Former CIA director James Woolsey declared on Fox News that "Iran is the puppetmaster and Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas to varying degrees are puppets", adding that the conflict in Lebanon "is really about Iran versus the U.S. and Israel is in the way." Lebanon, also "in the way," in this interpretation, and indeed bearing the brunt of the violence, is apparently not worthy of mention.
As an aside, this follows a familiar convention, racist in nature, among the U.S. intelligentsia. As already noted, John Bolton declared that there was no "moral equivalence" between actions resulting in Israeli deaths and actions resulting in Lebanese deaths. Only the former are worthy of condemnation. The latter are perhaps unfortunate, but understandable.
Similarly, Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz argued that "some" civilian deaths "are more tragic than others" after which he proceeded to explain which deaths are "more tragic": Israeli ones. The typical Israeli victim, in his argument, is "the 2-year-old", while the typical Lebanese is the "30-year-old-civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets." Every Israeli is an innocent victim, as innocent as a "2-year-old" child, while-following the standard convention-every Lebanese is either a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. Any Lebanese "who voluntarily remain" in populated areas after Israel has warned that they will be bombed, "become complicit" and cannot be "counted among the innocent victims." (One is reminded of the scene in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" where the helicopter gunner, shooting down civilians in a field, cries, "Every gook that runs is a V.C.! Every gook that stands still is a well-trained V.C.!")[41]
A typical characterization of civilian deaths in The New York Times explained that Arab "satellite television shows images of civilians killed and maimed by Israeli bombs," while "Hezbollah fires rockets into Israeli cities and towns, killing and wounding Israelis." Israeli victims of Hezbollah violence are real. Lebanese victims of Israeli violence are merely images of Arab propaganda.[42]
One could also read in The Los Angeles Times how the "main criticism" being leveled against Israel "that Israel is using 'disproportionate force'" is "just silly." The title implies the explanation for why this is so: "Who Says War Has to Be Proportional?" Such willful ignorance of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, is not atypical among U.S. intellectuals. The author, Jonathan Chait, concludes that while "it is true that Israel's counteroffensive has taken the lives of several hundred Lebanese civilians," "proportionality," as already noted, "has nothing to do with it"-at least not if one holds international law in contempt; "balancing the number of dead Israelis against dead Lebanese tells us nothing"-a convenient argument for apologists of Israeli foreign policy and U.S. support for actions in violation of international law, which we may pretend doesn't exist. Nothing to see here.
The New York Times remarked dryly on the "Debate Over Proportion" by saying:
One unfamiliar with the convention might ask what there is to debate, but the Times is not unfamiliar with it, and so takes the "debate," which is curiously limited to the U.S. amongst the nations of the world, quite seriously.
A Congressional Research Service report on the crisis stated that "Israel's political will" has been demonstrated "despite the high cost the campaign has paid in civilian casualties from rocket attacks in northern Israel and soldiers' lives lost in ground operations." Apparently, Lebanese civilians aren't worthy of being counted amongst the "costs" of Israel's military operations.[44]
There is no shortage of other examples.
Returning to former CIA director Woolsey, in his interview, he continued on to argue that the U.S. should bomb Syria, hitting the airport and President Bashar Assad's office. "I think the last thing we ought to do now," he argued, "is to start talking about cease-fires and the rest." The U.S. needs to weaken Iran, and "undermining the Syrian government with airstrikes would help weaken them badly." When asked why the U.S. didn't just "hit something in Iran," he replied, "Well, uh, one has to take things to some degree by steps. I think it would be a huge blow to Iran if the Israelis are able after a few more days to badly damage Hezbollah and Hamas, as they are doing, and if we were able to, uh, help undermine the continuation of the Assad regime."[45]
If the U.S. was serious about mitigating the threat of terrorism, the first elementary moral and logical step would be to stop committing and supporting terrorism and the greater crime of aggression. We may dismiss pretenses evidenced by rhetoric alone, contrary to the facts, that Israel's recent violence was an act of "self-defense." Giving Israel and its benefactor the benefit of the doubt, the crime against Lebanon was international terrorism, though one could make the case that it rose to the level of a war of aggression, "the supreme international crime" as defined at Nuremberg. In the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there can be no such benefit of the doubt, and it is well recognized that it was not merely a case of international terrorism.
Ceasing from engaging in or supporting terrorism and aggression would itself put an end to a great deal of violence and bloodshed. If we can't rise to even that most fundamental level, there's no sense talking about what can be done to win the "war on terrorism". If, on the other hand, we are capable of and willing to accept this most elementary moral and logical truism, we can go further.
A second possible step would be to examine the root causes of terrorism. While acts of violence falling within the definition of the term are unjustifiable, they are not impossible to understand, and are, in fact, well understood, despite a pretense of ignorance. We were told, for instance, that the root cause of the atrocities that occurred on September 11, 2001 was the hatred of freedom that some radical Islamists espouse. Osama bin Laden was presumed to be the mastermind of the attacks. Over the course of years, bin Laden has stated explicitly his grievances against the U.S., beginning with U.S. support for Israel's illegal occupation, violence, and aggression and followed by a host of other grievances, from U.S. support for tyrannical regimes, such as in Saudi Arabia, to the draconian sanctions regime in Iraq which led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis-at least half a million children.
It was well predicted prior to the invasion of Iraq that it would increase the threat of terrorism. This was no great feat of prescience by competent analysts, but an elementary observation based on even a very limited knowledge and understanding of the conditions that lead people to commit heinous acts of violence. In the case of the Middle East, even a precursory examination of the legitimate grievances of the Arab world against the U.S. suffice to empower us to recognize that a continuation or escalation of policies which led to the September 11 attacks will only escalate the threat of terrorism.
The recent National Intelligence Estimate, which "has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks," is not a new assessment. A series of intelligence reports from last year noted that Iraq had become a terrorist "training ground."[46] U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan made the same observation several months later.[47] The number of terrorist incidents around the globe more than tripled from 2003 to 2004, a large percentage of which were attributable to terrorist attacks in Iraq, according to the State Department in a report it initially sought to suppress.[48] The Iraq war, as predicted, has increased hatred of U.S. foreign policy (distinguishable from hatred of "freedom") not only in the Middle East, but around the globe; just as its ongoing support for Israeli crimes continues to do.
As an aside, this follows a familiar convention, racist in nature, among the U.S. intelligentsia. As already noted, John Bolton declared that there was no "moral equivalence" between actions resulting in Israeli deaths and actions resulting in Lebanese deaths. Only the former are worthy of condemnation. The latter are perhaps unfortunate, but understandable.
Similarly, Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz argued that "some" civilian deaths "are more tragic than others" after which he proceeded to explain which deaths are "more tragic": Israeli ones. The typical Israeli victim, in his argument, is "the 2-year-old", while the typical Lebanese is the "30-year-old-civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets." Every Israeli is an innocent victim, as innocent as a "2-year-old" child, while-following the standard convention-every Lebanese is either a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. Any Lebanese "who voluntarily remain" in populated areas after Israel has warned that they will be bombed, "become complicit" and cannot be "counted among the innocent victims." (One is reminded of the scene in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" where the helicopter gunner, shooting down civilians in a field, cries, "Every gook that runs is a V.C.! Every gook that stands still is a well-trained V.C.!")[41]
A typical characterization of civilian deaths in The New York Times explained that Arab "satellite television shows images of civilians killed and maimed by Israeli bombs," while "Hezbollah fires rockets into Israeli cities and towns, killing and wounding Israelis." Israeli victims of Hezbollah violence are real. Lebanese victims of Israeli violence are merely images of Arab propaganda.[42]
The New York Times remarked dryly on the "Debate Over Proportion" by saying:
The asymmetry in the reported death tolls is marked and growing: some 230 Lebanese dead, most of them civilians, to 25 Israeli dead, 13 of them civilians.... The cold figures, combined with Israeli air attacks on civilian infrastructure like power plants, electricity transformers, airports, bridges, highways and government buildings, have led to accusations by France and the European Union, echoed by some nongovernmental organizations, that Israel is guilty of "disproportionate use of force" in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and of "collective punishment" of the civilian populations. Israel has heard these arguments before.[43]
One unfamiliar with the convention might ask what there is to debate, but the Times is not unfamiliar with it, and so takes the "debate," which is curiously limited to the U.S. amongst the nations of the world, quite seriously.
A Congressional Research Service report on the crisis stated that "Israel's political will" has been demonstrated "despite the high cost the campaign has paid in civilian casualties from rocket attacks in northern Israel and soldiers' lives lost in ground operations." Apparently, Lebanese civilians aren't worthy of being counted amongst the "costs" of Israel's military operations.[44]
There is no shortage of other examples.
Returning to former CIA director Woolsey, in his interview, he continued on to argue that the U.S. should bomb Syria, hitting the airport and President Bashar Assad's office. "I think the last thing we ought to do now," he argued, "is to start talking about cease-fires and the rest." The U.S. needs to weaken Iran, and "undermining the Syrian government with airstrikes would help weaken them badly." When asked why the U.S. didn't just "hit something in Iran," he replied, "Well, uh, one has to take things to some degree by steps. I think it would be a huge blow to Iran if the Israelis are able after a few more days to badly damage Hezbollah and Hamas, as they are doing, and if we were able to, uh, help undermine the continuation of the Assad regime."[45]
If the U.S. was serious about mitigating the threat of terrorism, the first elementary moral and logical step would be to stop committing and supporting terrorism and the greater crime of aggression. We may dismiss pretenses evidenced by rhetoric alone, contrary to the facts, that Israel's recent violence was an act of "self-defense." Giving Israel and its benefactor the benefit of the doubt, the crime against Lebanon was international terrorism, though one could make the case that it rose to the level of a war of aggression, "the supreme international crime" as defined at Nuremberg. In the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there can be no such benefit of the doubt, and it is well recognized that it was not merely a case of international terrorism.
Ceasing from engaging in or supporting terrorism and aggression would itself put an end to a great deal of violence and bloodshed. If we can't rise to even that most fundamental level, there's no sense talking about what can be done to win the "war on terrorism". If, on the other hand, we are capable of and willing to accept this most elementary moral and logical truism, we can go further.
A second possible step would be to examine the root causes of terrorism. While acts of violence falling within the definition of the term are unjustifiable, they are not impossible to understand, and are, in fact, well understood, despite a pretense of ignorance. We were told, for instance, that the root cause of the atrocities that occurred on September 11, 2001 was the hatred of freedom that some radical Islamists espouse. Osama bin Laden was presumed to be the mastermind of the attacks. Over the course of years, bin Laden has stated explicitly his grievances against the U.S., beginning with U.S. support for Israel's illegal occupation, violence, and aggression and followed by a host of other grievances, from U.S. support for tyrannical regimes, such as in Saudi Arabia, to the draconian sanctions regime in Iraq which led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis-at least half a million children.
It was well predicted prior to the invasion of Iraq that it would increase the threat of terrorism. This was no great feat of prescience by competent analysts, but an elementary observation based on even a very limited knowledge and understanding of the conditions that lead people to commit heinous acts of violence. In the case of the Middle East, even a precursory examination of the legitimate grievances of the Arab world against the U.S. suffice to empower us to recognize that a continuation or escalation of policies which led to the September 11 attacks will only escalate the threat of terrorism.
The recent National Intelligence Estimate, which "has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks," is not a new assessment. A series of intelligence reports from last year noted that Iraq had become a terrorist "training ground."[46] U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan made the same observation several months later.[47] The number of terrorist incidents around the globe more than tripled from 2003 to 2004, a large percentage of which were attributable to terrorist attacks in Iraq, according to the State Department in a report it initially sought to suppress.[48] The Iraq war, as predicted, has increased hatred of U.S. foreign policy (distinguishable from hatred of "freedom") not only in the Middle East, but around the globe; just as its ongoing support for Israeli crimes continues to do.
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