#1
A little perspective is order here. Its not necessarily biased reportage as this opinion piece suggests. (Although CNN arguably does its fair share of that.) The news reports coming out of Israel must also clear government censors as well. In fact, its not uncommon for journalists to be censored by their host country in times of conflict then alter their stories absent any retraints. A simple disclaimer would solve the problem, however news organizations are loath to add these so as not to be viewed as the mouthpieces the author suggests.
#2
It's amazing that The reporters know its a farce, the editors know it's a farce, even the CNN talking head knows it but yet they show it anyway openly admitting it afterward. Its all about ethics and CNN has shown us again that Yellow journalism is alive and well in the halls of CNN.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/26/2006 12:13 Comments ||
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#3
I agree a simple disclaimer would do the trick; problem is : there isn't a disclaimer. Everything a western authority figure sez is handled with precaution, but words from tyrants, third world guerillas,... is taken at face value.
#1
Yeah... it looks like the domain was registered years ago but Google cache shows an all black page with just World War III and "coming soon" (chuckle) so recent events must have inspired a change.
Ten years ago, on April 18, 1996, Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon for 16 days in an operation called Grapes of Wrath. The global condemnation of Israel was fierce, especially when it bombed a U.N. refugee camp, killing 107 people, an attack that Tel Aviv said was a mistake.
At the time, the United States did nothing to stop the tide from turning against Israel and President Clinton said, I think it is important that we do everything we can to bring an end to the violence.
In private, Clinton seethed at the Israeli attack, saying he had discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres the possibility of concluding a military defense treaty with his nation, pledging U.S. aid in the event of an attack.
They really want this guarantee from us, Clinton told me. I would have given them the commitment, too, but now I cant because of the uproar over the refugee camp bombing.
No such treaty was ever signed.
Clintons willingness to use American power to force a cease-fire on Israel before it had fully eradicated Hezbollah stands in stark and sharp contrast to George Bushs insistence on letting Israel proceed with its attacks until the terrorist group is neutralized.
In a nutshell, this illustrates the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to Israeli security.
Bush and his administration clearly see the Israeli attack as an opportunity to clean out terrorist cells that have come to be pivotal in Lebanon. With Hezbollahs power extending into the cabinet in Beirut, it is clear that Israeli military action is necessary to forestall the creation of a terrorist state on its northern border.
While Clinton said he embraced the need for Israeli security, when the going got rough, he bowed to world opinion and called for a cease-fire. When the United States asks Israel to stop fighting, it is like a boxers manager throwing in the towel. The bottom line is that true friends of Israel cannot afford to let the Democrats take power in Washington.
But American Jews have voted Democrat in the past and will continue to do so in the future. It is really the Christian evangelical right that stands up for Israel.
The reason Israel has to fight in Lebanon today is that the United States did not permit it to finish the job of destroying Hezbollah in the 90s. Now, fortunately for Israels true friends, the White House is letting Tel Aviv win without reining her in.
Nothing so illustrates the generic anti-Semitism of the global community than its current obsession with proportionality in judging Israels response to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket bombing of its cities. The Vatican, the European Union and Russia have said nothing about the almost daily bombardment of Israels northern border by Hezbollah or the constant attacks from Gaza after Israel magnanimously vacated the strip. But now that the Jewish state is defending itself, the global community is outraged at the disproportionate Israeli response. Only Jewish lives have to be dealt with proportionately.
Israels defensive barrier has succeeded in sharply curtailing the once daily suicide/homicide bombing of civilian Israeli targets. Now the Israeli invasion will push back the frontiers from which the terrorists can work their mayhem through missiles.
Bush and the Republican administration realize that Israel is only acting in self-defense. It is obvious that she would not be attacking Lebanon if the terrorists had not made a habit of using it as a base for attacks on Jewish cities.
The global condemnation of Israel is simply illustrative of the low esteem attached to Jewish blood in this world where anti-Semitism comes disguised as morality and a commitment to peace.
#1
Morris, though I don't care for everything he has to say, is certainly informative. He shines a deadly bright light into the cold dark heart of the Clinton Clan.
Political Games and Moral Cowardice vs Substance and Rationality. Yep, that defines the difference.
#2
Well yes Dick, that's true. But unless someone figures out the contradiction of the liberal Jew, they'll keep pulling the lever for the straight Dem ticket.
#3
The problem for the Jewish community is their in the mindset of the German Jewish community circa 1932. They think they are dealing with reasonable people and can work this all out. Unfortunately, the people driving the Dem bus these days are not liberals, but the neo-Marxist, like those who drove thousands of their brethren out of the Soviet state and satellites. The universities and colleges have become a bastion of anti-Semitism under their abuse of power in the name of the new Marxist mantras of 'diversity' and 'social justice'. Wake up. The environment has changed. Adapt or perish.
#4
I think most American Jews view their liberalism as integral to their identity as Western modern Jews.
The result is that many of them are fighting old battles instead of current ones.
Another problem is that Islamicism does not lend itself to the "talking cure", which makes the majority of libs (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) throw up their hands.
Till yesterday the debate was why and how Indian Muslims are free from the contagious effect of the so-called jehad sweeping the Islamic world, having no concern, barring some in Kashmir, with the business of Al Qaeda, the ISI and terrorism. Indeed, in 2003 security expert B Raman wrote, The overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims are loyal, law-abiding citizens. They have not allowed their anger against the Indian government or the Hindus for any reason to drive them into the arms of terrorist organisations. India has the most modern, peaceful and forward-looking Muslim community in the world.
More recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh boasted that not even a single Indian Muslim is on the rolls of Al Qaeda. For this relative freedom of Muslims from the jehad ideology we credited our democratic system, the Sufi ethos of Indian Islam and a culture that discouraged any kind of extremism in thought and action.
After a series of blasts ripping through different cities of India and its religious places, however, it is now clear that Indian Muslim youths, however small in number, are working in India as foot-soldiers of international terrorist organizations. They still may not be fighting with the ranks of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or in Iraq or Palestine, but doubtless some of them are colluding with the global jehadis in the latters mission to weaken and destabilise India.
It is estimated, for example, that at least 100 people participated in the execution of the July 11 Mumbai blasts. Without committed local Muslim support such a despicable act would not have been possible. Intelligence experts say that at least 25 Muslim organizations are working on Indian soil to breed alienation among the Indian Muslim youths and to suck them into the global whirl of jehad. And the response of the Muslim masses to these organizations is not that of complete apathy.
The collusion of local Muslims with the global jehadi enlarges the scope of the battle against terrorism. Because it is not just inimical to the existence of Indian state, and its stability, but also against the Muslim community itself, it becomes obligatory for every Muslim also to work actively to defeat this offensive. In a way, it is doubly perilous for the Muslims of India: first, as common citizens vulnerable to the risk of terrorist attacks and second, as a supposed culpable minority susceptible to majority communal backlash, prejudices, suspicion and harassment by security agencies. Because it is more sinister to the Muslim interest they will have to contribute at two levels, as citizens of India and as fellow community members, located at a vantage point, to understand the psychology and motive of terrorists and to subvert their operations.
Till now the response of the Muslim intelligentsia, activists and the community in general to this challenge has been absolutely lukewarm to say the least. After every act of terrorism, they chose to, at most, issue a muted condemnation and express disapproval from their safe confines. When the ideology of terrorism has invaded Muslim homes and seminaries, and it is drawing legitimacy from the Islamic faith, such a response from the community is by no account adequate.
The Muslim community must take the extremists act more seriously because the consequences of terrorism on Indian soil, in a multi-religious society, are enormous. An act of terrorism, even one perpetrated by Kashmiri militants or the ISI, throws peace and communal harmony out of gear across the country. It makes a Muslims Indian-ness less credible in the eyes of many. A situation where boys born and brought up in UP and Bihar plant explosives in temples and trains would certainly script a terrible destiny for over 140 million Indian Muslims.
To eradicate this ideology, the Muslims need to make serious, perceptible and relentless efforts. Counter-terrorism requires a systematic plan of action to insulate the general youth and de-toxicate those infected with the ideology. The thinking Muslims will have to go out of the comforts of homes and offices and work in gullis, seminaries, mosques and other public places to acquaint common Muslims of the consequences of terrorist acts for the community. For every one SIMI-like organisation perverting the minds of youths, they will have to raise 10 organisations alerting Muslims to the dangers of such an ideology. They will have to espouse the duty which the Koran assigns to every Muslim: You are the best community that has ever been brought into being for the sake of mankind. You enjoin what is right and fair and you forbid what is wrong and unfair (3:110).
Terrorism is also a battle within the Muslim community; a battle between the life instinct of the many and the death wish of a handful of lunatics. A Muslim has reason to fight and win this battle for the good of many of their brethrens, besides for the larger interest of India.
(The writer, an IPS officer, is SP, Lahaul-Spiti)
Posted by: john ||
07/26/2006 16:51 ||
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If India's anger against Pakistan is justified, so is Israel's ire against Iran, Syria and their surrogates ---- Israel is a small country with a very small population. It has no military depth. It has to follow a policy of instant and forceful retaliation against terrorists and states such as Iran and Syria using terrorism as a weapon to make its population bleed. Israel has to retaliate instantly or perish. This has to be kept in mind while judging Israel's action in taking its fight against terrorism to the Lebanese territory. Israel had no other option, but to do what it has done.
The Hizbullah, which raided Israeli territory from its sanctuaries in the Lebanon, and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers on July 12 is the surrogate of the intelligence agencies of Iran and Syria just as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) are the surrogates of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). What Israel has been facing ever since the Islamic Revolutionaries captured power in Tehran in 1979, is a proxy war being waged against it by the Iranian intelligence - supported by the Syrian intelligence - by using various surrogates.
Israel has as much right to act against the intelligence agencies of Iran and Syria and their surrogates as India has to act against the ISI and its surrogates. Iran chose the present moment to use the Hizbullah against Israel to divert world attention from its military nuclear programme and to pre-empt the possibility of a strike against the Iranian nuclear establishments by the US and/or Israel - acting separately or in tandem.
Israel cannot be accused of using disproportionate force against the sanctuaries and rocket bases of the Hizbullah in the Lebanese territory. When the terrorists operate in one's own territory as the Maoists have been doing in our territory, one can use carefully calibrated force so that the force used is not more than necessary.
When the terrorists operate against you from sanctuaries in the territory of another state, it is not possible to calibrate the use of force so carefully. There could be occasions when after a specific incident, the force used may seem more than what was required by the circumstances of the incident. This cannot be called intentional use of disproportionate force.
Israel faces a particularly difficult situation in the Lebanon. Hizbullah terrorists operate from the midst of the civilian population. Their rockets are fired at the populated areas of Israel from rocket launchers concealed in heavily-populated areas. In the face of this, Israel faces a cruel choice - either leave its own civilian population unprotected due to fears of causing civilian casualties in the Lebanese territory or put these rocket-launchers out of action even at the risk of causing some civilian casualties. The primary responsibility of any state is to protect its population. One cannot blame Israel for exercising this responsibility. No state should shirk exercising this responsibility.
One has to understand the compulsions behind Israel's actions - particularly we in India who often face similar situations in Jammu & Kashmir.
The Iranian intelligence has been increasingly playing a dangerous game: It has been arming and instigating different Shia militia groups to keep the pot boiling in Iraq; it has been adding to the instability in Afghanistan by helping elements opposed to the Government of Hamid Karzai; and, it has been arming and advising the Hizbullah in order to destabilise the Lebanon and make the Israelis bleed. There has been one objective behind all these actions - to keep the US and Israeli forces bleeding and preoccupied, thus reducing the chances of a military strike against its nuclear establishments.
The Hizbullah, instigated by Iran, created the present situation. If the international community has to win the war against terrorism, it has to see that the present situation culminates not in a compromise which would further increase jihadi terrorism, but in the destruction of the military and terrorism capabilities of the Hizbullah. Lebanon has its own army, which has to be modernised and strengthened. The Hizbullah has no business to have an army of its own in the Lebanese territory.
The end of the Hizbullah is only one part of the solution. The other is to put an end to Iran's use of terrorism as a weapon to achieve its strategic objectives.
An outcome of the traumatic experience of 9/11 was a realisation by the civilised nations of the world that terrorism and state-sponsors of terrorism pose a serious threat to international peace and security. The civilian population continues to bleed in India, Afghanistan, Israel, Lebanon and Iraq due to the activities of three recalcitrant state-sponsors of terrorism - Pakistan, Iran and Syria - and their surrogates. The international community should unite to deal with them effectively.
This is not the time to criticise Israel. This is the time to help it get over its ordeal. At a time when we grieve over the deaths our nationals at the hands of Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorists, let us share the grief of Israel too over the deaths of its nationals at the hands of the Hizbullah and other jihadi terrorists. If our anger against Pakistan and its surrogates is justified, so is Israel's anger against Iran, Syria and their surrogates.
Posted by: john ||
07/26/2006 16:12 ||
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#1
Muslim seething...
Posted by: john ||
07/26/2006 19:23 Comments ||
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As the bodies of two more Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrive home, one has to ask why the West, and especially Washington, continues to treat with kid gloves the man who could throttle the Taliban insurgency.
Pervez Musharraf, the dictator president of neighbouring Pakistan, was quick to side with the administration of George W. Bush when it was clear the United States intended to clear al-Qaida and its Taliban regime protectors out of Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
But while Musharraf has talked a good line, his performance has always fallen well short of his rhetoric.
Border areas of Pakistan remain a haven and training area for the Taliban where teams of young Afghans are prepared for missions, including the kind of suicide bombing that killed Cpl. Francisco Gomez and Cpl. Jason Warren near their Kandahar base last week.
In all likelihood al-Qaida head Osama bin-Laden and Afghanistan's former Taliban leader Mullah Omar, both wildly popular cult figures in Pakistan, are hiding somewhere in the wild border country out of reach of Musharraf's government forces.
Perhaps most perplexing of all is Washington's continued stroking of Musharraf in the shadow of the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, former head of Pakistan's atomic agency. Early in 2004 Khan confessed that, in addition to being the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, he sold bomb-making technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
So the true source of dangerous nuclear proliferation is not a rogue state, but a Washington ally. More extraordinary still, Musharraf put Khan under house arrest for a while and then pardoned the man considered a national hero in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, for about two years Musharraf blocked American intelligence agency officials from interviewing Khan. It is only in the past few weeks that access to Khan has been approved.
And on Monday the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security released a report saying Pakistan is massively expanding its Khushab atomic site so that it will be able to produce enough plutonium to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.
The ISIS report is probably intended to spur the U.S. Congress to modify or derail plans by the Bush administration to develop peaceful nuclear technology trade with Pakistan's arch-rival, India. Critics of the deal foresee it sparking a nuclear arms race in South Asia involving not only India and Pakistan, but also India's other regional rival, China.
Perhaps the most generous interpretation that can be put on Washington's apparent insouciance in the face of Musharraf's sins of commission and omission is that the administration figures he's a better bet than the alternatives.
If that is the case, there is some justice in it. Pakistan's experiments with democracy since the country's partition from India in 1947 have been largely shambolic.
The military and the Inter-Service Intelligence agency are among the few efficiently functioning institutions in the country. The problem is that both these institutions, like much of Pakistan's population, are infused with Islamic radicalism.
The Taliban and al-Qaida are both to a substantial degree creations of Pakistan's ISI. The agency is culturally disinclined to slaughter its own offspring no matter what Musharraf or Washington say.
The result is that even though the Pakistan military has made some noisy and much-photographed forays into the so-called tribal areas of the Northwest Frontier Province and North and South Waziristan, the Pakistani forces do not control these border regions and have shown little will to do so.
Earlier this year the Taliban went so far as to declare it has created an "Islamic state" in North and South Waziristan. Although some of the Taliban claims are undoubtedly exaggerations, the basic premise appears to be true -- these Pakistani provinces have been turned into a Taliban haven containing about 2.5 million Afghan refugees, many of them young men eager for jihad.
For members of the Canadian and other coalition forces and their families, the bitter truth is that until Musharraf can be prodded into rooting out the terrorists in his own country, the Taliban insurgency will continue to flourish.
Posted by: john ||
07/26/2006 15:00 ||
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#1
No rooting out will be done.
Pervez Musharraf is the head of the Pakistan Army and the official motto of that army is "Jihad in the name of Allah"
They are jihadists... end of story
Posted by: john ||
07/26/2006 15:08 Comments ||
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#2
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan at least inhibits interference with the culture of the "Tribal territories." Musharaf once supported Taliban as part of Pakistan's "Pakistan in depth" policy, but dropped the support after 9-11.
Theres a disproportionate response all right. By Claudia Rosett
As Israel fights to defend itself against the Iranian-and-Syrian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah, are we really seeing a reckless, damaging and yes disproportionate response?
You bet. But not from Israel. Its coming from the U.N.
Hezbollah deliberately provoked this war on July 12 by kidnapping Israeli soldiers inside Israels borders, and has been launching rockets into Israel from a massive arsenal that under U.N. writ Hezbollah is not even supposed to possess. That was not the deal under which Israel, in keeping with U.N. wishes, withdrew entirely from southern Lebanon in 2000. The U.N. promise was that Hezbollah would be defanged and that U.N. peacekeepers would help the Lebanese government reestablish control over Hezbollah-infested terrain inside Lebanon.
Over the past six years, Israel honored its commitment to peace. The U.N. disproportionately required in practice no such compliance on the Lebanese side of the border. The peacekeepers of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, called UNIFIL, sat passively looking on, costing about $100 million a year and doing nothing to stop Hezbollah from trucking in weapons, digging tunnels, and running the armed protection rackets with which it has kept a grip on swathes of Lebanon, including the southern border with Israel, parts of the Bekaa, and southern Beirut. Before the current fighting, UNIFIL had most recently distinguished itself for a run-of-the-U.N.-mill financial swindle involving a contingent of Ukrainian peacekeeping troops. On that subject, whatever laws might have been violated, the U.N. has as usual with U.N. scams refused to release details. Now, UNIFIL peacekeepers have been reduced to casualties of the crossfire, while Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges that we take what the U.N. has done wrong already, and do more of it.
With its false promises, and disproportionate deals for peace, the U.N. left Israel exposed to the attack that has now come, and a war that Israel did not seek. Like America when attacked by al Qaeda, Israel has been fighting back. In response, U.N. officials have come close to trampling each other in their stampede to the media microphones not to admit the U.N.s own failure to stop Hezbollah, not to apologize for administering a phony peace that incubated this miserable war, but to denounce Israel.
These latest exercises in disproportion begin, of course, with U.N. officials ritually condemning all parties. With that sleight of hand, they conjure the baseline U.N. fallacy known as moral equivalence. In that U.N. scheme of the universe, a democratic society that is attacked while honoring U.N. agreements is treated as no different from its death-cult rule-violating terrorist attackers. But and here we get to the U.N.s real dark arts having set up that bizarre equation, U.N. officials then proceed with their proportionate calculus, lavishing their further innuendos, sly criticisms, or, in some cases, outright denunciations on Israel. These comments biased or even inane though some of them are echo especially loud in the so-called international community because they come from officials flashing a U.N. badge.
Thus did we get last weeks Pollyanna platitudes from U.N. Deputy-Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who on the subject of this Hezbollah-propelled war opined that military solutions an apparent allusion to Israel are not the answer. The basic point, said Malloch Brown, is that saving or losing a life is a very simple business
Perhaps that is how the world looks from the tree-shaded lawns of the George Soros estate, where Malloch Brown rents a $10,000 per month home. But the saving of lives is anything but simple in the face of a Lebanese landscape infested with Hezbollah terrorists using Lebanese civilians innocent or otherwise as shields to launch death-dealing attacks on Israel. It is even less simple when you consider that Hezbollah has for years been on the receiving end of a Syrian-Iranian Ho Chi Minh trail of money and munitions which the U.N. despite its resolutions and resources devoted in theory to peace has done nothing in practice to block. And it all gets most terrifyingly un-simple when you take into account that Hezbollah, which among its assorted brutalities has killed more Americans than any terrorist group except al Qaeda, is the Lebanon-based arm of a nuclear-bomb-seeking Iran, which the U.N. has also failed to stop, and whose president has vowed to annihilate Israel. At the very least, one has to wonder if Malloch Brown would take the same Bambi-eyed view were Hezbollah rocketing his local tennis courts.
Following the words of Malloch Brown, we have been treated over the past week to Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemning Israel for excessive use of force, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour hinting darkly about war crimes, and the accusations this past weekend of U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Jan Egeland about violation of humanitarian law.
The issue here is not, in fact, what yardsticks these people are using though that is quite problematic enough but that they are abusing their U.N. positions by making these selective, ad hoc accusations against Israel in the first place. These folks are not presidents, or prime ministers. They are U.N. civil servants. Even Kofi Annan, who fancies himself, by his own description, to be perhaps chief diplomat of the world, is actually under the U.N. charter mandated to be nothing more than the organizations chief administrative officer. (When trying to duck the blame for the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, Annan was quick enough to deny not only any policy role, but even his clear administrative responsibilities).
In the case of Arbour, and her threats aimed at Israelis, Ambassador John Bolton had a very good point when he offered a reminder last weekend to the U.N. High Commissioner, as one lawyer to another, that In America, prosecutors are not supposed to threaten people in public based on press accounts.
In the case of Jan Egeland, his job is to coordinate aid, not make selective pronouncements on the fly about humanitarian law. (This is the same Jan Egeland who immediately after the 2004 tsunami took it upon himself to publicly insult U.N. member states, including the U.S. mainstay of the bloated U.N. budget for being stingy). Among other things, it was apparently lost on Egeland, when he toured the bomb damage in south Beirut last weekend, that his convoy was waved past a road block by a Hezbollah guard dressed in black and armed with an assault rifle, according to a Reuters report. That scene right there was a violation of everything in the U.N. book, and not by Israel but apparently it didnt fit his script.
There are of course some subjects on which the same senior U.N. civil servants now so vocal have been most disproportionately circumspect. I cant recall any of them protesting in public that totalitarian, terrorist-sponsoring Syria (surely something in there is a violation of international law?) was allowed not so long ago to chair the U.N. Security Council, while democratic Israel has been chronically shunned.
And when operations of the U.N. itself have come under the spotlight in recent years, in some cases for behavior as egregious as pedophiliac rape by peacekeepers, or complicity in the kickback rackets of Saddam Hussein, Kofi Annan, and his entourage have rushed to impose the omerta in-house, while urging the rest of us to wait upon due process, refrain from rash comments, consider the larger picture and preferably just shut up and forget about it.
If Annan and his retinue feel a desperate need during this current crisis to express themselves, perhaps they should channel it into actually delivering some of that transparency theyve been promising in their own operations. That would be good preparation in the event the U.N. Security Council decides, say, to impose sanctions on Iran, and needs the Secretariat staff to perform with at least slightly more integrity than was displayed under the Iraq Oil-for-Food program.
Right now it is the job of the worlds more responsible political leaders not simply to deplore the horrors of war, or construct another false U.N. peace leading to even worse nightmare ahead, but to seek real answers to the miseries and menaces of the Middle East. That is a task perilous, contentious, and rough enough, without a parade of unelected and largely unaccountable U.N. civil servants using public platforms to insinuate into the process their private prejudices.
Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has so shaken and stirred the Middle East that some exceptionally strange things are happening. More importantly, these things unequivocally favor the U.S. in influencing the outcome of the Israeli-Hezbollah War now taking place in Lebanon.
What sorts of strange things? Well, consider an Arab League meeting in Cairo over the weekend, where a fight of sorts broke out. Jed Babbin described it best:
This meeting began with the Lebanese foreign minister Fawzi Salloukh proposing a resolution condemning Israel's military action, supporting Lebanon's "right to resist occupation by all legitimate means" . . . The Lebanese draft also called on Israel to release all Lebanese prisoners and supported Lebanon's right to "liberate them by all legitimate means." . . . The Syrian foreign minister, Walid Moallem, strongly supported Lebanon and Hizballah. But an historic obstacle was raised that blocked the Lebanese endorsement of terrorism.
The Saudi foreign minister, al-Faisal, led a triumvirate including Egypt and Jordan that, according to the AP report, was " . . . criticizing the guerilla group's actions, calling them "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts." Faisal said, "These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago, and we simply cannot accept them." . . . The Arab leaders are frightened that the acts of the terrorists they have coddled for decades might have consequences for them. And they are very frightened of what Iran may do next."
These regimes would most certainly not be afraid of what Iran may do next if Saddam Hussein still ran Iraq, providing for the Arab world a deterrent against Iran. . . .
The "big bang," as invading Iraq has sometimes been called, was meant to reorder the nature of politics in the region. This has been accomplished in a fundamental way. The idea of dividing an enemy force into its constituent parts and then dealing with it piecemeal is at least as old as Caesar's actions in Gaul. It applies no less to U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Every faction there has been made to reconsider its relationship with every other. Rather than there being a monolithic clash of civilizations, thus far the U.S. is dealing with the area in pieces--in whatever way it sees fit to do so--whether making it tacitly clear to Syria that what happened in Iraq could more easily happen to it, or threatening Iran on behalf of the region and world, or seeking cooperation with the Saudis in hunting down al Qaeda.
Far from being a bit of belated triumphalism about the invasion, all of this has immediate and direct consequences. While the success of Iraq's democracy hangs in the balance from an operational perspective, the strategic advantages created by the invasion of Iraq are working very favorably for the U.S. in the current Israeli-Lebanon crisis in very tangible ways. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
07/26/2006 05:49 ||
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(Saddam)blames Tehran primarily for the current flare-up, not some Zionist-U.S. conspiracy in the standard rhetoric of the region. Remarkable.
Maybe not remarkable, but interesting.
Maybe he can speak his mind now, without worrying about the political ramifications?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/26/2006 6:42 Comments ||
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What Nasser wrought when he seized Suez a half century ago.
by Arthur Herman
07/31/2006, Volume 011, Issue 43
ON JULY 26, 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, at that time the most vital international waterway in the world. The Middle East, and all of us, still live under the shadow of the fateful events his decision triggered 50 years ago. Even more than the Cold War, the Suez crisis has shaped the world we live in. And at its heart was the biggest American foreign policy blunder since the War of 1812.
The socialist Proudhon said the origin of property was theft. The same could be said of the modern Middle East. By any objective standard, Nasser's seizing of the canal was theft. Until that July, it had been administered by a private company headquartered in Paris and owned by international shareholders. Nasser had even signed an agreement recognizing the Canal Zone's autonomy two years earlier, which allowed Great Britain to pull out the last troops from its bases in Suez.
That withdrawal, of course, freed the Egyptian dictator to do what he pleased. Nasser decided to grab the canal to pay for his ill-conceived dam on the Nile at Aswan. He also reasoned that the resulting international outcry would only build up his reputation in the Arab world, and that the response from a declining British Empire, and the rest of the West, would be all talk and no action--even though Suez was vital to Britain and Europe for their oil from the Persian Gulf.
This was Nasser's one miscalculation--but in the end it proved unimportant. In 1956, memories of Hitler and Mussolini were still fresh. Appeasing demagogic dictators who broke international law had few advocates. Just three years earlier, Iran's Mossadegh had tried to nationalize Iran's oil wells. The British and the CIA had kicked him out of power for his pains.
Britain's prime minister, Anthony Eden, assumed he had to respond to Nasser's move with some show of force, especially if he wanted to lay claim to being Winston Churchill's political heir. He also saw an opportunity to reassert Britain's authority on the world stage after the loss of India. But ,unlike Churchill, Eden had no understanding of history; he had, in historian Paul Johnson's words, "a fatal propensity to confuse the relative importance of events." He also never understood, as Churchill had, that to use military force, one had to be ready to use it to the hilt.
So, when the British high command informed Eden it would take six weeks to assemble enough ships, planes, and men to take back the canal and topple Nasser, Eden turned to the French for help. They in turn appealed to the Israelis. For some time the Israelis had wanted to wipe out the Palestinian guerrilla bases which had sprung up along their border with Egypt since the 1948 war, camps run by a Palestinian student-turned-Nasser flunky named Yasser Arafat. So Israel's chief of staff, the 41-year-old Moshe Dayan, drew up a plan with the help of a young paratrooper colonel named Ariel Sharon for an incursion into Gaza and Sinai in coordination with an Anglo-French landing at Suez. The Israelis assumed the West would back up bold action against hit-and-run terrorists and those who supported them.
But they, and their allies the French and British, had not reckoned on the United States. President Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, were preoccupied with the Cold War. Like their Democratic predecessors, they were reluctant to support any move that smacked of "colonialism," no matter how justified. And Eisenhower, in Stephen Ambrose's words, was "uncomfortable with Jews" and never understood the threat Israel faced from its Arab neighbors. So the Americans refused to endorse the Suez invasion. "We do not want to meet violence with violence," Dulles said--words that have a disturbing echo today. Then the Americans went further. If the British and French attacked Egypt, Eden was told, the United States would not back them up in the United Nations.
Finally, in late October, after weeks of hesitation and prevaricating, the British, French, and Israelis struck. The British and French Operation Musketeer was a stunning success; in the face of the Israeli attack, Nasser's army collapsed. French paratroopers and tanks were poised to roll into Cairo. But then, with American encouragement, U.N. secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld became involved.
To this day in elite circles, his name is treated with pious reverence second only to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. After his death, his face even graced an American postage stamp. In fact, Hammarskjöld was arguably the worst secretary general in the history of the United Nations. He was certainly the most devious. He was the bleak prototype of another U.N. apparatchik, his fellow Swede Hans Blix. Smug, icily cerebral, essentially humorless, he possessed a smooth arrogance that concealed a bottomless pit of liberal guilt.
Suez was the making of him. From the start, Hammarskjöld steered the U.N. debate away from the question of how to deal with a lawless dictator, making it an open forum for denouncing "Western imperialism." The loudest voices came from the Russians and their Communist allies, who made Israel their particular target (even as Russian troops were crushing the revolt in Hungary). Nasser became the new hero of the "nonaligned nations," the Fifties code phrase for the new countries in Asia and Africa who were ready to play one Cold War superpower against the other. According to at least one insider, although Hammarskjöld personally despised Nasser, he deferred to Nasser's ambassador "on all points and at all stages" in arranging a final cease-fire and calling for a British, French, and Israeli withdrawal.
To Hammarskjöld, the issue was simple. If you were European and white, you were always in the wrong. If you were nonwhite, you were a victim of something and ipso facto in the right. Even so, Hammarskjöld's U.N. resolutions would have remained so many scraps of papers had President Eisenhower not threatened to break the pound sterling on the world's financial markets. Eden's will to fight burst like a soap bubble. French and British troops began pulling out in March 1957. Nasser triumphantly claimed his canal; Israel withdrew from Gaza and the Sinai.
The Suez crisis was over. But the damage it did was, and remains, incalculable. Eisenhower had wrecked the trust between the United States and its former World War II allies for a generation; in the case of France, for all time. If anyone wonders why French politicians are always willing to undermine American initiatives around the world, the answer is summed up in one word: "Suez."
Suez destroyed the United Nations as well. By handing it over to Dag Hammarskjöld and his feckless ilk, Eisenhower turned the organization from the stout voice of international law and order into at best a meaningless charade; at worst, a Machiavellian cesspool. Instead of teaching Nasser and his fellow dictators that breaking international law does not pay, Suez taught them that every transgression will be forgotten and forgiven, especially if oil is at stake.
As for Nasser, Israel moved to the top of his agenda. Attacking the Jewish state became the recognized path to leadership of the Arab world, from Nasser to Saddam Hussein to Iran's Ahmadinejad--with the U.N. and world opinion standing idly by. Nasser also poured money and arms into Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization, making it the world's first state-sponsored terrorist group. And again, the world did nothing.
This, in the end, was the most egregious result of Suez. Hammarskjöld had ushered in a new era of international gangsterism, even as the U.N. became an essentially anti-Western body. Its lowest point came less than two decades later, in 1975, when it passed a resolution denouncing Zionism as racism and a triumphant Yasser Arafat addressed the General Assembly with a pistol strapped to his hip.
Suez destroyed the moral authority of the so-called world community. Fifty years later, we are all still living in the rubble.
#1
Did France and the UK not consult with the US prior? Or did they consult with someone at State and it never made its way up to Ike? There has always been something fishy about this whole episode. I've always found it hard to believe that the same Ike that took covert action in Iran and Guatemala, wouldn't support the UK and French in this campaign.
#2
No, 11A5S, they didn't. Foster Dulles was sick and in the hospital. The US was talking out of both sides of its mouth ("Nasser must be made to disgorge..." "The US does not agree to the use of violence...") and Anthony Eden thought he truly had a green light to go. He also was a sick man who was recovering from gall bladder surgery and on some pretty heavy drugs. If you're really interested, there's a doorstop book called "Suez" that covers the whole thing from start to finish. It will make you want to cry to read how woefully inept the British were and how pusillanimous the US was. We're still paying for Eisenhower's siding with Nasser both in the French hatred for us and the Arab world's sneering disdain. Nasser needed a good public ass-kicking followed by a hanging at the nearest palm tree. Instead, he became an Arab hero just because we refused to back the Euros when they went to retrieve their property. It was by far the biggest foreign policy mistake of the Eisenhower presidency; Francis Gary Powers doesn't even come close.
Posted by: mac ||
07/26/2006 18:19 Comments ||
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#3
The USA was anti-colonialism, particularly French colonialism. BTW, I agree with the writer. Suez was a serious strategic error by the USA. He fails to mention the ME nationalisation of oil companies that resulted from Suez and the consequent power of OPEC. Had the British/French retaken Suez, the world would be a very different place.
Ike had some strange quirks. His preference for covert over overt action and his resignation to the USAF theory that the era of ground war was over and that land forces were obsolete stand out. He damn near destroyed the Army in the late 50's.
I'll have to read that book once I get through the other door stop that I'm working on right now.
During this period there is going to be violence. That is what war means. You can photograph it from every conceivable angle, and document every casualty. That does not change the fact that there is an aggressor â Hizbullah â and a defender â Israel. The end game of war is when the defender goes on the offensive to destroy the aggressor. The final stage of a war is when the defender appears to be the aggressor as it moves into the territory of the aggressor and burns out its black heart. That will be the final stage of the war. Then there will be peace.
I remember when Israel was correctly perceived as victim of Arab bullies.
Many have been wondering how long it would take for the US mainstream media to begin their turn against Israel and the reigniting of their passionate flames in support of terrorists. I noticed that they began the inevitable turning of the tides in opposition to the Jewish nation protecting itself from what has been called the premiere terrorist organization on the planet, Monday night.
During a brief channel-surfing session, I landed on ABC World News Tonight with Charley Gibson. I watched its war coverage for about ten minutes. Yes, I usually watch FNC for news. But, Fox was re-running a story I had already viewed. I entered the program, as it was displaying a mapa map of Israeli hits. The ABC map showed bright yellow-orange indicators of where Israeli rockets had landed in Lebanon. Missing, however, were the orange (or any other color) designations of where terrorist Hezbollah missiles had landed in Israel. From the ABC map, one would believe that Israel had experienced no Hezbollah-landed rockets whatsoeverdespite the inescapable reality that is has sustained hundreds and, most likely, over 1,000 missile-hits. The map also suggested that Israel was carrying out some crazed conflict against the innocent terrorists.
This certainly seems like one of the first salvos of the MSM toward rewriting the current Israel-Lebanon wareven before it has begun to reach a resolution.
Then ABC had two of its in-Beirut reporters commenting on the destruction and carnage Israel was wreaking on Lebanon. Apparently not able to contain their bias, these reporters actually interviewed Lebanese children. Any mention of the carnage terrorist Hezbollah was inflicting on Israel was glaringly missing from their journalistic efforts. Does ABC even have any reporters located in Israel? One has to wonder.
The kicker for me was when one of these reporters referred to Hezbollahnot even using the name of this terrorist organizationreferred to it as the resistance. With this characterization of the terrorist organization that actually trained al-Qaeda, ABC has placed it in the category of freedom fighters. In fact, I only heard the word Hezbollah (which is said to mean Gods Army) twice, during the entire report. Any questions as to which side ABC is on?
#1
ABC, CBS ans NBC seem to always follow the same pattern. At first, give lip service to the Israeli point of view, so as to not be accused of being unfair or unbalanced. But inevitably, their anti-American anti-Isreal core philosophy steers tome back to the same tired old Isreal bashing. CNN, on the other hand, made absolutely no pretense of airness, and was virulently anti-Israel in it's coverage right from the start.
#4
Good call on that link, Nimble. Even over such well-worn and familiar ground he gets almost every assertion and point dead backasswards wrong. That's actually hard to do, unless you're so twisted you actually believe such foolishness. Rubbish would be a step up.
#8
The front page of today's Washington Post includes an article on the “Guernica-like scenes” in Tyre, Lebanon. We all know what this is code for; the Post is equating Israel with Fascism and Naziism. if no one else gets around to it tonight, I'll try posting it here. I have to go to synagogue first.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/26/2006 18:18 Comments ||
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#9
The media is broadcasting shots of missiles flying out of Tyre. The complete story would include whether launchings are from civilian areas. At least one BBC story on north Beirut proved Israel's position that only Hizbollah strongholds are being targeted.
What do you say about a country that allows those loyal to a foreign country (Iran) to set up in their midst? Oops! Forgot about East LA.
A FEW years back, when folks talked airily about "the Middle East peace process" and "a two-state solution", I used to say that the trouble was the Palestinians saw a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to a one-state solution. I underestimated Islamist depravity. As we now see in Gaza and southern Lebanon, any two-state solution would be an interim stage en route to a no-state solution.
In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of US and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."
Swell. But suppose he got his way, what then? Suppose every last Jew in Israel were dead or fled, what would rise in place of the Zionist entity? It would be something like the Hamas-Hezbollah terror squats in Gaza and Lebanon writ large. Hamas won a landslide in the Palestinian elections, and Hezbollah similarly won formal control of key Lebanese cabinet ministries. But they're not Mussolini: they have no interest in making the trains run on time. And, to be honest, who can blame them?
If you're a big-time terrorist mastermind, it's frankly a bit of a bore to find yourself deputy under-secretary at the ministry of pensions, particularly when you're no good at it, and no matter how lavishly the European Union throws money at you, there never seems to be any in the kitty when it comes to making the payroll. So, like a business that has over-diversified, Hamas and Hezbollah retreated to their core activity: Jew-killing.
In Causeries du Lundi, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve recalls a Parisian dramatist watching the revolutionary mob rampaging through the street below and beaming: "See my pageant passing!" That's how opportunist Arabs and indulgent Europeans looked on the intifada and the terrorists and the schoolgirl suicide bombers: as a kind of uber-authentic piece of performance art with which to torment the Jews and the Americans. They never paused to ask themselves: Hey, what if it doesn't stop there?
Well, about 30 years too late, they're asking it now. For the first quarter-century of Israel's existence, the Arab states fought more or less conventional wars against the Zionists and kept losing. So then they figured it was easier to anoint a terrorist movement and in 1974 declared Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation to be the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", which is quite a claim for an organisation then barely a decade old. Amazingly, the Arab League persuaded the UN, the EU, Bill Clinton and everyone else to go along with it and to treat the old monster as a head of state who lacked only a state to head.
It's true that many nationalist movements have found it convenient to adopt the guise of terrorists.
But, as the Palestinian movement descended from airline hijackings to the intifada to self-detonating in pizza parlours, it never occurred to its glamorous patrons to wonder if maybe this was, in fact, a terrorist movement conveniently adopting the guise of nationalism.
In 1971, in the lobby of the Cairo Sheraton, Palestinian terrorists shot Wasfi al-Tal, the prime minister of Jordan, at point-blank range. As he fell to the floor dying, one of his killers began drinking the blood gushing from his wounds. Doesn't that strike you as a little, um, overwrought? Three decades later, when bombs went off in Bali, killing hundreds of tourists plus local waiters and barmen, Bruce Haigh, a former Aussie diplomat in Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had no doubt where to put the blame. As he told Australia's Nine Network: "The root cause of this issue has been America's backing of Israel on Palestine."
Suppose this were true: that terrorists blew up Australian honeymooners and Scandinavian stoners in Balinese nightclubs because of "the Palestinian question". Doesn't this suggest that these people are, at a certain level, nuts? After all, there are plenty of Irish Republican Army sympathisers across the world (try making the Ulster Unionist case in a Boston bar), yet they never thought to protest against British rule in Northern Ireland by blowing up, say, German tourists in Thailand.
Yet the more the thin skein of Palestinian grievance was stretched to justify atrocities halfway around the world, the more the Arab League big-shot emirs and EU foreign ministers looked down from their windows and cooed, "See my parade passing!"
They've now belatedly realised they're at that stage in the creature feature where the monster has mutated into something bigger and crazier. Until the remarkably kinda-robust statement by the Group of Eight and the unprecedented denunciation of Hezbollah by the Arab League, the rule in any conflict in which Israel is involved - Israel v PLO, Israel v Lebanon, Israel v (Your Team Here) - is that the Jews are to blame. But Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian opportunism on Palestine has caught up with them: it has finally dawned on them that a strategy of consciously avoiding resolution of the Palestinian question has helped deliver Gaza and Lebanon and Syria into the hands of a regime that's a far bigger threat to the Arab world than the Zionist entity.
Cairo and co grew so accustomed to whining about the Palestinian pseudo-crisis decade in, decade out, that it never occurred to them that they might face a real crisis one day: a Middle East dominated by an apocalyptic Iran and its local enforcers, in which Arab self-rule turns out to have been a mere interlude between the Ottoman sultans and the eternal eclipse of a Persian nuclear umbrella.
The Zionists got out of Gaza and it's now Talibanistan redux. The Zionists got out of Lebanon and the most powerful force in the country (with an ever-growing demographic advantage) are Iran's Shia enforcers. There haven't been any Zionists anywhere near Damascus in 60 years and Syria is in effect Iran's first Sunni Arab prison bitch. For the other regimes in the region, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are dead states that have risen as vampires.
Meanwhile, Kofi Annan in a remarkable display of urgency (at least when compared with Sudan, Rwanda, Congo and others) is proposing apropos Israel and Hezbollah that UN peacekeepers go in to keep the peace not between two sovereign states but between a sovereign state and a usurper terrorist gang. Contemptible as he is, the secretary-general shows a shrewd understanding of the way the world is heading: already, non-state actors have more sophisticated rocketry than many EU nations; and if Iran has its way, its proxies will be implied nuclear powers. Maybe we should put them on the UN Security Council.
So, what is in reality Israel's first non-Arab war is a glimpse of the world the day after tomorrow: the EU and the Arab League won't quite spell it out but, to modify that Le Monde headline, they are all Jews now.
HT to Drudge
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, 70, tells DER SPIEGEL about how the current conflict is affecting his country, the role of the Lebanese army and his relationship with Shiite militia Hezbollah.
SPIEGEL: Please explain your relationship to Hezbollah. What do you think of Hassan Nasrallah?
Lahoud: Hezbollah enjoys utmost prestige in Lebanon, because it freed our country. All over the Arab world you hear: Hezbollah maintains Arab honor, and even though it (Hezbollah) is very small, it stands up to Israel. And of course Nasrallah has my respect.
Lahoud: We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. It is the basic problem of our country, it led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975 and still remains unsolved today. Everybody today is talking about UN resolution 1559, but nobody mentions resolution 194, which recognizes the Palestinians' right of return (to Israel). Lebanon is small and can't integrate the Palestinians.
Another op-ed by the Belgian ESISC. The link is a pdf. By ClaudeMONIQUET, President of the ESISC
While the ground operations are going on, things appear to speed up at a diplomatic level. But these stirrings and the declarations of the ones and the others do not foretell the beginning of a solution. And that, for the simplest of reasons : although each one is in agreement about the existence of the illness and the extreme gravity of the symptoms, nobody agrees about its origin and the way to cure it.
European officials quoted Tuesday evening by the AP agency stated that M. Javier Solana, E.U. High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), will propose to the International Conference taking place in Rome this Wednesday, July 26, a cease fire and the deployment of a rapid reaction force.
The core of this force would be constituted by French, German and Spanish soldiers with the contribution of the military from Turkey, the Netherlands and Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to AP. But Mr Solana refused to comment about this information.
Curiously, these Brussels declarations echo a commentary of the Israeli Defense Minister, M. Amir Peretz, who declared earlier in the day that Israel will maintain a security zone in south Lebanon until the arrival of an international force. Mr. Peretsz insisted nevertheless on the necessity to reach an accord allowing the removal of Hezbollah from the south of Lebanon, the control of the frontier crossings between Syria and Lebanon, to stop the passage across the frontier of new weapons.
Of course, this will lead to an international force with the capacity to force the application of the accord that will be signed.
We have emphasized already in our previous analysis that a multinational force will make no sense unless it can :
- secure the Israeli frontier
- prevent infiltrations by Hezbollah and the shootings at the Hebrew State
- disarm Hezbollah applying resolution 1559.
Only these measures can bring peace between Israel and Lebanon. Such a program cannot be applied except on the base of a clear and precise political mandate. It will be very astonishing if the Rome meeting delivers this mandate.
France thinks that it is necessary to take first two steps : the end of hostilities and a political agreement among the belligerents. Only afterwards could an intervention force be deployed. It is worth noticing, in passing, that Paris is no longer talking about the stirring idea of President Jacques Chirac, of putting in place an international force that would be able to disarm Hezbollah through coercive measures. In any case, in Brussels, M. Solana said on Monday to Saad Hariri, that the disarmament of Hezbollah is not envisaged but, atmost, the supervisionof the operation.
It is therefore necessary to believe that Hezbollah will lay down arms by itself which it has not done for the last 6 years - or will be disarmed by the Lebanese army, which until now has never shown great enthusiasm about this task. Lebanese authorities said clearly to Mme. Rice on Monday that they do not want this solution that will carry the germs of a burst within the army and a new civil war.
For his part, Ottawa, intends to raise the question of Hezbollah at this meeting. The minister for Foreign Affairs, Peter McKay declared yesterday : We hope that the international community will take advantage of this occasion to grapple with this problem ( ) non-governmental role players such as Hezbollah and Hamas have been able to built up military stock and attack Israel, either because of the incapacity of governments or with the support of certain governments.
Finally, we will add that if the Arab countries come to Rome with the hope of reaching an immediate cease fire, for its part the United States does not seek any short term solution but wans to get down to the roots of the problem.
The most likely Roman scenario is that the participants at this huge diplomatic meeting will all go their own way without having reached an agreement that will allow, maybe, to resolve the crisis. The war will therefore continue and Europe, which wants to go to the Middle East to play some kind of role, but above all not that of solving the problems, will be able to do what it does best counting the dead, distributing good and bad points and lamenting the death of civilians which it could have helped to save with a little bit of courage.
#1
European officials quoted Tuesday evening by the AP agency stated that M. Javier Solana, E.U. High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), will propose to the International Conference taking place in Rome this Wednesday, July 26, a cease fire and the deployment of a rapid reaction force.
Should "EU" and "rapid reaction" even be in the same sentence?
#2
I have real faith in international forces in southern Lebanon. Dey gonna save us. Just like the UN saved people and made things right in Gaza, Rwanda, Dafur, Lebanon, Iraq, etc etc. The basic facts are:
*Hizb'Allah is a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
*Hizb'Allah is a proxy of Iran.
*Hizb,Allah is a cancer that has compromised and taken over Lebanon.
*Lebanon is unable and/or unwilling to get red of Hizb'Allah.
*There will be no peace in Lebanon until Hizb'Allah is totally destroyed and Syria has its a$$ handed to it hard enough to quit messing around in Lebanon.
If the EUniks can't help Israel get rid of this enemy of civilization, then the least that they can do is to stand aside and let Israel do the dirty work that they do not have the stomach for to do or help with.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/26/2006 15:03 Comments ||
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#3
"Israel is winning. Let's hurry up and save the Hezbo duckies, bunnies and kittens!"
If "The Ant Bully" had been released 50 years ago, it would be read, not at all incorrectly, as communist propaganda. In the computer-animated story, a colony of ants captures a young American boy and re-educates him. The ants, who are, of course, red, disdain individualism while singing the praises of working together for the common good.
Nothing like indoctrinating the little kiddies while they're young
Good thing for Warner Bros. that the most prominent McCarthy these days is Jenny. In the post-Cold War world, the U.S. government is more likely to be taken over by a swarm of talking ants than communists.
Not if Hollywood has anything to say about it.
In 2006, the film's sweet, simplified moralizing can skirt by without being hampered by its political overtones.
Hide the message in the cute little ants
That's good news for parents, because "The Ant Bully" breaks this summer's streak of dull animated flicks, with "Over the Hedge," "Cars" and "Monster House" in a parade of disappointment.
The Ant Bully: Rise of the Prolitari-Ant. Easily one of the most bizarre kids films Ive seen in a long time, The Ant Bully is your typical, by the numbers CG kids film thinly disguising a delightful work of subversive fiction. Its one of those films, that as it unfolds, causes you to look around the theatre at the other adults and ask: Im not the only one seeing what Im seeing am I?
You know those Bibles they make for kids? The ones with the simple stories and colorful artwork that leaves out all of the complex and adult themes that youd have to commit hours of time to explaining away? Well, if someone sat down to make a similar version of the Communist Manifesto, it would look a hell of a lot like The Ant Bully. Its a warm ultra-liberal hug of a kids film, preaching the joys of socialism and hard work, all the while telling a story of what the world might be like in a liberal post-9/11 world.
Yes, yes. I know. Ants are natures Communists. And I can imagine that it might be hard to tell a story about them without such an overt theme. Except that, well, they did it in Ants. But this isnt just an our culture, their culture thing. Because as overt as it appears earlier in the film, the point gets hammered home towards the end. As Lucas and Zoc sit atop a rock and stare at the human city, Zoc asks Is that your hive? Yeah, I guess its like a hive. When Zoc asks about how it works, Lucas replies I guess its every man for himself. This leads to a Zoc monologue about how that just doesnt make any sense. Everyone has their place and dont the humans realize that if they all work together and share in the fruits of their labor that they all can benefit?
Yeah. See. I aint making this shit up. Zoc falls just short of saying Everyone open your little red books and follow along on page 57. This is gonna play really well in China. And North Korea? Kim Jong Il is gonna flip for this. Of course, that demented little dwarf will no doubt see himself as the wise and benevolent Ant Queen. I can just picture him now, running around his palace with a pair of nylon wings singing I am the great Communist Ant Queen! Come little ants, come!
Just watching the previews of this flick creeped me out, now I know why. Excuse me while I go stomp some ants
Posted by: Steve ||
07/26/2006 17:33 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
