According to the New York Times, Lebanon is now becoming a militant haven. This is the end result of last summer's battle between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel, with Washington's complete backing, not only handed a major victory to Hezbollah but delivered a crushing blow to Lebanon's fledgling democracy. For no good reason at all, Israeli jets and warships set about demolishing the country's infrastructure - airports, power plants, even military installations. Their lunatic leaders - Olmert and Bush - got it in their pea brains that inflicting great hardship on the Lebanese people and their legitimate government would turn them against Hezbollah.
What happened? Israel made the Lebanese government, at the time our best hope for peace in that country, look ineffectual and irrelevant. It was Hezbollah that was seen to be fighting for all of Lebanon against Israel. It was Hezbollah that drove the Israelis back. It was Hezbollah that claimed victory - over Israel and over the very government of Lebanon.
"Today, the Lebanese are increasingly divided by rolls of razor wire spread across roads and wrapped around buildings and homes. They are separated by military checkpoints that tie up traffic. Nearly a dozen members of Parliament have left the country, fearful they will be killed. Some United Nations officials have moved from their heavily guarded offices in the center of Beirut to smaller, less obvious space deep behind a sea of razor wire.
"But Lebanese officials say they have had shootouts with several clusters of foreign Islamic militants, some of whom had clear ties with Mr. Abssi’s group. On June 7 a car-bomb factory was discovered in the Bekaa Valley in which two Mercedeses and a Jeep were being prepared for explosives. The operation was run by a Saudi and two Syrians who had fought in Iraq and their technique had some sophistication, including the use of fiberglass shields in a possible attempt to hide the explosives from detection devices, two Lebanese Army officials said.
"'We have no sleeper cells in Lebanon,' said a Lebanese Army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'They are all waking up.'
"Opposition leaders are pessimistic about a deal being reached that could end the political impasse. 'If we don’t form a national unity government from now until September, I think we are heading to chaos,' said Trad Hamadeh, who stepped down as labor minister last fall and is associated with Hezbollah. 'The Constitution will no longer be implemented. There will be no cabinet able to control and run the country. This means the country will be in a state of no laws, the loss of the system.'
"That is just the kind of state in which militant groups could thrive."
And, for those of us at home, let's remember who gave his unequivocal, unqualified backing to this madness - noneother than our very own furious leader, Stephen Harper. He's every bit as much a dolt as Bush or Olmert.
5 comments:
A central authority of a state must have a monopoly on the use of violence. When Hezbollah acts as a parallel quasi-governing authority in the southern part of the country with its own armed milita apart from the central government, is it any wonder we see internal problems? UN Resolution 1559 still isn't being respected if Hezbollah is active and operational.
I think it's disengenuous to aseert that Bush and Olmert believed that inflicting suffering on the Lebanese population was a means of turning them against Hezbollah. Indeed there were cases where Lebanese blamed Hezbollah for starting the conflict after hostilites had ended, so much so to the point that Iran had to funnel monies to Hezbollah in order to pay compensation to those who lost homes and possessions. The basic fact is that while Israel went out of its way to avoid civilian deaths, Hezbollah did the exact opposite with indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel and hiding its weapons and terrorists among the civilian populations. Israel nor any other nation should ever be given carte blanche to do whatever it wants regarding warfare, but when one examines the conduct of those involved as far as this conflict is concerned, this mess was caused by Hezbollah, not Israel or the US.
Look Matt, unexploded Israeli cluster bomblets still litter the Lebanese countryside. Your claim that Israel went out of its way to avoid civilian casualties is flat out, unadulterated bullshit. If you want to indulge in fantasies, please take that somewhere else. And, please, don't give me your skewed take on what is disengenuous.
I don't think you can pin Lebanon's mess on bush in the slightest. It was just as much of a shit hole when Clinton was around? why not blame him? or how about the Lebanese themselves? just a thought
No, Manuel, you're missing the point that Lebanon had just managed to put together a functioning democracy. Hezbollah was a minority party but there was at least a glimmer of hope of a moderate government. Israel went to war against Hezbollah but then, quite unnecessarily, extended the war to all of Lebanon with an air and sea campaign that wrecked vital infrastructure and undermined the nascent government. It was a blunder of great proportions and our very own Harpo stood up and saluted it.
Post a Comment