The Economist

A misstep from a usually reliable and insightful publication. In the July 29th edition of The Economist the article "An Affair to Remember" chronicles the Suez Crisis of 1956 attempting to briefly summarize and explain the significance of the event and what it spawned. In characterizing America's withdrawal of its offer to help finance the construction of the Aswan Dam, the author states, "John Foster Dulles, the American secretary of state, thought the dam would place too much strain on the resources of newly independent Egypt." The article makes no mention of the fact that the United States was displeased that Nasser had recently completed an arm's deal with Communist Czechoslovakia and had officially recognized the People's Republic of China. This was international Cold War incentive politics at its best.

The article however is thoughtful and attempts to paint the crisis as one of the many events that ultimately lead to the American hegemonic system and the current geopolitical structure in the broader Middle East. The final quote is telling: "Instead of saying that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, George Santayana might have better said that those who misinterpret the past are condemned to bungle the present."

Failure

From the BBC, more than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children, have been killed in a town in south Lebanon in the deadliest Israeli strike of the conflict so far.

The United States, the United Nations, and the International Community (ha) have failed the nation of Lebanon. In March the people of Lebanon took to the streets to protest against the influence and occupation of their country by Syria. Weeks later under pressure from the world and the United States, then Syria Army left Lebanon in what was seen as a victory for self determination and moderate Muslim nations. It was an inspiring time, a glimpse of an elusive triumph in a region beset by autocrats and fear. Extremist Muslim groups such as Hezballah had been brought into the political fray, participating in Lebanese democracy, hopefully in a long term attempt to moderate its extreme views while bringing its goals in line with those of the Lebanese people.

That was four months ago. Yes, Hezballah's attack on Israel provoked this specific conflict, but Israel must have noticed the progress Lebanon was making, the softening and moderation of its northern neighbor. Now I fear this incursion has pushed Lebanon back by twenty years and pushed those moderates back onto the side of the extremists.

This is where the President's rhetoric does not align with this actions. The official line, the US wants "to develop a resolution that will enable the region to have a sustainable peace, a peace that lasts, a peace that will enable mothers and fathers to raise their children in a hopeful world." The comment is so hopelessly vague and unrealistic that it can only be considered profoundly unserious (thanks CR). If we truly supported Democratic progress and moderate Muslim nations, this would have been an opportunity for us to express support for Lebanon, as we did so vocally when Syria was occupying its land. Instead we will once again be seen as a nation that supports Democracy and freedom when it is only in our interest, by weakening the despotic regime of Bashar al Assad. Nearly every day we listen to George W. Bush speak about how we will not abandon, "cut and run", from the fight in Iraq, what makes Lebanon so different?

Deplorable

From the Ottawa Citizen, UN Observer Maj. Hess-von Kruedener in an email days before his death following the Israeli strike on his outpost wrote:

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)."

Hezballah and other groups continue to use innocent civilians and UN peacekeepers as human shields, hiding missiles in homes and hiding their positions behind hospitals, churches, and mosques. This is nothing short of despicable, particularly damning considering Hezballah claims to be a righteous Islamic party. No decent person, let alone a devout Muslim could justify using these shields. This of course makes it very difficult for Israel to effectively target the Hezballah fighters without incurring excessive civilian casualties. Very difficult, but not impossible.

Mission Accomplished

In the wake of the deadly attack by the Israeli military on a U.N. observer post in south Lebanon, CNN reported that the U.N. was pulling parts of its peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon citing security concerns. Taking into account the Fog of War that inevitably occurs, it is still difficult for me to understand how a military as advanced as Israel's can make such a glaring mistake. In fact Israel has a history of "accidental" attacks on both the U.N. and U.S. One theory may be that with the U.N. gone Israel can violate those "quaint" Geneva conventions without the watchful, yet ineffective eye of the U.N.

*A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

The Simple Life

In today's conference held by Bush & Blair the characterizations were typically grossly oversimplified: paraphrasing Blair he made a reference to the length of this conflict, I believe he said it started two weeks ago, its no wonder these leaders cannot come up with a broader solution when they cannot grasp the broad struggle. The tragedy is that this conflict has been raging for almost a century and seems no closer to ending: the root cause of this conflict are not the Israeli soldiers being captured. Stick to the message, insert buzzwords (freedom, democracy), and hold on to a policy and ideology that is failing our own country as well as others.

Although the cause is a righteous one, the execution and the motive is more then questionable. Nobody questions whether espousing a moralistic cause such as spreading liberty to subjugated peoples is good or not, the questions are: is it possible, is it a good use of US power/treasure/time, is it comprehensive (not selectively applied), and is it effective. By taking a moral argument I believe you oblige yourself to take a moral stance in the other aspects of policy in order to gain legitimacy. Unfortunately this Administration has not, and it is obvious to the world.

Our Allies

Our ally Israel.

The United States' unabated and nearly unchecked support for the State of Israel is hurting American interests. As mentioned by many other observers it undermines our ability to be seen as an honest broker and bring about a fair solution to this conflict. It reduces our ability to impart democratic ideals in Iraq and creates more anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim & Arab world.

I can appreciate that we too have spies in our allies countries, and that is serves a vital part of our own interests, but if a state that we have done so much for does not warn us of an impending attack it is entirely indefensible. Regardless of the veracity of the report, it does not change the fact that the blind support of Israel has hurt us more then helped.

"Terrorists"

Do they have any legitimacy left? Israel began this operation with a rare moment of support from the broader Arab community. After Hezballah captured an Israeli solider the majority of the western friendly Arab nations acknowledged that the group had provoked conflict. Israel could have taken measured and reasonable steps to protect its citizens, instead it decided to terrorize Lebanese civilians by destroying infrastructure, killing escaping innocents, and destroying any chance for the only Westernizing state in the Middle East to create any lasting stability. In the end I believe that Israel will only have managed to create a new generation of resistance to its regional hegemony and greater disullisonment with the prospect of two states existing peacefully side by side. More worrying is that Israel's campaign has brought together the Shi'ite bloc of Syria, Iran, Muqtada al Sadr's militia, and Hezballah; made al Qaeda and Hamas embrace the "enemy of my enemy" doctrine and further alienated "moderate" Arab regimes in the region.

In this BBC piece, sources quote: "among those killed in the operation were a baby, two infants, three teenagers and a 75-year-old woman, Palestinians say...Israel says it killed 25 "terrorists"." And here: "Two mortar rounds have hit a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians escaping the violence in southern Lebanon."

State sanctioned terrorism....

Quote

John Maynard Keynes, who is said to have warned investors that although markets do tend toward rational positions in the long run, "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Colbert

Great clip of Colbert reacting to the mainstream media's criticism of one of his reports. Is the punchline even necessary anymore? Watching CNN & FoxNews coverage of the Middle East Conflict for the past two weeks has been classic comedy. The Fourth Estate and Congress continues its embarrasing "lay down" on anything of matter while continuing to attack the "important" issues.

Signing Statements

Another sign that George W. Bush and his cronies have niether the knowledge of nor respect for the Constitution. Exploiting perceived loop-holes in the system, backed up by the lap dog Alberto Gonzalez to a rubber stamp Congress. Finally a senior Republican, Arlen Specter, challenges the Executive...too little too late.

Escalation

From the Washington Times:

A senior member of Muqtada al-Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia, the Mahdi Army, says the group is forming a squadron of up to 1,500 elite fighters to go to Lebanon.

We are choosing the men right now," said Abu Mujtaba, who works in the loosely organized following of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "We are preparing the right men for the job."

If true, this will present an interesting dilemma for the U.S.'s rebuilding effort in Iraq. Will this cause the Administration to finally wake up to the fact that there is a sectarian civil war in Iraq? Shi'ite Muqtada al-Sadr coming to the aid of Shi'ite Hezballah....nevermind...probably a coincidence.

World War III Revisited

Insightful piece on ideological war against terrorism by Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times:

If you are looking for reassurance at this time of international crisis, do not consult Newt Gingrich. “We are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war,” says the former speaker of the House of Representatives, who is currently a member of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board. Mr Gingrich is not alone in his diagnosis. Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said last week that: “The third world war, I believe, has already started. What we’re seeing today in the Middle East is a chapter of it.” Even President George W. Bush has casually endorsed the idea. He told a television interviewer last May that the passengers who fought back against their hijackers on September 11, 2001 had staged “the first counterattack to world war three”. Symbolically, Mr Bush has placed a bust of Churchill (a gift from the British), in the Oval Office.

Any argument simultaneously associated with Newt Gingrich, the Israeli ambassador to the UN and President Bush is likely to be dismissed on those grounds alone in much of Europe. But the “third world war” crowd deserve a careful hearing. Essentially, they make two points. The first is that Islamist extremists are already waging a multi-front war. Fighting is under way in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine – and a confrontation with Iran is looming. Those inclined to dismiss this multi-front war as essentially a broad regional conflict are reminded that Islamist terrorists have also struck in New York, Madrid, London, Bali and elsewhere. The second argument is that these conflicts are all linked because Islamism is a “seamless totalitarian movement” – in the words of Michael Gove, a British Conservative member of parliament and author of a new book on the subject*. Mr Gove and many neo-conservatives in America argue that Islamism is a direct descendant of the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century because, like them, it is implacably and violently hostile to western, liberal democracy...

...But the idea of a “seamless totalitarian movement” also has some obvious holes in it. It requires making almost no distinction between the Arab-Israeli conflict and the “war on terror”. It glosses over the fact that Saddam Hussein was not an Islamist – and that it was the American-led invasion of Iraq that turned the country into a honey pot for “Islamofascists” (to use the neo-cons’ preferred term). And it struggles to make sense of the fact that the single biggest source of bloodshed in the Middle East at the moment is internecine conflict between Sunni and Shia extremists in Iraq. Indeed, some of those who now worry most about Shia militancy had convinced themselves a couple of years ago that the real problem in the Middle East was Sunni radicalism – and that the Shia were a key part of the solution.

But perhaps the most telling argument against the “world war three” thesis is that even many of those advancing it do not appear to believe their own rhetoric. In the same Fox News interview in which Mr Gingrich painted “a worldwide picture of efforts to undermine and destroy our civilisation”, he was asked by a clearly embarrassed interviewer about those who argue that “look, this is a costly war and maybe it includes raising taxes on the upper income to fight it”. Mr Gingrich was having none of it. The third world war will apparently not require “raising a penny in taxes”. Clearly, we are not yet at the blood, sweat and tears phase. The Bush administration is similarly reticent. It argues that we are engaged in a struggle to save western civilisation. But it is still all but inconceivable that the administration would re-introduce the draft – or even sharply raise taxes on petrol – to help win that struggle...

...The constant analogies between the war on terror and the war on Nazism do still matter, however. Choose the wrong analogy and you may end up choosing the wrong policy as well. Slogans about “Munich” and appeasement have been heard before some of the worst foreign policy disasters of the past 60 years – such as the Suez crisis and Vietnam. The same talk was heard before the invasion of Iraq and is now rife in connection with Iran.

But there have been other events in history besides appeasement and there are other decades that can be learnt from besides the 1930s. In fact, the struggle between western liberalism and Islamism may end up looking a lot more like the cold war than the second world war. In the cold war, people had to get used to the idea that normal life was taking place against the backdrop of terrifying risks that could not be eliminated by military action alone: then it was Soviet missiles, now it is the fear that a terrorist might get hold of a nuclear bomb. Then, as now, there were episodes of “hot war” – in Korea and elsewhere. But the cold war ultimately turned on a struggle between ideologies and social systems, rather than armies.

Communism finally imploded because it could not produce prosperity or a decent society. Militant Islamism – a miserable, medieval philosophy – is bound ultimately to go the same way. In Iran, which has had to live with a fundamentalist regime since 1979, there is plenty of evidence of popular disillusionment with the system, particularly among the young. It is this disillusionment that offers the best hope for the kind of “regime change” that actually lasts. Incapable of offering the hope of a decent life (at least on earth), Islamism’s only real recruiting sergeant is an appeal to a sense of Muslim humiliation and rage against the west. There may be further occasions when the “war on terror” requires military action.

But each new military front will be eagerly greeted by Islamists as a validation of their world view. It is no accident that one man who would happily embrace Mr Gingrich’s vision of a “third world war” is Osama bin Laden.

A Voice of Reason

Thoughtful piece by Ze'ev Moaz, professor of political science at Tel Aviv university, on Haaretz.com, some excerpts:

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, we dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, while wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothing to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli?

In terms of our own national soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage, and we have no special status.

Another "Accident"

From the BBC:

UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says. The post was hit by a precision-guided missile after six hours of shelling, diplomats familiar with the probe say...Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has expressed "deep regrets" over the deaths. Israel is conducting an investigation into the deaths.It has rejected accusations made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the targeting of the UN position was "apparently deliberate".

Continuing Israel's history of "deep regrets", read about the USS Liberty Incident here. And for those shocked to see Israel targeting civilian targets, enough naivete: Sabra & Shatila Massacre.

Borrow & Spend

A piece from Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post summarizing Congress's inaction on the federal deficit. Congress, as a body, continues to be a nothing but a venue for partisanship and self survival, with little concern for substance and innovation.

World War IV Myth

John Derbyshire of the National Review Online debunks Newt Gingrich's (and others) claim that we are facing World War III or IV (depends on who you ask.)

http://article.nationalreview.com/

History Repeats

Interesting bit from a review of Robert Fisk's latest novel by
Geoffrey Wheatcroft:

The Times of London, said about Iraq in September 1919, many people "think that the local inhabitants will welcome us because we have saved them," and that the country only needs developing to repay our expenditure, but this is clearly wrong, since "we are asking the Arab to exchange his pride and independence for a little Western civilization."

Another commentator said that in Iraq we have been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. . . . Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. . . . We are today not far from a disaster." The writer was none other than T. E. Lawrence - in August 1920.

It would have been wise to see the "big picture" of Iraq before the U.S. invaded the country. Perhaps Saddam Hussein was the way he was because of the way Iraq was, rather then Iraq being the way it was because of Saddam Hussein.

My take on the Current Arab-Israeli Conflict

I could probably write a book on whats going in my mind
about this situation, but I'll try to summarize.  My general stance
is that Israel as a sovereign state has the right to defend itself and
try to rescue its captured troops/civilians.  My issue is with what
I perceive as hypocrisy in terms of what Israel is "allowed" to do,
and what Lebanon and other parties are not.  To be clear by saying
this I don't condone what Hamas and Hezballah have been doing,
but I think that Isreal is, and continues to illegally occupy the Gaza
Strip (simply pulling out your trips does not count as no longer
occupying), the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.  Occupying forces
will always lead to sometime of homegrown resistance; the problem is
that the resistance in the occupied territories is not the nationalistic
movement it once was, but now a radical Islam based movement.
Any type of radical religious movement worries me and especially
one that has potential ties to terrorist groups that attack civilians all
over the world.  Israel for years has been kidnapping and assasinating
persons in territory that does not belong to it, and it seems that that
is what has happened to Israel this time.  What goes around comes
around.  That said, two wrongs do not make a right and I would like
to see the troops returned and Israel ultimately pull out of Lebanon
and all other occupied territories.  I think both sides are at fault and
the moral exceptionalism (borrowed term from the cunning realist)
that Israel enjoys, needs to end.

Israel's reaction to the soldiers capture I find extreme, particularly
attacking the civilian infrastructure in Beirut.  I have been to Beirut
and it is a fun and very western (compared to the rest of the Middle
East) city.  You can drink, party, gamble, etc..and it was just seeming
that it had achieved some type of Democratic rule after half a century
of civil war.  I thought that it could have become an example of a
prosperous and liberal Middle Eastern country, however, the ill will 
caused by this incursion may have just ruined that chance as it will
breed a new group of Islamic terrorists in the image of Hezbollah just
as the first Israeli incursion into the country 25 years ago created.
My main issue is that the punditry rants on Hezballah's connection to
Iran and Syria, I would have liked Israel to present evidence of this
and then invade those countries.  The problem is...those countries
would have actually put up a fight, and as we learned from our own
government, why invade the countries that are an actual danger and
would take some type of effort to invade when you can just create a lie
of a "proxy" with little or no evidence as a pretext for invading a country.
It seems that Israel learned well from its big brother America.

From the Daily Dish

A reader of the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan) writes:

Something that drove me crazy in the last election cycle and looks like it will continue to drive me crazy in this cycle are fiscal and small government conservatives voting for Republicans for no other reason than they are not Democrats. The Republicans they vote for have shown that they have completely abandoned the principles of fiscal conservatism and limited government, yet they still get their votes.

Try having a discussion with this crowd and they start making comments about how a 'tax and spend democrat' will never get their vote. Then, they'll go on and rant about how the Republicans are no better. By continuing to vote for Republicans for no other reason than they are not Democrats, fiscal and small government conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot. The Republican party will never respond to the concerns of fiscal and small government conservatives because they don’t have to. No matter what they do or how they betray their values, Republicans have the votes of the majority of this group.

The only thing worse than a tax and spend liberal is a borrow and spend Republican. At least the democrat is being upfront and honest in his intentions.

This comment speaks to the dilemma that conservatives face in the coming elections: vote for a very unconservative Republican candidate or a Democratic party that ideologically is opposed to the tenants of true conservatism? I have often espoused a multi-party system, how can the vast spectrum of political opinions be muddled into only two parties that have increasingly become more partisan and distorted their own partys' true ideologies?