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Our newspapers and television programs have failed to discuss clearly why the Israeli leaders ordered the bombing campaign that destroyed fifteen years of hard work and much treasure that was spent rebuilding the economy following the disastrous Lebanese civil war. Beyond the gnawing obsession of George W. Bush to strike at the Iranian mullahs who defy him, it was the restoration of Lebanon's economy and indications that Shiia Hezbollah puppets of Iran were taking over the fragile Beirut government that made the Israeli response so severe. Israeli commanders decided that since their implacable enemies were inexorably moving to dominate Lebanon governance by using Iranian tactics, financial payments and better weapons, it was expedient to destroy those resources with which their enemies would attack Israel as soon as the mullahs felt strong enough to strike a killing blow. After all, since George W. Bush ordered the dismembering of the Iraqi Army which kept Iran occupied for almost a decade, Israel is the only military force frustrating the mullahs' dream of a reborn Persian Empire based on primitive Islamic laws and financed by two hundred dollars a barrel oil. Or why do you think the mullahs are determined to build nuclear weapons? Even Turkey is cautious about Iran, because its own medieval Islamic true believers must be placated -- while several million Kurds want to cast off Turkish, Iraqi and Iranian rule in order to join their fellows in a homeland of their own.Be assured of this -- the ruling Islamic fundamentalists of Iran go to bed nights with visions of a reborn Persian Empire ruling over vast petroleum consortium dancing like sugarplums in their heads. The Islamic true believers want it all -- for they believe just as surely as do Christian true believers, that they alone have been ordained by God to rule or to ruin secular infidel societies! In fact Muslim, Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are as alike as peas in a pod. They all suffer deeply ingrained psychopathic wounds that lead them to feel threatened even when no enemies actually exist. Therefore, they are always ready to take the offensive against anyone who challenges them in any way. They justify their egoism by insisting that God orders them to deal out justice on the heretics of the world who get into life's chow line ahead of the true believers -- they themselves.
Actually, our Republican ideologues did for Iran what they couldn't do for themselves. They removed the Iraqi Army from the Iranian border and in effect gave the mullahs the opportunity needed to make as much mischief as they choose. This was the just first outcome of the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld decision to control the petroleum for the oil barons with a Maginot Line of military bases from which to dominate the entire region. For years after the First Gulf War when Saddam was defeated but not removed from power by the first President Bush, Dick Cheney and many of his fellow proto-fascists convinced his naïve but ideologically driven son George W. Bush, that his father had made a mistake. They decided that, when they took over the presidency, they would correct the mistake with another Iraq war. That decision was made by George W. Bush and his core advisors five years before the 9/11 attack on the United States. Obviously, the propaganda spin about weapons of mass destruction and a connection between Saddam and Ossama bin Laden was a fraud from the beginning. Unfortunately, these proto-fascist agents of the international oil companies completely overlooked the law of unintended consequences that appears during so many decisions made by incompetent pretenders. Because hubrists who gain power are simply too ideological to anticipate all the elements of complex human situations, the Bush gang bit off more trouble than it can swallow. And they have already wasted twenty five hundred American lives and twenty thousand more boys and girls maimed, in order to save their skins from a rebellious electorate.
Don't even think for a moment that the Iraqi War isn't about oil. Of course its about oil -- it is all about oil -- there is nothing else out there to fight over except for a few goats, some date palms and a lot of poor, deeply abused people who have little more to rely on than their religion. Were it not for the oil, we would have no more troops in Iraq than we have on Kappingamarangi in the Caroline Islands.
So here we are now, harangued mercilessly by a compulsive president who is convinced he made no mistakes by serving the oil barons but that we must stay the course of his noble dream of democracy sweeping from Iraq through autocracies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Emirates. He speaks much of the dangers of cutting and running but utters not a word about the bleeding and dying of our boys and girls because of his hubris and ignorance about Islam. If the Iranian mullahs wrest control of the oil fields from an already shaky Saudi Arabia, a defenseless Kuwait and an Iraq burning in a civil war -- and can defend their conquests with nuclear weapons, they would drive their European oil customers to their knees. The raw financial clout given by two hundred dollars a barrel oil would be within reach. Just a hint of turning off the taps for a month would send tsunamis roaring through every stock market of the world. This is indeed an intoxicating vision of a restored Persian Empire that seems worth a few military risks and increased pressure against Israel. After all, the mullahs have the assurances of Allah that they are on the rising tide of history -- especially since only poor Hezbollah peasants and hated Jews are being slain during the probing for places to attack.
For many years Saddam's Iraqi Army, armed with American weapons, funded by our Congress and guided by U S military advisers, frustrated Iran's pipedreams of Empire. Unfortunately, our surrogate dictator's hubris outpaced his grasp -- after all, Saddam was counseled by the American Ambassador to beat Iran to the punch and protect Kuwait's oil revenue. He took this as American approval and quickly protected the Kuwaitis out of everything they owned. Saddam was humiliated but not destroyed during the First Gulf War, because he still had a clear role to play in the region. George Bush I was much too sophisticated to destroy the Iraqi military counterbalance to Iran -- because it was the only force except for Israel capable of derailing the Persian Empire scheme. Unfortunately, George Bush II was too wounded emotionally and as a result, too ideological to see anything beyond his own aching wounds. He found the presidency of the United States a first rate job that his second rate world view couldn't manage wisely within the echo chamber he had created from his advisors. He really divides the world into two classes of people. There are the worthy people, the men and women of wealth and power with whom the Bush family plays golf and tennis and there are all the others. These are ignorant serfs who can be propagandized enough to serve their betters -- to fight, suffer and die in order to further enrich the elite. Obviously, few man or woman who are untouched by the war because they have no children bleeding and dying, will be persuaded that their generous president is a blunderer -- but the rest of us are not so sure. In a pragmatic world, no executive, no politician or no general receives credit for solving a problem he or she first caused through ignorance, stupidity or sloth.
No matter how this disaster comes out -- probably badly in the hands of George W Bush's unfortunate Democratic successor who must scrape up the pieces -- the historians of the twenty-first century are going to have Bush's scalp for storming like a bull in a china shop -- into a delicate and complex world of which he was complete ignorant. He is already being called by some historians, the most profoundly incompetent president since Buchanan who blundered into the Civil War. Two thirds of us can now understand that Bush's hubris is swiftly delivering the entire Middle East into the hands of an ideological Iranian leadership that believes it is called by God to send Islam into one great Persian Empire that reaches from Eastern Europe to North China, Malaysia and Indonesia. And perceptive people wonder where that shall leave us.
The Israelis responded to the Iranian pressure on their northern border by leveling the Hezbollah towns and villages and making their fields and pastures less productive for years to come. The Israelis pulled off what Wyatt Earp of frontier Arizona might have done had a saloon fight gone bad in Tombstone. Israel unlimbered a twenty-first century version of a ten gauge sawed-off shotgun and cut loose at everyone that threatened them as the Israeli Defense Force backed out the door. The Israelis dropped hundreds of cluster bomb canisters, each one containing thousands of deadly bomblets, to create mine fields with the completely unpredictable BLU antipersonnel mines. The boast of Hezbollah leaders that they've won a great victory by driving the Israelis away, is as if the local tough guy who challenged Wyatt Earp lay bleeding to death on the barroom floor, bragging that he'd made the town marshal break a sweat, while the gunfighter was riding home to dinner at the ranch. Actually, the Hezbollah perceived victory over Israel was more like Napoleon's quip following a hard fought defeat of an Austrian army. "Another victory like this and we shall lose the war."
The eight to ten million BLU bomblets the Israelis sowed in Hezbollah territory as they left are small weapons that are manufactured with hundreds of steel pellets cast in aluminum cases, much like peanuts baked in a cookie. They are filled with a vile brown concoction much more potent than TNT that detonates with such fury that the ball bearings explode in broad killing zones at speeds up to five thousand miles per hour. One pellet in an arm can cause such a shock wave of blood through the veins that the wounded person's heart bursts. And while they are indeed deadly to anyone within range, their main function is to deprive an enemy of valuable resources or for benefiting from good defensive positions.
The fist sized bombs are packed like grains of corn on a cob, in multiple rows and several layers in each aluminum canister that blows apart after being dropped from perhaps ten thousand feet altitude, dispersing thousands of bomblets over a wide area where they explode or lay dormant for years. Of course, high explosives never decay -- they become more sensitive. The French Army still has disposal units picking up unexploded World War I shells that farmers plow up every spring from the ninety year old battlefields of France. Every time farmers buy more modern tractors that plow more deeply, a new crop of un-detonated shells emerges. Occasionally an unfortunately farmer and his tractor vaporizes with a roar and a cloud of smoke when the plow point strikes the fuse of a rusty shell that was manufactured in a steam driven plant in Germany almost a century ago.
The sphere of the thousands of bomblets spread from each canister is perhaps two or three hundred yards across -- but stubby vanes on the balls spin then wildly, making them curve away for a mile or more in many arcs. As the BLUs spin, the centrifugal forces arm the fuses, setting them to explode within a few minutes, an hour, a day or a month or even a year. I know, because to my deep regret, I was the Engineering Research, Methods and Training Manager who facilitated the filling of millions of the deadly cases with explosives for a huge UniRoyal complex during the early years of the Indochina War. I finally repented and stopped trusting the ideological chicken hawks like George W. Bush and Richard Cheney who found clever ways to dodge the draft while our boys were slaying Asian boys. And vice versa!
The little demons fall at perhaps two hundred fifty miles per hour, bursting through roofs and floors, rolling unseen into drains and gutters, falling into water wells and fish ponds, infesting fields, grassy pastures and forests and burrowing deep into soft earth like diabolical rats. Some start exploding almost immediately and continue their deadly work at unpredictable intervals for a long, long time. They deny access to supply dumps, headquarters buildings, factories, roads, pastures and fields to soldiers or workers waste an entire growing season. Many of them remain dormant and primed even after others have exploded. To simply plow a field or herd sheep or go into a village sprinkled with hidden BLUs is to play Russian Roulette with one's life and limbs. You never know when one will explode and can seldom see those that have gone underground. They are so difficult even for experts to remove and they are too sensitive to be disarmed because they are so often hidden in tight places, that Lebanon has been forced to bring in disposal units from China to try to remove the millions of armed bomblets. Of course, Hezbollah conceals soldiers among their own people, sacrificing adults and children for propaganda purposes when the Israelis are forced to attack or surrender. Because they hate their enemies more than they love their own relatives, civilians often bear the brunt of the bombs as they try to go about their daily lives. What else can occur in a culture that persuades its sixteen year old boys to drape themselves with high explosives and go to paradise as martyrs who die killing Jews, Christians and other Muslims of the wrong persuasion?
Israel isn't governed by saints, of course, and powerless Arabs are often bullied and abused, but had they been pacifist Quakers, the Israelis would all have been slain by now. For if there is anything Islamic primitives are good at, it is taking revenge against anyone who succeeds in life. They live in a region where fathers and brothers who feel humiliated routinely murder abused daughters who are unfortunate enough to be kidnapped and raped by their cousins. The rapists are punished also -- after the girl is beheaded or stoned to death, the boy is scolded severely by his parents and a mullah or two.
Obviously, Iranian leadership has caused the devastation of much of Lebanese society by prodding the sleeping Israeli dragon through their boasts of driving him into the sea. One never knows how much of this violent rhetoric is real and how much is Arab fantasy. This, however, is real. The fantasies that resound with Hezbollah members boasting in the souks and coffeehouses of their communities, have created another decade or two of misery, disease and ignorance for their children and little or no prosperity for the suffering people they dragged into the disaster financed by and managed from Iran. The constantly threatened Israelis simply shall not allow the entire nation of Lebanon to be co-opted by Hezbollah in order to destroy their society. They needed a reason to seriously damage the dangerous society to their north and of course -- most terrorists never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to live normally.
Never again shall any Israeli government allow Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons by callously smuggling them in the cargo holds of Middle Eastern passenger jets landing in Damascus or Beirut. Fighter pilots shall force the commercial aircraft down first and then defy European outrage that still sees Arabic blood as more significant than Jewish blood. The bombing has already cut the supply roads and bridges between a compliant Syria and Lebanon so rockets cannot easily be trucked overland. The Israeli Defense Force, now that it has acquired American bunker buster bombs in addition to the cluster weapons, shall never let Iran build nuclear weapons in deep underground workshops. Israel's very survival depends on vigilance and military power in a region that wants every Jew driven into the sea and near a Europe that still harbors a great many communities that feel Hitler had the right idea with the Holocaust. There was a time when Jewish leaders scoffed at threats by psychopathic rulers but after the Holocaust, those days are long gone. An entire people has developed a communal sensitivity to danger and a determination to resist becoming another Somalia or Darfur at the bloody hands of fundamental Islam. They understand there is no mercy to be had for Jews when far more Muslins die at the hands of Muslins than from all other religionists combined. As Leon Uris wrote at the conclusion of his novel, Exodus, "Let the world understand that the last Jew has walked meekly into the last gas chamber." Or as Golda Meir quipped when asked by an American journalist when abandoned Palestinian land would be returned to the men and women who left home in order to kill Jews with three invading Arab armies during the War Of Liberation, "We'll let them come back when you return Manhattan to the Indians."
Hezbollah, Syrian and Iranian leaders are victims of their own spiritual, cultural and psychological delusions. They are, however, taking the enormous advantage the George W Bush military, cultural and political debacle in Iraq has handed them. Like reactionary politicians of all stripes, they peddle smoke and mirrors in wholesale lots in order to lead naïve families to sacrifice their careers, health care, education and even their sons and daughters in wars that benefit only a very small financial elite. They cannot admit that while they boast of a victory because the Israeli forces went home, they have lost yet another war. Their people will suffer through fifteen or twenty years of misery while rebuilding to the level they were when their Iranian masters ordered Hezbollah to prod the quiescent dragon that was preoccupied with Iran's other surrogates on the West Bank and in Gaza. Much worse, they have also pushed the Israelis another step closer to their own final solution should they find themselves being overrun by murderous invaders. Whether they are right or wrong in the particulars, the Israelis shall not go quietly whatever the United Nations may want and they shall not go into the darkness alone. The Iranians are setting the stage for a nuclear disaster if they persist in fantasizing a world in which the Israelis are going to dismantle the state of Israel and fade quietly away into the sunset so the Arabs can carry on centuries old feuds and the Iranians create a petroleum based Persian Empire in order to dominate the industrial world. The Israelis have enough first, second and third strike nuclear capacity to destroy every Arab city with over twenty thousand souls with ten minutes notice. They really mean it when they vow -- never again like lambs to the slaughter.
