AFP, via the Beirut Daily Star reports that the US is to find the Lebanese army $10 million to buy equipment needed to patrol the southern border and, presumably, keep Hezbollah in hand. For one thing, it doesn’t sound much. For another thing, wouldn’t it be an idea to get the Israelis to stop bombing the Lebanese army before trying to rearm it?
Meanwhile, a glimpse of our leaders in action. What with that and Secretary Rice’s recital at ASEAN, it frankly makes Jacques Chirac look like a good example.
Update: Comments on this entry are now closed as the thread has got frankly dreadful.
Alex, the tone of your comment suggests you expect an element of logic and sanity from the Bush Administration. This is admirable but far-fetched.
American foreign policy for decades, like its current President, is a miserable failure. They just don’t get it!
Well, there are people who might suggest that there is indeed a certain logic behind it.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436971/
It’s a pamphlet, but it’s not a bad film. As was to be expected it ran on arte.tv a week or so after it premiered in selected theatres in NYC and LA.
Although I suppose 10 million are really only slightly less symbolic than a pat on the back. No wonder Israel construes all this as a clear-cut “go ahead”.
How long does it take to burn 10 million in Iraq? Half an hour?
No amount of life jackets can save a person who is dying of thirst.
Ten million is lacking, as any other figure would be.
In case you haven’t noticed, Israel is not bombing the Lebanese army but Hizbollahs army.
Alex,
Israel is bombing the Lebanese army eh? Enough that they are apparently disarmed? And no links to top it off!
Don’t be an idiot, plz.
The problem isn’t equipment. It’s will. The Lebanese lacks it in spades.
Bob and xyan, what universe do you live in?
Shias constitute over a third of the Lebanese population, and in the south of the country a much bigger proportion than that. The raison d’etre of Hezbollah is to represent them in a country where politics still divides fully along confessional lines. From their POV anti-Israeli activity is a sideline not core business, at least until recently. That’s why Hezbollah has observed extended truces with the Israelis, and in the 1980s were even occasionally allied with them.
Asking the Lebanese army to fight Hezbollah is asking for a renewed Lebanese civil war – and we all know how well that turned out for everyone, including the Israelis. Further, it’s a civil war your favoured parties are very likely to lose.
Israel has what it takes to lay any and all of her enemies to waste. It’s just a question of escalation and political will.
Israel could end this current conflict by tonight if they wanted to, but they’d face international condemnation for reducing Lebanon- and Hezbollah- to glowing green shards of glass.
Gee Dave, just a question of escalation and political will, eh?
You don’t think that perhaps the current leaders of Israel are slightly deranged by any chance, do you?
You don’t see any connection between what Hitler thought and did at the beginning of WW2 and what Israel thinks and is doing in the Middle East, do you?
Glowing shards of green glass, eh. A whole race of people, a whole country in fact. Do you really think that Israel would care about international condemnation? You must be joking, Dave!
Daniel obviously missed the Iranian news from 2 July to 9 July 2006.
Here it is.
Wow $10 million! How generous. That is nearly 30 hours of “aid” given to Israel at a very conservative estimate ($3 billion a year/(365*24).
True, it’s not much at all–only 1/5 of the $50 million Iran gives to Hezbollah.
You don’t see any connection between what Hitler thought and did at the beginning of WW2 and what Israel thinks and is doing in the Middle East, do you?
After perusing the European media the last couple of days, one can only conclude that the above sort of mindset is par for the course in Europe.
It boggles the mind that Israel, democratic and westernized, is so demonized for a relatively small accident while over the past 5 years, far greater atrocities have occurred, yet no one emits a peep, or at the most, a very small one.
Derrida,
From what I’m reading, another civil war is inevitable between the Shia and everyone else, regardless of what Israel does.
It boggles the mind that Israel, democratic and westernized, is so demonized for a relatively small accident…
Indeed. Where’s is it all going – don’t they have enough brownish people to demonize anymore?
Nazi Germany was more westernized than Israel and while they didn’t have elections they would have won them if they had them.
But Bob, i would compair the conflict more with France and Algeria.
ps. I don’t call trying to entnicly cleansing almost a million people a small incident.
“Nazi Germany was more westernized than Israel and while they didn’t have elections they would have won them if they had them.”
Funny because its true. Same goal: World domination by hook or crook.
I give up.
Since this Israel-Hezbollah conflict began, there’s been a lot of heat, but not much light, on this blog.
Comments that have started out as anti-Israeli (fair enough; people can agree to disagree), and disintegrated into Jew-hating. There are some real whoppers just on this thread.
Interestingly enough, most of those posters, from what I can gather through their e-mail and blog links, aren’t native to the EU countries, but have connection to Europe through other means.
I submit that the Euros blog should stick to its subject matter, until the time arrives that the EU has some substansive role in the ending of this conflict.
Just substitute “Chosen People” for “Master Race” and here we go again…
I submit that the Euros blog should stick to its subject matter, until the time arrives that the EU has some substansive role in the ending of this conflict.
Your original intent was to find out whether this is desirable. And that remains a valid question. When we are in a guerilla war, it is too late to discuss.
Lebanon is the near abroad of Europe and a very likely candidate to join the EU. Also some countries allow the transit of Israeli resupplies.
I find that reason enough to talk about it without even using “This is the start of WWIII”
Israel, does not understand that Lebanese, like Palestinians; trust no one but themselves. Israel has to also remember that no matter where this war will take them, they will sooner or later negotiate to release their ‘Prisoners of War’. So, why waste all this time and lives? You will end up having hundreds if not thousands killed (on both sides).
No, Gina, you’ll have thousands killed on one side! The ratio to date is 16:1. (650+ in Lebanon, 150 in Gaza, and 55 in Israel)
Won’t the right-wingers be pleased!
Yes Daniel, we are.
“So, why waste all this time and lives? You will end up having hundreds if not thousands killed (on both sides).”
Isn’t that the point of war? It’s not a tickling competition. ‘These men are out to hurt each other.’
And there is no waste in seriously degrading Hezbollah and killing a few thousand(s) of their fighters and supporters as well as destroying however many hundreds of missles.
People who babble on about the senselessness of violence are the stupidest people imaginable. Talk about non violence when missles are raining down on your front lawn or the local pizza joint is blown up.
Look, Daniel, I want you to imagine that the families of each of those 55 Israelis killed are standing in front of you, crying bitterly at the loss of someone they loved more than any possession, and about to listen to your opinion of them.
Then you take a tone of voice with some sodding respect for them.
I hope I didn’t misunderstand you. It sounds as if you’d have us think that those 55 families aren’t worthy of any consideration in this.
These are human lives we’re talking about. And if anyone is about to dare accuse me of valuing Israeli lives above Lebanese ones, you’re wrong. Let me preemptively say that if anyone is planning on speaking contemptuously and dismissively of the insignificance or deservedness of _any_ of the deaths we’ve seen, I rebuke you. I can guarantee you that there are families on both sides that are hurting with the worst pain imaginable. I think it’s nonsense to rush to blame one side and call the other justified, and I think that to do so is nothing but sloppy thinking and indeed the blindness of impatience. We see a conflict, and we want to jump to a conclusion about what should have been done, and we want one side to be clearly wrong, so we can be untroubled any longer by uncertainty over whom to support. We pretend that there is a simple solution over whom to condemn. But the truth is that we no longer have the luxury of easily choosing a side.
Many of these families on both sides are innocent of any crime beyond being born in a rough neighborhood. And I’m sorry, but just because Hezbollah’s _THOUSANDS_ of rockets are less efficient than Israel’s army and air force, doesn’t make their rockets any more righteous or peaceful. They were amassed for one reason: to kill Israelis, innocent or guilty. Without those rockets being there, I believe that Israel would hardly have invaded Lebanon, so they were clearly offensive, not defensive. They weren’t put there to defend against an Israeli invasion, they were put there to harry the Israelis, just like the PLO has done. On the other hand, of course, Israel’s leadership has often taken quite arrogant actions, careless of other people’s lives (which, incidentally, is against the Torah law of care for the Other).
Don’t anyone pretend differently: those innocent families on both sides are at the top of your concerns, they’re not secondary, and they’re certainly not meaningless. If I have taken your post wrongly, I apologize. Otherwise, you speak with respect when you speak of taking lives.
Just substitute “Chosen People” for “Master Race” and here we go again…
Same goal: World domination by hook or crook.
A Jewish colleague (we are at a Canadian university) recently returned from an academic trip to Belgium and the U.K. and was shocked at the anti-semitism she encountered. I suggested she was being overly sensitive. If this blog is any indication, I was wrong. It makes for very worrisome reading. I think I’ll stay away.
From Iraq The Model:
“We need another ‘ June 67’ more than anytime in the past because like that defeat put an end for the days when pan-Arabism was in the top we are now in need for another defeat that wakes the region up and open its eyes to see the danger of terrorism and extremism and remove it from the top and put it where it belongs to.
Again I hope to see no half-solutions because we have had enough. I do not want to see the terrorists and their allies open their mouth when the war ends to brag about how “courageous and devoted” they were in defending the faith and the nation.
Meanwhile, let Europe argue for another decade to agree on a definition for terror…I thank God it isn’t Europe handling this war, the cowardice and reluctance of Europe disgusts me as much as the Arab media does.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
What about the 700-900 families affected by violent deaths in Gaza and Lebanon, most of them civilians? Obviously they don’t count at all because they’re not ‘one of us’!
Yes, they do count. I’ve said so. Now are you saying those 55 Israelis don’t count? Be honest about it. Say it.
Hypocrisy.
Nice of ITM to wish even more war on the Lebanese in order to further their political preferences. Go ahead England, Jamaica is behind you, as the old joke goes. Alternatively there’s the one about fighting to the last drop of your blood.
I’m sorry, but this sort of civilian war-fever is repellent enough when exhibited by the same nation that’s actually fighting. Working yourself into a blood rage when your soldiers, rather than you, take the consequences is bad enough, but doing so when some other country’s civilian population will pay the price is obscene.
Regarding everything else, I am of the opinion that this thread must be destroyed. Or at least closed to further comments.
doing so when some other country’s civilian population will pay the price is obscene.
Unfortunately it is sensible. The alternative is to wish for your own country to pay the price. Which, if you act upon that wish, is treason. You might take it as an argument to show that war inherently is evil, but that doesn’t give you new information you could act upon.
Bullshit. The alternative is to take some responsibility for one’s words. We consider this to be a wise principle in every other walk of life, so why not here?
In fact, it does give you new information—it’s a means of self-signalling. If it would be an incredibly stupid thing do if you paid the price, it’s quite likely to be an incredibly stupid thing tout court.