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On Lebanon (III)

Now Israel’s rampage against a defenseless Lebanon—smashing airport runways, fuel tanks, power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads and the occasional refugee convoy—has exposed Bush’s folly in subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East. The Lebanon that Israel, with Bush’s blessing, […]

Now Israel’s rampage against a defenseless Lebanon—smashing airport runways, fuel tanks, power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads and the occasional refugee convoy—has exposed Bush’s folly in subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East.

The Lebanon that Israel, with Bush’s blessing, is smashing up has a pro-American government, heretofore considered a shining example of his democracy crusade. Yet, asked in St. Petersburg if he would urge Israel to use restraint in its air strikes, Bush sounded less like the leader of the Free World than some bellicose city councilman from Brooklyn Heights. ~Pat Buchanan

Similarly, in Israel a survey published by Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed 53 percent of Israelis polled said Israel should hold negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli soldier captured in Gaza, while 43 percent backed a military operation.

A poll taken by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that 28 percent of Israelis believe Israel should immediately stop bombing Lebanon, compared to 7 percent who believe that the bombing should continue until the captured soldiers are freed, and 14 percent who believe bombing should continue until Lebanon agrees to disarm Hezbollah—a task that Israel’s invasion has made more impossible than ever. ~Paul Craig Roberts

Mr. Buchanan makes two excellent points.  First, in pointing to the Lebanese government as one of the administration’s triumphs in the “pro-democracy crusade,” he calls the hegemonists’ bluff.  To the hegemonists, I would say this: you can either prattle on about the “Cedar Revolution” (every bit as genuine and democratic as the fraudulent Orange Revolution in Ukraine or Rose Revolution in Georgia) and praise Lebanese democracy, or you can show your true colours and acknowledge that all of the democracy talk was a means to forcing the Syrians out and had next to nothing to do with an interest in Lebanese self-government.  Of course, the price for the Syrians’ departure was the relative strengthening of Hizbullah, which has now precipitated this crisis.  The dead, wounded and displaced civilians of Lebanon have suffered these things because of arrogant hegemonists’ schemes, whether they were for regional domination or democratisation.

When he asks “where are the Christians?” he drives home the vicious double standard that all together too many Christians in this country have when it comes to condemning wanton violence committed by governments abroad (of course, we would all be better off not subsidising any foreign governments and then we wouldn’t be so deeply implicated in what our clients do).  You can’t turn around but to find evangelicals deeply concerned about Darfur, where there are no Christians to be found, but an attack on Lebanon, where you have Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic Christians, among many others, making up roughly 40% of the population, seems to merit little or no concern among Christians in this country, especially those raised to think that the State of Israel serves some prophetic purpose.  Of course, it shouldn’t have to be a case of invoking the Christianity of almost half of the Lebanese people to make American Christians sit up and take note of what weapons paid for by their tax dollars are doing to civilian populations and infrastructure–they should be appalled that an allied nation is doing this to a civilian population, though you might think the fact that many of the civilians being displaced by the attack are Christians would make it particularly outrageous. 

Isn’t it also remarkable that a majority in Israel wants to negotiate?  In this country, any suggestion that negotiations, rather than massive bombardment, should be the solution will earn you the fast track to being labeled an “appeaser” and worse things than that.  But, as with the Iraq war today, what the majority of citizens believes is not relevant to the decisions the government makes.  The Americans who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 hoped for a “humble” foreign policy.  Instead, they received nightmarish empire-building.  The Israelis who voted for Kadima in the recent election expected a more rational policy aimed at resolving long-standing disputes, not the excessive use of force generating new and larger conflicts.  Take these as two examples of the truth of the Psalmist’s exhortation, Trust ye not in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. 

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