Syria, they will be unable to get at Israel. That’s got to be the plan. Total victory. Then they can do whatever they want with the settlements.
The logic makes a kind of sense, but it assumes we can hold Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in the fold while we do it. In my opinion, that is where the whole plan fails. I don’t think they will be able to ride out such violent and genocidal display of raw power and remain our allies and remain on their thrones, and keep the oil pumping.
It’s lunacy to even risk it.
If we are going to speculate, I’d say this is the key. This way, the way is cleared for US airstrikes against Iran without retaliation by Hezb on Israel.
Of course, the glaringly obvious but hardly ever mentioned logical flaw in the official line is that the actuality of a Hizballah missile rain, as now provoked, can’t possibly be preferable to its mere possibility, from the point of view of the Israeli public.
But for Cheney, Olmert et als. it may be better to get it over with already, well before a strike on Iran that will inevitable trigger a regional crisis if not worse. If Israel had to wage this war during a US bombing war on Iran, it could complicate matters.
This still doesn’t explain the overkill, but I suspect that’s just machismo and stupidity on the part of guys who have bought their own bullshit of “the Arabs only respect overwhelming force.”
In the face of apparently insanely self-destructive behavior, we tend to look for convoluted, perhaps paranoid, explanations. Here’s one that seems to fit the facts we know:
The US/Britain/other western powers promise Olmert that if he launches an all-out attack on Lebanon, provoking a strong reaction from Hezbollah, the big powers will seek “peace” by taking over Lebanon and giving Israel essential sovereignty over that territory. (After all, they attacked Israel, right?)
There is not reason to think the US et al actually care about Israel’s well-being, so it’s a tossup whether such a promise would be kept: “we” have routinely scammed other nations and forces into doing out bidding, and then abandoned them.
Such a promise would explain Israel’s seemingly self-destructive provocation. The problem then becomes explaining US et al motives. Well, there’s more hegemony in the ME. Or there’s the sheer insanity we’ve been seeing ever since the neocons grabbed power: another step closer to their dreams of armageddon arising in the “holy land”. Like I said, when rational explanation fails it’s time to look at the obsessions of mad people. Since such folks run the US government, it isn’t so much of a stretch.
Could there be another motive to the sudden escalation in this on-going conflict?
Michael Chossudovsky wrote this piece for globalresearch.ca
in which he describes a newly constructed pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey requiring a pacified Lebanon and Syrian to insure safety for deliveries of oil, natural gas, and water to Israel.
It’s protection for a business deal involving global oil giants ie. western nations. Check it out.
or maybe like the rotted rye there is something in our bread dough, or maybe all the pipes in DC are lead lined. Something somewhere is causing collective insanity and those of us not similarly affected just have to wonder WTF?
I’d say it’s a deadly poison compounded of equal parts nationalist arrogance and religion.