Bushies fixin’ to fight Hizbullah

Steve Weisman has a piece in today’s NYT about both the Bush administration’s recent escalation of its campaign against the Lebanese party Hizbullah, and the difficulties it has encountered in Europe as it tries to drum up support for this policy.
The piece reveals Weisman’s usual close understanding of US politics and a level of misunderstanding of Middle East politics that’s only too common among “well-connected insiders” in Washington DC.
Weisman sources his story to “officials and diplomats” in both the US and Europe who, “would not give their names, saying they did not want to be seen as worsening tensions between the United States and Europe on the eve of Mr. Bush’s trip.”
Did not want to be seen as worsening tensions? Yes, that is apparently right, because the difference of opinion between the US and most of Europe over the Hizbullah issue seems to be very deep indeed.
Of course, the fact that the sources that Weisman claims are unnamed makes his whole story rather nebulous and hard to pin down. But I don’t doubt that– because of who he is, and because his editors decided to run the story on the front page above the fold– he had some pretty authoritative ones.
Here’s what he writes:

In the past two weeks, the officials said, France has rebuffed appeals by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, to list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which would prevent it from raising money in Europe through charity groups. The United States has long called Hezbollah a terrorist organization, but the French, American and European officials said, have opposed doing so, and argue that making such a designation now would be unwise, given the new turbulence in Lebanon.

That’s kind of interesting about the French, since back in September they were apparently enthusiastic supporters of Security Council Resolution 1559 that called for the dismantling of Hizbullah and other militias inside Lebanon (as well as Syria’s ouster from it.) President Chirac was also a very prominent presence at Rafiq Hariri’s funeral yesterday, having been a long-time friend of the Hariri family.
Ah, but here’s a very sly kicker from Weisman:

Israeli and American officials say that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has told them that he, too, regards Hezbollah as a destructive force in the Middle East, one determined to undermine peace talks by supporting militant groups that attack Israelis.

I wrote a bit here, on Saturday, about Israel’s newly energized diplomatic campaign against Hizbullah.
I wrote there, too, that the Jerusalem Post was running a piece that attributed to “PA security officials” a fear of a Hizbullah assassination attack against Abu Mazen.
Of course, so far we’ve not yet had any actual expressions of such a concern– either from Abu Mazen or from security officials around him– that haven’t come out pre-filtered through (or, indeed, generated by) Israeli or American sources… So why on earth should we take all that pre-cooked hasbara seriously at all?
Why didn’t Steve Weisman try to ask Abu Mazen, or someone around him, whether he actually entertains such fears about Hizbullah?
Oh, sorry, Abu Mazen’s an Arab. That must mean he’s a congenital liar, right? [Irony alert in this paragraph, friends.] Clearly, “Israeli and American officials” can be trusted on to know the truth about his fears and concerns much better than him…
(In that post last Saturday, I also quoted Hizbullah’s deputy Secretary-General, Naim Kassem as having categorically denied to a Reuters reporter that they were trying to recruit Palestinian militants to destroy new Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts. Oh, but he’s an Arab too, right?)
Okay, so I’m waiting till we have any concrete evidence at all, on any of these Israeli-generated allegations against Hizbullah, before I rush to judgment.
I guess that makes me part of the old-fashioned, “reality-based community”, right?
But back to the story of how the Hizbullah issue is causing fissures between the Europeans and the Bushies…

Weisman quotes an (un-named, and unidentified even by country) European official as saying:

“This is a difficult issue because Hezbollah has military operations that we deplore, but Hezbollah is also a political party in Lebanon… Can a political party elected by the Lebanese people be put on a terrorist list? Would that really help deal with terrorism? Now with Lebanon in a fragile state, is this the proper moment to take such a step?”
…
“Nothing is going to change on Hezbollah because we don’t have an agreement among the member states,” [a European] diplomat said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t get a consensus. I know the Americans are impatient, but the European Union has 25 states, and these things take time.”

Weisman notes that back in September 2003, the Bushies did succeed in persuading the EU to list the Palestinian organization Hamas as a “terrorist group”, with all the penalties and severe restriction that that implies. But,

Now, in a measure of continuing trans-Atlantic disagreement about how to handle the Middle East, some European countries are questioning whether Hamas should remain on the terrorist list, because some of its members won municipal posts in recent Palestinian elections, and Europeans want to encourage Hamas to enter the mainstream of Palestinian politics.
Britain and other countries have argued that the best way to press Hamas to drop its efforts to disrupt Middle East peace talks and to recognize Israel is to offer inducements, several officials said. But the [EU’s anti-terrorist] Clearing House has not raised the question of whether to remove Hamas from the terrorist list.

To my mind, there are two quite distinct things at issue here. One is the undertaking and planned undertaking of actual acts of terror (that is, political violence against civilians)– both of which have been essentially halted by Hizbullah for several years now, and by Hamas for a number of weeks…
Long may both those decisions stand! Long may the two organizations, each of which represents a sizeable political base, continue to see their interests being furthered more by joining the political game than by any return to violence against civilians!
But the other thing at issue is– if both organizations stick on this course– what on earth would happen to those great serried cohorts of charlatans in the US and Israel who have made comfy careers for themselves as “terrorism specialists”?
It is at this level of naked, often extremely sordid self-interest that the current campaign against Hizbullah may well be being generated. And certainly, the “terrorism experts” in questions have great access to the western media, and to the Bush administration.
I mean, all those “experts” are looking around themselves today and seeing that hey, maybe they won’t have Hamas to kick around for too much longer… especially if it carries on being a lynchpin of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process…
So let’s ramp up the campaign against Hizbullah instead, why not? And this campaign has great side-benefits not provided by a continuation of the campaign against Hamas: if these faux-expert charlatans can really get something going against Hizbullah, that could help destabilize, weaken and chip away at Syria and Iran, as well. Woo-hoo! (from their point of view.)
So to understand what’s going on, I think we need to understand the weird, wild world of the whole “discourse of terrorism”: a place where words can be put into Abu Mazen’s mouth with no attempt to verify whether he actually said them; a place where a rigid refusal to use one’s God-given powers of reason, inquisitiveness, compassion, and intelligence can be justified on the basis that “you can’t possibly talk to these people, or even treat them as fellow-humans, because they’re all terrorists.”
Okay, pop-quiz time. Back in the 1980s, which organization in Africa was most frequently referred to by its opponents as a “terrorist group”, and on that basis banned from any participation in the political process?
Did you get the answer? Yes, friends, it was the ANC… Nelson Mandela’s warm and fuzzy ANC, that (nearly) all westerners nowadays like to patronize and support, and that nearly all White South Africans now claim they “secretly” supported all along… (Baloney on that last claim, by the way.)
But attitudes can and do change… And the “miracle” of real political inclusion can certainly transform even the most previously deeply anatagonistic of relationships.
So why are Condi Rice (who was probably the un-named source of much of Wesiman’s story, by my reading) and the new CIA head, Porter Goss, still trying to crank up the exclusion and emonization of Hamas and especially Hizbullah?
Here are a couple of other snippets from Weisman’s article:

Ms. Rice, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during hearings on the State Department budget, singled out Hezbollah as a group that had tried to wreck the Middle East peace talks.
“Here you have Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, many of them supported by Syria, trying literally to blow up the process,” Ms. Rice said.
In a statement before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Porter J. Goss, the new director of central intelligence, said Hezbollah’s “main focus remains Israel, but it could conduct lethal attacks against U.S. interests quickly upon a decision to do so.”

In addition, I think that Rice and the other Bushies have been ratcheting up the campaign against Hizbullah out of their (and the Israelis’) continuing frustration at the sheer guts, political smarts, and staying power that Hizbullah has demonstrated over the past few years.
Weisman again:

“It’s incumbent on everybody to tighten up on Hezbollah, but it’s become this big fat wild card that everybody’s afraid to take on,” an administration official said.

How about, instead of trying to “take it on”, they try to reach out and talk to Hizbullah, instead? It worked with the ANC, and brought to an end 400 years of very deep-rooted inter-group hatred in South Africa.
Maybe the US should considering trying such a simple, political approach to Hizbullah, as well?