Spokespersons for the Bush Administration have been doing linguistic gymnastics to explain how the US is both “mourning” the loss of innocent life in Lebanon, but not yet showing any signs of actively pushing for a cease-fire. When asked repeatedly (July 20) about Secretary of State Rice’s plans to travel to the region, her spokesperson Sean McCormack’s evasive replies included this classic double-speak gem:
She wants to go to the region to — when she believes it’s helpful and useful — to help — work on a lasting and durable political solution to end the violence.
Golly whiz. Just when will, or might that have been? Five years ago? Or how about when this latest round of violence first flared up? But no, that’s apparently not what the Administration now has in mind. Instead, according to McCormack,
“You’re not going to see a return to the kind of diplomacy I think that we’ve seen before where you try to negotiate an end to the violence that leaves the parties in place and where you have status quo ante. Whereby groups like Hezbollah can simply regroup, rearm, only to fight again another day and to be able to, as I said before, at a whim, cause violence and instability in the region. I don’t think anybody wants — nobody wants that. Maybe Hezbollah and its backers want that, but certainly I don’t think you’re hearing that from anybody else.”
In short, the US publicly is backing Israel’s position that no cease fire is needed until after Hizbullah is no more. Anybody who thinks differently is castigated as a “backer” of Hizbullah. Earlier this week, Tony Snow darkly dismissed Helen Thomas’ probing questions as “presenting the Hizbullah view,” — all the more demeaning since the 86 year old Thomas is of Lebanese heritage.
America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, was even more blunt in questioning whether a ceasefire would be effective or even possible:
“Any ceasefire is going to have to be accompanied by a qualitative change in the situation…. The simple reflexive action of asking for a ceasefire is not something that is really appropriate in a situation like this. Because you have to know who the parties would be to any cessation of hostilities. How do you get a ceasefire with a terrorist organization? I’m not sure it’s possible.”
With apologies to John Lennon, all John Bolton is saying is give war a chance.
So Bolton is providing cover to give Israel more of a chance to eliminate Hizbollah. Once Hizbollah (and Lebanon along with it) is fully destroyed, then we can have peace. “Change facts first,” and then, sure, we’ll talk.
“Ambassador” Bolton takes the novel approach that we never negotiate with those states or political movements we don’t like, never mind that in this case, the extent of Hizbullah’s political base is potentially 40+% of Lebanon’s population. So diplomacy is only about the art of talking to your friends? I can’t find that chapter in my diplomatic history texts. But from within this approach, there’s little reason to work for a cease fire.
How else then can we describe the Bush Administration’s present course, but to give Israel’s military more of a chance to “degrade” Hizbullah into oblivion? (And to be “fair,” we might say that its a bipartisan policy in American politics right now, given Congress’s inability to say “no” to “The Lobby” yesterday.)
Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow testily rejected what the rest of the world, sans Tony Blair, increasingly sees as obvious – that the US is giving Israel a green light to pound Lebanon even more.
“No, no; the insinuation there is that there is active military planning, collaboration or collusion, between the United States and Israel – and there isn’t … the US has been in the lead of the diplomatic efforts, issuing repeated calls for restraint, but at the same time putting together an international consensus. You’ve got to remember who was responsible for this: Hizbullah … It would be misleading to say the United States hasn’t been engaged. We’ve been deeply engaged.”
No doubt. And its “snow-ing” in foggy bottom in July.
Never mind the lame protestations to the contrary, Israel knows when its been given a free hand by its US patron. Yet Israel seems to be discovering that air power alone is no more a sufficient way to defeat and pacify an enemy in Lebanon – than it is in Afghanistan or Iraq. As such, Israeli reserve call-ups signal to many observers that Israel is preparing to launch a significant ground invasion into Lebanon — precisely as Charles Krauthammer all too predictably argued recently that they must.
So get out your Thesaurus and watch for the euphemisms that will be “flying” to re-name the pending invasion: the Israeli “assaults,” the “raids,” the “incursion,” the “operation expansion,” the “defensive maneuvers,” etc.
And watch too for more “compassionate” leaflet drops to allert Lebanese civilians to depart a 20 (or more) mile zone…. That is, “leave or die.” Ah, but the roads and bridges are in shambles. What would you do in such a situation?
As Juan Cole laments, “The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches….
[T]his is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population’s way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.
Strong words. Yet the danger is there. Does Israel really want to repeat 1982 – with the added “ethnic cleansing” of an entire region? Does the US really want to be seen by the world as having given Israel yet another green light to undertake a “maximal option” and make even worse mistakes than made before in Lebanon?
Maybe not. Word late today is that Secretary of State Rice really is planning to go to the Middle East, maybe sooner rather than later. But, depending on which report you rely upon, maybe not until sometime after Sunday. Worse, some reports say that even while there, she still isn’t going to press for a cease-fire.
Maybe she’s not sure the timing is yet “appropriate.” Guess she won’t be visiting Beirut either.
I am appalled!!!! Having seen first hand the destruction created by our powerful military machines, how can the world stand by and listen to the double-speak, the one-sided reporting of the human disaster taking place.
This problem will not be solved until the Lebanese government takes full responsibility for policing its borders so that vigilante groups cannot provoke neighboring countries and bring suffering to the Lebanese people.
Just imagine if an Anti-Immigration group in America crossed into Mexico to take hostages and sent missiles sailing over the Rio Grande!
Ah yes, and the United States should bomb say, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or for that matter itself, for not controlling those vigillantes who bombed us on 9/11.
Say Truesdell, since you brought up that curious Mexico parallel, let’s see how far it might go – albeitin a more plausible direction. Let’s say a Mexican nationalist gang wanted to take two border guards prisoner – and take them back into remote mountains somewhere in Mexico. (while demanding that the US release say, three of their comrades, captured the previous month by US agents operating deep inside Mexico)
So how might the US respond? Oh sure, we’d have O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs calling for the border to be militarized, a 10 foot wall/fence be built, and the border be closed. But next, would they be calling for the US airforce to bomb Mexico City’s airport, destroy every bridge in the country, and any sort of civil infrastructure that might somehow give moral or physical support to the “terrorists?”
Oh, and let’s say the following week, if Quebequoi nationalists slipped into Upper New York and took captive US reservists out on a fishing trip. Would we send the SAC to bomb Toronto, ravage the country’s infrastructure (to send it back 20 years) and then mock any tearful pleas from their Prime Minister for a cease fire — because he’s really, deep down a stooge, say, for da French.? eh?
Absurd indeed.
2006-07-21 Newt Gingrich on WW3
You should read “Take the Bull Out of the china shop” by Harlan Cleveland, about John Bolton. Harlan is a Fellow of the International Leadership Forum (ILF) and our blog is http://www.ilfpost.org. He’d enjoy your comments! Visit us soon.
Ok, here is a a personal comment. I hope upon hope that the Middle East hornet’s nest can be cleaned out but it doesn’t look as if it will, with both sides fighting each other and wanting to oust each other.
The point is that the elected governments in the US, Canada, Mexico and most civilized countries – even most uncivilized countries, for that matter – do not permit private armed militias to operate on their territory and have a monopoly on border patrol and war making authority.
“Earlier this week, Tony Snow darkly dismissed Helen Thomas’ probing questions as “presenting the Hizbullah view,” — all the more demeaning since the 86 year old Thomas is of Lebanese heritage.”
Indeed, and I presume you will similarly condemn Helena, Juan Cole, or the next pundit who accuses Jewish American policy makers of being “Likudniks.”
“Those who know Bush say his view of the conflict was shaped by several formative experiences — in particular the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which made fighting terrorism the central mission of his presidency. Another formative experience was a helicopter ride over the West Bank with Ariel Sharon in 1998, when Bush was Texas governor — a ride he later said showed him Israel’s vulnerability. The cause of Israel has been championed by many of the evangelical Christians who make up a significant chunk of the president’s political base.”
-Michael Abramowitz, The Washington Post 7/21/06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR2006072001907.html
Assuming Abramowitz is a reliable reporter, we now have confirmation that our President’s unquestioning support of Israel’s barbarous assault on the Lebanese people is based on (1) a 2001 incident involving Saudi terrorists, (2) a 1998 helicopter ride, and (3) evangelical “end times” mythology. Did I mention xenophobia, racism, ignorance and superstition?
Many thanks John C. for your latest on point and excellent post here. Glad you linked this Post story here.
I’ve been reading speculations about Bush’s “eschatology” (end times theology) ever since Arafat was hunkered down in Bethlehem…. while Bush did nothing…. Sometime soon, I’ll try to post an essay on “Christian Likudism” – and my own encounters with it here in Charlottesville. To put it gently, “they” have a rather different concept of what Jesus meant by, “Blessed are the Peacemakers”…. (As one otherwise bright young Wesleyan pastor told me, oh, “that verse was only meant to apply to relations among believers.”)
I found some helpful advice for our Israeli friends, as to how they might best go about eliminating the terrorist resistance in the ghettos of Gaza and the Lebanese “buffer zone:”
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/document/1061-ps.htm
These are tried and true methods. They worked then, and they’ll work now. But I guess you guys knew that already, didn’t you?
Comparing the Warsaw Ghetto resistance with Hizbullah…a terrorist group financed and armed by the Mad Mullahs of Iran (whose President, incidentally, undoubtedly believes that the Warsaw Ghetto is a hoax) who have usurped the sovereignty of the people of Lebanon…and brought a costly war to their doorstep 6 years after Israel pulled out of Lebanon…is sheer nonsense and a sick aspersion to the memory of those brave Polish Jews.
Oops, I just post and went for approval from Helena, I believe Helena having a problem with her internets/broadband connection/speed.
So I just quote this from my post today…
Rice: Cease-fire at this time pointless
“US Secretary of State rules out quick cease-fire as ‘false promise,’ says ‘Syria knows what it needs to do, Hezbollah is the source of the problem.’ Israeli ambassador to US: This is a war not of our choosing”
provoke neighboring countries
Then what you call the Israeli fighters run over Damascus? Is it “provoke neighboring country” or what you call this?
Look to your leader they whom never changes and never what the said toady in the Israeli army radio Vice Premier Shimon Peres said:
Shimon Peres
Also he also said “Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres” in 1986 this:
the Mad Mullahs of Iran (whose President, incidentally, undoubtedly believes that the Warsaw Ghetto is a hoax)
Yah, Iran thier not in North of Israel, goes and bomb him, Iran President is not in Lebanon!! Or you lost your direction like Khomeini when he starts his war with Iraq with same call for get rid of Israel and the “Big Devil”……
Stop chewing these words its all about your dreams not more and those Mullah cover you with their black robs
we now have confirmation that our President’s unquestioning support of Israel’s barbarous assault on the Lebanese people is based on–
Say what?? The article says: The cause of Israel has been championed by many of the evangelical Christians who make up a significant chunk of the president’s political base not that his policy is “based on evangelical ‘end times’ mythology.” That’s a critical reading error worthy of an eighth grader. It’s like saying “The cause of Palestine has been championed by many neo-nazis” [which it has been] and concluding that critics of Israel are Nazis. ie, yet another instance of sleazy, shabby well poisoning bigotry. And you’re wondering why the US public doesn’t take your opinions seriously?
Professor Martin van Creveld, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel’s most prominent military historian
Van Creveld: The same thing has happened to the Israeli army as happened to all the rest that have tried over the last sixty years. Basically it’s always a question of the relationship of forces. If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward then you are going to become cowardly – it’s only a question of time. The same happened to the British when they were here… the same happened to the French in Algeria… the same happened to the Americans in Vietnam… the same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan… the same happened to so many people that I can’t even count them.
So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape. Now the Israeli army has not by any means been the worst of the lot. It has not done what for instance the Americans did in Vietnam… it did not use napalm, it did not kill millions of people. So everything is relative, but by definition, to return to what I said earlier, if you are strong and you are fighting the weak, then anything you do is criminal.
“it did not use napalm” this not true Israelis used Napalm in1967 war in Sinai and Syrian war zones.
some says he “Martin van Creveld” a respectable historian, but by stating this he is a liar like the rest of them….
Any pretenses to US being an “honest broker” are now off the table:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/middleeast/22military.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Condi’s excuses (written by AIPAC man Indyk) for not actually going to any Arab country are rather pathetic…. More foot-dragging; more pain for Lebanon…. Even the Saudis are now starting to feel the heat back home…. Funny how the US is now relying on the most autocratic of Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan) for “support” against those relatively “democratic” radical upstarts in Gaza and Lebanon. So much for the “democratic peace.” It was all a bad joke….
Note to Salah…. You and others here may not have noticed, but I (Scott) am assisting Helena here this summer while she travels. Sorry for the confusion. Sometimes she is able to join us; other times we’ll have to carry on without her insights and experience.
I did delete two of your three posts – I hope I retained the one you wanted…
In any case, near the end of your last post, you made the following statement:
“Or you lost your direction like Khomeini when he starts his war with Iraq with same call for get rid of Israel and the “Big Devil”……
Actually, if you go back and look at the exact quotes from the day when SADDAM HUSSEIN (not Khomeini) launched his invasion into Iran, it was Saddam who referenced his assault into Khuzestan (heading east) was paving the road to liberating Jerusalem.
I’m afraid it remains part of the standard renditions in Arab textbooks that somehow Iran started the Iran-IRaq war…. (a subject I have long enjoyed exploring together with my Arab students)
For the exact quotes, see Chubin and Tripp’s “Iran and IRaq at War” I can get you the quotes here if you or others are interested…. Scott
escott,
First Thanks for your note, and my apology for triple posting (due to I got Server Error) made me put more.
Secondly I think there is confusion here happened my quote directed to Truesdell not you.
I don’t like to take more space in regards of who started 1980 war, but truly Khomeini was openly threaten the Gulf courtiers including Iraq to exporting his revelation this is fact don’t tell me that not happened.
What Khomeini did in 1979 in regards to Israel and US similar in such away to what are we seeing now from Ahmadinajad doing in regards to Israeli, to heating up the region and in my deep heart its not benefits any Arab’s state in the region, its in inline with Israeli/ US and Iran interests and needs…
Just read this which came now in Assafir Arabic news paper
“وقال مسؤول لبناني واسع الاطلاع ل ان ما قامت به هذه الشبكة يكاد يفوق ما قامت به ، واشار الى انه تم العثور على اجهزة اتصال لا مثيل لها مع ابرز الموقوفين وان بعضهم اعترف بقيامه بواسطة تقنيات متطورة بوضع اشارات للطائرات الاسرائيلية ادت الى انتقاء اهداف محددة في الضاحية الجنوبية لبيروت.
واشار المسؤول نفسه الى ان اعترافات احد ابرز عناصر الشبكة اظهرت ان اسرائيل استنفرت قبل اربعة ايام من عملية اسر الجنديين الاسرائيليين معظم خلاياها النائمة في لبنان وزودتها ببعض التوجيهات وبتقنيات متعلقة بحالات استهداف بعض مراكز ومقرات حزب الله في جميع المناطق اللبنانية وخاصة الضاحية الجنوبية.”
If those “Lebanones” captured today and admitted was right, its rise very interesting point here, why Israelis warning her Spy Network members in Lebanon 4 days before her solders captured by Hezbollah!! Is it a planed thing with Hezbollah?
I’m afraid it remains part of the standard renditions in Arab textbooks that somehow Iran started the Iran-Iraq war…. (a subject I have long enjoyed exploring together with my Arab students)
Who are you accusing Arab “Iraqi” Education system teaching also?
How you reach to this?
Who tells you this?
Is Ahmed Chalabi one of your “Arab Friends” also? What you got from him?
Look Esscot, Ironically one who “enjoyed exploring together with my Arab students” making this statement in time we as Iraqis lived and knew our details well and what’s happing in Iraq today a major part of it is Iran, there is no doubted about that, same as now Israel/US with Hezbollah case can you denied the link of Iran?
Resent Iraqi war thousands or millions of Iraqis speaks about US and its lies before and after the invasion of Iraq include some westerners but no one listen same as Israeli now doing massacre in Nabulis and Gaza they doing it there in Refugees Camps killing burning those tents they live in but still most of you blind what she doing, you believes the things you like to and what your media feeds you.
I feel sorry for some one talking in this level and type of words, who should listen and hear from all type of people to get balanced judgment not generalised things and making Ironic statements.
Sorry, but I am not understanding the specific point(s) or even drift of your post.
By my “Arab students” from the past, I should have broadened that to include both excellent students I’ve encountered from varsious Arab countries, Jordan and Kuwait in particular, who had been raised (not surprisingly) during the 80’s and 90’s to believe that the war beginning in 1980 was entirely the fruit of an “Iranian aggression.” (I happen to take a view similar to the last report issued by UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Quellar…. worth reading….)
When I said I enjoyed helping those students explore the subject, I was referring to my teaching method…. to have students confront facts and alternate perspectives different from what they had previously learned. To be sure, it was a huge “shock” for some of them to re-think such matters. Anyway, some professors see their role as imparting “truth” or “indoctrinating;” I prefer higher ed. as a Jeffersonian exploration using “reason, without fear,” instilling a life-long learning process, with the focus on “how” rather than “what” to think…. Alas, that’ll get me branded in a host of different quarters…. And so it goes.
I was referring to my teaching method…. to have students confront facts and alternate perspectives different from what they had previously learned. To be sure, it was a huge “shock” for some of them to re-think such matters. Anyway, some professors see their role as imparting “truth” or “indoctrinating;” I prefer higher ed. as a Jeffersonian exploration using “reason, without fear,” instilling a life-long learning process, with the focus on “how” rather than “what” to think….
Do you believe that your approach is the norm in Mideast Studies departments at US colleges?
I was referring to my teaching method…. to have students confront facts and alternate perspectives different from what they had previously learned. To be sure, it was a huge “shock” for some of them to re-think such matters.
Ok, there are no Iraqi with your students, whatever you believing but you and most Americans learned and believed what you fed by “the standard renditions in American textbooks” so what’s make you different from these guys Henry Alfred Kissinger, Noah Friedman, Thomas L. Friedman, Sheikh L. Paul Bremer III, all are ME specialist, they are Think-Tank of the US foreign polices what we get as Arab is just aggression more love and support of Israel, more support of corrupted regimes for as long as 100 yeras now like Al-Saud, Al –Subah, and Hashemite this is your foreign polices in ME what’s make you different can you tell us what previously learned make you different?
Did you in your life meet a Mullah? Did you spoke to a Mullah? Did you watch closely what these Mullah life and how they doing their doggy Iranian/Parisian attitude?
You convinced few students from Kuwait/Jordan and you trying to prove yourself are right!!
We live for generation with our aggressor neighbour Iran we watch them closely we listening to them and we knew how they thinking very well I doubt it you and other cane convinced me I am not right, simply I spent 45 years in Iraq between Hilla, Najaf, Karbalah, Kufa, Baghdad and more, I met tens of Iraqis from far South to far North so what you “teaching method” make me thinks that you are right Scott?
Scott, I don’t need to argue with this but to me and most Iraqi Iran its a problem and now the world facing Iran’s problem whatever they have in their minds of agenda, what I understand Iran still and continually having here Persian dreams in ME.
What Khomeini did nothing to do with Islam and its values the prove for you there inside Iran ask any Iranians not belong to regimen will tells you. Its not a big deal, so Iran invaded three Island from Bahrain during Shah time and refused withdraws from them moreover threatens the Gulf countries if they got this case to International tribunal this is in Mullah time.
Now in Iraq we are seeing Iran’s fingerprint and how state of Iraq demolished with cooperation with US by their tail Asistani, Alhakem and others, so as we speak in Lebanon Hezbollah.
If you like to kill or caught the snake you should do it from the head not from the tail Scott.
Good luck with your ” teaching method “and what you “previously learned”
BTW, Scott is this your book
The Iranians: Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation
http://birthtime.info/soul-b/free.php?in=us&asin=0452275636
2006-07-22 What is being born in the ME?
The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the summer, in part because they know that European and American universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition, and the universities are out in the summer.
Wow I see the mushrooms haven’t quite worn off!
Haifa is 25 miles from the Lebanese border. Whatever did this has a range greater than “3 or 4 miles”. [Cole should really stick to his specialty, or get a fact-checker.]
yes, Professor Cole did aver today in his blog that the IDF timed this war to coincide with summer vacations at European and US universities and that the range of Hezbollah’s missiles were only 3-4 miles and their targets were mainly in the “occupied” Shebaa Farms enclave. But he didn’t stop there. He goes on to conclude that Israel, not Hezbollah, was the aggressor because the IDF prepared a contingency plan to deal with Hezbollah’s missiles one year ago.
I now have a better idea what our Forum host had in mind when he spoke above about how some (presumably Middle East Studies department) professors “see their role as imparting ‘truth’ or ‘indoctrinating.'”
Mission accomplished?
Why would Israel bomb Lebanon’s pharmaceutical factories, grain silos and water processing plants?
Why would they attack the mosques, hospitals and a Greek Orthodox Church?
Why would they flatten Lebanon’s largest milk factory?
Is Hezbollah in the dairy business?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20060723&articleId=2791