Now that Reutergate has caught our attention, it's informative to look at certain other questionable aspects of Reuters policy.
For example, Reuters is famous for refusing to use the word "terrorist" in its copy or headlines.
Two years ago, Reuters made an amazing admission about this practice. I missed it at the time, but now it takes on greater significance. I had always thought that the failure of Reuters to use the "t" word was based on some abstract principle of "innocent till proven guilty," combined with an incomprehensible bias in favor of those in the Mideast with grievances against the West.
But it turns out I was wrong. Reuters's motivations are not even that lofty. They could best be described under the general rubric "CYA."
Oh, but let me present it in Reuters's own words--that is, the words of Reuter's managing editor David A. Schlesinger. Back in September of 2004 when CanWest, the owners of a large Canadian newspaper chain, decided to substitute "terrorists" for "militants" in Reuters's mealy-mouthed articles, Schlesinger said CanWest would be required to remove the Reuters label from such demonizing pieces:
"Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline."
Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations.
"My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity," he said.
So, it's Eason Jordan all over again. The words "editorial integrity" used to mean telling the truth; at least I thought so. But truth? Fahgetabout it, says Reuters. What does matter, instead? Press access: Reuters's ability to bring you all the news that's not fit to print.
How has it come to this? Oh, believe me, I understand the need for journalists to live to write another day. But if telling the truth is too dangerous, then it's time to get out and tell it from another place.
Because you've outlived your usefulness as journalists if you compromise that much. You've become the tools of terrorists--and I doubt even Mr. Schlesinger had that particular goal in mind when he chose his profession.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Monday, August 07, 2006
Israel and Lebanon: let's play dominoes
To some, the war in Lebanon and Israel may look like just another skirmish in that long-running "cycle-of-violence" film. To others--and I count myself among them--something quite different is going on. And it's a different "something" than has been going on until now in that region, and that "something" is the growing power and reach of Iran.
Those who support Israel have always seen the Mideast wars as fights for Israel's existence against those ranged to destroy it. But Israel always prevailed. Its enemies seemed unable to fight effectively, or to be in disarray, despite periodic help from powers such as the once-mighty USSR. Those who prefer to think Israel culpable--and even evil--still saw it as powerful compared to its enemies. In fact, that's one of the reasons those people supported those enemies--in sympathy for what was perceived as their weakness and downtroddenness. It certainly couldn't have been their glorious devotion to human rights.
At the beginning of this war many people (including myself) wrote of the Lebanese people as being held hostage by Hezbollah, as having been reluctantly dragged into this fight against their will. But, although that is certainly true for many Lebanese, it's become more apparent that there are a vast number of Hezbollah supporters in that country.
What else has become apparent? The extent to which the Lebanese government has been coopted by Hezbollah, and by its masters Syria and especially Iran.
Take a look at Alexandra's an excellent post on the subject. Iran is behind a great deal of the turmoil in Iraq, via al Sadr; it is behind Hezbollah. And Iran has declared itself boldly: it is dedicated to the destruction of the great and little Satans, the US and Israel.
So here's another domino theory for you, updated: Iran is bent on hegemony, and Lebanon is a pawn in the game. Take a stand here, and it might help stop Iran. Give in, and more than Lebanon may be lost. Think Czechslovakia in World War II.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that we are now in an atomic age. Previous tyrants never had access to destructive means of this magnitude. But now they do. This particular marriage of tyranny, religious megalomania, and nuclear physics has never been consummated before. But get ready: that horrific menage a trois is about to take its vows.
At the moment, Israel is fighting for its life. Some care about that, some don't. Some would cheer if the entire country were wiped off the face of the earth. But make no mistake. The words of Eric Hoffer, written in 1968, resonate with eerie prescience:
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
Is this another siege of Vienna, one of those pivot points in history? If so, let's fervently hope it pivots in the right direction.
And the first step towards that goal is recognition that this is not a minor skirmish. Israel is fighting for its life, but not only for its life. It's fighting for the West and the Enlightenment against formidable and implacable forces of darkness and religious tyranny.
Language like that is easy to mock in our postmodern world. So very apocalyptic, so over-the-top, so un-PC! But ignore and minimize this situation at your peril. Some day, the bell may toll for thee.
[ADDENDUM: Siniora, a man without a country.]
Those who support Israel have always seen the Mideast wars as fights for Israel's existence against those ranged to destroy it. But Israel always prevailed. Its enemies seemed unable to fight effectively, or to be in disarray, despite periodic help from powers such as the once-mighty USSR. Those who prefer to think Israel culpable--and even evil--still saw it as powerful compared to its enemies. In fact, that's one of the reasons those people supported those enemies--in sympathy for what was perceived as their weakness and downtroddenness. It certainly couldn't have been their glorious devotion to human rights.
At the beginning of this war many people (including myself) wrote of the Lebanese people as being held hostage by Hezbollah, as having been reluctantly dragged into this fight against their will. But, although that is certainly true for many Lebanese, it's become more apparent that there are a vast number of Hezbollah supporters in that country.
What else has become apparent? The extent to which the Lebanese government has been coopted by Hezbollah, and by its masters Syria and especially Iran.
Take a look at Alexandra's an excellent post on the subject. Iran is behind a great deal of the turmoil in Iraq, via al Sadr; it is behind Hezbollah. And Iran has declared itself boldly: it is dedicated to the destruction of the great and little Satans, the US and Israel.
So here's another domino theory for you, updated: Iran is bent on hegemony, and Lebanon is a pawn in the game. Take a stand here, and it might help stop Iran. Give in, and more than Lebanon may be lost. Think Czechslovakia in World War II.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that we are now in an atomic age. Previous tyrants never had access to destructive means of this magnitude. But now they do. This particular marriage of tyranny, religious megalomania, and nuclear physics has never been consummated before. But get ready: that horrific menage a trois is about to take its vows.
At the moment, Israel is fighting for its life. Some care about that, some don't. Some would cheer if the entire country were wiped off the face of the earth. But make no mistake. The words of Eric Hoffer, written in 1968, resonate with eerie prescience:
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
Is this another siege of Vienna, one of those pivot points in history? If so, let's fervently hope it pivots in the right direction.
And the first step towards that goal is recognition that this is not a minor skirmish. Israel is fighting for its life, but not only for its life. It's fighting for the West and the Enlightenment against formidable and implacable forces of darkness and religious tyranny.
Language like that is easy to mock in our postmodern world. So very apocalyptic, so over-the-top, so un-PC! But ignore and minimize this situation at your peril. Some day, the bell may toll for thee.
[ADDENDUM: Siniora, a man without a country.]
Reuters rides again
The plot thickens.
[ADDENDUM: Could it be that Reuters is finally concerned about its own dwindling reputation, if not the state of the Western World? Perhaps.
Reuters also said today it had put in place a tighter editing procedure for images of the Middle East conflict to ensure that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk, according to a Reuters spokeswoman.
Now if only they could do the same for their editorial policy, and their headlines.]
[ADDENDUM: Could it be that Reuters is finally concerned about its own dwindling reputation, if not the state of the Western World? Perhaps.
Reuters also said today it had put in place a tighter editing procedure for images of the Middle East conflict to ensure that no photograph from the region would be transmitted to subscribers without review by the most senior editor on the Reuters Global Pictures Desk, according to a Reuters spokeswoman.
Now if only they could do the same for their editorial policy, and their headlines.]
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Reutergate: the blogosphere fact-checks your ass; what do you fact-check?
Kate of Small Dead Animals has given the story the perfect name: Reutergate.
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (he of "Rathergate" and the superimposed forged memos fame) has caught Reuters red-handed in allowing a Photoshopped image of the war in Lebanon to pass muster. Once again, the blogosphere is living up to its unofficial motto: "we fact-check your ass."
Reuters--unlike Rather--has admitted the fraud and removed the photo. And perhaps the most interesting factoid about the entire story is the identity of the photographer, one Adnan Hajj, who was also the Reuters photographer at Qana.
The original "gate"--Watergate--was huge news at the time. But as the years have rolled by, and nearly every scandal has been given the "gate" appellation, most of them have been of little or no consequence.
Reutergate should be important, but not just because of this particular incident--which, in isolation, would not matter a whole lot. Its importance lies in the fact that it's part of a larger pattern in which once-respected news agencies and newspapers have become compromised. Not only do they regularly violate the cardinal rule of journalism--fact-checking and photo-checking: in short, truth--but they have become the willing or unwilling, ignorant or knowledgeable, tools of the enemy (see this).
Second Draft is a website devoted to explaining how the media has disseminated the lies of "Pallywood" around the globe, creating a fictional reality that has influenced perceptions about the Middle East, especially in Europe, where the most famous Pallywood oeuvre, "Caught in the Crossfire" (otherwise known as "the death of Mohamed al Durah"), was widely publicized and fueled anti-Israel sentiment. It's since become clear that in Qana the press coverage of the aftermath was at least partly a Pallywood production, as well.
I wonder how much coverage this incident will get outside of the blogosphere. And the blogs, unfortunately, are preaching mainly to the choir. Just now, for instance, I Googled "reuters photoshop lebanon," and all that came up in the way of news stories was an article in the Jerusalem Post, and a short one at that.
It remains to be seen if the MSM will even see this as a wakeup call to vet their stringers better, or whether it will end with the suspension of Adnan Hajj. But it's about much more than Hajj; the truth is that this photo wasn't even a good example of Photoshopping. As many observers have pointed out, it was crude and obvious and should have been caught--if anyone had been looking.
The same, of course, was true of the Dan Rather memos. Anyone familiar with the difference between a typewriter and a word processor could--and should--have seen the forgery. But one had to have been looking. And the press has stopped looking.
So it's not just about stringers, although that's part of it. Whether or not it's also about bias (and I happen to believe it is), at the very least it's about standards. The MSM needs to raise them, and to fact-check and photocheck and proofread itself in a new way. It needs to realize that it is now one of the major fronts in the war in which we are currently engaged, and that it's being co-opted by forces that are not only the enemy, but are the enemy of a free press as well.
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (he of "Rathergate" and the superimposed forged memos fame) has caught Reuters red-handed in allowing a Photoshopped image of the war in Lebanon to pass muster. Once again, the blogosphere is living up to its unofficial motto: "we fact-check your ass."
Reuters--unlike Rather--has admitted the fraud and removed the photo. And perhaps the most interesting factoid about the entire story is the identity of the photographer, one Adnan Hajj, who was also the Reuters photographer at Qana.
The original "gate"--Watergate--was huge news at the time. But as the years have rolled by, and nearly every scandal has been given the "gate" appellation, most of them have been of little or no consequence.
Reutergate should be important, but not just because of this particular incident--which, in isolation, would not matter a whole lot. Its importance lies in the fact that it's part of a larger pattern in which once-respected news agencies and newspapers have become compromised. Not only do they regularly violate the cardinal rule of journalism--fact-checking and photo-checking: in short, truth--but they have become the willing or unwilling, ignorant or knowledgeable, tools of the enemy (see this).
Second Draft is a website devoted to explaining how the media has disseminated the lies of "Pallywood" around the globe, creating a fictional reality that has influenced perceptions about the Middle East, especially in Europe, where the most famous Pallywood oeuvre, "Caught in the Crossfire" (otherwise known as "the death of Mohamed al Durah"), was widely publicized and fueled anti-Israel sentiment. It's since become clear that in Qana the press coverage of the aftermath was at least partly a Pallywood production, as well.
I wonder how much coverage this incident will get outside of the blogosphere. And the blogs, unfortunately, are preaching mainly to the choir. Just now, for instance, I Googled "reuters photoshop lebanon," and all that came up in the way of news stories was an article in the Jerusalem Post, and a short one at that.
It remains to be seen if the MSM will even see this as a wakeup call to vet their stringers better, or whether it will end with the suspension of Adnan Hajj. But it's about much more than Hajj; the truth is that this photo wasn't even a good example of Photoshopping. As many observers have pointed out, it was crude and obvious and should have been caught--if anyone had been looking.
The same, of course, was true of the Dan Rather memos. Anyone familiar with the difference between a typewriter and a word processor could--and should--have seen the forgery. But one had to have been looking. And the press has stopped looking.
So it's not just about stringers, although that's part of it. Whether or not it's also about bias (and I happen to believe it is), at the very least it's about standards. The MSM needs to raise them, and to fact-check and photocheck and proofread itself in a new way. It needs to realize that it is now one of the major fronts in the war in which we are currently engaged, and that it's being co-opted by forces that are not only the enemy, but are the enemy of a free press as well.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Understanding the 30s: a new Serenity Prayer
Victor Davis Hanson has written a compelling piece on the current moral malaise in the West and its pernicious effects. It's a topic many of us have been hammering home lately, although Hanson--as usual--says it especially well.
Hanson makes a point I've thought about many times recently, which is that previously it seemed difficult to understand how so many people of the 1930s could be blind to what was happening in Germany--what it meant, what it would lead to, and why it was so important to stop Hitler before his power had grown.
How could they have not seen, not known? Ah, we would have been so much smarter than they were, if faced with the same circumstances!
But lately, along with Hanson, I'm having no difficulty imagining the mindset of the 30s, and how it must have felt to watch, as Churchill put it, The Gathering Storm.
And I keep thinking of the poet William Butler Yeats's masterpiece "The Second Coming" (written in 1919 after World War I), which presciently foretold the events of the 30s, as Yeats himself acknowledged. I've quoted it before, I'm quoting it now, and I probably will quote it again, with emphasis on two especially important and famous lines:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Perhaps those two lines expresses a common truth of human nature, one that comes to the fore when a terrible danger is building: those doing the threatening are passionate and intense, and the majority of those reacting are confused and in denial. For who among us wants to face a truth so harsh, to look true evil in the eye and understand that to fight it will require great suffering on the part of innocent people?
But evildoers (in Bush's famous and much-maligned phrase) don't care about the anguish of innocents--although they pretend to, if it suits their propaganda purposes. Whereas the enemies of evil do care, and very much.
That's part of what gives many of those who would combat evil their lack of conviction: the need, at times, to fight fire with fire, to kill to prevent worse killing from happening, is something that is very difficult for compassionate people to accept.
It's almost as though we need a new version of the Serenity Prayer:
God grant us the serenity to change those things that can be changed with talk and diplomacy, the courage to fight for those things that require it, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Hanson makes a point I've thought about many times recently, which is that previously it seemed difficult to understand how so many people of the 1930s could be blind to what was happening in Germany--what it meant, what it would lead to, and why it was so important to stop Hitler before his power had grown.
How could they have not seen, not known? Ah, we would have been so much smarter than they were, if faced with the same circumstances!
But lately, along with Hanson, I'm having no difficulty imagining the mindset of the 30s, and how it must have felt to watch, as Churchill put it, The Gathering Storm.
And I keep thinking of the poet William Butler Yeats's masterpiece "The Second Coming" (written in 1919 after World War I), which presciently foretold the events of the 30s, as Yeats himself acknowledged. I've quoted it before, I'm quoting it now, and I probably will quote it again, with emphasis on two especially important and famous lines:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Perhaps those two lines expresses a common truth of human nature, one that comes to the fore when a terrible danger is building: those doing the threatening are passionate and intense, and the majority of those reacting are confused and in denial. For who among us wants to face a truth so harsh, to look true evil in the eye and understand that to fight it will require great suffering on the part of innocent people?
But evildoers (in Bush's famous and much-maligned phrase) don't care about the anguish of innocents--although they pretend to, if it suits their propaganda purposes. Whereas the enemies of evil do care, and very much.
That's part of what gives many of those who would combat evil their lack of conviction: the need, at times, to fight fire with fire, to kill to prevent worse killing from happening, is something that is very difficult for compassionate people to accept.
It's almost as though we need a new version of the Serenity Prayer:
God grant us the serenity to change those things that can be changed with talk and diplomacy, the courage to fight for those things that require it, and the wisdom to know the difference.
It bears repeating: Eric Hoffer on Israel
It was written in 1968, and perhaps you are familiar with it: Eric Hoffer's piece on what he referred to as the "peculiar" position of Israel.
Hoffer's essay is not only still astoundingly pertinent today, but it's also notable for its brevity and clarity. So I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to present it here in its entirety, as food for thought.
ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION
By Eric Hoffer (LA Times 5/26/68)
The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June, he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts and Jewish resources.
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
[Via Pajamas Media.]
[ADDENDUM: Change "the Arabs and their Russian backers" in Hoffer's essay to "the Arabs and Iranians and their (fill in the blanks) backers."]
Hoffer's essay is not only still astoundingly pertinent today, but it's also notable for its brevity and clarity. So I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to present it here in its entirety, as food for thought.
ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION
By Eric Hoffer (LA Times 5/26/68)
The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.
But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June, he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts and Jewish resources.
Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general. I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us.
[Via Pajamas Media.]
[ADDENDUM: Change "the Arabs and their Russian backers" in Hoffer's essay to "the Arabs and Iranians and their (fill in the blanks) backers."]
Friday, August 04, 2006
Israel: Athens or Sparta or Masada
Here's an astounding article (via Belmont Club) about three of the four founders of the Israeli peace movement (called "Four Mothers") that was largely responsible for the shift in Israeli attitudes leading to the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
Revisiting the views of these women now, six years later, provides a sort of "where are they now?" of the mind.
In the 1990's, they had lost children fighting the war in Lebanon. They felt that the war was being waged to little or no good, and became devoted to a withdrawal of forces from the country and to the cause of peace. These women not only gave peace a chance, they believed in it with a fervent zeal, they lived it and fought for it (metaphorically speaking), and thought they won it.
But read what they have to say now. It's not only a story about the process of how minds and opinions change (one of the themes of this blog), it's one of the best examples I've found of the fact that Israelis see the current war as a fight for their very survival--a grim necessity offering no alternatives.
One of the women, the eloquent Zohara Antebi, says of her previous commitment:
So if you are saying now that I was wrong when I believed that it would be possible to ensure far fewer casualties and far more quiet after leaving Lebanon, you're right. I was wrong. I'm afraid of those who are incapable of saying 'I was wrong' in the first person. I lived on the border, in Malkiya, and I saw the small tobacco plots of the farmers in southern Lebanon, and I believed that prosperity on both sides of the border would ensure quiet. That Nasrallah would aspire for his people to have a good life. In that I was wrong. I was definitely wrong.
And she says of the present war, and how it followed that previous withdrawal she helped engineer:
And leaving Lebanon then was not a military move. It was a civilian move. It was meant to enable us to be Athens, not Sparta. And precisely because of that there is now no choice. Now we have to change the diskette. This time we are fighting for our home. This time we are fighting so that we will have lives here.
Not all the women regret that initial withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, nor connect it inexorably to the present war. But all are united in believing that the present war is absolutely necessary. As one of them, Orna Shimoni, says, it's an "existential war," fought for their very lives. The enemy has made it clear that the goal is to eliminate Israel. And Shimoni, who has always been affiliated with the left, and who abhors killing with all her being, is now angry at her former comrades in the left in Israel. Since she sees this war as a fight for Israel's very life, and the consequence of losing would be the slaughter of the Israelis, she sees the left as aiding and abetting that slaughter.
The article is eloquent about the intensity of the suffering the deaths of Israeli soldiers cause the Israeli people. Israel is a small country with universal conscription, and Jews are famously known--as many Arab commenters so succinctly put it--to "love life." The Jewish mother is legendary in her protective maternal instincts, so much so that in the US she's always good for a laugh in that regard--but just imagine those instincts coupled with the constant threat of losing so many young adult children in war.
The earliest wars in Israel, however, were very clearly for survival, and the mothers of the soldiers who fought in those wars were--if not actually Spartan--part of the tough and pioneering group who founded that country. The mothers of today's soldiers and the soldiers of the previous decade came of age in a different Israeli climate-- one that, if not exactly secure, was at least more secure, or perceived as such. As Antebi puts it, it was more Athenian and less Spartan.
The Lebanese occupation was ultimately perceived by that generation as unnecessary and even counterproductive and wrong, and the deaths as simply not worth it--much like the Vietnamese War came to be perceived here in the late 60s and early 70s, and much as the Afghan-Soviet War came to be perceived by the Russians. Thus, the 2000 pullout from Lebanon was widely supported throughout Israel.
But the events of recent years have taken away the dream of Oslo and the Camp David era. It's no longer about the Palestinians, either; not this war. This war is about Iran and its plan to dominate the Arab world, a plan that does not include the existence of Israel. And this is true whatever Israel does or does not do, whatever steps it takes or does not take--short of the entire country reenacting the legend of Masada and committing mass suicide.
[ADDENDUM: Listen to this podcast, an interview with Caroline Glick, available through Politics Central at Pajamas Media. Her contention is that Israel must win this war not only for its own sake, but to save the country of Lebanon from becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran.]
Revisiting the views of these women now, six years later, provides a sort of "where are they now?" of the mind.
In the 1990's, they had lost children fighting the war in Lebanon. They felt that the war was being waged to little or no good, and became devoted to a withdrawal of forces from the country and to the cause of peace. These women not only gave peace a chance, they believed in it with a fervent zeal, they lived it and fought for it (metaphorically speaking), and thought they won it.
But read what they have to say now. It's not only a story about the process of how minds and opinions change (one of the themes of this blog), it's one of the best examples I've found of the fact that Israelis see the current war as a fight for their very survival--a grim necessity offering no alternatives.
One of the women, the eloquent Zohara Antebi, says of her previous commitment:
So if you are saying now that I was wrong when I believed that it would be possible to ensure far fewer casualties and far more quiet after leaving Lebanon, you're right. I was wrong. I'm afraid of those who are incapable of saying 'I was wrong' in the first person. I lived on the border, in Malkiya, and I saw the small tobacco plots of the farmers in southern Lebanon, and I believed that prosperity on both sides of the border would ensure quiet. That Nasrallah would aspire for his people to have a good life. In that I was wrong. I was definitely wrong.
And she says of the present war, and how it followed that previous withdrawal she helped engineer:
And leaving Lebanon then was not a military move. It was a civilian move. It was meant to enable us to be Athens, not Sparta. And precisely because of that there is now no choice. Now we have to change the diskette. This time we are fighting for our home. This time we are fighting so that we will have lives here.
Not all the women regret that initial withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, nor connect it inexorably to the present war. But all are united in believing that the present war is absolutely necessary. As one of them, Orna Shimoni, says, it's an "existential war," fought for their very lives. The enemy has made it clear that the goal is to eliminate Israel. And Shimoni, who has always been affiliated with the left, and who abhors killing with all her being, is now angry at her former comrades in the left in Israel. Since she sees this war as a fight for Israel's very life, and the consequence of losing would be the slaughter of the Israelis, she sees the left as aiding and abetting that slaughter.
The article is eloquent about the intensity of the suffering the deaths of Israeli soldiers cause the Israeli people. Israel is a small country with universal conscription, and Jews are famously known--as many Arab commenters so succinctly put it--to "love life." The Jewish mother is legendary in her protective maternal instincts, so much so that in the US she's always good for a laugh in that regard--but just imagine those instincts coupled with the constant threat of losing so many young adult children in war.
The earliest wars in Israel, however, were very clearly for survival, and the mothers of the soldiers who fought in those wars were--if not actually Spartan--part of the tough and pioneering group who founded that country. The mothers of today's soldiers and the soldiers of the previous decade came of age in a different Israeli climate-- one that, if not exactly secure, was at least more secure, or perceived as such. As Antebi puts it, it was more Athenian and less Spartan.
The Lebanese occupation was ultimately perceived by that generation as unnecessary and even counterproductive and wrong, and the deaths as simply not worth it--much like the Vietnamese War came to be perceived here in the late 60s and early 70s, and much as the Afghan-Soviet War came to be perceived by the Russians. Thus, the 2000 pullout from Lebanon was widely supported throughout Israel.
But the events of recent years have taken away the dream of Oslo and the Camp David era. It's no longer about the Palestinians, either; not this war. This war is about Iran and its plan to dominate the Arab world, a plan that does not include the existence of Israel. And this is true whatever Israel does or does not do, whatever steps it takes or does not take--short of the entire country reenacting the legend of Masada and committing mass suicide.
[ADDENDUM: Listen to this podcast, an interview with Caroline Glick, available through Politics Central at Pajamas Media. Her contention is that Israel must win this war not only for its own sake, but to save the country of Lebanon from becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran.]
Kind to the cruel: how Khomeini's life was spared
[NOTE: I'm aware that the following information comes from Wikipedia, a somewhat suspect source at times. I can't independently correborate or refute the information, and I'm wondering whether anyone else can find another more reliable source that can shed light on its truth or falsehood.]
Recently I happened to come across this little tidbit from history. Read it and weep:
In 1963, [Khomeini] publicly denounced the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was thereby imprisoned for 8 months, and upon his release in 1964, he made a similar denunciation of the United States. It is well known that General Hassan Pakravan saved Ayatollah Khomeini’s life in 1963. Khomeini was condemned to death but General Hassan Pakravan felt that his execution would anger the common people of Iran. He knew that the most influential portion of the population was not its elite. He presented his argument to the shah. Once he had convinced the shah to allow him to find a way out, he called on Ayatollah Mohammad-Kazem Shariatmadari, one of the senior religious leaders of Iran, and asked for his help. [Ayatollah Shariatmadari] suggested that Khomeini be made an ayatollah. So, they made a religious decree which was taken by General Pakravan and Seyyed Jalal Tehrani to the Shah. After the Iranian Revolution, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed.
Another illustration of the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished, as well as a demonstration of the wisdom of the ancient saying:
Those who are kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind.
Recently I happened to come across this little tidbit from history. Read it and weep:
In 1963, [Khomeini] publicly denounced the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was thereby imprisoned for 8 months, and upon his release in 1964, he made a similar denunciation of the United States. It is well known that General Hassan Pakravan saved Ayatollah Khomeini’s life in 1963. Khomeini was condemned to death but General Hassan Pakravan felt that his execution would anger the common people of Iran. He knew that the most influential portion of the population was not its elite. He presented his argument to the shah. Once he had convinced the shah to allow him to find a way out, he called on Ayatollah Mohammad-Kazem Shariatmadari, one of the senior religious leaders of Iran, and asked for his help. [Ayatollah Shariatmadari] suggested that Khomeini be made an ayatollah. So, they made a religious decree which was taken by General Pakravan and Seyyed Jalal Tehrani to the Shah. After the Iranian Revolution, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed.
Another illustration of the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished, as well as a demonstration of the wisdom of the ancient saying:
Those who are kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
That's Entertainment: the seamless web of war and propaganda and media
I've been thinking and writing about the war in Lebanon lately almost to the exclusion of other topics. In this I'm not alone; much of the media and the blogosphere is focused on the conflict, and rightly so.
And much of this discussion and thought isn't just about the war itself--strategy and battles and goals--but on the coverage of the action.
At first this fact puzzled me a bit, including my own emphasis on the media coverage--after all, isn't the conflict and what's behind it far more important than how the MSM chooses to frame it? The answer is yes, it should be--but the latter isn't just an unimportant side issue, either. It is absolutely essential to the war itself and can be instrumental in determining its outcome.
Morale, will, the perception of how essential it is to win a certain war and the justness of the cause--all have been part of war since time immemorial. Leaders have always had to inspire their armies; and now, in democracies, they have to inspire their people as well.
Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, and certainly prior to the 60s, the media used to be both less ubiquitous and more supportive of government efforts. During the Vietnam War, the media found its power as an antiwar force and a gadfly (see this for my views on the matter).
And since then, the media has never looked back. The irony is that the war in Vietnam probably was far more tangential to our interests than the present wars in Iraq or Lebanon, which are vital. But the media, like a junkie on a high, keeps going back for a fix of action and sensation and visual effect and almost kneejerk criticism of the US and Israel, without realizing the destructive potential of its own actions.
And those elements--the pursuit of sensation and effect--have become, I believe, at least as potent a motivator for the media's actions as any possible political bias of journalists. Perhaps even more.
On this point, Betsy Newmark cites an article by Noah Pollak that appeared today in National Review, "Video Made the Terrorist Star." In the piece, Pollak comments on the decline of "serious journalism," which was embedded in context and history and facts, and the ascendance of journalism as entertainment, designed to entertain and stimulate, looking for interesting "stories" and personal dramas.
Pollak doesn't even see journalists as especially biased, but rather as ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and intent on telling telegenic stories. And in doing so they have become, as he points out, codependent enablers of terrorists themselves.
In a far less important arena, I've noticed the same thing in coverage of sports events such as the Olympics. Over the years, fewer and fewer minutes were spent just showing us the unadorned action, and more and more time was devoted to fancy features about the personal lives of the athletes, usually highlighting tearjerker soap-opera type details designed to make it seem all the more "up close and personal." Pretty soon the sport became almost tangential to the story.
Well, it doesn't matter much with the Olympics, does it? I liked them better the old way, but who cares, really?
But war is different, and it matters, terribly. Because the truth is that the stupidity and short-sightedness of the media has worked to change the face of war. When, as Pollak puts it, "Hezbollah does not have a military strategy; it has a media strategy that so far has been chillingly effective," we understand that his words are true: Hezbollah doesn't need a military strategy. Military strategy has become increasingly irrelevant in today's modern, limited wars, every sensational detail of which is beamed around the globe at lightening speed.
Of course, if Israel ever decided to pursue a goal of all-out, total, war, the issue might become irrelevant. Israel could utterly destroy Hezbollah and Lebanon and even Iran if it so desired. But that has not happened so far, and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Iran are well aware--despite their demonizing of Israel as Satanic--that it's unlikely to happen.
So the media, pursuing its own selfish ends, has become the handmaiden of terrorists. And, in its shortsighted pursuit of sensation and "stories," the media could well be a participant in sowing the seeds of its own destruction, since the protection of a free press is not exactly the goal of Islamic jihadis.
Ironic, indeed.
And much of this discussion and thought isn't just about the war itself--strategy and battles and goals--but on the coverage of the action.
At first this fact puzzled me a bit, including my own emphasis on the media coverage--after all, isn't the conflict and what's behind it far more important than how the MSM chooses to frame it? The answer is yes, it should be--but the latter isn't just an unimportant side issue, either. It is absolutely essential to the war itself and can be instrumental in determining its outcome.
Morale, will, the perception of how essential it is to win a certain war and the justness of the cause--all have been part of war since time immemorial. Leaders have always had to inspire their armies; and now, in democracies, they have to inspire their people as well.
Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, and certainly prior to the 60s, the media used to be both less ubiquitous and more supportive of government efforts. During the Vietnam War, the media found its power as an antiwar force and a gadfly (see this for my views on the matter).
And since then, the media has never looked back. The irony is that the war in Vietnam probably was far more tangential to our interests than the present wars in Iraq or Lebanon, which are vital. But the media, like a junkie on a high, keeps going back for a fix of action and sensation and visual effect and almost kneejerk criticism of the US and Israel, without realizing the destructive potential of its own actions.
And those elements--the pursuit of sensation and effect--have become, I believe, at least as potent a motivator for the media's actions as any possible political bias of journalists. Perhaps even more.
On this point, Betsy Newmark cites an article by Noah Pollak that appeared today in National Review, "Video Made the Terrorist Star." In the piece, Pollak comments on the decline of "serious journalism," which was embedded in context and history and facts, and the ascendance of journalism as entertainment, designed to entertain and stimulate, looking for interesting "stories" and personal dramas.
Pollak doesn't even see journalists as especially biased, but rather as ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and intent on telling telegenic stories. And in doing so they have become, as he points out, codependent enablers of terrorists themselves.
In a far less important arena, I've noticed the same thing in coverage of sports events such as the Olympics. Over the years, fewer and fewer minutes were spent just showing us the unadorned action, and more and more time was devoted to fancy features about the personal lives of the athletes, usually highlighting tearjerker soap-opera type details designed to make it seem all the more "up close and personal." Pretty soon the sport became almost tangential to the story.
Well, it doesn't matter much with the Olympics, does it? I liked them better the old way, but who cares, really?
But war is different, and it matters, terribly. Because the truth is that the stupidity and short-sightedness of the media has worked to change the face of war. When, as Pollak puts it, "Hezbollah does not have a military strategy; it has a media strategy that so far has been chillingly effective," we understand that his words are true: Hezbollah doesn't need a military strategy. Military strategy has become increasingly irrelevant in today's modern, limited wars, every sensational detail of which is beamed around the globe at lightening speed.
Of course, if Israel ever decided to pursue a goal of all-out, total, war, the issue might become irrelevant. Israel could utterly destroy Hezbollah and Lebanon and even Iran if it so desired. But that has not happened so far, and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Iran are well aware--despite their demonizing of Israel as Satanic--that it's unlikely to happen.
So the media, pursuing its own selfish ends, has become the handmaiden of terrorists. And, in its shortsighted pursuit of sensation and "stories," the media could well be a participant in sowing the seeds of its own destruction, since the protection of a free press is not exactly the goal of Islamic jihadis.
Ironic, indeed.
The definition of joy, Palestinian-style
It's hard to comment adequately on a tale that resembles something from the Onion.
This story says a great deal, however, about how the thirst for destruction that's become commonplace in Palestinian society has joined the homicidal and suicidal impulses so closely that the two have become almost as one.
And, in line with that fact, I want to call your attention to an extraordinary article by Richard Landes.
Landes begins with an exploration of the cult of death in Arab Moslem society, ties it into the current war in Lebanon and in particular Qana, and describes the role the unwitting Western press plays in promoting that cult.
His essay is so rich with thought that, once again, I suggest you read the whole thing.
One particularly striking example he gives of the press's ineptitude (or malevolence--take your pick) is the following truncated quote by journalist William Orme of the New York Times.
Israelis cite as one egregious example [of Arab hated of Jews] a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers. “Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews,” proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings.
It sounds fairly innocuous: "Jews are Jews." Who could object to that? What's all the fuss about?
Here are the Sheik's actual words--and those that followed them--in his televised "sermon" (and it ain't no Sermon on the Mount, let me tell you):
The Jews are the Jews. Whether Labor or Likud the Jews are Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They must be butchered and must be killed… The Jews are like a spring as long as you step on it with your foot it doesn’t move. But if you lift your foot from the spring, it hurts you and punishes you… It is forbidden to have mercy in your hearts for the Jews in any place and in any land. Make war on them any place that you find yourself. Any place that you meet them, kill them.
This utterly egregious example of misuse of the truncated quote can't possibly be the result of ignorance or incompetence. So what is it? Stupidity or malevolence? Take your pick.
This story says a great deal, however, about how the thirst for destruction that's become commonplace in Palestinian society has joined the homicidal and suicidal impulses so closely that the two have become almost as one.
And, in line with that fact, I want to call your attention to an extraordinary article by Richard Landes.
Landes begins with an exploration of the cult of death in Arab Moslem society, ties it into the current war in Lebanon and in particular Qana, and describes the role the unwitting Western press plays in promoting that cult.
His essay is so rich with thought that, once again, I suggest you read the whole thing.
One particularly striking example he gives of the press's ineptitude (or malevolence--take your pick) is the following truncated quote by journalist William Orme of the New York Times.
Israelis cite as one egregious example [of Arab hated of Jews] a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers. “Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews,” proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings.
It sounds fairly innocuous: "Jews are Jews." Who could object to that? What's all the fuss about?
Here are the Sheik's actual words--and those that followed them--in his televised "sermon" (and it ain't no Sermon on the Mount, let me tell you):
The Jews are the Jews. Whether Labor or Likud the Jews are Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They must be butchered and must be killed… The Jews are like a spring as long as you step on it with your foot it doesn’t move. But if you lift your foot from the spring, it hurts you and punishes you… It is forbidden to have mercy in your hearts for the Jews in any place and in any land. Make war on them any place that you find yourself. Any place that you meet them, kill them.
This utterly egregious example of misuse of the truncated quote can't possibly be the result of ignorance or incompetence. So what is it? Stupidity or malevolence? Take your pick.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Neo is hot
I can attest to the truth of this. It's one of the hottest days I can ever remember in these parts.
Back of my neck gettin dirty and gritty. Although, actually, I've got one of these.
Back of my neck gettin dirty and gritty. Although, actually, I've got one of these.
Bush's blood pressure: the man has ice water in his veins
In keeping with the modern taste for intimate disclosure, the White House has released the results of President Bush's most recent physical.
First, the bad news: he's shrunk a quarter of an inch. Haven't we all? And gained five pounds, although he still has very little body fat, especially for a man his age (sixty, prime of life!).
The rest of the statistics are astounding, especially for a man under the sort of stress a post-9/11 war president endures. Blood pressure? 106/68, a level usually achieved only by young children, and by yogis who've attained nirvana. Pulse? 46 beats per minute, the sort of thing usually only found in elite athletes. His cholesterol is a very respectable 174, although I'm puzzled by the article's emphasis on the fact that he's lowered his cholesterol: down from 178 last year. Big deal; well within the range of test variation.
Because he had a precancerous lesion removed, doctors reminded him to wear sunscreen. If he's like most of the men I know, he'll promptly and totally ignore that advice.
Meanwhile, another leader isn't doing quite as well.
First, the bad news: he's shrunk a quarter of an inch. Haven't we all? And gained five pounds, although he still has very little body fat, especially for a man his age (sixty, prime of life!).
The rest of the statistics are astounding, especially for a man under the sort of stress a post-9/11 war president endures. Blood pressure? 106/68, a level usually achieved only by young children, and by yogis who've attained nirvana. Pulse? 46 beats per minute, the sort of thing usually only found in elite athletes. His cholesterol is a very respectable 174, although I'm puzzled by the article's emphasis on the fact that he's lowered his cholesterol: down from 178 last year. Big deal; well within the range of test variation.
Because he had a precancerous lesion removed, doctors reminded him to wear sunscreen. If he's like most of the men I know, he'll promptly and totally ignore that advice.
Meanwhile, another leader isn't doing quite as well.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The sleep of reason--and moral agency--produces monsters
Here we have Goya's famous etching"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters."
It came to mind while I was reading Melanie Phillips, who is presently writing some of the finest analysis of the British (and, by extrapolation, general Western European) reaction to the war in Lebanon that I've read.
Phillips makes sobering reading. It does appear that, among a certain rather large segment in Europe, reason has indeed gone to sleep and monsters are afoot. The West, the birthplace of the Enlightenment and its dedication to reason, seems to have lost the ability to do so.
Read most especially and particularly this; (and also this, and this, if you have more time).
Phillips writes with an air of astonishment as well as outrage, the astonishment of the child who points out the obvious fact that the emperor has no clothes, and yet no one will listen. Her "J'accuse" will no doubt be rejected by those she's criticizing in the press, the intelligentsia, and the Left.
Ms. Phillips writes that the West is in the grip of "a profound moral breakdown." Some of this is fed by the lies and distortions of the BBC, which provides most of the information for the British populace; the BBC seems to have abandoned not only it's vaunted objectivity but reason itself.
The consequences are dreadful, because, as Phillips points out, this isn't about Israel anymore. This is about a genocidal intent on the part of Iran and certain Arab states to obliterate Israel, and to establish an all-encompassing caliphate. If the Jews have always been the canary in the mine (and I believe they have), we're all in dire trouble. One of the troubles is that so few in Europe seem to recognize their own potentially suicidal defense of their enemies and their refusal to recognize their friends.
I could quote at great length from Phillips's piece, but I'll try to be as brief as possible and give you the essence of it. Please ponder this:
But the moral crisis in Britain extends far wider and deeper than the wretched BBC and other media. The surreally distorted response by so many to Israel’s attempt to destroy the would-be purveyors of genocide raises the question of whether Britain will ever again support a just war — because it no longer knows what a just war is, and no longer has the intellectual capacity to know. This is in large measure because moral agency has disappeared altogether from the analysis. Intention, the essence of moral actions, is now tossed aside as of no significance. All that matters are the consequences of an action. This is in accordance with the prevailing amoral consensus which has negated moral agency altogether in order to remove the burden of personal responsibility. What someone intends to do is therefore held to be of no account. All that matters is the consequences of their action.
So the fact that Israel is at war solely to prevent the deaths of innocents is dismissed. All that matters is that the consequences of its actions are that Lebanese civilians are dying. The fact that the Israelis do not intend them to die is irrelevant. Those deaths are deemed to be the equivalent of the deaths caused by Hezbollah. The fact that Hezbollah deliberately sets out to murder innocent Israelis is irrelevant. Thus the only thing that matters is which side has more dead people. The fact that there are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis settles the matter. The Israelis are in the wrong, are behaving disproportionately, are committing war crimes, are the villains of the piece. The fact that they are actually the victims of unprovoked genocidal aggression is deemed irrelevant. Thus the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s post-modern cultural desert...
Such prejudice [towards Israel] is not only despicable. It is also nationally suicidal. For such is the hatred of Israel that — fantastically — a world war is under way in which the designated victims don’t even realise it is happening.
If Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons and wipes out Israel--thus coming a long way to finishing the job Hitler began--will Western Europe mourn, or rejoice? I begin to wonder. Phillips does offer some hope, however--evidence that the middle-class "man in the street" gets the situation better than the intellectuals--and despite the efforts of the press to shape opinion otherwise.
_-_Sleep_of_Reason.jpg#/media/File:Goya_-_Caprichos_(43)_-_Sleep_of_Reason.jpg){kind=link}
It came to mind while I was reading Melanie Phillips, who is presently writing some of the finest analysis of the British (and, by extrapolation, general Western European) reaction to the war in Lebanon that I've read.
Phillips makes sobering reading. It does appear that, among a certain rather large segment in Europe, reason has indeed gone to sleep and monsters are afoot. The West, the birthplace of the Enlightenment and its dedication to reason, seems to have lost the ability to do so.
Read most especially and particularly this; (and also this, and this, if you have more time).
Phillips writes with an air of astonishment as well as outrage, the astonishment of the child who points out the obvious fact that the emperor has no clothes, and yet no one will listen. Her "J'accuse" will no doubt be rejected by those she's criticizing in the press, the intelligentsia, and the Left.
Ms. Phillips writes that the West is in the grip of "a profound moral breakdown." Some of this is fed by the lies and distortions of the BBC, which provides most of the information for the British populace; the BBC seems to have abandoned not only it's vaunted objectivity but reason itself.
The consequences are dreadful, because, as Phillips points out, this isn't about Israel anymore. This is about a genocidal intent on the part of Iran and certain Arab states to obliterate Israel, and to establish an all-encompassing caliphate. If the Jews have always been the canary in the mine (and I believe they have), we're all in dire trouble. One of the troubles is that so few in Europe seem to recognize their own potentially suicidal defense of their enemies and their refusal to recognize their friends.
I could quote at great length from Phillips's piece, but I'll try to be as brief as possible and give you the essence of it. Please ponder this:
But the moral crisis in Britain extends far wider and deeper than the wretched BBC and other media. The surreally distorted response by so many to Israel’s attempt to destroy the would-be purveyors of genocide raises the question of whether Britain will ever again support a just war — because it no longer knows what a just war is, and no longer has the intellectual capacity to know. This is in large measure because moral agency has disappeared altogether from the analysis. Intention, the essence of moral actions, is now tossed aside as of no significance. All that matters are the consequences of an action. This is in accordance with the prevailing amoral consensus which has negated moral agency altogether in order to remove the burden of personal responsibility. What someone intends to do is therefore held to be of no account. All that matters is the consequences of their action.
So the fact that Israel is at war solely to prevent the deaths of innocents is dismissed. All that matters is that the consequences of its actions are that Lebanese civilians are dying. The fact that the Israelis do not intend them to die is irrelevant. Those deaths are deemed to be the equivalent of the deaths caused by Hezbollah. The fact that Hezbollah deliberately sets out to murder innocent Israelis is irrelevant. Thus the only thing that matters is which side has more dead people. The fact that there are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis settles the matter. The Israelis are in the wrong, are behaving disproportionately, are committing war crimes, are the villains of the piece. The fact that they are actually the victims of unprovoked genocidal aggression is deemed irrelevant. Thus the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s post-modern cultural desert...
Such prejudice [towards Israel] is not only despicable. It is also nationally suicidal. For such is the hatred of Israel that — fantastically — a world war is under way in which the designated victims don’t even realise it is happening.
If Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons and wipes out Israel--thus coming a long way to finishing the job Hitler began--will Western Europe mourn, or rejoice? I begin to wonder. Phillips does offer some hope, however--evidence that the middle-class "man in the street" gets the situation better than the intellectuals--and despite the efforts of the press to shape opinion otherwise.
"You and what army?" redux
I was going to write a midlength post on the absurdity of the UN's call to Ahmadinejad to suspend Iran's nuclear program or face sanctions. The resolution was considered "mandatory" and "binding," words that are essentially meaningless in the context of the UN and Iran. Or perhaps the UN and anything.
Well, Tammy Bruce called this one. Not that it was so difficult to call. But she did it with special flair and verve.
And Ahmadinejad finessed me--and the UN. He already has responded by rejecting the UN resolution. Surprise, surprise!
"Binding," indeed! The UN has no power except by the consent of its member nations, and the threat of sanctions. And the latter is almost amusing after the Oil for Food scandal in Iraq.
Another irony: putting teeth into the UN's ability to halt the nuclear programs of rogue and tyrannical states is actually one of the things the buildup to the war in Iraq was meant to accomplish. But in the rush to tear down that effort, the UN itself lost whatever legitimacy it might have gained through that avenue.
Well, Tammy Bruce called this one. Not that it was so difficult to call. But she did it with special flair and verve.
And Ahmadinejad finessed me--and the UN. He already has responded by rejecting the UN resolution. Surprise, surprise!
"Binding," indeed! The UN has no power except by the consent of its member nations, and the threat of sanctions. And the latter is almost amusing after the Oil for Food scandal in Iraq.
Another irony: putting teeth into the UN's ability to halt the nuclear programs of rogue and tyrannical states is actually one of the things the buildup to the war in Iraq was meant to accomplish. But in the rush to tear down that effort, the UN itself lost whatever legitimacy it might have gained through that avenue.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Women and children first: the propaganda of compassion, at Qana and elsewhere
The casualties at Qana are horrific. The visuals are heartrending, and the details sorrowful--especially the predominance of women and children among the dead.
We are biologically predisposed to want to protect children--to love them, to smile when we see them. Only monsters kill children, correct?
Although the phrase "women and children first" comes from maritime tradition, the same impulse has meant, historically, that societies were generally dedicated to protecting that especially vulnerable and vital portion of their population from the enemy.
This doesn't mean that in war women and children were not killed, of course, despite those efforts at protection. In particular, the aeriel bombardments of World War II made children fair game if they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, although they were not specifically targets (except for purposeful Nazi killings of Jewish children during the Holocaust). Some countries, such as England, sent many of their children off to the countryside during the war, because it was mainly cities that were bombed.
And World War II ended with the terrible atomic conflagration of Hiroshima, which killed indiscriminately; a description of the plight of the victims was immortalized in John Hersey's classic. Hersey's Hiroshima, published after World War II ended, represented the first attempt of which I'm aware to take a close look at the enemy war dead, and to view them with compassion and even a sense of shame for what an honorable nation, the United States, felt it necessary to do in time of war.
I've discussed the pros and cons of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan here; I'm not going to rehash the topic at this point. I'm bringing it up now, however, to illustrate the fact that World War II involved such widespread and horrific carnage--both military and civilian--that, once it was over, there was a natural desire to write about the devastation in the humane (and probably vain) hope that people would somehow found a way to avoid such things in the future.
Here's what I wrote about Hersey's work in my earlier post:
Hersey's book purposely gives his reportage on Hiroshima no context at all, the better to appreciate the appalling human cost. He simply describes, and the reader identifies with the victims. There is no way to read his book and not feel a deep and visceral revulsion towards what happened there.
Although the scale is nothing whatsoever like Hiroshima, the casualties at Qana are dreadful, and we instinctively recoil from them. They are also the sort of the thing that makes good programming for the voracious jaws of the 24-hour-a-day cable news cycle. And as for context--well, too much context would muddy the waters and appear to justify the bombing of children.
But too little context serves the propaganda purposes of the group least interested in stopping the deaths of children such as these, and that is Hezbollah.
In Qana, Israel was targeting a location that had been used repeatedly for rocket firing at Israel's own civilians. Israel forces had warned the population to leave prior to the bombing. The people who died obviously did not heed those warnings. Whether this was because they didn't get the word to leave, or couldn't leave because they didn't have the resources, or voluntarily chose not to leave, or whether Hezbollah kept them from leaving, we simply do not know.
Israel had no information that this particular structure was filled with women and children when it was targeted. But filled it was. And, as Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club writes, "... all the leaflets in the world can be dropped and the death of civilians still be a near-inevitability."
The new calculus of asymmetrical warfare, of which Hezbollah is master, is that the sacrifice of women and children is a good strategic move; putting weaponry among its own women and children is the result of a conscious and wily decision on its part.
This is a sort of looking-glass inversion of the old rule "women and children first." And it tends to work, because current asymmetrical warfare is fought less on the traditional battlefield and more on the battlefield of public opinion.
Hezbollah knows that there's nothing like dead women and children to turn public opinion against those doing the killing. And there's nothing like the Western news to fail to adequately provide and evaluate the all-important context for that killing.
Hezbollah could not--and would not--operate this way if it didn't rely on both the compassion of the West and its news cycle. Without these things, Hezbollah's actions would be suicidal. But with these things, Hezbollah's actions are effective.
So, what's the solution? What should Israel--or any other country faced with such a dilemma--do when an enemy such as Hezbollah turns the tables on the compassionate West, and takes advantage of the compassion to get a twofer: launching rockets from civilian enclaves in Lebanon to directly target Israeli civilians, and then scoring a propaganda coup with the cooperation of the Western media when Israel retaliates and kills the Lebanese civilians?
And then imagine a similar question being asked when a nation such as Iran goes nuclear. The people of Iran will then be in the position of the women and children of Qana, first in line for retaliation if the mad mullahs decide to attack.
We are biologically predisposed to want to protect children--to love them, to smile when we see them. Only monsters kill children, correct?
Although the phrase "women and children first" comes from maritime tradition, the same impulse has meant, historically, that societies were generally dedicated to protecting that especially vulnerable and vital portion of their population from the enemy.
This doesn't mean that in war women and children were not killed, of course, despite those efforts at protection. In particular, the aeriel bombardments of World War II made children fair game if they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, although they were not specifically targets (except for purposeful Nazi killings of Jewish children during the Holocaust). Some countries, such as England, sent many of their children off to the countryside during the war, because it was mainly cities that were bombed.
And World War II ended with the terrible atomic conflagration of Hiroshima, which killed indiscriminately; a description of the plight of the victims was immortalized in John Hersey's classic. Hersey's Hiroshima, published after World War II ended, represented the first attempt of which I'm aware to take a close look at the enemy war dead, and to view them with compassion and even a sense of shame for what an honorable nation, the United States, felt it necessary to do in time of war.
I've discussed the pros and cons of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan here; I'm not going to rehash the topic at this point. I'm bringing it up now, however, to illustrate the fact that World War II involved such widespread and horrific carnage--both military and civilian--that, once it was over, there was a natural desire to write about the devastation in the humane (and probably vain) hope that people would somehow found a way to avoid such things in the future.
Here's what I wrote about Hersey's work in my earlier post:
Hersey's book purposely gives his reportage on Hiroshima no context at all, the better to appreciate the appalling human cost. He simply describes, and the reader identifies with the victims. There is no way to read his book and not feel a deep and visceral revulsion towards what happened there.
Although the scale is nothing whatsoever like Hiroshima, the casualties at Qana are dreadful, and we instinctively recoil from them. They are also the sort of the thing that makes good programming for the voracious jaws of the 24-hour-a-day cable news cycle. And as for context--well, too much context would muddy the waters and appear to justify the bombing of children.
But too little context serves the propaganda purposes of the group least interested in stopping the deaths of children such as these, and that is Hezbollah.
In Qana, Israel was targeting a location that had been used repeatedly for rocket firing at Israel's own civilians. Israel forces had warned the population to leave prior to the bombing. The people who died obviously did not heed those warnings. Whether this was because they didn't get the word to leave, or couldn't leave because they didn't have the resources, or voluntarily chose not to leave, or whether Hezbollah kept them from leaving, we simply do not know.
Israel had no information that this particular structure was filled with women and children when it was targeted. But filled it was. And, as Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club writes, "... all the leaflets in the world can be dropped and the death of civilians still be a near-inevitability."
The new calculus of asymmetrical warfare, of which Hezbollah is master, is that the sacrifice of women and children is a good strategic move; putting weaponry among its own women and children is the result of a conscious and wily decision on its part.
This is a sort of looking-glass inversion of the old rule "women and children first." And it tends to work, because current asymmetrical warfare is fought less on the traditional battlefield and more on the battlefield of public opinion.
Hezbollah knows that there's nothing like dead women and children to turn public opinion against those doing the killing. And there's nothing like the Western news to fail to adequately provide and evaluate the all-important context for that killing.
Hezbollah could not--and would not--operate this way if it didn't rely on both the compassion of the West and its news cycle. Without these things, Hezbollah's actions would be suicidal. But with these things, Hezbollah's actions are effective.
So, what's the solution? What should Israel--or any other country faced with such a dilemma--do when an enemy such as Hezbollah turns the tables on the compassionate West, and takes advantage of the compassion to get a twofer: launching rockets from civilian enclaves in Lebanon to directly target Israeli civilians, and then scoring a propaganda coup with the cooperation of the Western media when Israel retaliates and kills the Lebanese civilians?
And then imagine a similar question being asked when a nation such as Iran goes nuclear. The people of Iran will then be in the position of the women and children of Qana, first in line for retaliation if the mad mullahs decide to attack.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
And what does Ariel Sharon have to say about it all?
No, the title of this post isn't some sort of joke. And, of course, Ariel Sharon has nothing whatsoever to say--nor (barring some extraordinary miracle) will he ever be saying anything again.
But in one of my many efforts at organizing my papers and tidying up in general, I recently found a stack of unread New Yorkers. I skimmed their "Contents" sections and threw them all out (actually, took them to the dump to recycle, like the environmentally concerned person that I am).
But in one of them, the January 23 and 30, 2006 issue, I found and read "The Samurai of Zionism," a piece by Ari Shavit based on a series of interviews with Ariel Sharon over the last couple of years. Towards the end, Shavit quotes Sharon as having come to the following conclusions, which I reproduce here as food for thought in this particular crisis:
The conflict isn't between us and the Palestinians. The conflict is between us and the Arab world. And the problem at the heart of the conflict is that the Arab world does not recognize the Jews' inherent right to have a Jewish state in the land where the Jewish people began. This is the main problem. This also applies to Egypt, with which we have a cold peace. It also applies to Jordan, with which we have a very close strategic relationship, but this is a relationship between governments, not between peoples. The problem is not 1967. The problem is the profound nonrecognition by the Arab world of Israel's birthright. The problem will not be solved by an agreement. It will not be solved by a speech. Anyone who promises that it's possible to end the conflict within a year or two year or three is mistaken. Anyone who promises peace now is blind to the way things are. Even after the disengagement, we will not be able to rest on our laurels. We will not be able to sit under our fig tree and our vine....
The greatest danger is in signing some document and believing that as a result we will have peace. This is not going to happen...Instead, we have to build a process that will enable us to ascertain that indeed a change is taking place in the Arab world. It is necessary to teach all the teachers that Israel is a legitimate entity. And it is necessary to replace all the Palestinian textbooks. And this is beyond the elementary demand for the cessation of terror and the cessation of incitement and the implementation of reforms in the security organizations and the implementation of govermental reforms. It is necessary not to omit a single one of these steps. Under no circumstances should there be concessions. A situation must not develop in which Israel retreats and is chased by terror. Once you accept that, it will never end. Terror will keep chasing us.
Sobering words. I'm not sure he's correct about everything--I still tend to believe that the population of Jordan, for example, is not set on the elimination of Israel.
But many of his points are spot on. And right now it's more difficult than ever to see how the vision of the final paragraph could ever be implemented. And the phrase "a situation must not develop in which Israel retreats and is chased by terror" seem remarkably apropos to the current conflict.
I am reminded of an article I read back in my liberal Democrat days, during the early years of the 90s. I've searched for this article before, because I'd love to look at it again. I think it appeared in this very same periodical--the New Yorker--but I simply don't know, and at this point I despair of ever finding it.
But nevertheless I remember the subject matter. The article appeared after Oslo, back when the peace process seemed to be going well and when many people, including myself, were hopeful that things were going in the right direction. The author had visited the areas under the control of the PLO and especially the schools, and what he (she?) found there was chilling beyond belief. The article described the teaching of a hatred so deep and so naked, a hatred involving not just Israelis but Jews in general, that my blood ran cold.
For days afterwards I had trouble shaking the conviction that, whatever we might think about the hope for progress that Oslo represented, when the generation that was being steeped and marinated in such hatred came of age in about ten years or less, something terrible would be happening, no matter what Israel tried to do, no matter how many concessions it made towards peace.
And events have certainly "progressed" that way. And not with just the Palestinians and even the Arab world, but the non-Arab government of Iran. We have in the Iranian leaders and Hezbollah, of course, an enemy that not only hates Israel and Jews, but that isn't shy about saying so. And that enemy is playing to one of the oldest and deepest hatreds in the world--Jew-hatred--finding a harmonic resonance with all those who profess it, and using them for their own nefarious ends.
But in one of my many efforts at organizing my papers and tidying up in general, I recently found a stack of unread New Yorkers. I skimmed their "Contents" sections and threw them all out (actually, took them to the dump to recycle, like the environmentally concerned person that I am).
But in one of them, the January 23 and 30, 2006 issue, I found and read "The Samurai of Zionism," a piece by Ari Shavit based on a series of interviews with Ariel Sharon over the last couple of years. Towards the end, Shavit quotes Sharon as having come to the following conclusions, which I reproduce here as food for thought in this particular crisis:
The conflict isn't between us and the Palestinians. The conflict is between us and the Arab world. And the problem at the heart of the conflict is that the Arab world does not recognize the Jews' inherent right to have a Jewish state in the land where the Jewish people began. This is the main problem. This also applies to Egypt, with which we have a cold peace. It also applies to Jordan, with which we have a very close strategic relationship, but this is a relationship between governments, not between peoples. The problem is not 1967. The problem is the profound nonrecognition by the Arab world of Israel's birthright. The problem will not be solved by an agreement. It will not be solved by a speech. Anyone who promises that it's possible to end the conflict within a year or two year or three is mistaken. Anyone who promises peace now is blind to the way things are. Even after the disengagement, we will not be able to rest on our laurels. We will not be able to sit under our fig tree and our vine....
The greatest danger is in signing some document and believing that as a result we will have peace. This is not going to happen...Instead, we have to build a process that will enable us to ascertain that indeed a change is taking place in the Arab world. It is necessary to teach all the teachers that Israel is a legitimate entity. And it is necessary to replace all the Palestinian textbooks. And this is beyond the elementary demand for the cessation of terror and the cessation of incitement and the implementation of reforms in the security organizations and the implementation of govermental reforms. It is necessary not to omit a single one of these steps. Under no circumstances should there be concessions. A situation must not develop in which Israel retreats and is chased by terror. Once you accept that, it will never end. Terror will keep chasing us.
Sobering words. I'm not sure he's correct about everything--I still tend to believe that the population of Jordan, for example, is not set on the elimination of Israel.
But many of his points are spot on. And right now it's more difficult than ever to see how the vision of the final paragraph could ever be implemented. And the phrase "a situation must not develop in which Israel retreats and is chased by terror" seem remarkably apropos to the current conflict.
I am reminded of an article I read back in my liberal Democrat days, during the early years of the 90s. I've searched for this article before, because I'd love to look at it again. I think it appeared in this very same periodical--the New Yorker--but I simply don't know, and at this point I despair of ever finding it.
But nevertheless I remember the subject matter. The article appeared after Oslo, back when the peace process seemed to be going well and when many people, including myself, were hopeful that things were going in the right direction. The author had visited the areas under the control of the PLO and especially the schools, and what he (she?) found there was chilling beyond belief. The article described the teaching of a hatred so deep and so naked, a hatred involving not just Israelis but Jews in general, that my blood ran cold.
For days afterwards I had trouble shaking the conviction that, whatever we might think about the hope for progress that Oslo represented, when the generation that was being steeped and marinated in such hatred came of age in about ten years or less, something terrible would be happening, no matter what Israel tried to do, no matter how many concessions it made towards peace.
And events have certainly "progressed" that way. And not with just the Palestinians and even the Arab world, but the non-Arab government of Iran. We have in the Iranian leaders and Hezbollah, of course, an enemy that not only hates Israel and Jews, but that isn't shy about saying so. And that enemy is playing to one of the oldest and deepest hatreds in the world--Jew-hatred--finding a harmonic resonance with all those who profess it, and using them for their own nefarious ends.
Friday, July 28, 2006
A surprise but not a surprise: shooting in Seattle
A man opened fire at the Jewish Federation building in Seattle today, killing one woman and wounding four others. He identified himself as an "American Moslem," and said he was upset about "what was going on in Israel."
I assume he meant what was going on in Lebanon at the hands of Israel; I sincerely doubt that Katusha rockets raining on Haifa are his main concern.
The shooter was, according to the head of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts in Seattle, an individual acting alone, with "nothing to indicate it's terrorism related."
I'm not sure why an individual acting out a political grudge and declaring himself clearly in such fashion wouldn't be considered a terrorist, unless terrorism is, by definition, an organized group endeavor.
It's no wonder that this happened. It's a wonder it hasn't happened more often. And in fact, Hezbollah itself has been connected to the worst incidents of attacks on Jewish institutions outside of the Middle East, the most flagrant being the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, which killed 100 people and wounded twice that many.
It's been my understanding that, in the wake of 9/11, many synagogues in this country have quietly beefed up security. It only makes sense. Perhaps the Jewish Federation of Seattle, which is mainly a fund-raising organization, hadn't seen the need to do so up till this point. My guess is that that will change.
I assume he meant what was going on in Lebanon at the hands of Israel; I sincerely doubt that Katusha rockets raining on Haifa are his main concern.
The shooter was, according to the head of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts in Seattle, an individual acting alone, with "nothing to indicate it's terrorism related."
I'm not sure why an individual acting out a political grudge and declaring himself clearly in such fashion wouldn't be considered a terrorist, unless terrorism is, by definition, an organized group endeavor.
It's no wonder that this happened. It's a wonder it hasn't happened more often. And in fact, Hezbollah itself has been connected to the worst incidents of attacks on Jewish institutions outside of the Middle East, the most flagrant being the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, which killed 100 people and wounded twice that many.
It's been my understanding that, in the wake of 9/11, many synagogues in this country have quietly beefed up security. It only makes sense. Perhaps the Jewish Federation of Seattle, which is mainly a fund-raising organization, hadn't seen the need to do so up till this point. My guess is that that will change.
Katushas and other VSBMs as emerging terrorist weapons
This quotation has always made great sense to me:
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter...
The quote came to mind once again when I was reading Daniel Henninger's opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal.
The column is about Katusha and other very short-range ballistic missiles, or VSBMs. Ever since the current Lebanese war began, it's been clear that these missiles are a force that Hezbollah has exploited, and I wanted to learn more about them.
According to Henninger, these missiles are emerging as an ideal weapon for terrorists at borders, and there is presently no defense against them. Ordinarily, some sort of state apparatus is required to operate VSBMs, but there are certainly enough rouge states these days, or state-allied terror forces such as Hezbollah, to qualify.
VSBMs are not governed by any existing export-control regime. Since terrorists not only don't care if they kill civilians, but in fact desire to kill civilians, VSBMs don't have to be "smart" to be effective. Theoretically, they could be fitted with chemical or biological agents as well, although there's no indication that's happening at present in Lebanon.
Unless Hezbollah decides to take up residence in Juarez, it doesn't seem as though VSBMs pose any direct threat to the US. But they certainly pose an indirect one, through the vulnerability of allies such as Israel or South Korea. Previously, the threat was not considered great enough to warrant implementing a defense system against them (Israel, according to Henninger, nixed plans "to deploy Northrop Grumman's THEL system, whose lasers routinely have shot down Katyushas at the Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico"). Now that this vacuum in defense has been exploited by Hezbollah, look for that to change.
And what of the quote that began this post? Henninger writes:
As Robert Kaplan pointed out in the Journal last week in his review of "Terrorists, Insurgents and Militias," the biggest strategic problem today isn't past notions of big-power miscalculation but new rogue regimes whose ideology means they "cannot be gratified through negotiations."
That's the sad truth that many cannot and do not want to hear. We are now in the situation of dealing with a number of unreasonable and inhumane regimes that are truly tyrannical--Iran being the leading one at the moment. Such regimes do not enter into negotiations in good faith. Reason and pleading are not going to work. Although it's not altogether clear how to "give no quarter," it is clear that, once such regimes are armed with the nuclear weapons they seek and crave, the consequences will be far worse.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter...
The quote came to mind once again when I was reading Daniel Henninger's opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal.
The column is about Katusha and other very short-range ballistic missiles, or VSBMs. Ever since the current Lebanese war began, it's been clear that these missiles are a force that Hezbollah has exploited, and I wanted to learn more about them.
According to Henninger, these missiles are emerging as an ideal weapon for terrorists at borders, and there is presently no defense against them. Ordinarily, some sort of state apparatus is required to operate VSBMs, but there are certainly enough rouge states these days, or state-allied terror forces such as Hezbollah, to qualify.
VSBMs are not governed by any existing export-control regime. Since terrorists not only don't care if they kill civilians, but in fact desire to kill civilians, VSBMs don't have to be "smart" to be effective. Theoretically, they could be fitted with chemical or biological agents as well, although there's no indication that's happening at present in Lebanon.
Unless Hezbollah decides to take up residence in Juarez, it doesn't seem as though VSBMs pose any direct threat to the US. But they certainly pose an indirect one, through the vulnerability of allies such as Israel or South Korea. Previously, the threat was not considered great enough to warrant implementing a defense system against them (Israel, according to Henninger, nixed plans "to deploy Northrop Grumman's THEL system, whose lasers routinely have shot down Katyushas at the Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico"). Now that this vacuum in defense has been exploited by Hezbollah, look for that to change.
And what of the quote that began this post? Henninger writes:
As Robert Kaplan pointed out in the Journal last week in his review of "Terrorists, Insurgents and Militias," the biggest strategic problem today isn't past notions of big-power miscalculation but new rogue regimes whose ideology means they "cannot be gratified through negotiations."
That's the sad truth that many cannot and do not want to hear. We are now in the situation of dealing with a number of unreasonable and inhumane regimes that are truly tyrannical--Iran being the leading one at the moment. Such regimes do not enter into negotiations in good faith. Reason and pleading are not going to work. Although it's not altogether clear how to "give no quarter," it is clear that, once such regimes are armed with the nuclear weapons they seek and crave, the consequences will be far worse.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Disarming Hezbollah: either way, the punishment is war
The war in Lebanon has dominated the news, the blogosphere, and the thoughts of so many people, including myself.
The mind casts about for a solution. Indeed, there must be a solution right?
Some blame the usual targets, Israel and the US. The UN has come in for criticism as well, and rightly so. The government and people of Lebanon, who have failed to root out Hezbollah and in fact have often lauded it, bear some responsibility.
But there is little doubt in the minds of most thinking people that the lion's share of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the black-clad puppeteers behind the action, Iran, and their henchmen and disciples, Hezbollah, as well as their Syrian middlemen. The penetration of Hezbollah into so much of Lebanon has been a slow but steady one, and by now the entwinement is so thick and tangled that it's hard to see how it can be undone without terrible destruction of innocent people, and the destabilization of the country. Some of this has already happened.
But the mind searches for solutions, because the possible outcomes are so dreadful to contemplate. This morning, while casting about for the views of others, I came across this piece by Michael Totten.
The peripatetic Totten was in Lebanon fairly recently, a long sojourn in which he reported on what he saw there. What's his solution? Unfortunately, he doesn't have one. What he offers is a certain perspective, and it's not a comforting one.
Here's Totten on the topic of disarming Hezbollah, describing what he saw in Lebanon a few months ago, when neither he nor anyone foresaw the exact course of events to follow:
Many Lebanese Christians, Sunnis, and Druze were getting so impatient with the impasse over Hezbollah’s weapons they threatened to reconstitute their own armed militias that were disbanded after the war. Peaceful and diplomatic negotiation over Hezbollah’s role in a sovereign rather than schismatic Lebanon was not going to last very much longer. Once the rest of Lebanon armed itself against Hezbollah, a balance of terror would reign that could explode into war without any warning. That was the danger. That was the nightmare. That’s why Hezbollah had not been disarmed...
Totten saw the peace in Lebanon at the time as an uneasy and temporary one. Despite whatever polls might have said about Lebanese support for Hezbollah, he saw the people as more frightened of its power than approving. Of course, we have no way of knowing how representative Totten's informants were, or whether his impressions were skewed by seeing a small sample of the Lebanese people. But still, he was there, and did his best to learn what was really going on.
Now, Totten says that in the heat of this war the Lebanese are angry at the Israelis. Temporarily:
No one is running off to join Hezbollah, but tensions are being smoothed over for now while everyone feels they are under attack by the same enemy. Most Lebanese who had warm feelings for Israel -- and there were more of these than you can possibly imagine -- no longer do.
This will not last.
Totten makes a prediction about what will happen after. His "after" assumes (as I think it is correct to assume) that this particular episode, the hot war with Israel, will not end with the eradication of Hezbollah in Lebanon. He writes:
My sources and friends in Beirut tell me most Lebanese are going easy on Hezbollah as much as they can while the bombs are still falling. But a terrible reckoning awaits them once this is over.
Some Lebanese can’t wait even that long....
My friend Carine says the atomosphere reeks of impending sectarian conflict like never before. Another Lebanese blogger quotes a radical Christian war criminal from the bad old days who says the civil war will resume a month after Israel cools its guns: "Christians, Sunnis and Druze will fight the 'fucker Shia', with arms from the US and France."
For those who want Hezbollah out of Lebanon, this may sound like a solution. Totten addresses this idea:
Israeli partisans may think this is terrific. The Lebanese may take care of Hezbollah at last! But democratic Lebanon cannot win a war against Hezbollah, not even after Hezbollah is weakened by IAF raids. Hezbollah is the most effective Arab fighting force in the world, and the Lebanese army is the weakest and most divided....
To Totten, Lebanon has been essentially powerless from the start. It had one of two choices: war or accommodation. Since the war against Hezbollah was unwinnable by the weak and divided Lebanon, it chose the latter.
But there's no accomodation possible with a force such as Hezbollah. Know your enemy; accomodation only buys them time, I'm afraid.
And, in the end, Totten also seems to be saying this. He has great compassion for the dilemma the Lebanese people faced, and still face:
Israel and Lebanon (especially Lebanon) will continue to burn as long as Hezbollah exists as a terror miltia freed from the leash of the state. The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war. Lebanese were doomed to suffer war no matter what. Their liberal democratic project could not withstand the threat from within and the assaults from the east, and it could not stave off another assault from the south. War, as it turned out, was inevitable even if the actual shape of it wasn’t.
The quote that struck me most forcibly was this, which bears repeating:
The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war.
It immediately brought to mind a statement by Winston Churchill, he of the silver tongue, when speaking about a similar accomodation sought by the militarily weak British and French prior to WWII:
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.
And please, spare yourself the trouble of informing me that the situation isn't quite analogous. I know it's not. But the similarity is this: sometimes what seems like a choice is no choice at all. When dealing with certain enemies bent on destruction and conquest, how can one avoid battle? Sooner or later, the conflagration will erupt. And is it better in the end for it to erupt sooner rather than later, when the enemy is stronger and more deeply entrenched?
The punishment for taking on Hitler was war. The punishment for not taking on Hitler was war. World War.
In the middle of all of this, into my head popped some lines by the ancient Persian (Persia=Iran) poet Omar Khayyam. Somehow they seem apropos to the feeling of futility and confusion, of powerful forces working in mysterious ways that can't be foreseen.
Omar, a fatalist, didn't believe very much in the ability of human beings to control their own destiny. He wrote, so long ago, that:
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
I'm not ready to subscribe to the level of fatalism of Omar Khayyam. But it does seem right now that the people of Lebanon are "but helpless pieces" in a game being played--if not by the Master of the Show, then by the puppet masters of Iran.
And this verse of Khayyam's, with its strangely prescient geography ("Naishapur," Omar's birthplace, is a city in what is now Iran; and "Babylon" is the ancient word for Iraq), seems apropos as well:
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
The mind casts about for a solution. Indeed, there must be a solution right?
Some blame the usual targets, Israel and the US. The UN has come in for criticism as well, and rightly so. The government and people of Lebanon, who have failed to root out Hezbollah and in fact have often lauded it, bear some responsibility.
But there is little doubt in the minds of most thinking people that the lion's share of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the black-clad puppeteers behind the action, Iran, and their henchmen and disciples, Hezbollah, as well as their Syrian middlemen. The penetration of Hezbollah into so much of Lebanon has been a slow but steady one, and by now the entwinement is so thick and tangled that it's hard to see how it can be undone without terrible destruction of innocent people, and the destabilization of the country. Some of this has already happened.
But the mind searches for solutions, because the possible outcomes are so dreadful to contemplate. This morning, while casting about for the views of others, I came across this piece by Michael Totten.
The peripatetic Totten was in Lebanon fairly recently, a long sojourn in which he reported on what he saw there. What's his solution? Unfortunately, he doesn't have one. What he offers is a certain perspective, and it's not a comforting one.
Here's Totten on the topic of disarming Hezbollah, describing what he saw in Lebanon a few months ago, when neither he nor anyone foresaw the exact course of events to follow:
Many Lebanese Christians, Sunnis, and Druze were getting so impatient with the impasse over Hezbollah’s weapons they threatened to reconstitute their own armed militias that were disbanded after the war. Peaceful and diplomatic negotiation over Hezbollah’s role in a sovereign rather than schismatic Lebanon was not going to last very much longer. Once the rest of Lebanon armed itself against Hezbollah, a balance of terror would reign that could explode into war without any warning. That was the danger. That was the nightmare. That’s why Hezbollah had not been disarmed...
Totten saw the peace in Lebanon at the time as an uneasy and temporary one. Despite whatever polls might have said about Lebanese support for Hezbollah, he saw the people as more frightened of its power than approving. Of course, we have no way of knowing how representative Totten's informants were, or whether his impressions were skewed by seeing a small sample of the Lebanese people. But still, he was there, and did his best to learn what was really going on.
Now, Totten says that in the heat of this war the Lebanese are angry at the Israelis. Temporarily:
No one is running off to join Hezbollah, but tensions are being smoothed over for now while everyone feels they are under attack by the same enemy. Most Lebanese who had warm feelings for Israel -- and there were more of these than you can possibly imagine -- no longer do.
This will not last.
Totten makes a prediction about what will happen after. His "after" assumes (as I think it is correct to assume) that this particular episode, the hot war with Israel, will not end with the eradication of Hezbollah in Lebanon. He writes:
My sources and friends in Beirut tell me most Lebanese are going easy on Hezbollah as much as they can while the bombs are still falling. But a terrible reckoning awaits them once this is over.
Some Lebanese can’t wait even that long....
My friend Carine says the atomosphere reeks of impending sectarian conflict like never before. Another Lebanese blogger quotes a radical Christian war criminal from the bad old days who says the civil war will resume a month after Israel cools its guns: "Christians, Sunnis and Druze will fight the 'fucker Shia', with arms from the US and France."
For those who want Hezbollah out of Lebanon, this may sound like a solution. Totten addresses this idea:
Israeli partisans may think this is terrific. The Lebanese may take care of Hezbollah at last! But democratic Lebanon cannot win a war against Hezbollah, not even after Hezbollah is weakened by IAF raids. Hezbollah is the most effective Arab fighting force in the world, and the Lebanese army is the weakest and most divided....
To Totten, Lebanon has been essentially powerless from the start. It had one of two choices: war or accommodation. Since the war against Hezbollah was unwinnable by the weak and divided Lebanon, it chose the latter.
But there's no accomodation possible with a force such as Hezbollah. Know your enemy; accomodation only buys them time, I'm afraid.
And, in the end, Totten also seems to be saying this. He has great compassion for the dilemma the Lebanese people faced, and still face:
Israel and Lebanon (especially Lebanon) will continue to burn as long as Hezbollah exists as a terror miltia freed from the leash of the state. The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war. Lebanese were doomed to suffer war no matter what. Their liberal democratic project could not withstand the threat from within and the assaults from the east, and it could not stave off another assault from the south. War, as it turned out, was inevitable even if the actual shape of it wasn’t.
The quote that struck me most forcibly was this, which bears repeating:
The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war.
It immediately brought to mind a statement by Winston Churchill, he of the silver tongue, when speaking about a similar accomodation sought by the militarily weak British and French prior to WWII:
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.
And please, spare yourself the trouble of informing me that the situation isn't quite analogous. I know it's not. But the similarity is this: sometimes what seems like a choice is no choice at all. When dealing with certain enemies bent on destruction and conquest, how can one avoid battle? Sooner or later, the conflagration will erupt. And is it better in the end for it to erupt sooner rather than later, when the enemy is stronger and more deeply entrenched?
The punishment for taking on Hitler was war. The punishment for not taking on Hitler was war. World War.
In the middle of all of this, into my head popped some lines by the ancient Persian (Persia=Iran) poet Omar Khayyam. Somehow they seem apropos to the feeling of futility and confusion, of powerful forces working in mysterious ways that can't be foreseen.
Omar, a fatalist, didn't believe very much in the ability of human beings to control their own destiny. He wrote, so long ago, that:
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
I'm not ready to subscribe to the level of fatalism of Omar Khayyam. But it does seem right now that the people of Lebanon are "but helpless pieces" in a game being played--if not by the Master of the Show, then by the puppet masters of Iran.
And this verse of Khayyam's, with its strangely prescient geography ("Naishapur," Omar's birthplace, is a city in what is now Iran; and "Babylon" is the ancient word for Iraq), seems apropos as well:
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The plot thickens, but does the fog of war thin?
Today seems to be an all UN, all the time day.
Take a listen to an interview with retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, here. Quote: "there's an information war going on." Indeed there is, and I'm afraid Hezbollah, with the cooperation of the UN, is winning.
Other quotes: the UN observer said that "Hezbollah fighters were all over his position."
And, if this is true, why (as Canadian PM Harper asks) had the position not been evacuated by the UN weeks ago?
And then, take a look at this. I'm not sure about the provenance of the video, or who "Alan Peters" actually is, but things seem to be getting curiouser and curiouser.
Take a listen to an interview with retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, here. Quote: "there's an information war going on." Indeed there is, and I'm afraid Hezbollah, with the cooperation of the UN, is winning.
Other quotes: the UN observer said that "Hezbollah fighters were all over his position."
And, if this is true, why (as Canadian PM Harper asks) had the position not been evacuated by the UN weeks ago?
And then, take a look at this. I'm not sure about the provenance of the video, or who "Alan Peters" actually is, but things seem to be getting curiouser and curiouser.
What hath the UN wrought?
I used to like the UN.
As a child growing up in New York City, I would visit there with my class and gaze at the snazzy modern architecture, and watch the General Assembly talk while listening to simultaneous translations on the seemingly-magical headsets.
My admiration wasn't just for the esthetics, either. I knew about UNICEF, and the goal of eradicating smallpox--and of course, the UN was working towards peace. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that one of my very early childhood fantasies involved an image of myself as successful worldwide peacemaker, addressing the UN after some sort of diplomatic triumph I'd engineered that had averted a war.
That fantasy ended long ago. But my admiration for the UN lingered. Yet, over the decades, my disillusionment with the UN has grown. The Oil for Food scandal didn't help; that was in the nature of a final straw in the breakdown of any admiration I ever had for the UN. And journalist Claudia Rosett was instrumental in covering that terrible instance of destructive UN corruption.
Now Rosett has written another article about the UN, this time about its role in fostering the conditions leading up to the current Lebanese crisis. I've linked to her article in an addendum to this previous post of mine, but I've decided it needed to be spotlighted even more.
The article describes how the UN has failed in its mission in Lebanon, allowing the conditions to develop that led directly to this war. Rosett makes the point that, for the six years since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah has been arming itself with weaponry that it is not supposed to possess, all under the auspices of the UN "peacekeepers":
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.
Rosett goes on to list the biases UN officials have expressed since this war began (the article seems to have been written prior to the death of the UN obervers and Anna's remarks on that, since it makes no mention of them). It makes sobering reading.
The other day I got into an argument with a friend about the UN. He agreed that it was flawed, but said that it's our only hope for peace in the world. My answer to him at the time was that the institution has shown such corruption and bias that it cannot act as a force for peace at all, and that it's a pipedream to think otherwise at this point.
A pipedream, and a dangerous one at that. I have become convinced that the UN and its officials are not just powerless to solve the problem, but that they are contributing to it. How? By their rather large pockets of corruption, by holding themselves out to be equal to tasks they are utterly incompetent to deal with, by their biased prononuncements, and by giving false hope to those who want to believe that problems are being dealt with when they are not. And, while all this happens, the conditions that contribute to wars are allowed to grow and to fester, all under the auspices of the UN, supposed force for peace.
As a child growing up in New York City, I would visit there with my class and gaze at the snazzy modern architecture, and watch the General Assembly talk while listening to simultaneous translations on the seemingly-magical headsets.
My admiration wasn't just for the esthetics, either. I knew about UNICEF, and the goal of eradicating smallpox--and of course, the UN was working towards peace. In fact, you may be surprised to learn that one of my very early childhood fantasies involved an image of myself as successful worldwide peacemaker, addressing the UN after some sort of diplomatic triumph I'd engineered that had averted a war.
That fantasy ended long ago. But my admiration for the UN lingered. Yet, over the decades, my disillusionment with the UN has grown. The Oil for Food scandal didn't help; that was in the nature of a final straw in the breakdown of any admiration I ever had for the UN. And journalist Claudia Rosett was instrumental in covering that terrible instance of destructive UN corruption.
Now Rosett has written another article about the UN, this time about its role in fostering the conditions leading up to the current Lebanese crisis. I've linked to her article in an addendum to this previous post of mine, but I've decided it needed to be spotlighted even more.
The article describes how the UN has failed in its mission in Lebanon, allowing the conditions to develop that led directly to this war. Rosett makes the point that, for the six years since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah has been arming itself with weaponry that it is not supposed to possess, all under the auspices of the UN "peacekeepers":
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.
Rosett goes on to list the biases UN officials have expressed since this war began (the article seems to have been written prior to the death of the UN obervers and Anna's remarks on that, since it makes no mention of them). It makes sobering reading.
The other day I got into an argument with a friend about the UN. He agreed that it was flawed, but said that it's our only hope for peace in the world. My answer to him at the time was that the institution has shown such corruption and bias that it cannot act as a force for peace at all, and that it's a pipedream to think otherwise at this point.
A pipedream, and a dangerous one at that. I have become convinced that the UN and its officials are not just powerless to solve the problem, but that they are contributing to it. How? By their rather large pockets of corruption, by holding themselves out to be equal to tasks they are utterly incompetent to deal with, by their biased prononuncements, and by giving false hope to those who want to believe that problems are being dealt with when they are not. And, while all this happens, the conditions that contribute to wars are allowed to grow and to fester, all under the auspices of the UN, supposed force for peace.
Those infallible Israelis: through the fog of war, Annan jumps the gun
The killing of the four UN observers in Lebanon is a tragic and regrettable event, to be sure. But it's the sort of event that occurs with some regularity in war, and is one of the many reasons why war is universally regarded as a very bad thing--although not always the worst of things.
The expression "the fog of war" is a cliché for a reason, and that's because it's a useful and descriptive term for the confusion that inevitably occurs on all sides in a war--for the commanders, the fighting forces, the civilians, the obervers, and the commentators.
When events such as the shelling of the UN post, and the resultant deaths of the UN personnel, occur--and occur they will, almost without fail, in every hot war, no matter how careful the military might be--each side makes statements about what has happened. It's understood that all such statements are preliminary. An investigation can help dispel the fog, but only imperfectly, and only over time.
In this instance Israel has said that this was a tragic accident--no surprise there. One would also imagine that the UN--an institution at least theoretically dedicated to damping down conflicts, judicious restraint, withholding judgment until all the facts are in--would avoid making premature statements about what happened and what Israel intended.
But in this case, the UN is also the injured party, which makes the fog even thicker. And Kofi Annan's response has been to interpret this action in the worst light for Israel. At the same time that Annan said he is "trying to get the details" of the attack (a reasonable response), he also called it an "apparently deliberate targeting" on the part of Israel.
It seems clear to me that the latter statement is so excessively inflammatory that it should never have been uttered by any UN official in the absence of strong and incontrovertible evidence that it was true.
So, what gives? Annan was clearly upset by the deaths--as well he might be. In moments of strong emotion, people often let words slip out that would otherwise--and should otherwise--have remained unsaid. And in those moments, people often reveals their biases. However, none of this is the sort of behavior the Secretary General of the UN should display.
It's not as though Annan's biases--or those of the UN--were hidden prior to this, though. Case in point: this article, written by Alan Dershowitz on July 20 (prior to the deaths of the UN observers), lists some examples for Annan. And anyone familiar with the history of the UN and Israel since the 1970s knows the sad story there (see also this).
What happened at that UN outpost, and why? I don't pretend to know. If this report is true--and I have no reason at the moment to think it isn't--the fog of war must have been unusually thick at the time, allowing some sort of total breakdown of communication that led to the incident.
But, as Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has said, the accusation that Israel would have deliberately targeted UN officials simply makes no sense:
"Why on earth would we deliberately target U.N. observers?" he asked. "What good would that do either on the military or the political level, because it so obvious that this would be harmful. Of course it is a tragedy for the observers and their bereaved families and we truly share their sorrow and we deeply regret the incident. It was obviously a fatal mistake.
Palmor has said it's obvious that the accusation makes no sense "on the military or political level," and I agree. So where does the accusation come from? The charges do make sense in one way, and that is on the emotional level of those making the accusation.
To those who are predisposed to believe that Israel and Israelis are not demonic Nazis, but merely citizens of a country that's been fighting for its very existence ever since the beginning of that existence, it would seem obvious that this was an error rather than a top-down policy of the Israeli government. But it's not obvious at all to those who have bought their own rhetoric about Israeli evil.
Those who believe that this was a case of deliberate targeting of UN personnel are not only operating under the supposition of Israeli evil intent, but of Israeli infallibility. The latter two characteristics--evil coupled with genius, as in "evil genius"--have been part and parcel of anti-Semitic thought for centuries. Now that type of thinking has been transferred to those who demonize Israel.
Israel--unlike its enemies--attempts to be a country that fights wars in a relatively humane way. It tries to avoid killing civilians; it does not deliberately target them. This, of course, is in contrast to its enemies, whose main stock in trade is to deliberately target civilians--both Israel's and its own. And that is no secret; it is obvious and up-front. The enemy targets Israeli civilians directly by methods such as suicide bombing in pizza parlors and restaurants, as well as firing unguided Katusha rockets into Israeli cities. And it targets its own civilians by hiding weaponry and "insurgents" among the civilian population (see this for a discussion).
Israeli weaponry (like that of the US) has developed a remarkable degree of sophistication. In an effort to kill only the guilty, amazing advances have been made. Smart weaponry and good intelligence cannot, however, be infallible, and they can never dispel the fog of war entirely, nor protect innocent civilians (or UN obervers, or reporters), who will always remain at risk.
It is paradoxical, then, that those very advances in "smart" weaponry--and the intent behind those advances, which is the desire to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible--have backfired. Because Israeli attacks are targeted as opposed to indiscriminate, the Israelis are somehow assumed to be omniscient and omnipotent in this regard. And this, combined with the idea that they have evil intent, gives rise to statements such as Annan's.
[ADDENDUM: Belmont Club offers his usual detailed and knowledgeable analysis of the situation. A must-read.
See also, this: Claudia Rosett on how the UN has grievously mishandled the Lebanese situation since the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from that country. Strong stuff.]
The expression "the fog of war" is a cliché for a reason, and that's because it's a useful and descriptive term for the confusion that inevitably occurs on all sides in a war--for the commanders, the fighting forces, the civilians, the obervers, and the commentators.
When events such as the shelling of the UN post, and the resultant deaths of the UN personnel, occur--and occur they will, almost without fail, in every hot war, no matter how careful the military might be--each side makes statements about what has happened. It's understood that all such statements are preliminary. An investigation can help dispel the fog, but only imperfectly, and only over time.
In this instance Israel has said that this was a tragic accident--no surprise there. One would also imagine that the UN--an institution at least theoretically dedicated to damping down conflicts, judicious restraint, withholding judgment until all the facts are in--would avoid making premature statements about what happened and what Israel intended.
But in this case, the UN is also the injured party, which makes the fog even thicker. And Kofi Annan's response has been to interpret this action in the worst light for Israel. At the same time that Annan said he is "trying to get the details" of the attack (a reasonable response), he also called it an "apparently deliberate targeting" on the part of Israel.
It seems clear to me that the latter statement is so excessively inflammatory that it should never have been uttered by any UN official in the absence of strong and incontrovertible evidence that it was true.
So, what gives? Annan was clearly upset by the deaths--as well he might be. In moments of strong emotion, people often let words slip out that would otherwise--and should otherwise--have remained unsaid. And in those moments, people often reveals their biases. However, none of this is the sort of behavior the Secretary General of the UN should display.
It's not as though Annan's biases--or those of the UN--were hidden prior to this, though. Case in point: this article, written by Alan Dershowitz on July 20 (prior to the deaths of the UN observers), lists some examples for Annan. And anyone familiar with the history of the UN and Israel since the 1970s knows the sad story there (see also this).
What happened at that UN outpost, and why? I don't pretend to know. If this report is true--and I have no reason at the moment to think it isn't--the fog of war must have been unusually thick at the time, allowing some sort of total breakdown of communication that led to the incident.
But, as Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor has said, the accusation that Israel would have deliberately targeted UN officials simply makes no sense:
"Why on earth would we deliberately target U.N. observers?" he asked. "What good would that do either on the military or the political level, because it so obvious that this would be harmful. Of course it is a tragedy for the observers and their bereaved families and we truly share their sorrow and we deeply regret the incident. It was obviously a fatal mistake.
Palmor has said it's obvious that the accusation makes no sense "on the military or political level," and I agree. So where does the accusation come from? The charges do make sense in one way, and that is on the emotional level of those making the accusation.
To those who are predisposed to believe that Israel and Israelis are not demonic Nazis, but merely citizens of a country that's been fighting for its very existence ever since the beginning of that existence, it would seem obvious that this was an error rather than a top-down policy of the Israeli government. But it's not obvious at all to those who have bought their own rhetoric about Israeli evil.
Those who believe that this was a case of deliberate targeting of UN personnel are not only operating under the supposition of Israeli evil intent, but of Israeli infallibility. The latter two characteristics--evil coupled with genius, as in "evil genius"--have been part and parcel of anti-Semitic thought for centuries. Now that type of thinking has been transferred to those who demonize Israel.
Israel--unlike its enemies--attempts to be a country that fights wars in a relatively humane way. It tries to avoid killing civilians; it does not deliberately target them. This, of course, is in contrast to its enemies, whose main stock in trade is to deliberately target civilians--both Israel's and its own. And that is no secret; it is obvious and up-front. The enemy targets Israeli civilians directly by methods such as suicide bombing in pizza parlors and restaurants, as well as firing unguided Katusha rockets into Israeli cities. And it targets its own civilians by hiding weaponry and "insurgents" among the civilian population (see this for a discussion).
Israeli weaponry (like that of the US) has developed a remarkable degree of sophistication. In an effort to kill only the guilty, amazing advances have been made. Smart weaponry and good intelligence cannot, however, be infallible, and they can never dispel the fog of war entirely, nor protect innocent civilians (or UN obervers, or reporters), who will always remain at risk.
It is paradoxical, then, that those very advances in "smart" weaponry--and the intent behind those advances, which is the desire to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible--have backfired. Because Israeli attacks are targeted as opposed to indiscriminate, the Israelis are somehow assumed to be omniscient and omnipotent in this regard. And this, combined with the idea that they have evil intent, gives rise to statements such as Annan's.
[ADDENDUM: Belmont Club offers his usual detailed and knowledgeable analysis of the situation. A must-read.
See also, this: Claudia Rosett on how the UN has grievously mishandled the Lebanese situation since the 2000 Israeli withdrawal from that country. Strong stuff.]
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
The dump and the lost and the found
Yesterday I went to the town dump.
I live in a town where--despite fairly hefty property taxes--we don't have garbage collection. I'm not sure why, but my guess is that there's some sort of ethos here that garbage isn't esthetically pleasing enough; all those cans and bags by the road tend to spoil the bucolic charm. And the town dump is supposedly a happy place where everyone meets and greets, although I can't say I've seen too much of that. Also, I hear tell that the richer among us (that's not me!) hire private garbage collectors to do their dirty work for them.
Even though I've lived in New England for most of my adult life, this was the first place I'd ever resided in that didn't have garbage pickup. At first I was a bit miffed--after all, what were those high property taxes all about? I don't have kids any more in the school system, even though I see the need to support it--so I figured I should at least be getting garbage collection for my pains.
But now I'm used to the rhythm of my visits to the dump. If I've had guests and the garbage piles up faster and it's hot out, I can make more frequent visits. It's vaguely relaxing and mindless work, sorting things out; and I also enjoy the sense of making a clean sweep and a fresh start every time I return home and see those momentarily empty recycling bins of mine.
At the dump there's a complex system of carefully labeled containers, telling us what goes in where and what doesn't go in where, with so Byzantine a set of rules that an attorney might be of assistance in deciphering them (and perhaps dump law is a new legal specialty, for all I know). There's an area where you can bring the sort of waste that's good for compost, which they then make and sell to raise money; and there's a huge pile of brush and one of scrap and one of concrete and one of batteries and one of--well, you get the idea.
And the dump has a few more perks. There's a Goodwill bin that I visit regularly in an attempt to simplify my life. And then there's the car vacuum machine.
And here I have a confession to make--I sometimes procrastinate at the task of cleaning my car. Yes, I do; indeed I do. But going to the dump and passing by that large suction hose reminds me to look down and notice that, now that mud season is over and it's truly summer, there's a lot of debris in my car that could use some getting rid of.
Vacuuming the car is one of the most satisfying tasks of all. First, I clear out all the odd papers and place them in a bag, to be sorted out when I get home. This requires moving the seats and crawling down under them to find the wealth of paper that has somehow, unbeknownst to me, found its way there. Then, put the coins in the machine (four quarters these days, and I've found it accepts Canadian!) and off to the races.
Because the vacuum is timed, there's a sense of urgency to beat the clock, a nice game to play. Floors, cushions, little cracks in between this and that, even the trunk; can I fit it all in? Yes and yes and yes.
And now the inside of my car looks, if not new, certainly newer.
Afterwards, though, sorting out the papers at home (most of them worthless scrap), I found a stamped envelope addressed to the state but unmailed. Not good. I had the sinking feeling that I knew what it was and, opening it, discovered that I was correct.
Speaking of property taxes--inside was a note I'd written three weeks ago that was part of the process of applying for a partial property tax refund that I seem to be entitled to. It was supposed to have arrived at the state office by July 15. I'd filled it out and sealed it and stamped it and put it in the car as I do with all my mail, but somehow it had slipped under the seat and not been posted with all its fellows. And I never noticed till now.
I called the state office involved, and the woman I spoke with suggested I send it to them with a note of explanation. I have no idea whether I'll still get that rebate I'd been counting on and very much looking forward to, though.
The moral[s] of the story: go to the dump more often? Clean out your car more often? Quit your complaining? Be more careful? Don't sweat the small stuff? All will be well in the end? The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley? There's no way to beat death and taxes, even if you try? Mama said there'd be days like this? There's no business like show business?
At any rate, it's a nice respite from talking about war all the time.
I live in a town where--despite fairly hefty property taxes--we don't have garbage collection. I'm not sure why, but my guess is that there's some sort of ethos here that garbage isn't esthetically pleasing enough; all those cans and bags by the road tend to spoil the bucolic charm. And the town dump is supposedly a happy place where everyone meets and greets, although I can't say I've seen too much of that. Also, I hear tell that the richer among us (that's not me!) hire private garbage collectors to do their dirty work for them.
Even though I've lived in New England for most of my adult life, this was the first place I'd ever resided in that didn't have garbage pickup. At first I was a bit miffed--after all, what were those high property taxes all about? I don't have kids any more in the school system, even though I see the need to support it--so I figured I should at least be getting garbage collection for my pains.
But now I'm used to the rhythm of my visits to the dump. If I've had guests and the garbage piles up faster and it's hot out, I can make more frequent visits. It's vaguely relaxing and mindless work, sorting things out; and I also enjoy the sense of making a clean sweep and a fresh start every time I return home and see those momentarily empty recycling bins of mine.
At the dump there's a complex system of carefully labeled containers, telling us what goes in where and what doesn't go in where, with so Byzantine a set of rules that an attorney might be of assistance in deciphering them (and perhaps dump law is a new legal specialty, for all I know). There's an area where you can bring the sort of waste that's good for compost, which they then make and sell to raise money; and there's a huge pile of brush and one of scrap and one of concrete and one of batteries and one of--well, you get the idea.
And the dump has a few more perks. There's a Goodwill bin that I visit regularly in an attempt to simplify my life. And then there's the car vacuum machine.
And here I have a confession to make--I sometimes procrastinate at the task of cleaning my car. Yes, I do; indeed I do. But going to the dump and passing by that large suction hose reminds me to look down and notice that, now that mud season is over and it's truly summer, there's a lot of debris in my car that could use some getting rid of.
Vacuuming the car is one of the most satisfying tasks of all. First, I clear out all the odd papers and place them in a bag, to be sorted out when I get home. This requires moving the seats and crawling down under them to find the wealth of paper that has somehow, unbeknownst to me, found its way there. Then, put the coins in the machine (four quarters these days, and I've found it accepts Canadian!) and off to the races.
Because the vacuum is timed, there's a sense of urgency to beat the clock, a nice game to play. Floors, cushions, little cracks in between this and that, even the trunk; can I fit it all in? Yes and yes and yes.
And now the inside of my car looks, if not new, certainly newer.
Afterwards, though, sorting out the papers at home (most of them worthless scrap), I found a stamped envelope addressed to the state but unmailed. Not good. I had the sinking feeling that I knew what it was and, opening it, discovered that I was correct.
Speaking of property taxes--inside was a note I'd written three weeks ago that was part of the process of applying for a partial property tax refund that I seem to be entitled to. It was supposed to have arrived at the state office by July 15. I'd filled it out and sealed it and stamped it and put it in the car as I do with all my mail, but somehow it had slipped under the seat and not been posted with all its fellows. And I never noticed till now.
I called the state office involved, and the woman I spoke with suggested I send it to them with a note of explanation. I have no idea whether I'll still get that rebate I'd been counting on and very much looking forward to, though.
The moral[s] of the story: go to the dump more often? Clean out your car more often? Quit your complaining? Be more careful? Don't sweat the small stuff? All will be well in the end? The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley? There's no way to beat death and taxes, even if you try? Mama said there'd be days like this? There's no business like show business?
At any rate, it's a nice respite from talking about war all the time.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Hezbollah: entwined and enmeshed in Lebanon
Many--including myself--have used the phrase "hostage" to describe the Lebanese people in the current crisis. And no doubt many of the citizens of that country are in just that position.
But not all. Although it's difficult to know the true percentages, one cannot deny that Hezbollah has a great deal of support in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, the organization that is driving the present action in Lebanon, was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But over the years it has insinuated itself so deeply and profoundly into Lebanese life that one can say that, if the Lebanese people are being held hostage, it is by an organization that many of them have supported and/or tolerated, and have been the social beneficiaries of, for decades. Lebanon has not only failed to eradicate Hezbollah, the group has grown in power in recent years and is now closely intertwined in Lebanese life and politics.
Take a look at the history of Hezbollah in Lebanon (and yes, it's from Wikipedia, but it seems to be a fairly straightforward and undisputed article). Originally arriving in Lebanon 1982 as an arm of the mullahs of Iran, devoted to the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeni and aimed at engaging the Shiite majority of Moslems in Lebanon, Hezbollah positioned itself from the start as the potential liberator of Lebanon from the Israeli occupation that began in 1982 and lasted until Israel's withdrawal in 2000. All the while, Hezbollah has been openly and unabashedly dedicated to the destruction of Israel, rather than any sort of coexistence or negotiation with it.
There is no question that the events of 2000 allowed Hezbollah to claim victory over Israel, and earned it regard throughout Lebanon for this. In 2003, for example, the Maronite Christian President of Lebanon at the time, Emile Lahoud, is quoted as saying [emphasis mine]:
For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.
Like many terrorist organizations, and in the time-honored fashion of other political groups with power agendas, Hezbollah has also won over the people by establishing organizations such as schools and hospitals, filling gaps in the system of social services (much as the decidedly non-terrorist but extremely corrupt Tammany Hall did in New York City of the 1850s through 1930s).
After 2000, Hezbollah made it clear that not only did it take responsibility for the Israeli withdrawal, but that it considered said withdrawal a reflection of Israeli weakness. Ever since, Hezbollah has been consolidating its power in Lebanon and burrowing its way ever deeper into Lebanese political and military life.
The relative calm in Lebanon has enabled Hezbollah, in its role as liberator, to become the de facto army of southern Lebanon, and to seed throughout that area the Syrian- and Iranian-supplied rockets used in the present attacks, storing them in strategic locations--"strategic," in this case, being (of course!) embedded in the midst of civilians, the better to maximize Lebanese civilian casualties when Israel retaliates.
In the Lebanese election of 2005, Hezbollah increased its representation in Parliament by a multiple of three, going from a previous high of eight representatives to its present twenty- three, as well as gaining, for the first time, ministers in the executive branch of the government.
It's interesting to speculate whether those Lebanese who supported Hezbollah as liberators and social workers ever thought about the hidden Hezbollah agenda, which was to use the Lebanese people as the aforementioned hostages to score propaganda points with the press and the West when those hostages inevitably become victims. Were they aware of this plan, as well as the very clear statements by Hezbollah that their goal was not peace, but the eradication of the state of Israel? If so, did the supporters of Hezbollah care? Did they see the possible consequences for themselves?
Going back to the bank robber/hostage analogy, one might say that many of the Lebanese people are in the position of having been minor accessories to the crime--roughly analogous to those who might gain prior knowledge of a crime about to be committed but who fail to act or to alert authorities so that it might be prevented--who then find the main actor in the crime (the bank robber), a former trusted friend and accomplice, suddenly grabbing them and placing them between the police and himself. It may be a surprise to the hostage--but should it be?
It's clear that Hezbollah needs to be rooted out of Lebanon. But it's very difficult to see how this could happen if the Lebanese people themselves don't wish it to happen--and even then, it would be far from easy to accomplish at this point. Syria, as Hezbollah's main supplier, could theoretically be involved, but that has the danger of "inviting" the Syrians back into greater power in a country that's only recently begun to detangle itself from its nefarious influence.
That word "detangle" is a good one, because excising Hezbollah from Lebanon is not going to be a simple act of surgery. Many metaphors come to mind: Hezbollah in Lebanon is like a tumor without sharp borders or boundaries; a neuroma that's burrowed itself into the tissue in a deep and complex manner, a family that's too deeply enmeshed for members to individuate and separate.
This is one of the reasons that Condoleezza Rice's words at Friday's news conference were so interesting. If you read the transcript, you'll find that, over and over, she emphasizes the issue of Lebanese sovereignty, an appeal to Lebanese pride in its own autonomy. Knowing how instrumental Hezbollah was in Lebanese perception of that autonomy from Israel back in 2000, and how pleased the country is to have recently expelled the Syrians, she carefully phrases the eradication of Hezbollah from Lebanon as an issue of Lebanese sovereignty as well.
Whether this will be at all effective is unclear. But it's the right sort of rhetoric for the occasion, to be followed by tough negotiations that--as Rice herself says--don't just put into place a meaningless cease-fire that perpetuates business as usual, but some sort of lasting change for the better that damps down Hezbollah's power in the region.
[Cross-posted at Winds of Change.]
But not all. Although it's difficult to know the true percentages, one cannot deny that Hezbollah has a great deal of support in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, the organization that is driving the present action in Lebanon, was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But over the years it has insinuated itself so deeply and profoundly into Lebanese life that one can say that, if the Lebanese people are being held hostage, it is by an organization that many of them have supported and/or tolerated, and have been the social beneficiaries of, for decades. Lebanon has not only failed to eradicate Hezbollah, the group has grown in power in recent years and is now closely intertwined in Lebanese life and politics.
Take a look at the history of Hezbollah in Lebanon (and yes, it's from Wikipedia, but it seems to be a fairly straightforward and undisputed article). Originally arriving in Lebanon 1982 as an arm of the mullahs of Iran, devoted to the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeni and aimed at engaging the Shiite majority of Moslems in Lebanon, Hezbollah positioned itself from the start as the potential liberator of Lebanon from the Israeli occupation that began in 1982 and lasted until Israel's withdrawal in 2000. All the while, Hezbollah has been openly and unabashedly dedicated to the destruction of Israel, rather than any sort of coexistence or negotiation with it.
There is no question that the events of 2000 allowed Hezbollah to claim victory over Israel, and earned it regard throughout Lebanon for this. In 2003, for example, the Maronite Christian President of Lebanon at the time, Emile Lahoud, is quoted as saying [emphasis mine]:
For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.
Like many terrorist organizations, and in the time-honored fashion of other political groups with power agendas, Hezbollah has also won over the people by establishing organizations such as schools and hospitals, filling gaps in the system of social services (much as the decidedly non-terrorist but extremely corrupt Tammany Hall did in New York City of the 1850s through 1930s).
After 2000, Hezbollah made it clear that not only did it take responsibility for the Israeli withdrawal, but that it considered said withdrawal a reflection of Israeli weakness. Ever since, Hezbollah has been consolidating its power in Lebanon and burrowing its way ever deeper into Lebanese political and military life.
The relative calm in Lebanon has enabled Hezbollah, in its role as liberator, to become the de facto army of southern Lebanon, and to seed throughout that area the Syrian- and Iranian-supplied rockets used in the present attacks, storing them in strategic locations--"strategic," in this case, being (of course!) embedded in the midst of civilians, the better to maximize Lebanese civilian casualties when Israel retaliates.
In the Lebanese election of 2005, Hezbollah increased its representation in Parliament by a multiple of three, going from a previous high of eight representatives to its present twenty- three, as well as gaining, for the first time, ministers in the executive branch of the government.
It's interesting to speculate whether those Lebanese who supported Hezbollah as liberators and social workers ever thought about the hidden Hezbollah agenda, which was to use the Lebanese people as the aforementioned hostages to score propaganda points with the press and the West when those hostages inevitably become victims. Were they aware of this plan, as well as the very clear statements by Hezbollah that their goal was not peace, but the eradication of the state of Israel? If so, did the supporters of Hezbollah care? Did they see the possible consequences for themselves?
Going back to the bank robber/hostage analogy, one might say that many of the Lebanese people are in the position of having been minor accessories to the crime--roughly analogous to those who might gain prior knowledge of a crime about to be committed but who fail to act or to alert authorities so that it might be prevented--who then find the main actor in the crime (the bank robber), a former trusted friend and accomplice, suddenly grabbing them and placing them between the police and himself. It may be a surprise to the hostage--but should it be?
It's clear that Hezbollah needs to be rooted out of Lebanon. But it's very difficult to see how this could happen if the Lebanese people themselves don't wish it to happen--and even then, it would be far from easy to accomplish at this point. Syria, as Hezbollah's main supplier, could theoretically be involved, but that has the danger of "inviting" the Syrians back into greater power in a country that's only recently begun to detangle itself from its nefarious influence.
That word "detangle" is a good one, because excising Hezbollah from Lebanon is not going to be a simple act of surgery. Many metaphors come to mind: Hezbollah in Lebanon is like a tumor without sharp borders or boundaries; a neuroma that's burrowed itself into the tissue in a deep and complex manner, a family that's too deeply enmeshed for members to individuate and separate.
This is one of the reasons that Condoleezza Rice's words at Friday's news conference were so interesting. If you read the transcript, you'll find that, over and over, she emphasizes the issue of Lebanese sovereignty, an appeal to Lebanese pride in its own autonomy. Knowing how instrumental Hezbollah was in Lebanese perception of that autonomy from Israel back in 2000, and how pleased the country is to have recently expelled the Syrians, she carefully phrases the eradication of Hezbollah from Lebanon as an issue of Lebanese sovereignty as well.
Whether this will be at all effective is unclear. But it's the right sort of rhetoric for the occasion, to be followed by tough negotiations that--as Rice herself says--don't just put into place a meaningless cease-fire that perpetuates business as usual, but some sort of lasting change for the better that damps down Hezbollah's power in the region.
[Cross-posted at Winds of Change.]
Close to home
Here's an interesting visual, courtesy of Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities special Middle East Edition.
It hits particularly close to home for those of us who live in New England, and know the distances involved. Hint: they're not large. Not at all.
It hits particularly close to home for those of us who live in New England, and know the distances involved. Hint: they're not large. Not at all.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Hezbollah and the "occupation" argument
If you look at the wide variety of opinions in the highlighted articles at Real Clear Politics as to how the current Mideast conflict is going to play out, you realize how much disagreement and confusion there is. In truth, we're in the fog of war, and no one knows. Read them and decide what makes the most sense to you, and then watch as events unfold, no doubt in some direction no one quite foresaw.
That's one of the many problems with war; it's unpredictable, and unleashes strong and powerful forces that are destructive to human life, although in the end they can resolve certain issues and topple certain regimes. As Churchill--no stranger to war, and a man who did not shy away from it--said:
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
That said, Dennis Ross (former Mideast "peace process" negotiator) has an interesting article in the New Republic about the significance of Hezbollah's actions in this war, and the message it sends to the world, including the Arab world. For decades, the Arabs of the region have presented their animus towards Israel as the result of Israeli "occupation." Although the historical record indicates otherwise--the Arab nations tried to destroy Israel long before there was any occupation--it was a convincing argument for many.
According to Ross:
When Hezbollah was fighting Israeli "occupation," it was untouchable. But the general Arab narrative has been that the violence, meaning terrorism, is driven by occupation: no occupation, no violence. Hamas has already cast doubt on this narrative by launching attacks from Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, but it is hard for Arab regimes to challenge Hamas's legitimacy. Hezbollah, however, is another story.
Ross goes on to list the many condemnations of Hezbollah's recent actions offered by the Arab countries of the region. He sees the situation as an opportunity--a tricky one, to be sure, filled with perilous traps and the need for delicate balance--to check Iran's rise in the region.
In recent years, Israel has pulled back from the Arab territories it formerly occupied and fortified its borders with the famous defensive fence. These acts had the effect of calling its enemies' bluffs. But this retreat was widely seen by those enemies as Israeli weakness rather than strength. Now Israel is trying to show that perception to be a false one.
That's one of the many problems with war; it's unpredictable, and unleashes strong and powerful forces that are destructive to human life, although in the end they can resolve certain issues and topple certain regimes. As Churchill--no stranger to war, and a man who did not shy away from it--said:
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
That said, Dennis Ross (former Mideast "peace process" negotiator) has an interesting article in the New Republic about the significance of Hezbollah's actions in this war, and the message it sends to the world, including the Arab world. For decades, the Arabs of the region have presented their animus towards Israel as the result of Israeli "occupation." Although the historical record indicates otherwise--the Arab nations tried to destroy Israel long before there was any occupation--it was a convincing argument for many.
According to Ross:
When Hezbollah was fighting Israeli "occupation," it was untouchable. But the general Arab narrative has been that the violence, meaning terrorism, is driven by occupation: no occupation, no violence. Hamas has already cast doubt on this narrative by launching attacks from Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, but it is hard for Arab regimes to challenge Hamas's legitimacy. Hezbollah, however, is another story.
Ross goes on to list the many condemnations of Hezbollah's recent actions offered by the Arab countries of the region. He sees the situation as an opportunity--a tricky one, to be sure, filled with perilous traps and the need for delicate balance--to check Iran's rise in the region.
In recent years, Israel has pulled back from the Arab territories it formerly occupied and fortified its borders with the famous defensive fence. These acts had the effect of calling its enemies' bluffs. But this retreat was widely seen by those enemies as Israeli weakness rather than strength. Now Israel is trying to show that perception to be a false one.
Getting around in their Pajamas
The Anchoress observes that Pajamas Media is doing an impressive job of covering the current Mideast war.
I've noticed the same thing myself. Of course, as a member of Pajamas, I guess you can't call me unbiased; I most definitely have a dog in this race.
When PJ began, I saw it as an experiment that might or might not work out. But I was more than willing to go along for the ride. After all, I had nothing to lose, and it sounded like a good idea and a fun idea.
At first, I didn't go to their website much. It seemed a haphazard collection of random blog posts, with nothing special to recommend it. But I figured that would change over time, as they found out what worked and what didn't.
And it most certainly has. Now I go there not because I'm curious about how they're doing, or loyal, but because their coverage has become excellent. In fact, they feature the best roundups of news and opinion about the war that I've found online.
One of the ways I can tell that the Pajamas readership has risen considerably is by the amount of traffic they drive. At first, when I was linked there, the uptick on my sitemeter was very modest indeed. Then there was a slow increase over time. Now any link from PJ causes a very respectable surge.
I noticed a sharp upturn in both the traffic and quality of the website with the appointment of Gerard Van der Leun, who brings his extensive expertise and ebullient energy (love those alliterations--watch for more!) to the job of Editor in Chief. Head honcho, the refreshing and resourceful Roger Simon, has been burning the midnight oil as well, as have those cover-the-globe editors: the judicious and jocund Juliette Ochieng, the hardworking and humane Jose Guardia, and the remarkable and reflective Richard Fernandez.
Last November, at the PJ kickoff in New York--back when the group was laboring under the fortunately short-lived moniker OSM--I met the majority of these people, as well as a host of my fellow PJ bloggers. You can read my description of the event here, in case you missed it first time round. Fun.
I've noticed the same thing myself. Of course, as a member of Pajamas, I guess you can't call me unbiased; I most definitely have a dog in this race.
When PJ began, I saw it as an experiment that might or might not work out. But I was more than willing to go along for the ride. After all, I had nothing to lose, and it sounded like a good idea and a fun idea.
At first, I didn't go to their website much. It seemed a haphazard collection of random blog posts, with nothing special to recommend it. But I figured that would change over time, as they found out what worked and what didn't.
And it most certainly has. Now I go there not because I'm curious about how they're doing, or loyal, but because their coverage has become excellent. In fact, they feature the best roundups of news and opinion about the war that I've found online.
One of the ways I can tell that the Pajamas readership has risen considerably is by the amount of traffic they drive. At first, when I was linked there, the uptick on my sitemeter was very modest indeed. Then there was a slow increase over time. Now any link from PJ causes a very respectable surge.
I noticed a sharp upturn in both the traffic and quality of the website with the appointment of Gerard Van der Leun, who brings his extensive expertise and ebullient energy (love those alliterations--watch for more!) to the job of Editor in Chief. Head honcho, the refreshing and resourceful Roger Simon, has been burning the midnight oil as well, as have those cover-the-globe editors: the judicious and jocund Juliette Ochieng, the hardworking and humane Jose Guardia, and the remarkable and reflective Richard Fernandez.
Last November, at the PJ kickoff in New York--back when the group was laboring under the fortunately short-lived moniker OSM--I met the majority of these people, as well as a host of my fellow PJ bloggers. You can read my description of the event here, in case you missed it first time round. Fun.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Fighting elephants; trembling mice
There's an old saying, rendered variously as:
When elephants fight, it's the mice who must tremble.
When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers.
The applicability to the current situation in the Middle East? When Hezbollah goads Israel from its hiding place in Lebanon, and Israel retaliates, the ordinary people in both countries suffer.
Right now, as Fouad Ajami points out in today's Opinion Journal (and as I pointed out some days ago, here), the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah. Yes, of course, some of the Lebanese people support Hezbollah, even though it was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But the majority? Doubtful. But that didn't stop Nasrallah from provoking the Israelis into this war in Lebanon; elephants don't ordinarily ask the mice's permission when they start a battle.
Ajami believes that Nasrallah miscalculated, thinking it would be just business as usual when he provoked Israel, underestimating the spine of the new, non-Sharon, government (as well as the opposition of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan). Gone were the old warriors of Israel, Nasrallah thought--the elephants, as it were--and in their place were the bureaucrats.
But Israel seems to have found a new resolve, exemplified by this passage from a speech Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made last Monday:
"There are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more!" Olmert said in a speech in the Knesset plenum Monday evening. "And I say to everyone: no more! Israel will not be held hostage - not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state."
There's that metaphor again: being held hostage. And the linked Jerusalem Post article goes on to point out that Israel and its leaders (usually so fractious) are presently united behind Olmert.
Why is this? It seems to me that it's because so much else has been tried, for so very long, and been found so very wanting. If the slogan of the peace movement is "Give peace a chance," Israel can honestly say (although its enemies will never credit this, of course) "Been there, done that, many times. And it didn't work."
Another reason Olmert can stand firm is that the Bush administration is refusing to pay any more lip service to the 'peace process" as a way of dealing with terrorist entities such as Hezbollah.
The tricky part, of course, is to stand firm in such a way that the Green Revolution in Lebanon is not destroyed--that the mice and the grass (to continue the green metaphor) don't tremble too much as the elephants collide.
Secretary Rice is going to the region to try to strike that delicate balance. It will not be easy, as blogger Alcibiades at Kesher Talk points out, here:
...the crumbling of prosperous, pro-Democrat Lebanon may represent a crumbling of what could have been a very important bulwark against the Islamist night that will never be built up again in quite the right way.
But, unfortunately, for Lebanon to ever become that bulwark, Hezbollah has to be rooted out. You can't have it both ways. The hope is that the cure isn't worse than the disease.
Secretary Rice is declaring her own version (or Bush's version, or their combined version) of Olmert's cry of "No more!" Her version is a "no more, enough!" to the false promise of the ceasefire in this case:
We do seek an end to the current violence and we seek it urgently,'' Rice told reporters at the State Department. Still, ``a cease fire would be a false promise if it just returns us to the status quo.''....`Hezbollah is the source of the problem,'' Rice said. No diplomatic solution can allow Hezbollah to stay in place, she said. The U.S. is working to put pressure on Iran and Syria, which sponsor Hezbollah, to ease the strife diplomatically...
Rice is clear: a diplomatic solution is not ruled out. But it must involve an end to the Hezbollah presence in Lebanon. Only then can a ceasefire be meaningful; until then any cease-fire would be premature and counterproductive.
"Cease-fire." It's a wonderful word, is it not? It speaks of peace and tranquility; the poor mice and the defenseless grass can finally stop suffering. Who wouldn't want that? And there are those who are calling for an immediate ceasefire--such as Kofi Annan, not unexpectedly.
But ceasefires in the region, especially ones with a terrorist entity as one of the parties, don't have a good track record. The status quo is unacceptable.
Enough is enough.
When elephants fight, it's the mice who must tremble.
When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers.
The applicability to the current situation in the Middle East? When Hezbollah goads Israel from its hiding place in Lebanon, and Israel retaliates, the ordinary people in both countries suffer.
Right now, as Fouad Ajami points out in today's Opinion Journal (and as I pointed out some days ago, here), the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah. Yes, of course, some of the Lebanese people support Hezbollah, even though it was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But the majority? Doubtful. But that didn't stop Nasrallah from provoking the Israelis into this war in Lebanon; elephants don't ordinarily ask the mice's permission when they start a battle.
Ajami believes that Nasrallah miscalculated, thinking it would be just business as usual when he provoked Israel, underestimating the spine of the new, non-Sharon, government (as well as the opposition of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan). Gone were the old warriors of Israel, Nasrallah thought--the elephants, as it were--and in their place were the bureaucrats.
But Israel seems to have found a new resolve, exemplified by this passage from a speech Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made last Monday:
"There are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more!" Olmert said in a speech in the Knesset plenum Monday evening. "And I say to everyone: no more! Israel will not be held hostage - not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state."
There's that metaphor again: being held hostage. And the linked Jerusalem Post article goes on to point out that Israel and its leaders (usually so fractious) are presently united behind Olmert.
Why is this? It seems to me that it's because so much else has been tried, for so very long, and been found so very wanting. If the slogan of the peace movement is "Give peace a chance," Israel can honestly say (although its enemies will never credit this, of course) "Been there, done that, many times. And it didn't work."
Another reason Olmert can stand firm is that the Bush administration is refusing to pay any more lip service to the 'peace process" as a way of dealing with terrorist entities such as Hezbollah.
The tricky part, of course, is to stand firm in such a way that the Green Revolution in Lebanon is not destroyed--that the mice and the grass (to continue the green metaphor) don't tremble too much as the elephants collide.
Secretary Rice is going to the region to try to strike that delicate balance. It will not be easy, as blogger Alcibiades at Kesher Talk points out, here:
...the crumbling of prosperous, pro-Democrat Lebanon may represent a crumbling of what could have been a very important bulwark against the Islamist night that will never be built up again in quite the right way.
But, unfortunately, for Lebanon to ever become that bulwark, Hezbollah has to be rooted out. You can't have it both ways. The hope is that the cure isn't worse than the disease.
Secretary Rice is declaring her own version (or Bush's version, or their combined version) of Olmert's cry of "No more!" Her version is a "no more, enough!" to the false promise of the ceasefire in this case:
We do seek an end to the current violence and we seek it urgently,'' Rice told reporters at the State Department. Still, ``a cease fire would be a false promise if it just returns us to the status quo.''....`Hezbollah is the source of the problem,'' Rice said. No diplomatic solution can allow Hezbollah to stay in place, she said. The U.S. is working to put pressure on Iran and Syria, which sponsor Hezbollah, to ease the strife diplomatically...
Rice is clear: a diplomatic solution is not ruled out. But it must involve an end to the Hezbollah presence in Lebanon. Only then can a ceasefire be meaningful; until then any cease-fire would be premature and counterproductive.
"Cease-fire." It's a wonderful word, is it not? It speaks of peace and tranquility; the poor mice and the defenseless grass can finally stop suffering. Who wouldn't want that? And there are those who are calling for an immediate ceasefire--such as Kofi Annan, not unexpectedly.
But ceasefires in the region, especially ones with a terrorist entity as one of the parties, don't have a good track record. The status quo is unacceptable.
Enough is enough.
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