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Bummer in the Summer
The Mideast is going to get worse before it gets better. Didn't have to be this way. An American president who held the moral high ground might be able to leverage his authority to cool things off on all sides. Bush not only doesn't have it, he doesn't want it. Indeed, at the G-8, his big urgency was to get the hell outta Dodge. He had things to do at home, he said--gotta fix that bike chain.
It's clear now: Bush wants to be President as little as we want him to be. (Except, of course, for all the people who were turned off by Kerry's wife or that windsurfing photo and decided that an idiot bully made more sense in the Oval Office.) His take on the crisis: "I feel like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen." Right. Make it the responsibility of the U.N.--which John Bolton is crippling in every possible way--and Syria’s president.
“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” Mr. Bush said. It's always "they," isn't it?
From The Guardian:
"Anyone who understands anything about this country knows the government is powerless to stop Hizbullah. With that information at hand, one wonders why the Israeli government is taking these actions. What do they hope to achieve, except the destruction, wholesale, of a country's economy and life-line again? Imagine France bombing Heathrow, Gatwick, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the M1 and M25, as well as strategic locations in the north in order to force Tony Blair to control those Al-Qaeda elements that operate from London. That is what is happening here."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nothing we have done in this region has been more useless than the blank check--the $3-4 billion blank check--we give Israel every year. Israel now has fantastic military resources; its adversaries have much less. Nonetheless, enough damage has been done to Israel for it to justify hitting the Arabs with massive firepower. The results are grotesquely disproportionate. Arab casualties are comparatively massive--or is it that Israel's precision bombs just happened to stray into civilian areas?
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has said there's no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in "malicious terrorist acts" in Israel. Big surprise--we never say a word against Israel. (It's soooo important for the Jews to hold Jerusalem when The Rapture comes.) The result is one of Israel's famed "we are fighting for our very lives" campaigns. Which only Americans really believe.
My Zionist friends like to say that every Arab hates Israel and wants every Jew dead. I've never bought this line. In my--granted--limited experience, most people want to be left alone to muddle through life with their loved ones nearby. Nobody I know wants to kill a neighbor's child. Until, that is, the neighbors throw bombs into nurseries. But there are Jews--many, I suspect--who believe otherwise. And, by now, there must be many Arabs who believe the Jews want them dead.
The line got crossed--who remembers when?--the first time the targets were civilian. And, especially, children. Don't give me that crap about bombs going awry. It's brilliant strategy to kill kids. That kind of murder at once depresses and enrages the enemy--and makes him react with the kind of blind rage that is never productive.
In my Sunday school days, I planted trees in Israel. How long ago that seems. Now I am as ashamed of "my" people as Arabs ought to be of Hezbollah. I can't believe I'm saying this, but in the absence of sanity, a cease-fire or a sign from God....a plague on all their houses.
It's clear now: Bush wants to be President as little as we want him to be. (Except, of course, for all the people who were turned off by Kerry's wife or that windsurfing photo and decided that an idiot bully made more sense in the Oval Office.) His take on the crisis: "I feel like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen." Right. Make it the responsibility of the U.N.--which John Bolton is crippling in every possible way--and Syria’s president.
“See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” Mr. Bush said. It's always "they," isn't it?
From The Guardian:
"Anyone who understands anything about this country knows the government is powerless to stop Hizbullah. With that information at hand, one wonders why the Israeli government is taking these actions. What do they hope to achieve, except the destruction, wholesale, of a country's economy and life-line again? Imagine France bombing Heathrow, Gatwick, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the M1 and M25, as well as strategic locations in the north in order to force Tony Blair to control those Al-Qaeda elements that operate from London. That is what is happening here."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nothing we have done in this region has been more useless than the blank check--the $3-4 billion blank check--we give Israel every year. Israel now has fantastic military resources; its adversaries have much less. Nonetheless, enough damage has been done to Israel for it to justify hitting the Arabs with massive firepower. The results are grotesquely disproportionate. Arab casualties are comparatively massive--or is it that Israel's precision bombs just happened to stray into civilian areas?
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has said there's no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in "malicious terrorist acts" in Israel. Big surprise--we never say a word against Israel. (It's soooo important for the Jews to hold Jerusalem when The Rapture comes.) The result is one of Israel's famed "we are fighting for our very lives" campaigns. Which only Americans really believe.
My Zionist friends like to say that every Arab hates Israel and wants every Jew dead. I've never bought this line. In my--granted--limited experience, most people want to be left alone to muddle through life with their loved ones nearby. Nobody I know wants to kill a neighbor's child. Until, that is, the neighbors throw bombs into nurseries. But there are Jews--many, I suspect--who believe otherwise. And, by now, there must be many Arabs who believe the Jews want them dead.
The line got crossed--who remembers when?--the first time the targets were civilian. And, especially, children. Don't give me that crap about bombs going awry. It's brilliant strategy to kill kids. That kind of murder at once depresses and enrages the enemy--and makes him react with the kind of blind rage that is never productive.
In my Sunday school days, I planted trees in Israel. How long ago that seems. Now I am as ashamed of "my" people as Arabs ought to be of Hezbollah. I can't believe I'm saying this, but in the absence of sanity, a cease-fire or a sign from God....a plague on all their houses.
