Lebanon: why, how, what now, and what the fuck?

Nour Al Houda, 17 months old, in the underground parking lot of a mall turned bomb shelter near the southern suburbs of Beirut. The Hezbollah-run shelter houses 300 families. Photo: Stephanie Sinclair for the NY Times


Israeli familes in a Ben Eliazer bomb shelter. Photo: Heidi Levine/Sipa Press, for The NY Times

1. A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.

The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.

Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.

Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.

That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.

Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.

Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.

None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.

You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.

This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.

In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.

Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.

Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.

With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.

When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.

Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.

The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.

Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.

So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.

Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.

Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice.


2. Wild dogs are devouring the victims of Israel’s Bombing Raids -- by Mike Whitney (from Information Clearing House)

“Lebanon carpenters are running out of wood for coffins. Bodies are stacked 3 or 4 feet high at the hospital morgue. The stench is spreading in the rubble. The morbid reality of Israel’s bombing campaign is reaching almost every corner of the city…On Thursday, the wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the village.” Hassan Fattah, New York Times

“The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.” Paul Craig Roberts; “The Shame of being an American”

For more than a week Israel has been raining down terror on the Lebanon’s unprotected cities and towns. So far, more than 1,200 sites have been completely destroyed laying to waste most of the country’s civilian infrastructure and triggering a humanitarian crisis. The death toll, currently at 350, continues to mount while the number of displaced civilians is estimated at more than 500,000.

We know now that Israel’s plan of attack was “finalized more than a year ago” and that Hezbollah’s capturing of the 2 Israeli soldiers was merely a pretext to execute their strategy. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University clarified this point saying, “Of all Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving Power-point presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think-tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail.”

Although this simply confirms what most serious analysts suspected from the beginning, it is still interesting on many levels. For one thing, we can be sure that top ranking officials in the Bush administration (including George Bush) not only knew of the plan, but tacitly endorsed the invasion of a friendly country who posed no threat to national security. We can also assume that the battle-plans were carefully orchestrated with Washington so that Bush could co-opt the leaders at the G-8 meetings while Israel pummeled its vulnerable neighbor. Again, this shows the appalling degree of cynicism in the Bush foreign policy strategy.

The SF Chronicle article also demonstrates the extent to which the media is integrated into the machinery of state power. The fact that select “journalists” were provided with information about future aggression against non-threatening states shows that the administration places great value on the preparation of propaganda for major events like the destruction of Lebanon. The media’s carefully crafted message; chock-full of the usual “buzz-words” and “talking points” (nb. “Israel is fighting a war on 2 fronts”; “Israel has the right to defend itself”; “Syria and Iran are the cause of the violence”) follows the predictable pattern of emphasizing Israeli “victim-hood” while lashing out against future enemies without any evidence of wrongdoing. Nearly every one of the 4,000 or so articles covering the violence, use the very same talking points in describing events on the ground. It is a shocking reminder of the woeful state of modern corporate media which advances an elite agenda through the intentional dissemination of misinformation. In the present crisis, much of the public support for Israeli aggression can be directly attributed to the manipulation of language and facts appearing in the media. (We should note that, so far, there is no proof that either Iran or Syria is directly involved in the hostilities and that, more importantly, it is American ordinance in the control of Israeli pilots that is pelting-down on the blameless civilians in Lebanon. Neither Iran nor Syria are in any way responsible for the carnage in Lebanon.)

According to the Chronicle, Israeli officials expect a 3 week campaign. Targeted bombing is to be followed by commando raids and a ground offensive, but the situation is “fluid” and plans will undoubtedly be modified to meet the changes in conditions on the ground. Already, we can see that 500,000 mostly poor Shiites have been uprooted in the south and “ethnically cleansed” from the area. Israel’s 20 mile buffer-zone to the Litani River is tantamount to occupation and will preclude many of these refugees to returning to their homes.

Israel’s invasion can be expected to reenergize the ethnic and religious rivalries which resulted in Lebanon’s civil war which killed an estimated 70,000 Lebanese nationals. Apparently, no price is too high to pay to ensure that Israel can establish a client regime in Beirut that will function at the behest of Tel Aviv.

Once again, all of the details were clearly worked out with members of the Bush administration prior to the invasion. Obviously, they were given Washington’s blessing. Since the hostilities broke out, the Bush administration has publicly given the “green light” to Israeli aggression and successfully blocked all diplomatic efforts to achieve a “cease-fire”. The international community is now as much a hostage of Bush’s preemptive doctrine as the frightened Lebanese civilians cowering in their underground shelters in Beirut.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Bush was “rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel” to guarantee that the killing can continue nonstop and that whatever is left of Lebanon’s frayed infrastructure will be swiftly pounded into dust.

Make no mistake, the vast destruction of the once-bustling metropolis and the ocean of suffering caused by the unprovoked Israeli air-assault, is a joint-operation facilitated by the Washington warlords as much as anyone in Tel Aviv.

In an op-ed piece today in the New York Times, neoconservative chieftain, Richard Perle provided a lurid summary of the present strategy:

“Israel must now deal a blow of such magnitude to those who would destroy it as to leave no doubt that its earlier policy of acquiescence is over. This means precise military action against Hezbollah and its infrastructure in Lebanon and Syria, for as long as it takes and without regard to mindless diplomatic blather about proportionality.”

Perle’s statement is, in fact, an apt description the Bush-Olmert battle-plan for Lebanon. It tells us that, despite the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two leaders still believe they can achieve a political solution through the (exclusive) use of overwhelming force. There is no moral or ethical component to the present policy, nor is there any wiggle-room for negotiation or diplomacy. (Condoleezza Rice’s trip is purely for public relations purposes) It is simply violence as a political-panacea removed from any rational alternative. 3 years in Iraq and 39 years of unrelenting bloodshed in Palestine, have taught them nothing. Lebanon is shaping up to be another dismal chapter in the chronicle of colonial atrocities.


3. Ballots and Bullets -- by NOAH FELDMAN (from The NY Times)

When Hamas and then Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers a few weeks ago, the Israeli government could have held its fire and avoided a major confrontation in which dozens of Israelis — and many more Palestinians and Lebanese — have died. There might have been a strategic rationale for such a policy, since starving kidnappers of attention may be the best way to deter them. But Israel's leaders could not consider this option: they are responsible to an electorate that will tolerate war deaths but will not tolerate the neglect of kidnapped soldiers.

In the past, Israel was the only democracy in the region, and its enemies, whether autocratic states or free-floating terrorist groups, were not similarly accountable to a voting public. This time, however, things are different. With the Iraq war, the United States introduced to the Middle East a bold new policy of democratization by destabilization. That policy encouraged elections in Lebanon and Palestine, opening the door to entities like Hezbollah and Hamas that are now experimenting with a potent cocktail of electoral politics, radical Islamist ideology and violence. Destabilizing the old order really has changed the rules of the game. We are now witnessing the most serious regional test so far to the wisdom of starting down this uncertain path.

The most important new feature of the present situation is the strange hybrid character shared by Hamas and Hezbollah: both are simultaneously militias and democratically elected political parties participating in government. In the case of Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections in January, the political wing may not be able to control the military wing, yet the party maintains a basic unity of purpose. Hezbollah, for its part, does not hold a majority in the Lebanese Parliament, but its elected leaders participate in the Lebanese government, whose democratic credentials have been cited by the Bush administration as a sign of progress in that troubled country.

The dual political and military structures of Hamas and Hezbollah are not unique. In Iraq, both the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Moktada al-Sadr's movement play major roles in the elected government while maintaining counterpart militias that they have been unwilling to disband. The model of Islamist organizations that combine electoral politics with paramilitary tactics is fast becoming the calling card of the new wave of Arab democratization.

The fact that Hamas and Hezbollah pursue democratic legitimacy within the state while also employing violence on their own marks a watershed in Middle Eastern politics. For one thing, the boundary between state and nonstate violence has essentially been erased. Has the Palestinian government demanded an exchange of prisoners with Israel, or has the Hamas militia? Israel has been acting as if it were at war with Lebanon — its targets have included a Lebanese Air Force base and Beirut's international airport - but Hezbollah began the hostilities, not the Lebanese government.

More important still, the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah owe much of their present standing to elections calls into question the viability of Middle Eastern democracy as a peaceful practice. In choosing these Islamists, Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites were in effect endorsing not only their political aims but also their commitment to violence, which was never hidden during their campaigns. (The same is true, to a lesser degree, of voters in Iraq who opted for the Shiite alliance.) It was possible that once in power, the politicians at the helm of Hamas and Hezbollah would distance themselves from violence or at least refrain from initiating it. That would have been a reasonable strategy if they wanted to persuade the voters that they could actually govern and use the resources of the state to improve their constituents' lives. We now know definitively that the leaders have rejected this path.

II.

How will the constituencies that support Hamas and Hezbollah react, over time, to kidnappings and rocket attacks that were calculated, it would seem, to provoke Israeli military reprisals? The elected Islamists are gambling that popular anger at Israel, apparent in the streets of Gaza and southern Lebanon in the first weeks of battle, will translate into redoubled enthusiasm for Islamist intransigence and rejectionism. This has sometimes worked for both Hamas and Hezbollah in the past. Both groups came to power in part because they were perceived as the only local actors willing to fight Israel head-on.

For its part, Israel is gambling that the right strategy is to make the people who elected Hamas and a government that includes Hezbollah reckon the costs of their representatives' recklessness. That is why Israel has targeted not only Hezbollah leaders and strongholds but has also bombed infrastructure that sustains daily life for everybody in Lebanon. From Israel's standpoint, this is no longer a fight with nonstate terrorists who are holding their fellow citizens hostage to their tactics. It is, rather, war between Israel and countries that are pursuing (or tolerating) violent policies endorsed (or at least accepted) by their electorates.

Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza last year on the theory that disengagement would lead to fewer attacks on it, not more. Right-wing Israelis argued that withdrawal rewarded Islamist violence and that rockets would soon be fired into Israel from the very areas being vacated. Now those critics claim to have been vindicated. The reply of the centrist Israeli government — elected on the promise that it would unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank too — is to insist that in the long run Hamas and Hezbollah can be deterred like Israel's other Arab enemies. The route to deterrence, claims the government, is to degrade the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah and in the process inflict on Gaza and Lebanon the punishment of defeat in war — the same approach that eventually led the major Arab powers to stop attacking Israel a generation ago.

The catch for Israel is that, taken too far, the strategy of making all Palestinians and all Lebanese pay for the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah may well backfire. Destroying the economic prosperity that had begun to return to Lebanon is likely to generate fresh hatred of Israel, and Palestinians under the gun have in recent years tended to become more radicalized, not less. Provided that democratic institutions in Palestine and Lebanon remain intact, the long-term success of Israel's campaign will probably depend on how the Palestinian and Lebanese electorates evaluate all that has happened. They will be doing so against the backdrop of deeply conflicted feelings: Hamas and Hezbollah may have sparked this round of fighting, but the bombs raining down on their cities and the soldiers in their bases still come from Israel, and no one likes to be bombed.

Democracy means that you cannot blame someone else for troubles caused by your own government. That is a comparatively new lesson in the region, and whether it is learned or not will determine the prospects for democracy itself there. But dodging missiles and running from tanks is not the ideal circumstance for rational reflection on the nature of self-rule. As in Iraq, what is especially risky and worrisome about democratization through destabilization is that it comes accompanied not by peace but by the sword. In this dangerous environment, the costs of democracy — the weakness of government, the uncertainty, the violence — can be felt everywhere. The benefits of democracy, though, are barely palpable.

III.

Although elections in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories owe much to America's democracy agenda, the Bush administration has, from the start, generally taken a hands-off approach to the region once known as the Levant. This is in part a function of limited capacity. Officials who have been focused since 9/11 on Afghanistan, and then on Iraq, cannot spare the time or attention to supervise the ins and outs of Israel's dealings with the Palestinians or with Lebanon. It also reflects the fact that the Bush administration — mindful of President Clinton's ultimate failure at Camp David — is wary of squandering its credibility on an ever-elusive peace deal. But it results, too, from a shift in perspective created by the Iraq-driven nature of the democratization policy itself. This has led the administration to see developments outside the Persian Gulf as democratic aftershocks of Saddam Hussein's removal — and to believe it best to stand aside and let destabilization and the democratic spirit do their slow work.

Lebanon, in particular, has been treated by the Bush administration as a success of democratization. In a sense it has been one. Mass demonstrations, largely free of violence (including several organized by Hezbollah), set the tone for domestic Lebanese politics in the wake of last year's assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister. These protests would have been hard to imagine without the American commitment to democratization in Iraq. For once acting with European allies, the Bush administration was able to respond by pressuring Syria to reduce its involvement in the country. The only difficulty was that once elections were held, Hezbollah took on a substantial role in the governance of the country while retaining its close ties to Syria and Iran. Until this latest crisis, the American attitude toward this problem was to leave it alone.

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, a hands-off strategy appeared to be working. Successful elections following the death of Yasir Arafat, coupled with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, made it seem that the permissive approach was the right one. Until Hamas's election victory this January, it even seemed conceivable that democratization might eventually create a Palestinian government capable of saying yes to Israeli peace overtures and delivering Palestinian popular support for an eventual deal.

The sudden explosion of Israel's fronts with Gaza and Lebanon represents a major challenge to the Bush administration's detachment. Leaders and political observers in the region instinctively expect the Bush administration to respond to the crisis the way earlier administrations dealt with previous crises — namely, by becoming deeply involved and trying not merely to halt the violence temporarily but also to guide the parties toward a comprehensive solution. Among some in the region, you can almost sense a nostalgic yearning to become once again the center of attention for American foreign policy.

How the United States responds to this latest crisis will therefore set an important historical precedent: has Iraq once and for all displaced Israel and its neighbors as the focal point of American interest and attention in the broader Middle East? Should the Bush administration limit its involvement to stanching the bloodshed in the short term and then disengage from serious negotiations, it would be a sign that we really have shifted the focus of our regional policy away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a shift that may last a quarter-century. (It could take at least that long for the United States to come to terms with its involvement in Iraq — win, lose or draw.)

Letting relations between Israel and its neighbors develop on their own, without our stage management, would suggest that the Bush administration is taking seriously its own argument that democratization is a messy, long-term business that must run its course, unimpeded. According to this claim, the regional destabilization that followed the Iraq invasion is just the cost of democracy. The new wave of violence is one storm center in that destabilized atmospheric system. If the strategy of democratization remains in place, other storms will form — and they, too, will have to be weathered.

IV.

Of course, even if President Bush did take on the task of negotiating something more than a stopgap to the bombing, American diplomats would face a more difficult challenge than their predecessors ever did. In the past, crises involving Israel were addressed by dealing with the regional Arab powers, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, all of which exerted influence of different kinds on the actors. Today, however, Iran has become the predominant external influence on Hezbollah, and perhaps even on Hamas. And American leverage over Iran, never very significant since the Iranian revolution, is today at its lowest ebb in years in the wake of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and the election of the populist anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The point is not that Iran necessarily gave a direct order to either Hamas or Hezbollah to initiate a new round of hostilities by kidnapping Israeli soldiers. No direct evidence of any such order has been made public, and the complex internal workings of Hamas — which moved first — are not particularly susceptible to such a chain of command. Rather, Iran clearly gains by the mess that has emerged, and both Hamas and Hezbollah know that serving Iranian interests is sure to result in continued, active support from Tehran.

The main issue for Iran is, of course, the threat of American intervention against its growing nuclear capacity. Iran's primary foreign-policy goal is therefore to deter the United States through the threat of repercussions. One potential arena is Iraq, where U.S. troops can barely handle the Sunni-led insurgency and would face the danger of being overwhelmed if there were serious attacks on them from either Shiite militias financed by Iran or Iranian irregulars. But Iran has more tricks up its sleeve. The attacks on Israel not only harm America's closest regional ally, but, by generating an expanding circle of violence, also substantially destabilize the region. It is as if the Iranians were saying to the United States, ''You have your strategy of creative destabilization, and we have ours.''

Iran's support for Hamas and Hezbollah is already being cited as evidence by those who want the United States to intervene directly against Iran. If their argument prevails, then Israel's little wars with Hamas and Hezbollah will turn out to have been a pair of proxy wars leading to the big one right around the corner. In Lebanon in the 1980's, Israel and Syria fought such a proxy war on behalf of the United States and the Soviet Union respectively. That it remained a proxy war is something for which we can be grateful.

But the cold-war days of balanced powers are behind us now. Faced with the threat of terror, the remaining superpower chose to unleash at once the forces of freedom and instability. From Baghdad to Beirut, Gaza City, Haifa and beyond, the consequences are beginning to be realized. We are in the world of asymmetry, of democratically legitimated militias and armed bands that fight wars with powerful states. Democracy can no longer be seen as an end in itself, and the fate of peoples lies in their own hands.

(Noah Feldman, a contributing writer for the magazine, is a law professor at New York University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.)


4. No, this is not 'our war' – by Patrick J. Buchanan

My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless.

Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora.

To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work."

On American TV, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the ruination of Lebanon is Hezbollah's doing. But is it Hezbollah that is using U.S.-built F-16s, with precision-guided bombs and 155-mm artillery pieces to wreak death and devastation on Lebanon?

No, Israel is doing this, with the blessing and without a peep of protest from President Bush. And we wonder why they hate us.

"Today, we are all Israelis!" brayed Ken Mehlman of the Republican National Committee to a gathering of Christians United for Israel.

One wonders if these Christians care about what is happening to our Christian brethren in Lebanon and Gaza, who have had all power cut off by Israeli airstrikes, an outlawed form of collective punishment, that has left them with no sanitation, rotting food, impure water and days without light or electricity in the horrible heat of July.

When summer power outrages occur in America, it means a rising rate of death among our sick and elderly, and women and infants. One can only imagine what a hell it must be today in Gaza City and Beirut.

But all this carnage and destruction has only piqued the blood lust of the hairy-chested warriors at the Weekly Standard. In a signed editorial, "It's Our War," William Kristol calls for America to play her rightful role in this war by "countering this act of aggression by Iran with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"

"Why wait?" Well, one reason is that the United States has not been attacked. A second is a small thing called the Constitution. Where does George W. Bush get the authority to launch a war on Iran? When did Congress declare war or authorize a war on Iran?

Answer: It never did. But these neoconservatives care no more about the Constitution than they cared about the truth when they lied into war in Iraq.

"Why wait?" How about thinking of the fate of those 25,000 Americans in Lebanon if we launch an unprovoked war on Iran. How many would wind up dead or hostages of Hezbollah if Iran gave the order to retaliate for the slaughter of their citizens by U.S. bombs? What would happen to the 130,000 U.S.troops in Iraq, if Shiites and Iranian "volunteers" joined forces to exact revenge on our soldiers?

What about America? Richard Armitage, who did four tours in Nam and knows a bit about war, says that, in its ability to attack Western targets, al-Qaida is the B Team, Hezbollah the A Team. If Bush bombs Iran, what prevents Hezbollah from launching retaliatory attacks inside the United States?

None of this is written in defense of Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.

But none of them has attacked our country, nor has Syria, whom Bush I made an ally in the Gulf War and to whom the most decorated soldier in Israeli history, Ehud Barak, offered 99 percent of the Golan Heights. If Nixon, Bush I and Clinton could deal with Hafez al-Assad, a tougher customer than son Bashar, what is the matter with George W. Bush?

The last superpower is impotent in this war because we have allowed Israel to dictate to whom we may and may not talk. Thus, Bush winds up cussing in frustration in St. Petersburg that somebody should tell the Syrians to stop it. Why not pick up the phone, Mr. President?

What is Kristol's moral and legal ground for a war on Iran? It is the "Iranian act of aggression" against Israel and that Iran is on the road to nuclear weapons – and we can't have that.

But there is no evidence Iran has any tighter control over Hezbollah than we have over Israel, whose response to the capture of two soldiers had all the spontaneity of the Schlieffen Plan. And, again, Hezbollah attacked Israel, not us. And there is no solid proof Iran is in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it has signed, but Israel refuses to sign.

If Iran's nuclear program justifies war, why cannot the neocons make that case in the constitutional way, instead of prodding Bush to launch a Pearl Harbor attack? Do they fear they have no credibility left after pushing Bush into this bloody quagmire in Iraq that has cost almost 2,600 dead and 18,000 wounded Americans?

No, Kenny boy, we are not "all Israelis." Some of us still think of ourselves as Americans, first, last and always.

And, no, Mr. Kristol, this is not "our war." It's your war.


5. Condi Rice's Mid-East Fantasy Ride -- by Rami Khouri

American officials are very good at vernacular descriptions, but lousy at history and political reality in the Middle East. As U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sets off Sunday on her short trip to a Middle East that is increasingly engulfed in violent confrontations and political turmoil, she has described the massive destruction, dislocation and human suffering in Lebanon as an inevitable part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East".

From my perspective here in Beirut, watching American-supplied Israeli jets smash this country to smithereens, what she describes as "birth pangs" look much more like a wicked hangover from a decades-old American orgy of diplomatic intoxication with the enticements of pro-Israeli politics.

We shall find out in the coming years if indeed a new Middle East is being born, or - as I suspect - we are witnessing the initial dying gasps of the Western-made political order that has defined this region and focused primarily on Israeli national dictates for most of the past half a century. The way to a truly new and stable Middle East is to apply policies that deliver equal rights to all concerned, not to favor Israel as having greater rights than Arabs.

Rice declared that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire, saying: "This is a different Middle East. It's a new Middle East. It's hard. We're going through a very violent time."

Behind the American position to support Israel's massive attacks against Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and Hizbullah positions is a sense - widely reported from Washington in recent days - that the Bush-Rice team wants to use this conflict to achieve short-term tactical aims and long-term strategic goals that serve the interests of America, Israel and their few allies in the region.

Short term, the United States would like Israel to wipe out Hizbullah, allow the Lebanese government to send its troops to the south of the country, ensure the safety of northern Israel, cut Syria's influence down to size, and apply greater pressure on Hizbullah-supporter Iran. The United States opposes a ceasefire, therefore, because, Rice says, "A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo."

This diplomatic position to support Israel's attacks on Lebanon, coupled with rushing sophisticated precision bombs to Israel from the U.S. arsenal, indicates that Washington seriously aims to fundamentally redraw the political and ideological map of the Middle East in the longer term. If this means yet another Arab land goes up in flames and war, so be it, Washington seems to be saying.

So we now have three Arab countries where American policies and arms have played a major role in promoting chaos, disintegration, mass death and suffering: Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. You can watch them burn - live on your television sets.

Ironically, these were the three countries that Bush-Rice & Co. have held up as models and pioneers of the American policy to promote freedom and democracy as antidotes to Arab despotism and terrorism.

Washington's desire to change the face of the Arab world requires removing the last vestiges of anti-American defiance and anti-Israel resistance. The problem for Bush-Rice is that such sentiments probably comprise a majority of Arab people. Most of them flock to Islamist parties and resistance groups like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Shiite groups in the Iraqi government.

Syria and Iran are the most problematic governments for Washington in this respect. So there is further irony and much incoherence in the latest American official desire for Arab governments to pressure Syria to reduce its support for Hizbullah and other groups who defy the United States and Israel. The numbing fact that Bush-Rice fail to acknowledge - perhaps understandably, given the alcoholic's tendency to evade reality - is that Washington now can only speak to a few Arab governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere) who are in almost no position to affect anyone other than their immediate families and many guards.

Washington is engaged almost exclusively with Arab governments whose influence with Syria is virtually nonexistent, whose credibility with Arab public opinion is zero, whose own legitimacy at home is increasingly challenged, and whose pro-U.S. policies tend to promote the growth of those militant Islamist movements that now lead the battle against American and Israeli policies. Is Rice traveling to a new Middle East, or to a diplomatic Disneyland of her own imagination?

If Rice pursues contacts in the coming five days that increase Washington's bias towards Israel, tighten its links with isolated, increasingly impotent Arab governments, and further alienate the masses of Arab public opinion, she will exacerbate the very problem she claims she wants to fix: the spread of violence and terror, practiced simultaneously by the armies of states like the United States, Israel, and police state governments in the Middle East who live by violence as a rule, and by non-state actors like Hizbullah and others like it.

On her long flight from Washington to Palestine-Israel Sunday night, someone should give Condoleezza Rice a modern history book of the Middle East, so that she can cut through the haze of her long political drunken stupor, and finally see more clearly where the problems of this region emanate, where the solutions come from, and how her country can become a constructive rather than a destructive force.

(Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.)


6. The Pin in the Grenade -- by William Rivers Pitt

There is no way to tell exactly how this Middle East upheaval is going to unfold, and making any sort of prediction is a dangerous game. There are, however, a number of disparate factors threaded through this situation that, if allowed to coalesce, will create an unspeakably dangerous convulsion that will be felt all across the globe.

Any first step toward this dangerous convulsion would involve other Middle East nations besides Israel and Lebanon actively becoming involved in the conflict. Syria, which shares a border with both Israel and Lebanon, is a prime candidate for this possible entry.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Israeli ground forces have pushed deeper into Lebanon as they press their fight against Hezbollah guerrillas. Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz said, "The army's ground operation in Lebanon is focused on limited entrances, and we are not talking about an invasion of Lebanon."

Also on Sunday, Syrian information minister Moshen Bilal told the Spanish newspaper ABC, "If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometers of Damascus. What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict. I repeat, if Israel makes a land invasion of Lebanon and gets near us, Syria will not stand by with arms folded. It will enter the conflict."

This warning was leveled within the context of a cease-fire discussion proffered by Syria by way of Spain. The discussion would require direct talks between Syria and the United States, something the Bush administration has thus far dismissed, and would further require Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria, something Israel would almost certainly balk at. The offer, in short, appears to be a non-starter, even as Israeli forces push deeper into Lebanon despite Syrian threats of open involvement.

If conflict between Israel and Syria breaks out, the fighting will in all likelihood not stay between them alone. Syria and Iran signed a mutual defense pact not so long ago, which means fighting one could be tantamount to fighting both. While Israel's military capabilities are undeniably substantial, a war against Syria or Iran, or both, would be no simple task.

Beyond the dangers involved in such a clash lies the potential for a widened conflict that draws the United States in. Iran's batteries of Sunburn missiles, if unleashed from their mountainous shoreline overlooking the Persian Gulf, could attack heavy American warships patrolling those waters. The Sunburn has the capability of defeating Aegis radar systems, so damage to the American fleet could be severe. Iran likewise has the ability to, overnight, bring their fight against Israel to the American soldiers in Iraq; Iran's Shiite allies all across Iraq can introduce a whole new front in that struggle.

There are also economic ramifications to consider. If Iran is attacked, or if their government chooses to squeeze the Western world, they could decide to turn off the petroleum spigot. Gas prices in America climbed again through the middle of July, but a disruption of petroleum distribution on this level would send those prices skyrocketing and badly shake the global economy.

Syria, if pressed into a corner by Israel's effective attacks, could choose to break the seal on the final and most dangerous option: their stockpile of chemical weaponry. If gas bombs are used against Israeli troops, and explode within Israel's borders, the situation will spiral completely out of control. Israel would erupt in rage and visit a terrible retribution on both Syria and Iran.

Today, across the Middle East, anger at Israel's military actions in Lebanon and America's unconditional support for this seethes in every capital city. The San Jose Mercury News has reported, "Even in the Christian sections of Beirut, which are largely immune to the violence, anger at Israel is growing. 'If they keep targeting civilians like this, they're only hurting themselves,' said Riad Khattar, the Christian owner of an Internet cafe in Beirut. 'Even the Christians are now starting to support Hezbollah. This was not the fact before the war. By killing civilians, they are making Hezbollah stronger and stronger.'"

Should Israel envelop Iran and Syria in a massive retaliatory attack, that seething anger could boil over. Even the Arab governments who chastised Hezbollah would be forced to choose between opposing Israel or being themselves toppled by the swell.

Here, then, we reach one of the most frightening possibilities in all this. If such an eruption of anger reaches Pakistan, , whose hard-core fundamentalists are umbilically and spiritually tied to their Taliban neighbors in Afghanistan, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf could be faced with a sudden revolution. Such a revolt would come both from his population and from within the ranks of his Taliban-friendly military. If his government is toppled, the world will be faced with the fact that a nuclear power has been overthrown by Islamic extremists.

There is today in Pakistan an American special forces unit whose sole purpose is to secure and remove that nation's nuclear arsenal in the event of revolt. If that unit loses the race to get hold of the weapons, Pakistan's nuclear weapons will be loose amid a hellbroth of anti-Israeli and anti-American rage all across the region.

If this last bit involving Pakistan seems too farfetched, someone should let the editors of the Los Angeles Times know. The following appeared in the Opinion section of their Sunday edition: "Al Qaeda has had Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in its sights for years, and the organization finally gets its man. Pakistan descends into chaos as militants roam the streets and the army struggles to restore order. India decides to exploit the vacuum and punish the Kashmir-based militants it blames for the recent Mumbai railway bombings. Meanwhile, U.S. special operations forces sent to secure Pakistani nuclear facilities face off against an angry mob."

At this point, the scenario becomes unutterably grim for the Americans who think this fight does not involve them. It was, after all, the violence between Israel, Palestine and Lebanon back in the 1980s that inspired men like Ramsi Yousef to attack the World Trade Center in the first place. The Bush administration would be largely powerless to stop these attacks, because anti-terror funding has been redirected to bean festivals in Indiana instead of major capitols and seats of infrastructure, and because our first-warning intelligence services have been savaged in an ideological purge.

The exact kind of violence taking place today is what brought terrorism to our shores. If it is allowed to continue or expand, there is no guarantee that it will not return here again. If the scenario involving the fall of Pakistan becomes a reality, everyone between Portland ME and Portland OR will be hiding under their beds.

The Bush administration has proven to be allergic to any negotiations or cease-fire talks that would come close to returning matters in the Middle East to what they call the "status quo." While it is true that a cessation of violence at this point would amount to little more than putting the pin back in the grenade, this is far more preferable course than allowing the grenade to go off.

This isn't just about them, over there. This is about us, over here, as well. The nightmare scenarios here must be avoided at all costs.

(William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence)