"No government can survive on the ruins of a nation."

[WilliamPitt]

Bush's Choice

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, July 21, 2006; 12:38 PM

Presented with a crisis on the Israeli-Lebanese border in which the two pillars of his foreign policy -- fighting terror and spreading democracy -- were conspicuously at odds with each other, President Bush made it clear which pillar is dearest to his heart.

Bush is strongly supporting Israel's furious wave of attacks against Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon, even going so far as single-handedly thwarting a humanitarian-based international consensus for a cease-fire.

But the cost to the fragile Lebanese government -- up until now, the greatest success story in Bush's push for democracy in the Middle East -- has been enormous.

"The country has been torn to shreds," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told diplomats in Beirut on Wednesday. "Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions? . . . You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation."

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Personally, the only ones in Lebanon I see "winning"

are the terrorist organizations in Lebanon, because of the shelling of people not caught up in Hezbollah and the inaction of the Lebanese government to try and protect them.

I put "winning" in quotes because violence as done by Hezbollah is, in the long run, counterproductive and will not get them what they want.

[bullimiami]

2. how can they so often speak the truth of the matter

" 'The president believes that unless you address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East, you cannot forge a lasting peace,' said White House counselor Dan Bartlett


while taking actions that are so destructive to the success of that reality.

Are they so stupid or corrupt that they think the root cause is bad people doing bad things but never consider WHY?

[pberq]

4. Statement by WH spokesman - pure BS propaganda

Despite any statements to the contrary, this adminstration has done nothing to "address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East", and in fact has acted to increase the violence.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. I hope that Lebanon will sue Israel for the damages, just as Saudi

Arab is suing Iraq (who is left there to fight the suit?) for $billions it says it is owed and for damages caused by Saddam going into Kuwait!

[pberq]

5. The results of the invasion will be defiance and resistance

The ongoing destruction of Lebanon will solve nothing. How can people support actions that will not improve the situation? This is highly irrational. And this refers also to the actions of Hezbollah.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/21/1431251

<snip>
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the images that we’ve been seeing for the last week of the enormous damage and the killing of innocent civilians, the incredible damage to the infrastructure of Lebanon; your thoughts?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, my thoughts are this is doubly tragic, because it’s the third or fourth time that Israel does this. I mean, it’s just extraordinary that a people as enlightened and with such a difficult history as the Jewish and Israeli people would actually now be the perpetrators of this kind of savagery over and over again, and each time they do it they reap a much worse counter-reaction.

You know, they started this in the late ’60s, when there was a couple Fatah guerrillas in South Lebanon. They bombed Beirut Airport in 1968 for the first time. Then what they got back was a much bigger Lebanese resistance, a leftist nationalist resistance, with the PLO. Then they went into Lebanon in the ’70s, and then in ’80 they occupied South Lebanon, and they reaped in return for that Hezbollah. And they went into Hezbollah in 1996. They tried to wipe them out from the south, and what they have now is a much stronger Hezbollah, supported by Syria and Iran, with missiles that are hitting Haifa and Safed and other Israeli towns.

So I think there’s a kind of an irrationality to Zionism that we’re seeing today, or at least to the Israeli political leadership, that just don't seem to get it, that when you repress somebody and you brutalize them, what you get is not acquiescence and subservience. What you get is defiance and resistance. And I think this is a lesson that most military powers have learned. Certainly the Americans learned it in Vietnam. They’re learning in Iraq. The Russians learned it in Afghanistan. And the Israelis seem unable or unwilling to learn these lessons in Lebanon.

[DemReadingDU]

6. Related thread, another article by Rami Khouri

7/21/06

Chickens coming home to roost

If you've never seen chickens come home to roost in real time, turn on your television. Watch the expanding military attacks by Israel, Hamas and Hizbullah, and listen to the background music from the United States, Iran and Syria. The widening war is primarily the result of four decades of failed hard-line policies by the United States and Israel, combined with moribund Arab diplomacy and leadership, and resurgent Iranian influence in the region.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x223632