Michael Bérubé - American Airspace

Suez deux?

It’s been two weeks now since I returned to the U.S., and as you may have noticed, I haven’t yet said anything substantive on this blog about the crisis in the Middle East. My initial impression—which I mentioned briefly on my return—was that Israel’s response to these latest provocations was disproportionate, profoundly counterproductive, and morally illegitimate. But “disproportionate,” as you may know, is a dirty word on some wings of the way-further-left, where you can find people who are willing to deny that Israel has any right of response—or, perhaps, any right to exist—at all. This circumspect, progressive-left blog doesn’t go there, and like Eric Kirk, will not join the British ultraleft in their little chants of “we are all Hezbollah now” and George Galloway in shouting “I am here to glorify the resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify the leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.” I actually believe Israel has a right to respond to provocations, and I actually condemn the hurling of rockets into Israeli towns and cities (especially by organizations that were supposed to disarm years ago! —but now we know why they didn’t: “[Sheikh Naim] Qassem, a founding member of Hezbollah . . . admitted Hezbollah had been preparing for conflict since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000”). But I will join thousands of critics to my left and even a couple hundred liberals a bit to my right in remarking on the fact that there is almost no place in American public life for principled criticism of Israel—not even among the most progressive elected Democrats, not even under circumstances as extreme as these. Think about it: people talk about Social Security as the “third rail” of American politics. Hah. If you’re an elected official or a think-tank fellow, you can talk about dismantling Social Security in this country, and people might oppose you or criticize you, but you won’t provoke a national scandal, and you certainly won’t lose your job. About Israel, however, there is no leeway whatsoever—and, accordingly, there is no opposition party. The first Democrat who stands up and says that Israel is behaving like a rogue nation, escalating a long-simmering, low-level conflict into a possible cataclysm, will be linked to Mel Gibson. Or—almost as bad—George Galloway. In the meantime, Congressional Democrats will either line up behind Bush—or just slightly to his right.

It is for moments like these, dear friends, that we have blogs. Over the past two weeks, Billmon has outdone himself, and if you haven’t checked him out lately, go right ahead and do so now. (I’ve been reading him daily and thinking, but no one needs me to chime in when we already have Billmon. Mr. Billmon! We need you! Don’t ever leave us again! Please! We promise to patronize the Whiskey Bar every day, or until our livers finally give out!) Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber kicked off an instructive discussion of war crimes. Digby has been pondering the consequences of the dangerous combination of disastrous U.S.-Israeli political isolation combined with disastrous U.S.-Israeli military stalemates, and tristero has looked searchingly into John Podhoretz’s heart of darkness. And as for the liberal blogs that have a bit of crossover with liberal magazines, that young Mr. Yglesias turned in a fine essay the other day:

It’s usually best in the American context to keep one’s criticisms of Israel polite and measured, but there are times when it’s better to be blunt in the hopes of achieving clarity. Israel’s current war in Lebanon is strategically blinkered and morally obtuse. . . .

In the years between Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the current crisis, Hezbollah was known, now and again, to fire off a rocket or two in Israel’s direction. Primarily, however, the organization directed its energies at Lebanese domestic politics. Indeed, even the occasional rocket attack is best understood as having been undertaken for domestic consumption. The nominal rationale for Hezbollah being allowed to maintain a militia while other Lebanese factions were not was the struggle against Israel. Therefore, it was necessary to launch a notional attack or two to prove that the group was still in the fight. These attacks were, morally speaking, despicable—the targeting of civilians with no possibility of achieving any legitimate war aims. They were not, however, a large problem in practice for the state of Israel. Efforts to root out Hezbollah rocketeers by force have made Israelis civilians much less safe than they were before.

The cross-border raid to capture Israeli soldiers was, of course, another matter. But here Israel had options. If they wanted their soldiers back, they could have traded some Hezbollah captives for them. If they wanted to act tough in the face of threats, they could have refused to negotiate and mounted a smallish, well-targeted retaliatory strike that would have garnered significant international support. Instead, Israel chose to escalate a low-intensity border conflict that posed no serious threat to its security into a much larger-scale battle it can’t possibly win—one that will only harden anti-Israeli sentiments in its neighbor to the north. . . .

Israel and its friends abroad need to face reality—the problem that needs solving is the Palestinian problem. Were Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians resolved, other challenges like Hezbollah would soon melt away. The idea of firing rockets into Israeli towns would appear absurd. Iran and Syria would have nothing to gain from supporting groups that behaved in that manner. Arab public opinion would no longer applaud the firing of rockets at random into Israeli cities. . . .

This, rather than hearty bromides of encouragement and solidarity, is what Israel needs to hear from its American friends right now.

Not bad for a “liberal” publication. Though, again, don’t expect this kind of thing to filter up to elected Democrats, who can’t manage even the “polite and measured” version of criticism.

So in this context, “disproportionate” is not necessarily a bad word. And I’ll stand by “profoundly counterproductive,” too—at least if you take into consideration the support of every single Arab state, together with 87 percent of the Lebanese population, for Hezbollah’s campaign against Israel.

According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah’s fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah’s resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Well, so much for that Washington Post headline of July 14, “Attacks Could Erode Faction’s Support.” If indeed Israel was trying to get Lebanon to abjure Hezbollah, then its campaign seems to have been as successful a PR strategy as was Dick Cheney’s tragedy-or-farce “2002 diplomacy tour,” which tried to drum up support in the Arab world for the invasion of Iraq, and which promptly produced a statement of Arab solidarity against the invasion of Iraq. And “morally illegitimate?” Opinions differ on what constitutes moral legitimacy under these circumstances, of course, but this weekend’s bombing of sleeping refugees, many of them children, is about as indefensible as indefensible gets. (Update: via LGM, a searing post from Jonathan Edelstein.) And then there’s bombing a UN observation post, not to mention forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians from their homes, and killing a fair number of them in the process. So I’m going to stick with my original description, at least for now.

But there are two things I’d like to add. The first is that I did not expect Hezbollah’s resistance to be quite so . . . resilient. I thought this would be a political disaster for the region and a humanitarian disaster for Lebanon, but I did not imagine that it would also be a strategic disaster for Israel.

The second is that I was probably wrong to say that there is no braking system in place. In one sense that’s true, because the U.S. has clearly green-lighted the “kill them all” option, and the wingnuts have begun to debate whether we made a mistake in not killing enough Sunni men between 15 and 35 in the course of our noble quest to liberate Iraq. A bunch of dead children, bombed in their sleep, and our government can’t even demand a cease-fire. (But let’s not overlook Condi Rice’s very first diplomatic triumph: getting Israel to announce a 48-hour suspension of air strikes. Oops, wait a sec . . . It turns out that “despite Israel’s announcement of 48-hour suspension of aerial strikes, bombs continued to fall across Lebanon, albeit at a slower pace and at more limited targets than earlier in the offensive.” Well, Secretary Rice, congratulations on that much.)

But in another sense, there is a braking system out there. It’s a dangerous one: it basically involves pulling the emergency cord and possibly derailing the train. Though it does not involve the Rapture.

Last Thursday, Digby wrote:

This is a very dangerous moment for the world. The US is showing over and over again that it is immmoral and incompetent. That is the kind of thing that leads ambitious, crazy or stupid people to miscalculate and set disasterous events in motion. The neocons have destroyed America’s carefully nurtured mystique by seeking to flex its muscles for the sake of flexing them. What a mistake. This country is much, much weaker today because of it and the world is paying the price. At some point I have to imagine that we are going to be paying it too. Big Time.

And I thought, paying the price . . . paying the price . . . hmmm, I seem to remember something along these lines. . . .

Ah, yes. Four years ago, in the pages of the Nation, William Greider wrote about paying the price, and he meant it literally:

The imperial ambitions of the Bush Administration, post-9/11, are founded on quicksand and are eventually sure to founder, but for fundamental reasons not currently under discussion. . . . The US financial position is rapidly deteriorating, due mainly to America’s persistent and growing trade deficit. US ambitions to run the world, in other words, are heavily mortgaged. Like any debtor who borrows more year after year with no plausible way to reverse the trend’ a nation sinking deeper into debt enters into an adverse power relationship with its creditors-greater and greater dependency.

These creditors are both private investors and governments from Europe and Asia; now none of them have any incentive to disrupt their lopsided relationship with the super-powerful leader of the world. After all, it works for them: Their exports have unfettered access to the largest consumer market in the world, producing trade surpluses and gaining greater market share. Their capital, meanwhile, reaps good returns on the loans and investments in the American economy. But history suggests that with sufficient provocation, the creditor nations will eventually assert their leverage over the United States, however reluctantly. That critical juncture is likely to arrive either because the American debt burden has become so great that additional lending would be too risky or because the creditor nations want to jerk Washington’s chain, perhaps to head off reckless new adventures. Either way, it will be a humbling moment for American triumphalism. . . .

The threatening implications are seldom discussed with any clarity or candor, but the numbers are not secret. The US economy’s net foreign indebtedness-the accumulation of two decades of running larger and larger trade deficits-will reach nearly 25 percent of US GDP this year, or roughly $2.5 trillion. Fifteen years ago, it was zero. Before America’s net balance of foreign assets turned negative, in 1988, the United States was a creditor nation itself, investing and lending vast capital to others, always more than it borrowed. Now the trend line looks most alarming. If the deficits persist around the current level of $400 billion a year or grow larger, the total US indebtedness should reach $3.5 trillion in three years or so. Within a decade, it would total 50 percent of GDP. Instead of facing this darkening prospect, Bush and team regularly dismiss the worldviews of these creditor nations and lecture them condescendingly on our superior qualities. Any profligate debtor who insults his banker is unwise, to put it mildly. . . .

Instead of reformulating global governance to share power and burdens more broadly, a multipolar system that matches the economic reality, America still acts as if it runs things—alone. And America pays dearly for the privilege, both through its bloated military spending and by accepting the lopsided trade deficits. Both are implicitly regarded in Washington as the burdens of leadership—defending the world against terrorism on any frontier, upholding the global trading system by serving as “buyer of last resort” for other nations’ exports. . . .

British power was fundamentally eclipsed in 1914, but the United States provided the financial nurture to keep it upright, as a kind of dummy leader in world affairs, until after World War II. Washington decisively pulled the plug in 1956, when Britain (along with France and Israel) invaded Egypt to capture the nationalized Suez Canal. It was the last gasp of British colonialism, and Washington disapproved. By withholding an IMF loan to London, the United States crashed the pound, forced Britain to withdraw from war and its prime minister to resign in disgrace. The Brits were finally relieved of their delusions. . . .

The Bush warriors’ reckless American unilateralism can only hasten the day when the creditors conclude that they must assert their leverage over us, perhaps in order to defend peace and stability in the world. How will Americans react when they discover that “U-S-A” is a lot less muscular than they were led to believe? Assuming Americans do not really yearn to become latter-day Roman legions, many people may be relieved to learn the truth. Stripped of imperial illusions, this country could concentrate on building a different, more promising society at home. But while we can hope that the transition ahead will be gradual and without national humiliation, it’s more plausible that America’s brave new imperialists will plunge ahead blindly, until one day they encounter their own intense reckoning with the bookkeepers.

It’s a shame Greider ends on such a bizarrely upbeat note: Americans are stripped of their illusions and become better people for it. Not bloody likely, my friend! To gauge just by this past month’s histrionics on the right, some Americans will be stripped of their illusions of omnipotence and they will respond by insisting that the people who brought you Abu Ghraib failed only in that they were too nice.

Anyway, the parallel isn’t exact. Our creditors do not stand in relation to us as we stood in relation to the British in 1956, and any attempt to pull the plug on us will have severe ramifications for every other financial market around the globe. It would be a terrible mess. One of these days, though, someone is going to decide it will be less of a mess than the alternative of letting a bunch of crazed neocons drive the world right over the cliff.

In the meantime, if you have a moment, please consider donating to the UN relief effort in Lebanon.

Posted by on 07/31 at 01:33 PM

This is a tough call for me. It seems from all accounts that Israel’s show of force is profoundly disproportionate to the rationale being used to justify it. Yet, 1200 Israelis have been killed by terrorists in the last six years and many of them were children, too. None of them were warned in advance.

And, frankly, I don’t agree that Israel and its friends abroad need to face reality—the problem that needs solving is the Palestinian problem. Were Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians resolved, other challenges like Hezbollah would soon melt away. The idea of firing rockets into Israeli towns would appear absurd. Sorry, but solving the Palestinian problem will not suddenly make the Middle East a love fest. The Jews aren’t welcome there. Period.

The question can be asked on behalf of both the Palestinians and the Israelis: how much misery are a people supposed to tolerate before they are “allowed” to fight back? And when it comes to war and death, what’s okay and what isn’t? Is killing soldiers any better than killing civilians? Is a 20 year old’s life more expendable than a 10 year old’s? Does volunteering to put yourself in harm’s way suddenly legitimize the harm?

“Thou shalt not kill” is the first Commandment. It’s been part of Jewish teaching for 3,500 years (the Ten Commandments are part of the Torah, which I would bet a lot of people unaware of). Yet the same old crap goes on and on and on ...

Posted by on 07/31 at 04:44 PM
”Sorry, but solving the Palestinian problem will not suddenly make the Middle East a love fest.”

Nobody I’ve read/heard expects that. But the Palestinian problem has been the main prop for all governments in that region and their continued refusal to recognize that Israel has a right to exist. Remove that, and they have to figure out what they should be focusing on (like, building their own economies? Governing for their own people?).

(Captcha = “choice,” which seems appropriate.)

Posted by Linkmeister on 07/31 at 05:07 PM
I would add Belgravia Dispatch to your list of excellent commentators of the most current Middle East mess. Greg Djerejian is a rightie but of the shrill and reality-based vareity for a while now, and he has been on a roll lately - not Billmon-good (he has been peerless the last two weeks) but very good indeed.

As for the creditor/debtor speculation the US has a better hand than the numbers indicates. As long as the dollar is the de facto world currency, T-bills (and any US collateral) is the real deal. The UK analogy is only valid when the dollar is superceded, pretty much the same way the sterling was superceded by the dollar. When China, Japan, and the oil-selling countries substitute dollars for, say, euros, your scenario may be likely. Don’t hold your breath.

Posted by on 07/31 at 05:09 PM
Yet, 1200 Israelis have been killed by terrorists in the last six years and many of them were children, too. None of them were warned in advance.

No kidding, Wendy. That’s why I find the “I heart Hezbollah” festivals on the far left so obscene. Galloway had himself a nice little U.S. tour a few years ago, and when he spanked Norm Coleman and dissed Christopher Hitchens, many liberals cheered. But we folks on the democratic left always knew he was a toad.

The IRA had to disarm before it was considered a legitimate political player on the state level, and rightly so. The same standard should be set for Hezbollah.

Posted by Michael on 07/31 at 05:11 PM
"Thou shalt not kill” may have come down from the mountain but it is now a civil proscription and we don’t do civil matters anymore. When civil authority loses jurisdiction and military solutions are introduced this commandment has carries little consequence. If we’ve learned anything these past five years we know that our civil authority is not part of the solution. 9/11, Katrina, the Mexican border—all end up with military solutions.

A policy of disproportionate response seems to willfully blunder into the strength of asymmetric warfare, willingly taking up a fight that can’t be won. The word stupid doesn’t show up around here much but “not smart” ain’t dumb enough.

Captcha – respect.

Posted by black dog barking on 07/31 at 05:37 PM
Yes, ideally Hezbollah would have to disarm before being considered a legitimate political player, just like the Provisionals. But, unfortunately, I can envision a scenario (given the numbers indicating Lebanese support for Hezbollah’s campaign) similar to the most recent elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council. While the parallel, again, isn’t exact, I’m wondering what would happen if, like Hamas, the world suddenly had no choice but to consider Hezbollah a legitimate political player.

In other news, this from the BBC. Of particular interest is PM Olmert’s assertion that “We will end it when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security.” Which, if history is any indication with regard to that last bit, means that it will never end.

Posted by Arkadin on 07/31 at 05:39 PM
I think I’m pretty much in agreement with you, Michael, and Wendy as well. But, I don’t think disproportionate is the right criticism. The Israeli aim to enforce, by force, the U.N. resolution to disarm Hezbollah has been undertaken with proportionate means. Comparing the means of their arguably justifiable aim to the single act that broke the camel’s back; isn’t very appropriate. The threat they face is far more pernicious than that single event.

The real problem I have with what’s happened is that Israel went right to “...and we’ll stop”, skipping over the “...or else we’ll start” stage. Lebanon wasn’t given an opportunity to act against Hezbollah (not likely, but it’s worth making that offer before you open fire). Israel ignored far too many requests for cease-fires - considering that the present threat isn’t so pressing that a time-out couldn’t be accommodated, and that, in all likelihood, Israel’s case would have been strengthened by allowing Hezbollah the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to vexatious provocation.

I’m writing the whole thing up as another frustrated attempt to impose a single decisive solution to a complex problem.

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 07/31 at 05:53 PM
Israel’s response is disproportiate mainly because it’s given every indication that it considers Lebanon itself a threat. While some manner of military response to Hezbollah was justified, nothing justifies Israel’s bombing on TV stations in the North, the airport, the Lebanese army (which might have had some interest in convining Hezbollah to join the Lebanese polity entirely) or, for that matter, refugees.

Are your figures of Israeli deaths from ‘terrorists’ including those caused by all nonstate actors? Do they include only civilians? At any rate, Hamas and Hezbollah are not the same. Hezbollah should be understood as a substate actor rather than a merely terrorist group, and now that Hamas has participated in the political process, it can’t simply be called ‘terrorist’ anymore.

Also, Wendy, sure, “thou shalt not kill” is fine, but the Hebrew scriptures are full of divinely sponsored genocide that is just as systemic to the Scriptures as the Decalogue. I’d rather we not try to prop up decency with religious texts we can make speak any way we want so long as we ignore what we find distasteful.

but solving the Palestinian problem will not suddenly make the Middle East a love fest.

False dilemma. Solving the Palestinian problem will improve matters.

--
MB: thanks for the words on Galoway. It gives me the creeps when leftists align themselves with religious fundamentalists.

Posted by on 07/31 at 07:13 PM
Oh, and Central Content:

The Israeli aim to enforce, by force, the U.N. resolution to disarm Hezbollah has been undertaken with proportionate means.

It’s pretty dang cheeky to conjure up the UN to justify Israel’s actions here, when Israel is, like the US, utterly indifferent to UN resolutions except when they coincide with the course of action on which it has already decided.

Posted by on 07/31 at 07:18 PM
I have to admit, I’m balking at the phrase “solving the Palestinian problem.” Both the Israelis and the Palestinians, especially the latter’s current rulers, have such a keen sense of history, or at least a mythology that passes for history. Given the varieties of hatred toward Israel in the region, any solution to the Palestinian problem would require not only for both sides to put aside real and imagined cruelties, but also a long (and unlikely) cessation of terrorist violence against Israel, and not just from Palestinian actors.

That said, nice post, and thanks for the link to Billmon. Captcha: time, as in heals all wounds (one would like to think)

Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 07/31 at 07:22 PM
In many respects, I don’t really care who was right and who was wrong, or who has a “right” to live where they do.

All of that is irrelevant as long as killing goes on. It needs to stop, and concentration should be on how to do that most quickly.

The rest can be sorted out--even to the not-quite-satisfaction of all parties (it was almost achieved just six years ago). But it will never be sorted out while the killing continues.

I don’t care if one side is doing it more or as a disproportionate response. None of that matters until the killing stops.

Posted by Aaron Barlow on 07/31 at 07:23 PM
It’s pretty dang cheeky to conjure up the UN to justify Israel’s actions - Karl

Agreed, cheeky is a damn good word for it, but, that’s what they claim they’re doing, and, I don’t think Israel is being disingenuous when they say they want Hezbollah disarmed. Regardless, it’s in the stage beyond reason now. What does justification matter?

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 07/31 at 07:49 PM
The IRA had to disarm before it was considered a legitimate political player on the state level, and rightly so. The same standard should be set for Hezbollah.

I dont think that you have a very good grasp of the timeline. It was ceasefires alone that brought the IRA and various other parties into political talks, and indeed into government in NI. Disarmament followed many years later, if indeed it has occurred at all.

Posted by on 07/31 at 08:39 PM
All things considered, not a bad commentary.

Posted by Louis Proyect on 07/31 at 09:24 PM
I dont think that you have a very good grasp of the timeline. It was ceasefires alone that brought the IRA and various other parties into political talks, and indeed into government in NI.

Fair enough, otto, but of course I’m not going to compress 35 years of the troubles into one sentence. (Let alone the history of the island since the Battle of the Boyne.) The point is that blowing up Harrod’s (or Mountbatten) is illegitimate in a political sense, and campaigning for seats and policies is contingent on giving up the blowing-up-Harrod’s (or Mountbatten) part of the agenda. That’s all.

I would add Belgravia Dispatch to your list of excellent commentators of the most current Middle East mess.

Thanks, Dan K! He’s now on the blogroll, along with Eric Kirk and Jonathan Edelstein.

As for the creditor/debtor speculation the US has a better hand than the numbers indicates.

Yeah, I think Greider’s way ahead of the gate on this. And while I’m not holding my breath until the supersession of the dollar, I don’t imagine that we can pull off this empire-without-end business, either. Something’s gotta give one of these days. . . .

Of particular interest is PM Olmert’s assertion that “We will end it when the threat over our heads is removed, when our kidnapped soldiers return to their homes and when we can live in security.” Which, if history is any indication with regard to that last bit, means that it will never end.

Or, Arkadin, that it will end when the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

And they call themselves “realists”. . . .

But, I don’t think disproportionate is the right criticism. . . . The real problem I have with what’s happened is that Israel went right to “...and we’ll stop”, skipping over the “...or else we’ll start” stage. Lebanon wasn’t given an opportunity to act against Hezbollah (not likely, but it’s worth making that offer before you open fire). Israel ignored far too many requests for cease-fires - considering that the present threat isn’t so pressing that a time-out couldn’t be accommodated, and that, in all likelihood, Israel’s case would have been strengthened by allowing Hezbollah the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to vexatious provocation.

OK, CCP, although I agree with Karl about the cheekiness of any Israeli claim to be enforcing the UN resolution on Hezbollah, I largely agree with this. “Disproportionate” is indeed an unfortunate word if it leads people down the garden path of trying to determine tit-for-tat syllogisms for this conflict. All I meant is that “punishing” Lebanon for Hezbollah is (a) out of whack and (b) very likely to produce precisely the result least desired (see 87 percent approval rate, above).

And as for Palestine (Wendy, Linkmeister, Karl, Crazy Little Thing), I have long since given up any hope that a Palestinian state would actually put an end to all the violence and hatred in the region. It remains, however, a just cause in and of itself, and (along the way) it may very well strip certain Arab regimes of the handy device by which they tell their own people that Israel is the fons et origo of all their suffering.

Posted by Michael on 07/31 at 09:59 PM
George Galloway in shouting “I am here to glorify the resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify the leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.”

Just to give some context (though not excuse) to Galloway’s statement. He’s specifically protesting the recent laws brought in to criminalise glorifying terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4905304.stm

Posted by on 07/31 at 10:05 PM
Michael, can you clarify why you see the U.S.’s huge debts in Europe and Asia as a potential “braking system” on violence in the Middle East?

Posted by on 07/31 at 10:09 PM
I despise American justifications for Israel’s “response” that are predicated on the notion that the Israeli state is staring into the abyss. From the Bush line on Ïsrael’s right to defend itself” to the NRO line on Ïsrael’s struggle to survive,” they recapitulate in (slightly) more insistent terms the story about al-Qaeda’s threat to the U.S. It’s hard to see how our representatives can be so worried about Israel’s continued existence when they use so much of our hardware.

I’m frankly terrified that the Bush administration is dragging its feet on calling for a ceasefire hoping that if this crisis continues long enough, they’ll have a case for starting some kind of campaign in Iran. I can see the right-wing narrative taking shape already. Where opposing the Iraq war got one labeled objectively pro-terrorist, I expect opposing an Iran occupation will bring accusations of being objectively pro-Holocaust.

captcha: faith

Posted by on 07/31 at 10:29 PM
Disarming sounds good, but I suspect that the Hizbollah are further (as well as farther) from the IRA’s recent history than from that of the Iranian Fedayeen-i-Khalq (whom I’ve probably misspelled). I’ve heard surviving Fedayeen and supporters regret bitterly that they disarmed when the Iranian government ordered them to; of course Khomeini’s people immediately killed as many of them as they could hunt down.

Yes, yes, they’re despicable, no shit, but they likely have some memory and a book or two.

Posted by Ron Sullivan on 07/31 at 10:50 PM
CCP
Regardless, it’s in the stage beyond reason now. What does justification matter?

Agreed, but sorting some of this out might help return some of what’s going on to reason or at least the realm of politics. Or we can just give up on a political solution and declare the whole area a humanitarian disaster area and start flooding the area with humanitarian solutions: food, clothing, camps, all of them assidiously kept from direct violence. Maybe there’s something in that.

Christ, I don’t know.

I don’t see Hezbollah disarming though. They’re better trained and better armed than the IRA ever was. Disarming isn’t going to be the solution, especially not now, not when they’ve fought Israel to a standstill. Getting them deeper into political processes is the only way I see out, but I wonder if Hezbollah is systemically incapable of such a thing. Perhaps, but it also strikes me that the political process can have a mellowing effect on ideologues when they find their monolithic approaches discourage the people they need as allies. Maybe we can only hope that power corrupts.

Again, I don’t know.

Captcha: corner, as in, painted myself into.

Posted by on 07/31 at 11:30 PM
Others of the Jewish persuasion, including MaxSpeak and myself, have been blogging on this too--and noting similar criticism of Israel in the process.

However, I want to add one thing that is not being discussed: There was supposed to be a referendum among Palestinians this month that would have placed the Palestinian people on record for a two state solution. I think it was going to pass, but the Israeli government, the militants in Hamas (there was a split brewing just 60 days ago where some backed the referendum) and Hezbollah did not want peace. Israeli prime minister Olmert denounced the referendum as “meaningless” and continued provocations that began in the spring against Hamas--before Hamas’ kidnapping of the soldier. Then, after the first Israeli disproportionate response, Hezbollah, as religious extremists are wont to do, attacked Israel and...here we are.

Israel could have faced a far better August 2006 than it is facing now--but the Israeli government chose the George Bush method of diplomacy and war and got the same result: An emboldened terrorist movement. And meanwhile, my folks think I’m anti-Israel for saying this stuff, while I watch in distress as a small element of the far left tries to tell me I should be “fort the Hezbollah and the Bush administration rah-rahs the Israeli government to keep on bombing.

Can you say isolated, frustrated and powerless? I can, MisterRogers.

Posted by Mitchell Freedman on 07/31 at 11:31 PM
A question for Wendy:

What is the source that 1,200 Israelis have been killed since 2000? I know that by the end of 2002, about 350 Israelis and 1,200 Palestinians had been killed in fighting and military/terror attacks, but haven’t been able to track down your figure.

Also, any idea as to how many Palestinians have been killed since 2000?

If we’re going to go by numbers, might as well learn about both Israelis and Palestinians killings. My gut tells me Palestinians lose more people, which should tell us again why the Israeli anti-terrorist policies are not ones we should necessarily follow in our nation.

Posted by mitchellfreedman on 07/31 at 11:37 PM
I agree.

Posted by Bob in Pacifica on 07/31 at 11:40 PM
Just slightly OT…

Anyone else terrified by the serious attention that premillenialist lunacy is receiving from CNN and MSNBC (I don’t watch the b’cast network news nor Fox...lord only knows what they’re doing).

Every time I turn on MSNBC or CNN, they seem to have another “expert” on, explaining how the current crisis reveals that the endtimes are here.

Apparently it’s a canon of the New Objectivity that one is not allowed to challenge such crap on the air, either by pointing out that we’ve had two thousand years worth of folks falsely claiming that the end times are near based on Revelation and other apocalyptic texts, or simply by noting that the very idea is batshit crazy.

Of course, reported entirely differently, this should be a news story, as belief in this nonsense clearly motivates many members of the U.S. public to whom this administration at the very least feels the need to pander.

(Captcha: “carried,” as in “the things they")

Posted by on 07/31 at 11:41 PM
Seriously OT.

But in the spirit of serendipitous synchronicity, I just got information from the Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre that they are holding a BeckettFest in August & September, which they say covers all 19 of his plays. EndGame, Krapps, Happy Days and Godot (contradictory info on whether Godot is 9/11 or 10/19 - may be read one date & performed the other) presented on their own, plus 3 combos of 5 short plays each.

Since it is but a short hop over the ridges - provided the creeks don’t rise of course - and given this, assumed you (and others in the vicinity) would be interested.

Posted by on 07/31 at 11:58 PM
For a European perspective:

http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/the_conceited_empire.html

http://www.rwevans.co.uk/~r/rwevans/wevansnet04/item0042A.htm#721

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023113/023113102X.HTM

Posted by on 08/01 at 10:08 AM
Here’s the source for the 1200 number, complete with an individual listing of all the people who died, along with their ages. And yes, there have been more Palestinians killed than Israelis. But the point I was making is that the Israelis are also under attack, and many very young people have died or been injured as a result. And the attacks have been small but relentless, almost on a daily basis.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/terrorism- obstacle to peace/palestinian terror since 2000/Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism sinc

Sorry, that’s the URL in its entirety; it may be incomplete, though.

It is also an interesting exercise in the perceived value of human life to note the bizarre “exchange rate” used when non-violent prisoner exchange is implemented as a solution. A recent issue of Newsweek listed a few examples. I’ll see if I can find them. But essentially one Mossad leader was “equivalent” to two Hamas leaders. Two Israeli soldiers were “equivalent” to hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. There were other examples, but they were all similar.

Posted by on 08/01 at 10:35 AM
Thank you, Wendy. I am going to bookmark the official Israeli government web site you provided. I was unaware the number of IDF and Israeli civilians killed since 2000 had reached that level.

I also agree with you about the “bizarre” exchange rate regarding prisoners. However, I also must note that there is a similar, though reversed rate when comparing US media coverage regarding Palestinian and Isareli lives lost. Here are two articles from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (an admittedly left oriented media critic organization) on the NY Times and NPR in terms of reporting on the loss of life in the Middle East:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1656

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1086

I also recall, years ago, Alexander Cockburn writing extensively about how one American life lost equalled so many foreign lives lost--and how the US government learned to not figure out how many Vietnamese were being killed as the Vietnam War rolled on. We see this in the Iraq War II under Bush as well.

I would not say this “balances” out the exchange rate because it doesn’t. Plus, I have continued to state that the violent-crime Arab prisoners are anything but contrite and that Israel should not be giving in to the 1 soldier for 1,000 prisoners exchange originally proposed by Hamas.

I will, though, continue to insist that the Israeli government had a couple of opportunities this year to avoid this fiasco when the Hamas leadership was divided about whether to continue terrorist attacks against Israel and when the Palestinian referendum on the two state solution was proposed and placed on a ballot. The current Israeli government willfully forfeited those opportunities. As for the Arab leadership, that leadership continues to operate as terrorists and mobsters. Had they followed Martin Luther King, Jr. civil disobedience at any time in the past 20 years, the Palestinians would long ago have had a functioning, peaceful state in Gaza and the West Bank.

Posted by Mitchell Freedman on 08/01 at 11:42 AM
These are good examples of how Israel is *not* the United States, as so many like to imagine.

Posted by Central Content Publisher on 08/01 at 11:47 AM
Working on deadline today, so quickly (with apologies): James, thanks for the links! That Emmanuel Todd interview is especially interesting.

Michael, can you clarify why you see the U.S.’s huge debts in Europe and Asia as a potential “braking system” on violence in the Middle East?

Can’t give you the details, Amanda, because I’m just a literature professor. All I know is that the imbalance-of-trade problem has bedeviled economists for over a decade, and they seem to have been reduced to the Beckettian mantra, “This can’t go on. [Full stop, no comma.] It’ll go on.” I just think that our increasingly precarious financial situation will eventually put the brakes on the whole empire. Though the euro’s not quite ready to become the world currency yet, I hear.

Just to give some context (though not excuse) to Galloway’s statement. He’s specifically protesting the recent laws brought in to criminalise glorifying terrorism.

Thanks, Bruce. The context does explain Gorgeous George’s use of the term “glorify” (and yeah, I was aware of it—someone pointed it out to Eric Kirk, too), but it’s the objects of the verb to which I object.

Of course, reported entirely differently, this should be a news story, as belief in this nonsense clearly motivates many members of the U.S. public to whom this administration at the very least feels the need to pander.

Remember, Ben, this blog is objectively pro-Rapture. And yes, that’s how we would like this to be reported. One of these days we’re going to find out that for the Base, “No Child Left Behind” was actually code for post-Rapture K-12 education policy.

Wendy, Mitchell, CCP, Bob, Ron, everyone (Louis too!), thanks for the discussion. And I agree that Hezbollah’s not likely to disarm. I still think states shouldn’t include, as sub-quasi-pseudo state entities, privately armed militias.

Posted by Michael on 08/01 at 01:33 PM
I still think states shouldn’t include, as sub-quasi-pseudo state entities, privately armed militias.

Hi Michael, not to get all 2nd Amendment on you, but, although you’re correct that “all your guns are belong to us” is pretty much the definition of states (okay, monopoly on the legitimate use of force, individual and family self-defense excepted), many (most, all?) states haven’t done much except pick fights with other states across borders, or create criminals within borders ("war on drugs” anyone?), to justify their existence. An even more crude anarchist line about the state as protection racket: “nice life you got there pal. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Seriously, there are three basic questions here I think we need to consider, in descending order of generality. The first is the whether any state (or I guess we should say any state with the military as a big component—well, that’s pretty much “any state,” isn’t it?) has an interest in “peace.” The second is more specific: whether big powers, acting through their client states / regional powers, have any interest in “stability” in resource rich zones that are always the object of jockeying to construct spheres of influence. And third and most specifically, as Mitchell Freedman has well pointed out, is whether the Israeli / US military-industrial complex and Hamas / Hezbollah and their various other state and non-state actor allies, have any interest in peace now in 2006. I’m inclined to answer “no” to all three question.

Posted by John Protevi on 08/01 at 02:05 PM
Self-follow-up to: “nice life you got there pal. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Here in the good old US of A, the state’s line would be: “nice life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness you got there pal. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

(Boy, I’m really channeling my inner anarchist today! Wonder what would happen should he meet the General’s inner Frenchman?)

Posted by John Protevi on 08/01 at 02:57 PM
"Just to give some context (though not excuse) to Galloway’s statement. He’s specifically protesting the recent laws brought in to criminalise glorifying terrorism.”

Bruce - That does put it into a better light however. Has he clarified that he was merely making the statement to challenge the law?

Posted by Eric Kirk on 08/01 at 07:48 PM
Eric and Michael,

I’ve actually found a video of the rally and Galloway’s speech on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6qWVGqEJ4

I don’t know anything more about it than this video and what I’ve seen here and briefly in one or two other blogs. I haven’t seen any comment from Galloway on it, so I don’t know exactly what he means. The wording quoted above struck me as specific to this law and challenging this law does seem to be part of his purpose.

Posted by on 08/01 at 08:50 PM
Perhaps your best post ever.

Thereto apertaining, I was wondering what we would be reading today if that spy on the submarine (check page A22, right next to the underwear ads) had been an Arab-American.

Posted by on 08/10 at 09:31 AM

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