Thoughts on the lackadaisical Canadian "response," the hypocrisy of the global war on terror, and the very real possibility of a third world war.
An image you won't find anywhere in the mainstream media: Israel's "enemies of peace" - dead children littering the ground in southern Beirut.The situation in Gaza/Lebanon has deteriorated rapidly over the course of the weekend, even by the already volatile standards of the Middle East. With the backing of the US, Israel has continued to ignore international pleas to stop its one-sided campaign, which has since devolved into little more than a perverted slaughter of innocent civilians - including four Canadian children vacationing in Beirut.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials have placed the blame for Hezbollah's attacks squarely on the shoulders of Syria and Iran, a move that could easily turn this regional conflict into something much, much bigger.
Before pressing ahead with the commentary, I'm going to re-cap the weekend's events to get you up to speed on the latest developments. If you want to skip ahead, then by all means do so.
Thursday, July 13
Israel continues its two-pronged assault, bombing the Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Gaza and launching air strikes on targets in southern Lebanon. Any hope of fleeing the war zone or recieving international aid is lost as the Beirut international airport is partially destroyed and Israeli warships blockade Lebanon's major ports. 25 people are reported killed over the last two days.
Friday, July 14
The UN holds an emergency Security Council meeting to put forth a draft resolution condemning Israel's actions in Gaza and Lebanon. All-too predictably, the United States uses its veto power to block the resolution, calling it "unbalanced" and "one-sided." However, the remaining ten participatory states all voted in favor of the resolution, while Britain, Peru, Denmark and Slovakia abstained.
Click here for a list of UN resolutions critical of Israel that the US has vetoed ( a total of 41 since 1972 ).
During the Security Council meeting, Israel claims that Hezbollah's actions in Lebanon are "merely the finger on the bloodstained and long-reaching arms of Syria and Iran," an ominous indication of their wider aims in the region.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declares "open war" on Israel as his Beirut office is bombed to the ground.
Saturday, July 15
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora makes an emotional plea for a ceasfire in a televised address, calling Beirut a "disaster zone" in need of international aid. The UN is unable to agree on a statement and Israel ignores the appeal outright, deciding instead to order additional airstrikes on the beleaguered nation. The civilian death toll in Lebanon rises to 85.
At the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, President Bush continues to condone Israel's actions, asserting that the key to stopping the crisis is disarming Hezbollah instead. Later, when caught on an open microphone, he put it much more bluntly: "See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and its over."
Sunday, July 16
Eight people are killed and 20 more are injured as Hezbollah launches primitive rockets into the Israeli city of Haifa. Israel retaliates with another salvo of airstrikes, killing dozens more and further damaging Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.
Iran denies Israel's accusations of arming Hezbollah and warns of "unimaginable losses" if Syria is attacked.
Monday, July 17
Israel intensifies its air strikes in Lebanon, bombing the northern cities of Tripoli and Baalbeck, as well as the port of Beirut. Kofi Annan and Tony Blair take pro-Israel, American-approved action by calling for an international peacekeeping force to be sent into Lebanon to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks. That's right, never mind the indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes that have by now killed over 150 Lebanese civilians, cut off all manner of escape or reinforcement, destroyed key infrastructural components and devastated the limping Lebanese economy - the fault is clearly with Hezbollah.
Seven Canadian civilians - including four children - are killed in Beirut by an Israeli airstrike.
An Israeli missile crater divides a major thoroughfare in Beirut.A decidedly un-Canadian response
Nearly two weeks ago, our government spinelessly sided with the US in rejecting a UN Human Rights resolution condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. A week later, Israel invaded Lebanon, where upwards of 40,000 native Canadians live abroad. 7 of them now lay dead, their charred remains left to smolder in the skeletal ruins of a residential neighborhood in southern Beirut. There were no Hezbollah militants in the region, nor was there any strategic reason to attack it, other than flat-out terrorism.
Prime Minister Harper's response? Chartering commercial ships to try and evacuate the other Canadians in the war zone. No denouncement of the attacks, no promises to help the UN stop this miserable atrocity of a war, no acknowledgement of the glaring hypocrisy of the supposed "global war on terror."
Canada enjoys its excellent international reputation due to its long-standing commitment to multilateralism and peacekeeping. Whenever sovereign nations have been unjustly attacked, a dictator oversteps his bounds, or a region lies on the brink of war, Canada has always been among the first to try and organize an international response. We have long stood for equality, peace, justice, and the preservation of human rights. We even had the noble audacity to defy the United States when its policies endangered those very beliefs.
I have to ask: where is that Canada now?
All I see is a cowardly puppet in its place; the empty shell of a once-great nation that would have risked everything to oppose this war, to put its peacekeeping troops on the ground and its food and water in the air.
Survivors pick their way out of a devastated Lebanese neighborhood.
The United States' grave mistake
And what about the United States, the world's only remaining superpower, the "great liberators" and purveyors of peace, justice, and democracy? The terrible tragedy of 9/11 allowed the US government to mobilize the collective passions of some 300 million people against the horrors of global terrorism, which they then shamelessly expended on an illegal war in a helpless sovereign state. Their international reputation plummeted while their national defecit soared, and many Americans found themselves questioning the government's intentions as a result. A successful anti-terrorism operation to follow-up would have saved face and helped to allay any doubts over the sincerity of the war on terror.
Stopping Israel would have been the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, the US has invested far too much in its favorite satellite state to throw it all away now, and so they blamed Hezbollah, vetoed the UN, and continue to supply military and monetary aid to Israel as they indiscriminately slaughter civilians. People have addressed the hypocritical selectivity of the war on terror before, only to be dismissed as unpatriotic or even treasonous. Now, we have incontestable proof that the "global war on terror" isn't global at all, but a selective war on Islamists and Arabs.
There are well over a billion Muslims in this world, all of whom regard this war as being authorized and sustained by the United States - and they're absolutely right. They don't hate us Westerners because of our freedoms, as President Bush would have you believe. Anyone in the Middle East would sacrifice everything they have for just a taste of our freedom. No, they hate us because we've been trying to destroy the Arab world from the inside-out for over 40 years.
Whatever credibility the US was desperately hanging on to after its misadventure in Iraq is gone. Terrorism is a relative concept, and if you try looking at it from the other side of the Mediterranean, it doesn't take long to realize that we are the biggest threat to global security, not Islamic fundamentalists. Islamic fundamentalists don't have thousands of nuclear warheads or a $500 billion per year defense budget.
Allowing Israel to ravage Gaza and Beirut is the worst thing the United States could have possibly done. Osama bin Laden once said that he was inspired to attack the United States after watching Israel destroy Lebanon in 1982. How many future bin Ladens do you think are watching history repeat itself, hateful contempt burning in their eyes as the West once again lays seige to beautiful Beirut; the "Paris of the Middle East?"
As bin Laden himself once said, "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands."
The coming war
Ultimately, what started as a relatively minor inter-state conflict has mutated into a full-fledged regional war in under two weeks time, and now Syria and Iran are being dragged into the fray - a disturbing development that could have far-reaching consequences.
The US has been toying with the idea of launching air strikes on Iran for months, going so far as to consider using a "bunker busting" nuclear device to destroy its underground research and development labs. Now that Israel has implicated Iran in supporting Hezbollah, the US is faced with a very unique opportunity. While its armed forces are bogged down in the hopeless quagmire that is Iraq (which has seen hundreds of deaths this week alone), it can still use its considerable means to fight a proxy war with Iran.
However, Iran's allies are numerous - it has ties with the entire Arab League, as well as the rising superpowers of Russia and China, who are already deeply divided with the United States over issues such as democratic reform, respect for human rights, and the recent North Korean missile tests.
Iran has already warned Israel of "unimaginable losses" if it were to attack Syria, and such a retaliation would assuredly mobilize the war hawks in the Pentagon into action. Given the level of hostilities in the international arena right now, we could very well be looking at a new world-scale war.
For now we can only hope that cooler heads will prevail, and that the UN finally overcomes its identity crisis and becomes the functional institution that it was meant to be.
As always, more on this as it develops.
In the meantime, here are some excellent links to keep you reading:
Tagged for technorati: Israel, Lebanon, Middle East
Nearly two weeks ago, our government spinelessly sided with the US in rejecting a UN Human Rights resolution condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. A week later, Israel invaded Lebanon, where upwards of 40,000 native Canadians live abroad. 7 of them now lay dead, their charred remains left to smolder in the skeletal ruins of a residential neighborhood in southern Beirut. There were no Hezbollah militants in the region, nor was there any strategic reason to attack it, other than flat-out terrorism.
Prime Minister Harper's response? Chartering commercial ships to try and evacuate the other Canadians in the war zone. No denouncement of the attacks, no promises to help the UN stop this miserable atrocity of a war, no acknowledgement of the glaring hypocrisy of the supposed "global war on terror."
Canada enjoys its excellent international reputation due to its long-standing commitment to multilateralism and peacekeeping. Whenever sovereign nations have been unjustly attacked, a dictator oversteps his bounds, or a region lies on the brink of war, Canada has always been among the first to try and organize an international response. We have long stood for equality, peace, justice, and the preservation of human rights. We even had the noble audacity to defy the United States when its policies endangered those very beliefs.
I have to ask: where is that Canada now?
All I see is a cowardly puppet in its place; the empty shell of a once-great nation that would have risked everything to oppose this war, to put its peacekeeping troops on the ground and its food and water in the air.
Survivors pick their way out of a devastated Lebanese neighborhood.The United States' grave mistake
And what about the United States, the world's only remaining superpower, the "great liberators" and purveyors of peace, justice, and democracy? The terrible tragedy of 9/11 allowed the US government to mobilize the collective passions of some 300 million people against the horrors of global terrorism, which they then shamelessly expended on an illegal war in a helpless sovereign state. Their international reputation plummeted while their national defecit soared, and many Americans found themselves questioning the government's intentions as a result. A successful anti-terrorism operation to follow-up would have saved face and helped to allay any doubts over the sincerity of the war on terror.
Stopping Israel would have been the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, the US has invested far too much in its favorite satellite state to throw it all away now, and so they blamed Hezbollah, vetoed the UN, and continue to supply military and monetary aid to Israel as they indiscriminately slaughter civilians. People have addressed the hypocritical selectivity of the war on terror before, only to be dismissed as unpatriotic or even treasonous. Now, we have incontestable proof that the "global war on terror" isn't global at all, but a selective war on Islamists and Arabs.
There are well over a billion Muslims in this world, all of whom regard this war as being authorized and sustained by the United States - and they're absolutely right. They don't hate us Westerners because of our freedoms, as President Bush would have you believe. Anyone in the Middle East would sacrifice everything they have for just a taste of our freedom. No, they hate us because we've been trying to destroy the Arab world from the inside-out for over 40 years.
Whatever credibility the US was desperately hanging on to after its misadventure in Iraq is gone. Terrorism is a relative concept, and if you try looking at it from the other side of the Mediterranean, it doesn't take long to realize that we are the biggest threat to global security, not Islamic fundamentalists. Islamic fundamentalists don't have thousands of nuclear warheads or a $500 billion per year defense budget.
Allowing Israel to ravage Gaza and Beirut is the worst thing the United States could have possibly done. Osama bin Laden once said that he was inspired to attack the United States after watching Israel destroy Lebanon in 1982. How many future bin Ladens do you think are watching history repeat itself, hateful contempt burning in their eyes as the West once again lays seige to beautiful Beirut; the "Paris of the Middle East?"
As bin Laden himself once said, "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands."
Beirut burns by night.
The coming war
Ultimately, what started as a relatively minor inter-state conflict has mutated into a full-fledged regional war in under two weeks time, and now Syria and Iran are being dragged into the fray - a disturbing development that could have far-reaching consequences.
The US has been toying with the idea of launching air strikes on Iran for months, going so far as to consider using a "bunker busting" nuclear device to destroy its underground research and development labs. Now that Israel has implicated Iran in supporting Hezbollah, the US is faced with a very unique opportunity. While its armed forces are bogged down in the hopeless quagmire that is Iraq (which has seen hundreds of deaths this week alone), it can still use its considerable means to fight a proxy war with Iran.
However, Iran's allies are numerous - it has ties with the entire Arab League, as well as the rising superpowers of Russia and China, who are already deeply divided with the United States over issues such as democratic reform, respect for human rights, and the recent North Korean missile tests.
Iran has already warned Israel of "unimaginable losses" if it were to attack Syria, and such a retaliation would assuredly mobilize the war hawks in the Pentagon into action. Given the level of hostilities in the international arena right now, we could very well be looking at a new world-scale war.
For now we can only hope that cooler heads will prevail, and that the UN finally overcomes its identity crisis and becomes the functional institution that it was meant to be.
As always, more on this as it develops.
In the meantime, here are some excellent links to keep you reading:
- Lebanon Live Bloggers reporting live from Beirut under siege.
- The Angry Arab News Service Unfiltered, uncompromised reporting from the war zone.
- Antiwar.com A brilliant site with a wide array of articles, including this one about the coming war.
Tagged for technorati: Israel, Lebanon, Middle East
posted by Sylpheed @ 10:29 PM
5Comments:
Yea, shit is going down now. A third world war would truly be terrible. At the rate things are going, it doesn't seem far off. Strangely enough, however, it would seem as if the tables have turned, and now the west is on the side of the war-mongers, while the "Allies" are the several millions of muslims everywhere who are sick and tired of getting bombed, embargoed and discriminated against. But I don't really want to comment on the unjustness of Israel's attacks - you can do that.
I was just thinking: is it possible Israel do have a case here? I mean, even though the capture of two soldiers and some (relatively) minor skirmishes are really nothing to go apeshit over (which Israel has), perhaps this isn't the only reason. Admittedly, the fighting has been going on for years and years. Their ceasefire was ended because of the mission into their country to capture a soldier. I'm fairly sure they'd just like to live in peace. If no one attacked them, they wouldn't attack anyone else. But that's not the case. So they respond with force. But not 'just enough'. Rather, they are acting like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, beating Appollo Creed so badly that he won't be able to, or won't come back for me. Part of it is malice, part of it is anger and frustration that they are never left alone.
Not sure this made any sense, but whatever. In short, maybe you could write something about Israel's case, instead of being so one-sided.
Cheers
Alright, so I just wrote you a page-long reply, and it was immediately swallowed into the Blogger abyss, never to be seen again...
*sigh*
Here goes again...
I'm not wasting time on Israel's side of the story because it's already being doled out to the ignorant masses ad nausaeum by "news" networks such as CNN and Fox and international terrorists like say....President Bush.
There is absolutely no way that Israel can justify this kind of indiscriminate destruction and slaughter of civilians on a mere 3 captured soldiers. The fact that they're even trying to makes it clear that there is an ulterior motive at play here, most likely having to do with regime change.
They have a case in being concerned over their national security, yes - things tend to get dicey when you've been shitting on your surrounding Arab neighbors for close to 60 years, using Western support as a means to influence public opinion and downplay your atrocities. In my opinion, the Arabs are only doing what comes natural - uniting in resistance against the opressive Western state that was unceremoniously plopped in the middle of their land.
I am not defending Hezbollah or the Palestinian militants - any death is a deplorable one, no matter what side of the border it occurs on. However, Israel is dead wrong if it thinks meeting force with force will produce positive results. There are any number of measures they could have taken to reduce the number of rocket attacks, given their considerable power, but instead they chose to provoke them further by bombing innocent civilians and turning Gaza and Beirut into a disaster area. One needs only to look at the death tolls to see how horribly disproportionate this war is.
The UN has condemned it, the EU has condemned it, and hundreds of thousands of protestors across the world have condemned it because they know it to be in clear violation of the human rights and war-conduct doctrines that have kept our world in relative stability over the last half century.
In short, I am being one-sided because this war is one-sided. There are already enough people denying the plight of the Arabs in the UN and our Western administrations. If its unfounded pity for the priveleged Israelis you're looking for, there are thousands of other websites you can visit - or you can just turn on your television.
Cheers, and thanks for the great comment.
www.cnn.com
Exactly.
Case in point: The top stories of the moment at CNN.com are -
1) UN: Lebanon should help restore peace
2) Hezbollah rockets rain on northern Israel
Incidentally, the most popular story is "Oprah to readers: 'if we were gay, we would tell you.'"
Well, at least they have their priorities straight.
Since yesterday, Harper has been taking a lot of heat from opposition MPs and Lebanese-Canadians over his refusal to budge in his support for Israel. The Globe and Mail ran a moderately critical front-page story about it today ( which is about as good a response from the media as we can hope for ), and other national papers are quickly following suit.
Apparently, he's been quoted as saying that the conflict in the Middle East is the result of the Palestinian government, who are "not committed to peace."
What a load of shit. I despise that smug little bastard, and I'll never forgive him for pulling out of Kyoto.
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