Rubicon

The Whole World Is Watching

John Shelton Lawrence (see his books here) introduced me to a very interesting website today. It's called Watching America, and it compiles (and when necessary translates) articles from foreign periodicals about the US and US-relevant issues. It's a good corrective to the American media, which is mostly insular and self-serving.

George Bush lives in an information bubble, but it is also true that to some degree all Americans live in a bubble—more permeable than Bush's, perhaps, but still a space that contains a limited amount of filtered information about the world. And that information is particularly distorted when it deals with America's image, especially in this era of bully-boy diplomacy and preemptive war.

Here's a short sample of articles now on Watching America:

1. Kak Aso Kurdi, "Three 'Wasted Years' On, the Breakup of Iraq the 'Most Judicious Solution'," 8/28, Kurdish Media, Iraq (includes Kurdish map above):

After three wasted years, the number of coalition deaths has exceeded more than 2,845. Approximately 100,000 mostly innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed. These war statistics are unbiased and are conservative in terms of Iraqi deaths. The rate of unemployment, inflation and crime has skyrocketed to alarming levels; Iraq's infrastructure has been totally paralyzed; and worst of all, sectarian and ethnic violence is on the rise. Iraq has become fertile ground for international terrorist groups.

Despite the allocation of huge financial resources for the reconstruction of Iraq, except for "new" ruins and remains, nothing has been accomplished. Reconstruction cannot thrive without enduring peace and stability. The fate and future of Iraq remains very much on doubt, and every day the outlook becomes more disconcerting.…

Most military strategists and political experts assess that it will not be possible to contain the calamitous civil war that is now underway. The more that the United States remains firm that it is obliged to maintain its presence, the more affliction, insecurity and mayhem the Iraq people have to look forward to.

At present, the definitive and most judicious solution would be the disintegration of Iraq into three different entities: a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center and a Shiite state in the south. To prevent the further waste of innocent lives and to put and end [sic] the pain and suffering, Iraq must ultimately be divided up … and the sooner, the better.

2. Interview with Salman Rushdie, "Terror Is Glamor," 8/28, Der Spiegel, Germany:

Rushdie: I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal. There are always reasons for criticism, also for outrage. But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people. If the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, for example, were to be miraculously solved from one day to the next, I believe we wouldn't see any fewer attacks.…

Terror is glamour -- not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers. Many are influenced by the misdirected image of a kind of magic that is inherent in these insane acts. The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other peoples lives. There's one thing you mustn't forget here: the victims terrorized by radical Muslims are mostly other Muslims.…

I hadn't thought it possible that the Bush administration would go about setting up the machinery of an authoritarian state.…

Spiegel: Has it done that?

Rushdie: Oh yes.…

Spiegel: So are Bush and Blair going too far?

Rushdie: This is the problem with politicians who by nature tend towards being authoritarian: When they are given the chance, they go too far. We have to watch out there. I find it deeply depressing that the Anglo-American politics and Arab politics are currently corroborating each other -- that is: their worst prejudices. Take a look at Iraq, at Lebanon. There is no just side in either conflict. But at the same time we need moral clarity, something I have often missed recently in many liberally minded people -- and I myself am liberal. We need clarity about what is right and wrong, the willingness to defend our values with clear words and to actually call the guilty persons guilty.

3. "American Inconsistency 'a Tragedy of the Highest Order'," editorial, 8/28, The Daily Star, Lebanon

From the perspective of many Lebanese, being America's friend carries precious few benefits. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has done his utmost to respect American wishes on a variety of fronts, only to be sent away empty-handed when he has asked for anything in return. American policy vis-a-vis the devastating war with Israel was no more than a highly purified version of this formula, with Washington repeatedly claiming that it was concerned about the stability of Siniora's government, but simultaneously helping the Jewish state to mete out more and deadlier punishment.

Especially in this part of the world and particularly for a tiny country like Lebanon, the absence of effective support means no support at all. The presence, meanwhile, of active and enthusiastic support - diplomatic, economic, and military - for a powerful invader is difficult to see as anything other than unabashed betrayal.…

The current situation in Lebanon is just the latest episode in a long-running horror show of American inconsistency, and the Lebanese need look no further than Palestine for another recent case: the collective punishment and economic strangulation of a people who dared elect a government that defied Washington's diktats.

And that's the news from outside the bubble.

The Road to Tehran

Israel's murderous bombardment of Lebanon is a dress rehearsal for an American aerial attack on Iran, according to Seymour Hersh, writing in this week's New Yorker. The Bush administration was involved in planning for the Israeli attacks, which were primed and ready to go as soon as a reasonable pretext could be found. The odd detachment of George Bush and Condoleezza Rice in the early days of the war—when they claimed to want a "sustainable ceasefire" but also called for a delay until "the conditions are conducive"—seems less odd if one knows that they were aware of the details of Israeli strategy but expected quick victory over Hezbollah.

Bush and Dick Cheney, writes Hersh,

were convinced … that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah despite nine thousand air missions, and the collective punishment meted out to all of Lebanon has instead created many more enemies for Israel, and for the US. Nevertheless, Bush and his cronies are unlikely to interpret the failure as a cautionary tale about the profound dangers of attacking Iran. Many American strategists do understand the danger, however, and "the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps" resists the plan to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure. Richard Armitage, formerly Bush's Deputy Secretary of State, told Hersh:

If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million. The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.

The road to American military dominance in the Middle East (what George Bush calls "democratization") has so far wound through Kabul, Baghdad, and Beirut, with disastrous consequences for millions of innocent civilians—and for American prestige and influence. Apparently, the planned extension of that road will next reach Damascus and Tehran. And the inevitable blowback will include retaliatory attacks on innocent civilians in Israel, Britain, and the US. Not all of those attacks can be thwarted by  British intelligence.

At Last, a Ceasefire!

The ceasefire in Lebanon has begun. Let us hope it continues—that, in fact, it has really begun. For that hope to be realized, disengagement must begin quickly. Fortunately, that seems to be the course preferred by the Israeli military. Amos Harel and Aluf Benn report for Haaretz:

The army is recommending that once the cease-fire takes effect, Israel should begin withdrawing its forces from Lebanon relatively quickly.

The intention is for the forces to move back to a line north of the border with Lebanon within about 10 days, or as soon as the Lebanese Army is ready to begin entering south Lebanon. This means that the IDF will not be conducting searches for Hezbollah fighters or arms caches in the areas that it has captured over the last few days, which the army defined as "the heart of the operational campaign" against Hezbollah.

Once the Lebanese Army is fully deployed in the south, together with a beefed-up UNIFIL force, the IDF troops will withdraw completely.

Sunday, five IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting and more than 30 were wounded, 10 of them seriously. In addition, despite the IDF's advance, Hezbollah fired some 250 rockets on Israel, the war's heaviest one-day total to date. The strikes killed one person and wounded dozens.

Without rapid withdrawal, small incidents are likely to occur that might lead quickly to the usual reprisals, and the same bloody scale of continuous attack might well resume. That's also why the international force must be inserted as soon as possible. Caleb Carr writes in the Los Angeles Times of the pattern of mistakes and intransigence characteristic of both Israel and Hezbollah—and the resultant danger to the rest of the world:

In this as in so many things, these enemies have displayed what Freud called "the narcissism of small differences." Those differences seem far less small, however, when one realizes that the narcissism extends to the belief that their causes are worth not only the lives of the most innocent on both sides of every border, but the risk of a regional — or even a global — conflagration.

Clearly, the combatants can no longer be trusted to make sound judgments, and the time has come for the world to insert that rarest of phenomena, a multinational force with both bullets and a brief: to keep the sides apart, to allow humanitarian relief to be administered and to demonstrate that the rest of the world's patience with their repeated errors, and interruptions of each others' errors, will no longer be tolerated.

Will Friday's United Nations Resolution accomplish this? When one reads the fine print, it seems unlikely. And even if it can, it will not begin to go into effect for days — and days, in this conflict, can narrow possibilities for success dramatically by allowing the terrible error of reciprocal civilian death to go on.

A real ceasefire might even provide room for a lasting peace to flower. It could have happened two or three weeks ago, if Bush and Rice had not stood in the way. They must now continue to use their leverage constructively and insist on the cooperation of the Israeli government.

At least Bush is now finally talking to Olmert. According to the New York Times, Friday was the first time he had done so since the conflict began a month ago. May it not be the last.

Bush's Clarifying Wars

George Bush is intolerant of ambiguity. He knows what's right, and he's not afraid to use maximum force on the side of what he knows is right. That's why he always wants to simplify complex issues and come up with the one right answer: friends against enemies, good against evil, democracy against terrorism. Early in 2001, when Colin Powell worried that the Israeli army would use too much force in the West Bank, Bush replied, "Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things."

A show of force does clarify things, in the sense that it reduces ambiguity. Force on one side is met by force on the other side, and the voices of tolerance and moderation are drowned out, because the enemy—whichever side you're on—continues to do such unreasonable things that we must up the ante to protect ourselves. A show of force, particularly when unaccompanied by face-saving ways of backing down, can lead quickly to a situation with only two possible alternatives and no room for compromise. That unambiguous outcome is comfortable for Bush, and his preference for war over diplomacy is calculated to reduce his discomfort, to clarify things for ready comprehension by his simple, limited brain.

Lebanon is still being torn apart, because Bush and Rice conduct "diplomacy" only with allies like Israel and France, not with the antagonists whose inclusion is essential—and even then not always successfully, so that their proposed UN resolution is unacceptable to the Lebanese government or to veto-wielding Russia. The Israeli war machine churns on, "clarifying things" for Bush, while increasing the long-term dangers to Israel and the US. As Glenn Greenwald points out, "Waging unnecessary wars, particularly when they are waged poorly, makes a nation much weaker, not stronger."

The same is true in Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza, force being met with counterforce and breeding a generation of implacable enemies. Some of those enemies were just thwarted by the sharp-eyed British government, saving the lives of thousands of trans-Atlantic fliers. But the liquid-bomb plot is only one of an uncountable number of impending dangers that are being exacerbated (if not created) by the US-British-Israeli strategy of military "clarification." And yet Bush continues to threaten Syria and Iran with air attacks rather than approaching them diplomatically and attempting to reach a livable modus vivendi.

Life is messy and ambiguous. International politics is especially messy and ambiguous. But it is that very ambiguity that permits different kinds of nations to coexist on the same planet. When the entire earth is sufficiently clarified for Bush, the only possible outcome is apocalyptic conflagration.

Victims and Martyrs: Karbala and Masada

With God on your side, you can't lose. So if you find yourself losing anyway, it's a simple matter to redefine victory: Losing here on earth is the very mark of God's blessing and the ticket to heaven. Losing is winning.

But realists know otherwise. They see suffering and carnage, and they recognize disaster, not salvation. Kate Seelye interviewed one such Lebanese realist for Salon, Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, and he said:

The fanatics have won the day. The Israelis are arrogant and won't admit they've lost, but they have. Hezbollah can afford this tactic of burnt earth. We're squeezed between Karbala and Masada.

Karbala is holy to Shiites as the place where Hussein—the third imam, son of Ali and Fatima, grandson of Muhammad—died in battle in 680 CE. Masada is the place where, in 73 CE, one thousand Jewish Zealots, besieged by a Roman army, committed suicide rather than submit to impending defeat. Both spots of sacred ground memorialize those who died for a cause greater than mere earthly life, martyrs who conquered their enemies by losing a battle but thereby achieved moral superiority and eternal life. When two combatants are both willing to accept failure rather than admit error, as Israel and Hezbollah are, there is little room for negotiation.

Israelis are losing in Lebanon, not on the battlefield—where Olmert's policy of collective punishment and total rubblization are all too successful—but in the moral judgment of observers everywhere, for their disproportionate vengefulness. But they imagine their opponents to be purely evil and their critics naïve, so they assume they are winning. They think their God approves of their violence.

Hezbollah is losing in Lebanon, not in the eyes of other Muslims (especially other Shiites)—for whom their courageous resistance to Zionist aggression is seen as admirable—but in their obliterated cities and villages, with nearly a thousand civilians dead. But they imagine their opponents to be purely evil and their own sacrifices necessary, so they assume they are winning. They think their God approves of their violence.

Squeezed between Karbala and Masada, Lebanon needs realists with sufficient power to stop the madness. George Bush is too steeped in his own tribal religious beliefs, unable to understand cause and effect in the real world, to provide the realism: his neoconservative zealotry is destroying one Middle Eastern country after another. Only the UN and the Arab League seem to have any grasp of the situation, and they lack the necessary power.

Glenn Greenwald sums up the American contribution to the chaos:

When you bomb a region and kill their leaders, you necessarily radicalize them, i.e., you spread the resentment and hatred that the president says is what caused the 9/11 attacks. But neoconservatives know no other approach besides killing and bombing their failures away, which -- as the state of the Middle East today conclusively demonstrates -- serves only to exacerbate those failures.

That is the inescapable incoherence that lies at the core of neoconservatism. It claims as its goal the transformation of "hearts and minds" but the only instruments it knows are air raids and ground invasions. This approach is no different than trying to extinguish a fire with gasoline, and unsurprisingly, the flames that for decades were simmering are now raging, with no limits and no end in sight.

But Bush too thinks he is winning, even when he is losing. He steadfastly insists that his God approves of his violence. The fanatics have won the day.

Blocking the Neocon Vision

George Bush and his neoconservative cheerleaders don't want a ceasefire until it can be a "sustainable" ceasefire, and Ehud Olmert is happy to oblige. Just a few more deaths in Lebanon and Israel, they seem to say, and then all this shooting and bombing will stop forever. How many more deaths? They're not altogether clear on that point. So far, it's 900 Lebanese (almost all civilians) and 69 Israelis (29 of them civilians). Perhaps another couple of thousand (mostly Arab civilians) will be sufficient, though if they keep resisting it might take a million or so to quiet everyone down—some serious nuclear collective punishment, perhaps.

With the spiraling threats on both sides—you bomb my capital and I'll bomb yours!—and volcanic anger throughout the Muslim world, it is hard to see where the escalation will stop. The neocons, according to Sidney Blumenthal, would be happy to see Israel in a four-front war, simultaneously fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. The Bush administration would provide support, of course, but it's ever so much nicer to have a client state to fight your wars, especially when you're bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things," as Bush told Colin Powell early in 2001. Clean out all the demons—that's what Armageddon is all about.

It won't work. Olmert may destroy thousands of buildings and roads and bridges in Lebanon, just as Bush did in Iraq, and with them many innocent human beings, but the survivors are unlikely to acquiesce or silently steal away. As Blumenthal points out, the neocon dream of a cleansing regional conflagration will thrust Israel "into a ring of fire." But the Muslim forces, though defeated militarily, can easily rise again, strengthened by memories of slaughter and hopes of revenge. In the Washington Post, Anthony Shadid quotes a Lebanese villager:

"They say they've destroyed Hezbollah, but Hezbollah remains where it was," said Hussein Rumeiti, the leader of a nearby village, pointing at the pillars of clouds rising near the town of Taibe. "There's the proof."…

So far in the conflict, Israel and the United States have scaled back their ambitions -- from disarming or even destroying Hezbollah in the early days to the more modest aim now of creating a frontier that would push the militia back from the border. The growing signs that Hezbollah will emerge from the fighting intact, though battered, have already inspired its portrayal of the war as a victory, by everyone from its grass-roots activists to the senior leadership. Although Hezbollah may suffer in the long run -- amid a debate over its arms and recrimination among its supporters over the suffering the war has inflicted -- it is now building more political capital.…

For many of the weary still living along the border, that means the end of this battle may not mark the end of the war.

If there is any hope of stopping the escalation, an immediate ceasefire is the first requirement. Many Israelis are beginning to come to that conclusion, reconsidering their early support for the attacks on Lebanon. Molly Moore and Jonathan Finer write in the Post:

[S]ome of the nation's most influential voices criticizing political leaders and Israel Defense Forces generals for military strategies they say have failed to protect Israeli citizens.

They blame Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz for trying to lull citizens into a false sense of security, fault generals for relying too heavily on air power to destroy Hezbollah rocket launchers, and worry that Israeli troops may not have been prepared to defeat a force far tougher than Palestinian fighters.…

"I fought the same battles against the same enemy in the same places 16 years ago," said Ido Ahronson, 36, a Jerusalem computer technician who served in Israel's previous conflict in Lebanon. "We didn't accomplish anything then, and I don't see how we can accomplish that much now. How would you feel if George Bush decided to send you back into Vietnam?"

The US should demand an immediate ceasefire. Bush, of course, is too fixated on his tough-boy image to understand the strength and intelligence it takes to stop fighting—but in the House of Representative, Dennis Kucinich has introduced Resolution 450, calling for a ceasefire, along with multiparty negotiations and an international peacekeeping mission. One of the 22 cosponsors of the resolution is my representative, Barbara Lee of California district 9 (photo above). I'm proud of her active efforts to rein in the war machine.

Here is the text of the resolution:

Calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),  That Congress--

(1) calls upon the President to--

(A) appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence;

(B) commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions; and

(C) send a high-level diplomatic mission to the region to facilitate such multi-party negotiations;

(2) urges such multi-party negotiations to begin as soon as possible, including delegations from the governments of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; and

(3) supports an international peacekeeping mission to southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border skirmishes during such multi-party negotiations.

Let's applaud all the representatives who cosponsored this resolution and encourage others to join them. Let's also reelect every one of them in November, along with many more like-minded Democrats. Here is the roll of honor:

• Raul Grijalva, Arizona 7th district
  
• Lynn Woolsey, California 6th
• Barbara Lee, California 9th
• Fortney Pete Stark, California 13th
• Mike Honda, California 15th
• Hilda Solis, California 32nd
• Maxine Waters, California 35th
• Bob Filner, California 51st
• Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii 1st
• Bobby L. Rush, Illinois 1st
• Danny K. Davis, Illinois 7th
• Carolyn Kilpatrick, Michigan 13th
• John Conyers Jr, Michigan 14th
• Betty McCollum, Minnesota 4th
• Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri 5th
• Charles B. Rangel, NewYork 15th
• Maurice Hinchey, NewYork 22nd
• Louise Slaughter, NewYork 28th
• Marcy Kaptur, Ohio 9th
• Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 10th
• Jim Moran, Virginia 8th
• Jim McDermott, Washington 7th
• Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin 2nd

With a revitalized Congress, we may yet be able to thwart the neocon vision of world domination through indiscriminate war. November 7 is a very important date for the US, as it is for every country in the Middle East.

Standing with Folded Hands

At her July 21 press conference, Condoleezza Rice said, "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the … birth pangs of a new Middle East." She then spent the next ten days blocking the Lebanon ceasefire that everyone but Israel wanted, by talking about a "sustainable peace" while actually ensuring sustained war. Each time she talked to Ehud Olmert, he complained he needed just another 10 to 14 days to complete the mission; the deadline was pushed out by one day every 24 hours.

The new Middle East, it seems, has now been born, and the infant is on life support. Those who allowed this tragedy to happen, who stood by with folded hands when they could have acted to ameliorate it—perhaps even avert it—are guilty of crimes against humanity. Rice and George Bush are among the criminals.

Muslims around the world, Sunni and Shia alike, are united in their condemnation of Israel and the United States, particularly following the horrific Qana massacre. In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has issued a fatwa (translation by Juan Cole):

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Among a series of its continuous attacks on dear Lebanon committed by the forces of the Israeli enemy, today came a new massacre in the wounded town of Qana, in which dozens of innocents perished, a scene of the utmost ugliness and horror.

Words are insufficient to condemn this dastardly crime that appears to have been committed by persons devoid of all human values and principles. Even the women and children in shelters were not safe from them.

The scale of the tragedy that has befallen Lebanon is a result of the continuous Israeli attacks, which have reached the point where patience can no longer bear more. It is not possible to stand with folded hands before them. The international community must take the intitiative to impose an immediate ceasefire and to halt this horrific tragedy.

The Muslim world and all peace-loving people will not excuse the parties that put obstacles in the way of this. There will be severe consequences in the entire region.

There will, in fact, be severe consequences for the entire world. With each succeeding day of indifference and carnage, the possibilities for a sustainable peace—a peace of any kind—recede further into the future. The escaping homeless refugees, the wounded and disabled, the friends and family of the hundreds of innocent dead, all are angry, and their anger will not dissipate when the killing stops. They know that Israelis ordered civilians to leave southern Lebanon and bombed their vehicles as they obediently fled. They know that Israelis killed civilians who did not leave, whether out of fear or defiance or lack of transportation.

Peace  is so unlikely now, in Rice's new Middle East—the combatants rigidly oblivious to the humanity of their enemies—that it hardly seems realistic to speak of a peace of any kind, much less a sustainable peace. But that is exactly what several optimists are doing, speaking of peace and pointing the way. I am grateful to them for keeping hope alive.

Anyone who shares this hope is aware that a long-term peace agreement must deal not only with relations between Israel and Lebanon, or between Israel and Palestine, but with all states and groups in the region. It must be a comprehensive peace agreement between Arabs and Jews. 

One American Jew who believes such a peace is possible is Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of Tikkun. He initiated a full-page ad that appeared yesterday in the New York Times, calling for an immediate ceasefire and an international peace conference "to impose a just, equitable and lasting settlement on all parties" throughout Lebanon, Israel, and the Occupied Territories of Palestine. The proposal, signed by 1,500 religious leaders, scholars, academics, writers, and others, demands that:

• the Israeli government immediately halt its attacks on Lebanon
• Hezbollah and Hamas immediately stop shelling or otherwise engaging in violence against Israel
• the U.S. government and governments around the world call on Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas to observe an immediate ceasefire, embargo all weapons, and join an international conference

The proposal goes on to suggest specific elements of a sustainable peace, including an economically and politically viable Palestinian state, reparations for displaced Palestinians and Jews, and a long-term international peacekeeping force. (These ideas are more fully developed in Lerner's book The Geneva Accord and Other Strategies for Middle East Peace.)

Another optimist is Brent Scowcroft, who as George H. W. Bush's national security advisor spent many years dealing with the seemingly intractable conflicts of the Middle East. Writing in Sunday's Washington Post, he says that the time is right for a comprehensive settlement in the region, and that the US must lead the way. He lists the essential elements:

• A Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.…
• Palestinians giving up the right of return and Israel reciprocating by removing its settlements in the West Bank.…
• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia unambiguously reconfirming his 2002 pledge that the Arab world is prepared to enter into full normal relations with Israel upon its withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967.
• Egypt and Saudi Arabia working with the Palestinian Authority to put together a government.…
• Deployment, as part of a cease-fire, of a robust international force in southern Lebanon.
• Deployment of another international force to facilitate and supervise traffic to and from Gaza and the West Bank.
• Designation of Jerusalem as the shared capital of Israel and Palestine, with appropriate international guarantees of freedom of movement and civic life in the city.

George W. Bush is unlikely to heed Scowcroft's advice, as his father did, because he wants to be seen as tougher than his father. He is unlikely to heed Lerner's advice either, because the only religious leaders he listens to are those who sanctify war. Instead, like his acolyte Rice, Bush will continue to stand with folded hands while thousands more are slaughtered.

Update: Jimmy Carter also calls for a comprehensive peace settlement, pointing out how destructive the current policies are, for both the US and Israel:

It is inarguable that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks on its citizens, but it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hezbollah for provoking the devastating response. The result instead has been that broad Arab and worldwide support has been rallied for these groups, while condemnation of both Israel and the United States has intensified.…

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.

A major impediment to progress is Washington's strange policy that dialogue on controversial issues will be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and will be withheld from those who reject U.S. assertions. Direct engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority and the government in Damascus will be necessary if secure negotiated settlements are to be achieved. Failure to address the issues and leaders involved risks the creation of an arc of even greater instability running from Jerusalem through Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran.

The people of the Middle East deserve peace and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong leadership and support.

Amen.

Botched Surgery

The Israeli air force, like the US air force, prides itself on its pinpoint bombing, its "surgical strikes." With technology that includes detailed satellite imagery and laser-directed bombs, the air force claims to be able to distinguish military targets from civilian nontargets.

The killing yesterday of 34 children and 26 adults, all civilians, in Qana, Lebanon, gives the lie to that claim. Of the 68 people, members of two extended families, who huddled together on the ground floor of their building, only 8 survived. The Guardian has a vivid description:

Witnesses describe two explosions a few minutes apart, with survivors desperately moving from one side of the building to the other before being hit by the second blast.…

Muhammad Qassim Shalhoub, a slim 38-year-old construction worker, emerged with a broken hand and minor injuries, but lost his wife, five children and 45 members of his extended family. "Around one o'clock we heard a big explosion," he said. "I don't remember anything after that, but when I opened my eyes I was lying on the floor and my head had hit the wall. There was silence. I didn't hear anything for a while, but then heard screams."

"I said: 'Allahu Akbar [God is most great]. Don't be scared. I will come.' There was blood on my face. I wiped it and looked for my son but couldn't find him. I took three children out - my four-year-old nephew, a girl and her sister. I went outside and screamed for help and three men came and went back inside. There was shelling everywhere. We heard the planes. I was so exhausted I could not go back inside again."

Ibrahim Shalhoub described how he and his cousin had set out to get help after the bombs hit. "It was dark and there was so much smoke. Nobody could do anything till dawn," he said, his eyes still darting around nervously. "I couldn't stop crying, we couldn't help them."…

Rescue workers were pulling bodies from the rubble all morning. They came across the smallest corpses last, many intact but with lungs crushed by the blast wave of the bombing.

In fact, "surgical strike" may be an appropriate metaphor. It is intended to suggest the precision of small, sharp medical instruments, carving out only the "bad parts." But it more tellingly calls to mind the tendency of many surgeons to avoid the tediousness of preventive and palliative care, preferring instead the quick solution of cutting. If you are trained to use a knife, a knife is your tool of choice, even when it may not be the best medical practice.

Similarly, if you are trained to fly planes and drop bombs, diplomacy seems quaint and uncertain. In this sense, the Israeli air force and the Israeli government are surgeons, not general practitioners: their solution to every problem is the same, to use the tools they think will achieve quick results. However, these tools are not appropriate to the situation, and furthermore the surgery is not even precise—unless, in fact, they actually intended to kill all those defenseless children, to break the will of Hezbollah with indiscriminate "collective punishment."

Two profound misapprehensions about aerial attacks are shared by most military strategists, including Ehud Olmert and his generals. First, bombing is never as precise as the military thinks it will be. And second, it tends not to break the will of the enemy, but to stiffen resistance and encourage unity, especially when civilians are targeted.

These clear historical lessons, proven time after time in the last century, seem always to be lost on the next generation of strategists, perhaps because they think (first) that recent technological improvements have finally ensured precision, or (second) that the overwhelming "shock and awe" of their attack are unprecedented and thus will prove successful. Their hardware is different and their tactics are different, so they will succeed where all before have failed.

They are always wrong, just as the Israelis are wrong now. The collateral damage piles up—all those small corpses—and the will of the enemy to survive and seek revenge is strengthened.

Tom Engelhardt explains the history and psychology of this method of warfare in an impassioned essay he calls "Degrading Behavior: The Middle East and the Barbarism of War from the Air." He writes:

Nothing in history was more brutal than the last century's style of war-making -- than those two world wars with their air armadas, backed by the most advanced industrial systems on the planet. Powerful countries then bent every elbow, every brain, to support the destruction of other human beings en masse, not to speak of the Holocaust (which was assembly-line warfare in another form), and the various colonial and Cold War campaigns that went on in the Third World from the 1940s on; which, in places like Korea and Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, substituted the devastation of air power locally for a war between the two superpowers which might have employed the mightiest air weaponry of all to scour the Earth.

It may be that the human capacity for brutality, for barbarism, hasn't changed much since the eighth century, but the industrial revolution -- and in particular the rise of the airplane -- opened up new landscapes to brutality; while the view from behind the gun-sight, then the bomb-sight, and finally the missile-sight slowly widened until all of humanity was taken in. From the lofty, godlike vantage point of the strategic as well as the literal heavens, the military and the civilian began to blur on the ground. Soldiers and citizens, conscripts and refugees alike, became nothing but tiny, indistinguishable hordes of ants, or nothing at all but the structures that housed them, or even just concepts, indistinguishable one from the other.…

And yet, of course, the "will" of the enemy is not broken and, among Israel's leaders and its citizens, frustration mounts; so threats of more and worse are made and worse weapons are brought into play; and wider targeting fields are opened up; and what might faintly pass for "precision bombing" is increasingly abandoned for the equivalent of "area bombing." And the full support system -- which is simply society -- for the movement in question becomes the "will" that must be broken; and in this process, what we call "collateral damage" is moved, by the essential barbaric logic of air power, front and center, directly into the crosshairs.

Israel has announced a 48-hour reprieve for southern Lebanon. It is not enough. A complete ceasefire is essential, to allow time for a diplomatic solution to be crafted. No more botched surgery.

Israel Is a Rogue State

The continuing military campaign against the civilian populations of Lebanon and Gaza, masquerading as a campaign against terrorism, has placed the government of Israel beyond the pale of civilized nations. It has now clearly made the choice to become a rogue state—along with its equally arrogant protector and abettor, the government of the United States.

It did not have to be like this. There was a deep strain of democratic idealism in Israel at its founding, coupled with a sense of intelligent planning and pragmatic hard work—and Israelis thought of themselves as heroic underdogs, able to construct a benign society against great odds. In the fifties and sixties, nearly every American agreed, sharing a warm feeling for Israel and respect for its plucky citizens. When I visited the country in 1959, after traveling through Syria and Jordan, I was struck by the sense that crossing the Green Line was like being transported in one kilometer from the Third World to the steps of Frankfurt. In eleven short years, Israelis had created a functioning outpost of Western European civilization.

True, I had also learned something of the suffering of Palestinians, when the tour guide who led us around the Old City of Jerusalem (then part of Jordan) described his family's ancestral orchards across the border, lands he had not seen since being driven east in 1948. But it was easy for me to focus on the angry Arabs who did not want to see a Jewish state in Palestine, easy for me to assume that Israelis really wanted to live peaceably with the previous inhabitants—and that only the Palestinians' intransigence had foiled Israelis' desire for a multiethnic society.

With the 1967 capture of the West Bank and its gradual colonization, the outlook of Israelis began slowly to change, and with it the country's reputation. Tony Judt, in a brilliant article first published last May in Haaretz, describes the transformation:

Before 1967 the State of Israel may have been tiny and embattled, but it was not typically hated: certainly not in the West. Official Soviet-bloc communism was anti-Zionist of course, but for just that reason Israel was rather well regarded by everyone else, including the non-communist left. The romantic image of the kibbutz and the kibbutznik had a broad foreign appeal in the first two decades of Israel's existence. Most admirers of Israel (Jews and non-Jews) knew little about the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. They preferred to see in the Jewish state the last surviving incarnation of the 19th century idyll of agrarian socialism - or else a paragon of modernizing energy "making the desert bloom."…

But today everything is different. We can see, in retrospect, that the victory of Israel in June 1967 and its continuing occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state's very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified and publicized the country's shortcomings and displayed them to a watching world. Curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, public humiliations, home destructions, land seizures, shootings, "targeted assassinations," the separation fence: All of these routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority of specialists and activists. Today they can be watched, in real time, by anyone with a computer or a satellite dish - which means that Israel's behavior is under daily scrutiny by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel. Until very recently the carefully burnished image of an ultra-modern society - built by survivors and pioneers and peopled by peace-loving democrats - still held sway over international opinion. But today? What is the universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced worldwide in thousands of newspaper editorials and political cartoons? The Star of David emblazoned upon a tank.

Today only a tiny minority of outsiders see Israelis as victims. The true victims, it is now widely accepted, are the Palestinians. Indeed, Palestinians have now displaced Jews as the emblematic persecuted minority: vulnerable, humiliated and stateless. This unsought distinction does little to advance the Palestinian case any more than it ever helped Jews, but it has redefined Israel forever.

Judt goes on to analyze the frequent tendency of Israeli politicians, when challenged on their questionable policies, to plead victimization—or, worse, anti-Semitism—rather than engage in reasonable diplomatic exchanges that might lead to a Middle East of wary but respectful neighbors. It is no longer enough to cite the Holocaust, when the actions of Israeli soldiers enforce a policy of dehumanization on Palestinians. As Judt puts it:

In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. "Remember Auschwitz" is not an acceptable response.

Israel, says Judt, has not grown up, even after 58 years. It continues to act like a spoiled adolescent, pampered by its indulgent guardian, the equally self-justifying US. Both governments think they can get their way if only they stomp about and frighten others. It won't work forever.

And now Lebanon. Ten lives for one, with fifteen percent of Lebanese rousted out of their homes (700,000 refugees, equivalent to 45 million Americans). The asymmetric destruction will continue until Hezbollah is completely destroyed, said an Israeli general, though latterly some realization is dawning that such an outcome is impossible, particularly since every enemy killed convinces five more Lebanese to become enemies. And Gaza continues to be pummeled, innocent civilians murdered—it is all one war, against the despised Other. The Rome conference was a farce: the inept Condoleezza Rice wrote another blank check for Ehud Olmert's endless war. Only the US stood in the way of an immediate ceasefire.

Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich has introduced a bill in Congress calling for an immediate ceasefire, multiparty negotiations, and an international peacekeeping force. If you're in the US, write your representative and senators to ask for support. Jewish Voice for Peace has more information about the bill here, and more background on the crisis here.

Like American unilateralism in Iraq, Israeli unilateralism in Lebanon and Gaza will not bring security or peace. To anyone. War creates more war, now and in the future. Only peace creates peace.

Cry, the Beloved City

The Israeli government, having learned nothing from 40 years of ineffectual military overkill, is still seeking security by means of massive, indiscriminate retaliation. With every bomb dropped on Lebanon, ten more enemies of Israel rise up out of the ground, like the dragon's teeth of Cadmus transformed into fierce warriors.

The destruction of Beirut is a crime, as BBC News reports:

The UN's Jan Egeland has condemned the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes in Beirut, saying it is a violation of humanitarian law.

Mr Egeland, the UN's emergency relief chief, described the destruction as "horrific" as he toured the city.

He arrived hours after another Israeli strike on Beirut. Israel also hit Sidon, a port city in the south crammed with refugees, for the first time.…

A visibly moved Mr Egeland expressed shock that "block after block" of buildings had been levelled.…

He appealed for both sides to halt attacks and said UN supplies of humanitarian aid would begin to arrive in the next few days.

"But we need safe access," he said. "So far Israel is not giving us access."

Though Israel says the aims of the attacks are limited to reprisals against Hezbollah, many innocent civilians have suffered. The latest death toll in the 12 days of warfare is now at least 364 Lebanese and 36 Israelis. And the invasion of ground forces may soon reach 20 kilometers north of the border, to the Litani river. That could well be sufficient provocation for Syria to enter the fray, as the information minister in Damascus has threatened. The mindless escalation may in fact spin out of control, drawing in other nations in the region.

We have known for three years now that the road to peace does not lead through Baghdad. We have learned this month that it does not lead through Beirut. If the road to peace has not been irreparably bombed out, it may yet lead through Jerusalem and Washington. That would requre leaders in those cities with enough wisdom and restraint to look past the latest provocation, leaders who really wanted peace and security, unlike Olmert and Bush.

As for Beirut, alas! The beautiful city will again require many years to rebuild, once the vengeful attacks finally cease.