THE BRITS SHOULD KNOW BETTER: The strategic geography of Mesopotamia may seem distant, perplexing, and “exotic” to many in the United States. But, with all due respect to the British military, they should have known better than to let the Bushites take them along for the promised “cakewalk” into Iraq.
The Brits should have known better. Actually, many Brits do. Many Brits learned in their (our) history books about the problems encountered by the expeditionary force sent into Mesopotamia by the authorities in British-ruled India.
Those who weren’t “lucky” enough to read those books can find out all about it on a good-looking site called First WorldWar.com (ironic subhead– “The war to end all wars”.) The site even has a special section on the “Mesopotamian front” that lets you click down all the major engagement from the capture of Basra in November 1914 through the capture of Tikrit three years later, and finally, the Battle of Sharqat in October-November 1918.
Basra took the Anglo-Indian force 16days to capture from the Turks. We learn that, “In the face of distinctly unfavourable attacking conditions – heavy rainfall and its consequent mud bath, in addition to heat mirages – the British force found progress initially difficult to come by until the use of 18-pounder artillery succeeded in scattering defenders, most of whom escaped under protection of a heat mirage, unable to be pursued by cavalry in such thick mud.
But finally the Brits made it into the city:
In taking Basra the British-led force suffered under 500 casualties and the Turks in excess of 1,000. Crucially the British had secured and ensured a continuation of oil supplies in the Middle East: a matter of paramount importance.
[Oil supplies were a factor because of the huge refineries in the “Persian” city of Abadan, just across the Shatt al-Arab from Basra.]
After that, slowly–very slowly– the British-Indian force plodded northward. The battle reports covering the next 18 months speak repeatedly of problems with supply lines, terrible physical conditions, confusion about the loyalties of various tribes, etc etc. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, eh?
Then, in April 1916, came the First Battle of Kut al-Amara. By now, the Brits, who’d been trying to pursue an aggressive strategy of “forward defense” found their garrison of 10,000 troops in that eastern-Mesopotamian city besieged. They brought up a 30,000-man force to try to relieve it, but in a series of engagements the Turks inflicted heavy losses. “1,200 British casualties were incurred alone on 6 April, with additional losses suffered the next day and on 9 April.”
By April 22, the losses among the relieving force had reached 23,000.
“Accordingly Sir Charles Townshend [the British commander of the Kut garrison ~HC], having consulted with higher authority, surrendered unconditionally on 29 April 1916 having failed to purchase parole for his 10,000 men with a
CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY; AL-HAYAT COLUMN YESTERDAY:
CSM COLUMN OUT TODAY; AL-HAYAT COLUMN YESTERDAY: Busy times we live in. The Christian Science Monitor column was titled “Military occupations – the good, bad, and ugly”, which makes me think the copy editor who composed it must have read my earlier lengthy post here by that title…
I wrote the piece Tuesday, and then had a good, productive time working with my editor on it. I do note, though, that in the layout phase the powers-that-be in Boston sliced up some of the middle grafs into single-sentence chunks.They say they sometimes need to do that to fill white space on the page. I say that it makes me look a little, well, staccato.
Not much reaction to that yet yet. Talking of “reaction”, though, I just signed up on something called Tag-board: once I get it installed into my template here will give me (give us all, y’all and me) a way to do short comments etc. Fun!
And then yesterday, the latest of my twice-monthly columns came out in al-Hayat, the leading pan-Arab daily out of London. They don’t have an English-language version for me to link you to. If you read Arabic, you can read it here.
That column, I actually wrote on Wednesday of last week. A terrible day,because everyone knew that Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam would expire that evening. And I knew, since I write my columns for them in English and they subsequently have to translate them, that it would almost certainly not appear until after the U.S. had already launched its threatened assault against Iraq.
That piece was titled (in English), “The anti-war movement moves to the next phase”. It attempted to make a sober assessment of the state of the anti-war movement here in the USA. Maybe after a couple of days, once Al-Hayat has milked it of every penny they can in syndication re-sells, I’ll put a link to it up here.
(I have this rich fantasy life in which the publications that pay me their mere pittances to produce my wonderful columns for them are then turning around and making vast amounts of money by syndicating the same texts elsewhere. Who knows, it might even be true?)
BILL SAFIRE GOES BESERK
BILL SAFIRE GOES BESERK: I think that at heart of the present (and impending) imbroglio in Iraq lies not only a profound moral/ethical miscalculation– to the effect that problems can be solved through violence— but also a very profound political miscalculation: the one that predicted with seeming confidence that the Iraqi populace would certainly greet the arriving US troops as “liberators”.
It is true, and most certainly significant, that there are already signs of deep disquiet, back-biting, finger-pointing, and just general CYA from inside the Pentagon regarding many operational aspects of this war. See, for example, the quotes in Thomas Ricks’ really interesting article in today’s Washington Post. The piece is titled, simply and ominously enough, “War could last months, officers say.” Its lead reads:
“Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday.”
In the body of the piece, there are numerous quotes, on background, from an un-named U.S. Army general and other un-named administration officials. Ricks also uses on-the-record quotes from retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, and retired war-planning specialist Maj. Robert Killebrew. (Interestingly, much of what Ricks writes about seems to track positively with the excerpts I cited in my post Tuesday, about the Russians’ apparently impressive ability to listen in on high-level Pentagon communications… Worth watching this more, I think.)
But possibly the funniest (saddest?) part of Ricks’ article came near the end when, in an attempt I suppose to beef up the required “balance”, he notes that, “Some Pentagon insiders and defense experts vigorously contested these pessimistic assessments.” And then, the first of these folks whom he quotes is– ta-da!!– Newt Gingrich, the infamously ignorant and mean-spirited former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives who is now on Richard Perle’s just-plain-infamous “Defense Planning Board”. (Before Gingrich two-timed his wife Marianne, she was on the payroll of an Israeli settlers’ organization, as I recall.)
At the heart of the present and set-to-continue strategic/operational imbroglio are issues like how fast the US ground forces should be moving forward, and how hard the US military in general should be bombarding the Iraqi cities. These are tough issues indeed for military planners to make a judgment call on. (And they also have truly heart-wrenching consequences, either way, regarding the life-chances of the combatants and civilians on the battlefield.)
But we have to recognize that antecedent to the design of the present US forces’ present operational plan was the essential political judgment, as articulated most clearly last week by Vice-President Cheney, to the effect that once they entered Iraq the US forces would be greeted by the vast majority of the Iraqi people “as liberators”.
That has not happened, and as of now it is highly unlikely that it will happen on any significant scale anywhere in the country (except, of course, in the already long-“liberated” north of the country. But that would be nothing new.)
Where did that very grave political miscalculation come from? Cheney and Richard Perle are among the administration (or, administration-linked) officials who have articulated it most clearly. But behind them stands a phalanx of well-connected, extremely rightwing commentators and intellectuals who try to pass themselves off as “Middle East specialists” when the need requires. The very same people who have sponsored Iraqi opposition “leader” Ahmed Chalabi all along — even though there has been plenty of evidence in the past that Chalabi’s claims to be able to speak for and about “all Iraqis” have been grossly exaggerated. Right now, those claims have been ground firmly into the mud that is engulfing many US encampments in the lower Tigris valley. (Sorry about the metaphor confusion there.)
So how are these radical rightwing ideologues dealing with the fact that the promised pro-US uprisings have nowhere taken place?
First of all, apoplectically. Second of all, by engaging in wild finger-pointing and saying something to the effect that that, “Well, that just proves how repressive Saddam Hussein is, because his people are out there, right now, stomping on all the free souls who would otherwise be doing the uprising… ”
Actually, since I grew up in England, I have a simpler explanation. I was born in 1952, but my family and community’s folk-culture was full of stories of the London Blitz. And the main story-line there was the way that, under intense bombardment from an outside power, Londoners came together despite their many class and political differences and rallied round their national leadership and their national symbols.
There are many other examples of that phenomenon in the history of the 20th century. (Stalingrad has already been mentioned in connection w/ Baghdad.) It actually takes an extremely brutal and sustained bombardment of a city to cause its leaders and people to cave…
Which brings me to Bill Safire, uber-cheerleader for Ahmed Chalabi (as for Ariel ‘Bulldozers-Away’ Sharon); and to Safire’s truly remarkable and disturbing column in today’s New York Times. This column is, disingenuously enough, titled “Help Iraqis Arise”. In most of it, Safire puts forth his own feisty version of the argument that “the fact that Iraqis haven’t risen against Saddam yet is just further proof of how repressive and heinous he is”.
But at the end, Safire becomes downright terrifying. He writes,
“President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, meeting today, should emulate their World War II predecessors. They should pre-empt proposals for bombing halts and armistices with a ringing statement about the only way to end the war: by unconditional surrender.
Change the leaflets and broadcasts. No talks about terms; no amnesties for paramilitary killers; no deals on exile for torturers. Surrender, plain and simple.”
Excuse me? How would we get such a surrender?
Is he honestly proposing the use of the same means that forced the German and Japanese surrenders in 1945? Lest we forget, those means included the fire-bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and numerous other cities in the two countries — not to mention the use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am appalled. Saddened. Horrified. If somebody has such a sick mind that he would recommend following this path today, he needs to be hauled off to DC’s fine psychiatric hospital, St. Elizabeth’s.
Please, someone do this. For all of our sakes.
[And next up on JWN: News of my column in today’s CSM; and an assessment of how the Iranians are sitting by and enjoying seeing their two sworn enemies slug it out in the mud of Mesopotamia.]
THE RUSSIANS ARE LISTENING?
THE RUSSIANS ARE LISTENING? I guess a lot of people around the world have become used to the idea that the US government, or their friends in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, listen in on just about everyone’s cellphone and other supposedly private conversations. But now, do the Russians have sophisticated listening capacity that can capture some internal US government communications as well?
There’s an interesting website called “War in Iraq” — don’t know how long it’s been up, but not long– that posts just-about-daily reports about the US war in Iraq, and gives some excerpts from what purport to be the texts of intra-US contacts as captured by Russia’s military intel, the GRU.
In an English-language post today, the site says:
A particular point of concern for the US command is the huge overuse of precision-guided munitions and cruise missiles. Already the supply of heavy cruise missiles like the “Tomahawk” has been reduced by a third and, at the current rate of use, in three weeks the US will be left only with the untouchable strategic supply of these missiles. A similar situation exists with other types of precision-guided munitions. “The rate of their use is incompatible with the obtained results. We are literally dropping gold into the mud!” said Gen. Richard Mayers [sic– HC] during a meeting in Pentagon yesterday morning. [reverse translation from Russian]
The US experts already call this war a “crisis”. “It was enough for the enemy to show a little resistance and some creative thinking as our technological superiority begun to quickly lose all its meaning. Our expenses are not justified by the obtained results. The enemy is using an order of magnitude cheaper weapons to reach the same goals for which we spend billions on technological whims of the defense industry!” said Gen. Stanley McCrystal during the same Pentagon meeting. [reverse translation from Russian]
Since the early morning today the coalition high command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are in an online conference joined by the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This meeting immediately follows an earlier meeting last night at the White House. During the night meeting with President Bush emergency actions were outlined to resolve the standstill in Iraq. The existing course of actions is viewed as “ineffective and leading to a crisis”. The Secretary of State Collin Powell warned that, if the war in Iraq continues for more than a month, it might lead to unpredictable consequences in international politics.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Mayers reported on the proposed actions and corrections to the plan of the operation in Iraq. George Bush demanded that the military breaks the standstill in Iraq and within a week achieves significant military progress. A particular attention, according to Bush, should be paid to finding and eliminating the top Iraqi political and military leadership. Bush believes that Saddam Hussein and his closest aides are the cornerstone of the Iraqi defense.
During today’s online meeting at the coalition headquarters Gen. Franks was criticized for inefficient command of his troops and for his inability to concentrate available forces on the main tasks.
According to [Russian military] intelligence Pentagon made a decision to significantly reinforce the coalition. During the next two weeks up to 50,000 troops and no less than 500 tanks will arrive to the combat area from the US military bases in Germany and Albania. By the end of April 120,000 more troops and up to 1,200 additional tanks will be sent to support the war against Iraq.
A decision was made to change the way aviation is used in this war. The use of precision-guided munitions will be scaled down and these weapons will be reserved for attacking only known, confirmed targets. There will be an increase in the use of conventional high-yield aviation bombs, volume-detonation bombs and incendiary munitions. The USAF command is ordered to deliver to airbases used against Iraq a two-week supply of aviation bombs of 1-tonn caliber and higher as well as volume-detonation and incendiary bombs. This means that Washington is resorting to the “scorched earth” tactics and carpet-bombing campaign.
I haven’t had the time to track the performance of this site very much at all. Are they offering what they purport to offer? Can anyone else give me a lead on this?
Aaah, it’s been a long time since I really got into Russian-watching. Then, it was called Soviet-watching. My Russian is pretty rusty, but I could make out that a recent posting on their Russian-language mother site, Voyna v’Irake (War in Iraq) was titled, “Analysis: the tactic of David and Goliath”.
I think everyone recognizes that information, and disinformation, are playing a crucial part in this war. As in all wars– but maybe more than in most other wars, this time around. The Russian military and the Pentagon both, evidently, have capabilities in this regard. But still, I think I’ll try to track this site a bit, see how realistic its analyses turn out to be.
CONTINUING TO ARTICULATE AN ALTERNATIVE
CONTINUING TO ARTICULATE AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR: Today, I wrote my column on “comparative military occupations” for the Christian Science Monitor. Once again the writing went more quickly because I’d thought most of the text through beforehand. It’ll be in the paper Thursday.
Meanwhile my visa-ed passport arrived back from the Tanzanian Embassy. Next task: figure out getting the Mozambique one. Plus, where to stay in Maputo, Jo’burg, and Cape Town. I love planning trips!
Anyway, last night, Bill, three other U.Va. profs, and I were all on a panel discussion organized by the university’s African-American studies center. About the war. Slightly last-minute organizing, so not huge turnout. But definitely bigger than what the Charlottesville Daily Progress (Daily Regress?) reported.
The reporter there was correct that the panel had “most of the weight on the left side of the table.” But I learned afterwards that at least one other faculty member who would have anchored the other end of the table declined to appear with the rest of us.
By the way, the Prog also had a nice report on the High School walkout I wrote about here yesterday. Again, the number of participants was underestimated there.
Anyway, in the course of our panel discussion, I really reached some clarity on something I’d been worrying about since the war began. Yes, we know we failed to prevent the war being launched, but what can we in the antiwar movement plausibly say right now?
Well, for starters, I already knew that the argument that dissent at home “can harm our troops abroad” is a very dishonest one. It was not us who placed the troops in harm’s way. That significant feat was achieved the moment the President decided to launch the war.
But of course I care about the wellbeing of the US troops– as I do for the wellbeing of everyone caught up in that hellzone of war.
Now, one thing I did during the 1991 Gulf War, that later I came to think was a mistake, was to adopt the argument that, “since I know that war is brutalizing and ugly, then the best thing all round for minimizing the total amount of harm caused by the war is to hope for a rapid and decisive outcome.”
I heard that precise same argument being voiced last night by Jim Childress, a distinguished professor of medical ethics here at U.Va. And a version of it also by my spouse.
So that reminded me of the many concerns I have had about that argument ever since I used it in 1991.
Firstly, it sort of “assumes” that the US is going to win. So one ends up cheering on the effort for a rapid and decisive US victory. That felt strange enough for me to be doing when I did it back then– yes, I actually wrote columns to that effect, not necessarily with much cheering, but making that exact argument. But at least then, the US war effort had a much stronger basis in international law. The present one doesn’t, so cheering it on in any way involves supporting what I see as forces of global vigilanteism.
Secondly, it means that one gets emotionally into the danger of eliding the nasty reality of the war, and one gets caught up in planning for the after-war.
But I think it’s important to resist those temptations In particular, it’s important to continue being able to say, today, tomorrow, or any other time before the “end” of this war, that THERE IS STILL AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR. Even today. Even any other day, whether the news from the battlefield is “good” or bad” from the US military viewpoint.
And what I feel quite comfortable saying is that on any one of these days, President Bush can still call for an immediate ceasefire-in-place, and call on the United Nations to help negotiate a resolution to the imbroglio in Iraq.
Why not? There is an always an alternative to violence, and I think it is up to those of us in the peace movement to be able to propose what that might be. And we are lucky, oh so lucky, that we still–even if only barely– have an international body like the United Nations that has the international legitimacy and global networks capable of taking over such negotiations.
I should imagine Kofi Annan and the leaders of the vast majority of the world’s countries would be delighted to have the U.N. play such a role. (Well, okay, maybe Kofi wouldn’t be “delighted”, since dealing with the massive pol-mil-humanitarian mess inside the country will be a horrendously difficult task. But I imagine that he would, at least, be ready to shoulder this task; and he’d presumably see that as a course far preferable to watching the violence and destruction just continue.)
Of course, I fully recognize that for Prez Bush to make such a turnround is, in the present circs, fairly unlikely. I realize that for the hawks in his administration, such a decision would represent the ultimate defeat of their world-defying strategy.
But just because it’s unlikely that Bush would heed our call that he stop fighting and turn the issue over to the UN for a negotiated settlement, does that mean we should not utter it, should not organize around it?
Of course not! It’s equally unlikely in my humble opinion that he’ll heed our calls to do the right thing by the health, education, and other social programs inside this country. But does that unlikeliness prevent us from organizing around our demands for the fulfillment of urgent social needs? No, of course it doesn’t…
So anyway, I was glad to have that bit of clarity come to me last night. Today, though I was writing something I consider to be important (for the CSM) about the after-war, I made sure to put in at least a couple of sentences about the fact that we still, even now, don’t need to just stay fatalistically on the war-wagon. And I articulated my still-valid, proposed alternative to continuing the war.
“THE 17-YEAR-OLD” ASSERTS HERSELF: Yesterday,
“THE 17-YEAR-OLD” ASSERTS HERSELF: Yesterday, she was on my case again. “Mom, why do you call me that? It’s so demeaning!”
I tried to explain it was related to an old joke. But that it was too complex to explain.
She carried on. “Besides, in your March 1 post, you talked about the dog having a slipped disk before you said anything about the so-called ‘seventeen-year-old’ having a bad injury. What’s up with that?”
Okay, mea culpa. I’m really, really sorry. So folks let me introduce you to: Ms. Lorna Quandt! What’s more, Lorna’s not just any 17-year-old but a talented young woman who with a bunch of her friends from Charlottesville High School today organized a walkout by 250 students in protest against the war. Read all about it (with pictures!) on George Loper’s website. George is a great community activist here in Charlottesville, VA, who has really enriched community life by using his site as a sort of public bulletin board for discussions and news of what’s going on around town.
The CHS students did a fabulous job of organizing their action; and they did it all on their own. And the school administration and the local police were both also quietly cooperative of the school students getting to exercise their right of free speech…
Two hundred fifty students is around 25 percent of the school’s student body. When the demonstrators got on the local t.v. news tonight, the ones who were interviewed were all stunningly articulate. And they really spoke from their hearts. The school should be– probably is– very proud of them.
These are kids, of course, who– if the war and/or the state of occupation drag on for any length of time– may well be subject to the draft. The young men among them, that is. But I think they all already know some recently graduated high schoolers who got lured into the military by recruiters who promised them that was the way to get job training, or learn computers, or whatever. So the whole business of the war has a scary immediacy for the high schoolers that it may not have for many of us older folks.
Our city only has one high school, which therefore takes in kids from nearly the whole demographic of the city’s population. The University of Virginia, which is located here, has a student body that, by and large, comes from a much narrower (= higher-income, more upper-middle-class) demographic. The level of antiwar activism in the high school seems MUCH higher than that among the U.Va. students! In this country, in general, relatively fewer young people from higher-income families than from lower-income families volunteer for the armed forces– since they have so many other options in life. So maybe the difference in activism levels we see among the young people in our city is related to the level of social/economic privilege that many U.Va. students enjoy, and to their relatively greater isolation from from knowing many people who actually serve in the military.
I guess it was the new Oscar winner Mike Moore who noted, in his recent letter to President Bush, that only one serving member of the U.S. Congress has a son or daughter in the armed forces. (MM suggested, too, that Bush should maybe send his own daughters over to join the fray.)
BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For
BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For some reason, two of my sisters have both expressed a concern that my blogging “might be taking too much of my time”. (All three of my sisters live on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, in England. Sometimes I wonder how much they talk about me behind my [very distant] back, as it were. I don’t spend much time speculating about it though, because– well, you know– I have a life.)
So anyway, my general response to that is that, for me, blogging is like doing warm-up exercizes for my formal writing. (Sorry about the atlantically indeterminate spellings around here.)
Case in point: my lengthy thinking-out-loud post last Friday on the subject of comparative military occupations.
Today, I needed to consult w/ my editor at the CSM about the topic I would be writing a column on, for a probable spot in this Thursday’s paper. “Comparative military occupations” was my main suggestion– and the one she leaped at. (Leapt at?)
Of course, cramming my main points on this into 800 words, while translating the text from blog-ese into CSM-ese, will still be quite a task. But writing the column will be a darn’ sight easier because I really have done a lot of thinking-it-through while– and since– writing about the subject here.
And now to bed. Lots going on around here that I don’t have time to write about. But when I go to bed, I start thinking about– all the poor benighted souls in the hell-zone that the warhawks have turned Iraq into; my Syrian journalist friend Ibrahim Hamidi who got arrested back in December, shortly after I talked with him in Damascus; all political prisoners everywhere– what is “going to bed” like for them, every night? — and the tortured souls in Palestine and Israel who seem so incapable of escaping from their ever-turning treadmill of fear and violence.
So I just give blessings after blessings that I can have a great home and family in such a calm place as here. We had a wonderful Meeting for (Quaker) Worship this morning. Luminous! And we have daffodils now– finally– blooming around the blue peace signs in our front yard…
And another blessing: my dear old friend and erstwhile colleague in the Middle East peace-and-justice movement Saad Ibrahim was acquitted last week, by the Egyptian courts, of all remaining charges against him. Hallelujah! (It’s over a year now since I wrote a column in Al-Hayat that gently mocked the Egyptian government for continuing to pursue its case against him. I don’t know whether that column had much good effect. Let’s hope so. Last month, when my husabnd was in Cairo, he got a little bit of time to catch up with our old friend Ahmed Maher, the Egyptian Foreign Minister. AM told Bill that he often reads my Al-Hayat columns with some enjoyment– but he thinks I’m still “ways too idealistic”. That makes me so happy! I would just hate it if some event– turning 50, say– had caused me to lose that idealism. Actually, I’m working pretty hard on becoming a Raging Older Woman for Peace, or something.)
Whoa. Didn’t I say it was time for bed?
MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3
MILITARY OCCUPATIONS, PART 3: I first met Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist, in a PLO office in Tunis in the mid-1980s. Uri has sure hung in there over the years! (I saw him at the Tel Aviv offices of his present organization, Gush Shalom/ the Peace Bloc, just last June.) Today, I got an email from GS, in which Uri had penned some very thought-provoking notes about the present US-Iraqi war. Among them were the two notes that follow:
[I should note that I’m a little troubled by Uri’s apparent recourse to group-stereotyping in the title of the first of these notes. But that’s what he chose. And the content of what he writes there is really important. Plus it tracks totally with what I wrote in my recent lengthy screed on comparative military occupations. Anyway, over to Uri… ]
# Beware of the Shiites.
The troubles of the occupation will start after the fighting is over. Here is a personal story and its lessons:
On the fourth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed the border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car, accompanied only by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen Shiite villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ourselves only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they had showered the soldiers with rice.
A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started to kill them.
When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, the Shiites were a down-trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others. After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the Arab world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army.
Sharon is the real father of the Shiite force in Lebanon. Bush may well become the father of Shiite power in Iraq. The Shiites, 60% of the Iraqi population, have been until now down-trodden and powerless. When they will realize that the Americans intend to stay, they will start a deadly guerilla. Bush does not intend to leave Iraq, as Sharon did not intend to leave Lebanon.
Then what? America will argue that Iran, the great Shiite neighbor, is behind the Shiite guerilla. In Iran there is a lot of oil. That?s the next target.
# Germany.
Germany is against the war. Against any war. In no other country was the anti-war outburst so authentic, emanating from the innermost feelings of the masses.
And who is furious about this? Israel, the country of the Holocaust survivors. How do they dare, these damn Germans, to object to the war?
A sad irony of history: all German TV stations show citizens, intellectuals and ordinary folk, who pray for peace, all Israeli TV screens show retired generals, obviously enjoying themselves, discussing with great relish how to employ giant bombs and other instruments
of death.
… So folks, if you want to see more of what Uri writes, and what his organization does, go to their site. Toda and Shalom, Uri.
MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS:
MORE ON MICHELE AND GLADYS: So I wrote here Thursday night about the civil disobedience action that some Quakers and others here in Charlottesville undertook that afternoon. What I failed to put in was any part of the lovely statement that Michele Mattioli had prepared, that explained what they were doing. Here are some extracts:
We are citizens who oppose war. Killing people is never the way to solve a problem…
We love our country, which is full of generous and kind people. We support our troops by doing whatever we can to stop the war and bring them home. Killing and risking death damages these men and women, and we demand an end to the war so we can receive them back into our communities to get on with their lives…
Violence only begets more violence, and there are non-violent ways to deal effectively with tyrants.
The old world order in which power resided in guns and money is crimbling. Millions of people are standing up to say that true power comes from justice, love and compassion. This new power is welling up and will prevail.
During the action Thursday, shortly before the police came, Michele came out of Congressman Goode’s office and told the antiwar protesters arrayed outside that she had been a Montessori teacher for more than 20 years. “And I always used to tell my children, over and over and over, ‘Don’t hit! Don’t hit! Use words!‘” She got a huge cheer for that.
Also, in my earlier post I mistakenly described Gladys Swift as a late-70-something. She is in fact 80.
And later, she told me she was really upset that the police refused to arrest her. They put her with the one 16-year-old taking part and only gave the two of them some kind of summons to appear later for a scolding.
What kind of ageism is that??
Anyway, I also didn’t quite get the end of my earlier post written well. What I should have written was, that if Mr. Goode can’t be persuaded to represent his constituents more effectively, why, then maybe at the next election we’ll just have to look for Mr. or Ms. Very Much Better!
FOUND! A WORTH-READING ISRAELI BLOG:
FOUND! A WORTH-READING ISRAELI BLOG: From Salam via Diane I found a good-to-read blog by an Israeli. At last! Someone who writes from the heart. She’s Imshin. For some reason her blog is called “Not a Fish”. Her definition of it is: “The meaningless chatter of your regular split personality Israeli mother trying to make sense of current insanity.”
But no, Imshin, I don’t think it’s meaningless at all. It gives a great flavor of what life must be like for you. I found your post about teaching your kids about their gas masks very moving and real. There’s lots of other good stuff on there as well. As soon as I dare fiddle with the JWN template again I’ll put a permanent link to “Not a Fish” in there.
Of course, it would still be great if we could think that the Palestinians in the occupied territories had anything like the gas-masks and other civil-defense preparations and facilities that Israelis have. But still, the situation Imshin writes about is the one that, I imagine, many many Israelis are in.