fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

On Lebanon (II)

Lebanon’s prime minister said Wednesday that 300 people have been killed, 1,000 have been wounded and a half-million displaced in Israel’s week-old onslaught on Lebanon. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said he would seek compensation from Israel for the “unimaginable losses” to the nation’s infrastructure and he appealed for an end to hostilities on a humanitarian […]

Lebanon’s prime minister said Wednesday that 300 people have been killed, 1,000 have been wounded and a half-million displaced in Israel’s week-old onslaught on Lebanon.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said he would seek compensation from Israel for the “unimaginable losses” to the nation’s infrastructure and he appealed for an end to hostilities on a humanitarian basis.

In a swipe at the international community, particularly the United States, which said Israel was acting in self-defense, Saniora said: “Is this what the international community calls the right of self-defense? Is this the price to pay?” ~The Guardian

Via Antiwar

It may be rather obvious, but no other country (except for the United States) could launch such an assault (and now a ground invasion) on a neighbouring country with this level of American indifference and/or approval.  If regimes of a rather different stripe displaced hundreds of thousands of people with such an attack, Washington might start irresponsibly throwing around talk of genocide and war crimes, and proceed to start bombing the offenders. 

In the case of Yugoslavia, there did not need to be a massive displacement of population to spur Mr. Clinton to launch his war of aggression, though his war did make certain that such displacement eventually took place (the better to blame the Serbs for causing a “humanitarian crisis”).  The main difference in 1999 was that Serbia responded to years of provocations by the KLA with a fairly limited counterinsurgency campaign that had killed approximately 2,000 people in a year, which in turn brought down the wrath of NATO upon it, while Israel escalates to something close to full-scale war with Lebanon and may be precipitating a humanitarian crisis, and all because of a kind of border skirmishing that Pakistan and India used to engage in with heavy artillery on a semi-regular basis.  After all this, Israel still receives the green light from Washington.  Meanwhile, drone-like, American pundits and columnists solemnly swear their belief in Israel’s “right to self-defense,” most of whom were more of the “let’s crush Serb skulls” view seven years ago.  It’s more than a little bizarre, if you ask me.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here