About those "birth pangs"...they're really "death throes."

[marmar]

About Those 'Birth Pangs'
They're really death throes…
by Justin Raimondo
"What we're seeing here, in a sense," said Condoleezza Rice at a July 21 press conference announcing her trip to the Middle East, "is the growing – the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one."

Well, that was quick, because here it is, a month later, and the Old Middle East has bounced right back – with a vengeance, as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was quick to note: "Their 'New Middle East,' based on subjugation and humiliation, and denial of rights and identity, has turned into an illusion," he crowed. Not that the denial of rights and identity isn't an everyday occurrence in Syria, a tightly controlled one-party state. Bashar was addressing the Syrian Journalists Union, although, given Syria's state-owned -and controlled media, what journalists in Syria do is much closer to stenography. But he's right when he says:

"Israel has been trying for decades to gain acceptance in the region. What Israel should know is that every generation has more hatred toward it than the generation before. Hatred is not a good word. We do not hate and we do not encourage hatred. But Israel did not leave room in our region except for hatred."

Which raises the question: just what were the Israelis trying to accomplish? Oh, I know what they say their war aims were, but all accounts of these have been strangely unsatisfactory. We are told that the "plan" was to strike Lebanon and incur, not a wave of hatred directed at Israel, but a reaction against Hezbollah. The Lebanese people, the Israeli strategists supposedly told themselves, would blame Hezbollah for starting the war and bringing Israeli vengeance down on their heads. As Seymour Hersh relates in his latest New Yorker piece:

"The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon's infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon's large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. "

Of course, it didn't turn out that way: instead, the Lebanese people – Muslim, Christian, and Druze alike – were outraged by the viciousness of the Israeli attack, which killed over 1,000, overwhelmingly civilians, including many children, and decimated the infrastructure of a once thriving society. But what I want to know is: how could anyone have expected a different result? The Israeli "strategy" – we bomb the sh*t out of them, and then they'll hate someone else, not us – is just not believable. There's something else going on here.

The complete article is at: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9542