Category: Archive

Israel’s Interests
 
It goes without saying that Israel would benefit from the destruction of Hezbollah. Yet it is hard to see how the indiscriminate attack against Lebanon that is taking place will achieve anything other than strengthening the already strong support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world. Shmuel Rosner argues in a Haaretz OpEd that Israel is "America’s deadly messenger" , being used to promote Bush’s "democracy agenda" . It certainly appears that Israel’s current actions are irrational and self-destructive. Unless their real aim is to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict , following directions from Washington . At the very least it is clear that Israel would not be doing this in the absence of a guarantee from the US that it will intervene if the conflict widens, which in any event Bush has already publicly announced .

If Iran enters the conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel, the US will step in and destroy the military infrastructure of Iran by aerial bombardment. As suggested by Seymour Hersh and others [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , this is likely to involve the US use of nuclear "bunker busters" .
 
It has been predicted that if the US or Israel attack Iran, Iran will unleash Hezbollah who will carry out devastating attacks against Israel. "Hizbollah was also seen as a means of tying our hands on the Iranian nuclear threat," says an Israeli official. Well, we are in the dress rehersal, and we are seeing that despite all the hype, Hezbollah is a paper tiger . Green light for the Iran attack .
 
Iran’s Interests
 
What is really unusual about the current flare-up in the Middle East is the barrage of strident denunciations against Iran, from the Bush administration , politicians from across the political spectrum [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , and the mainstream media [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , that uniformly accuse Iran (without presenting evidence) of being behind the Hezbollah actions. This has never happened before when there was conflict in Lebanon where Hezbollah was involved , why now?

One argument is Ahmadinejad’s stated animosity against Israel. However, that has been Iran’s stated position since 1979 .

The other argument is that Iran is trying to "divert attention" from the nuclear issue . That defies the most elementary logic. If Iran was really intent in getting nuclear weapons and destroying Israel, it would try to keep things as quiet as possible until it gets those nuclear weapons, several years into the future .
 
The reality is that, whether one ascribes to Iran evil or benign intentions, Iran draws no benefit whatsoever from the current turmoil in Lebanon. Neither does Syria. Consequently the rhetoric from the US and Israel suggests a deliberate attempt to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict .
 
US Interests
 
A US attack on Iran has been predicted by analysts for several years. The US policy vis-a-vis Iran is clearly directed towards confrontation rather than accommodation. There are many reasons for the US to attack Iran, including the control of energy resources, suppression of a regional power opposite to US and Israeli interests, etc. However I have argued for many months that the key reason for the US to seek a military confrontation with Iran is that it will "force" the US to cross the nuclear threshold and use low yield nuclear weapons against Iranian installations. And this is seen as essential to further US geopolitical goals .

The United States used nuclear weapons against Japan not because it had to. It did so to demonstrate to the world that it was in possession of a new weapon that packed the destructive power of thousands of bombing missions into a single one. To tell the rest of the world, beware .

Since then, it has spent over 5 trillion dollars in building up its nuclear arsenal, but nuclear weapons have become "unusable" after 60 years of non-use. America has achieved nuclear primacy but it is useless, until it shows that nuclear weapons are usable again.
 
Low yield B61-11 nuclear bunker busters have already been deployed, just in case "surprising military developments" give rise to "military necessity" . Once Iran is drawn into a conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel or US forces in the region, the US administration will argue that the next Iranian missile could carry chemical or biological warheads and cause untold casualties among Americans, Iraqis or Israelis. A low yield nuclear bunker buster will be touted as the most "humane" way to prevent further loss of life.
 
What could happen
 
In 1941, a vast military effort was started by the United States to create nuclear weapons, culminating in the Trinity test and subsequent bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The effort was shrouded in secrecy and any moral qualms were set aside. When it succeeded , it was argued that many American and Japanese lives had been saved by nuking Japan into surrender.
 
Any speculation during the period 1941-1945 that the United States had 100,000 people devoted to create a secret weapon million-fold more powerful than any known weapon would have been dismissed as the ultimate "conspiracy theory".
 
Similarly, much evidence indicates that a deliberate project, shrouded in secrecy, exists today that will culminate in the nuking of Iran, to "save lives" . Many are privy to parts of the plan, as Seymour Hersh revealed, only a few know the plan in its entirety. Low-yield nuclear bunker busters would  be used, untested but as reliable as the untested "Little Boy" that leveled Hiroshima. Americans will buy the "military necessity" argument because it will be true: American troops in Iraq will be sitting ducks facing Iranian missiles, with or without WMD warheads.
 
After the US uses nuclear weapons again, it will have established the usability of its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear countries. It will be possible to wage war "on the cheap" , saving many American lives in future conflicts. "Support the troops" is the one thing all Americans, no matter how diverse their views are, agree on.
 
It should not be allowed to happen. The President has sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. We know from previous actions of this administration what B u sh , Ch en ey and Rum sf eld are capable of. There have been radical changes in US nuclear weapons policies and in preemption "doctrine" , and the Bush announcement that the nuclear option is "on the table" . In response, there needs to be a strong groundswell call to restrict the absolute presidential authority of this President to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran . By the general public, by "antinuclear" organizations, by scientific, political and professional organizations. To push Congress into action before it is too late. Without a "nuclear option", the US will be more interested in negotiation than in confrontation with Iran.

Cui Bono?
 
In the short term, Israel certainly will benefit from the destruction of Iran’s military capabilities.
 
But Israel will not enjoy peace as a result, because the nuking of Iran will create enormous animosity against Israel in the Muslim world and beyond. To the extent that the world buys the US fable that the nuking of Iran was required by "military necessity" and not premeditated, Israel (and Jews worldwide) will bear a heavier than deserved brunt for having contributed to "precipitate" these events.

The US will reap enormous benefits. Flexing its nuclear muscle, it will establish its absolute hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond, and gradually squeeze China and Russia into nuclear disarmament and complete submission.

In the end of course we will all lose. Because the nuclear genie, unleashed from its bottle in the war against Iran, will never retreat. And just like the US could develop nuclear weapons in only 4 years with completely new technology 60 years ago, many more countries and groups will be highly motivated to do it in the coming years.

Think about the current disproportionate response of Israel, applied in a conflict where the contenders have nuclear weapons. 10 to 1 retaliation , starting with a mere 600 casualties, wipes out the entire Earth’s population in eight easy steps. Who will be willing to stop the escalation? The country that lost 60,000 citizens in the last hit? The one that lost 600,000? 6 million?
 
As the nuclear holocaust unfolds, some will remember the Lebanon conflict and subsequent Iran war and blame it  on Israel. Others will properly blame Americans, for having allowed their Executive to erase the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons , first in doctrine and then in practice , despite having the most powerful conventional military force in the world. Others of course will blame "Muslim extremism".
 
And then the blaming will wither away as a three-billion-year old experiment, life on planet Earth, comes to an end.

The offensive against Gaza is designed to destroy Hamas for daring to win an election. The "international community" stood by as Gaza suffered collective punishment. Dozens of innocents continue to die. This meant nothing to the G8 leaders. Nothing was done.

Israeli recklessness is always green-lighted by Washington. In this case, their interests coincide. They want to isolate and topple the Syrian regime by securing Lebanon as an Israeli-American protectorate on the Jordanian model. They argue this was the original design of the country. Contemporary Lebanon, it is true, still remains in large measure the artificial creation of French colonialism it was at the outset – a coastal band of Greater Syria sliced off from its hinterland by Paris to form a regional client dominated by a Maronite minority.

The country’s confessional checkerboard has never allowed an accurate census, for fear of revealing that a substantial Muslim – today perhaps even a Shia – majority is denied due representation in the political system. Sectarian tensions, over-determined by the plight of refugees from Palestine, exploded into civil war in the 1970s, providing for the entry of Syrian troops, with tacit US approval, and their establishment there – ostensibly as a buffer between the warring factions, and deterrent to an Israeli takeover, on the cards with the invasions of 1978 and 1982 (when Hezbollah did not exist).

The killing of Rafik Hariri provoked vast demonstrations by the middle class, demanding the expulsion of the Syrians, while western organizations arrived to assist the progress of a Cedar Revolution. Backed by threats from Washington and Paris, the momentum was sufficient to force a Syrian withdrawal and produce a weak government in Beirut.

But Lebanon’s factions remained spread-eagled. Hezbollah had not disarmed, and Syria has not fallen. Washington had taken a pawn, but the castle had still to be captured. I was in Beirut in May, when the Israeli army entered and killed two "terrorists" from a Palestinian splinter group. The latter responded with rockets. Israeli warplanes punished Hezbollah by dropping over 50 bombs on its villages and headquarters near the border. The latest Israeli offensive is designed to take the castle. Will it succeed? A protracted colonial war lies ahead, since Hezbollah, like Hamas, has mass support. It cannot be written off as a "terrorist" organization. The Arab world sees its forces as freedom fighters resisting colonial occupation.

There are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli gulags. That is why Israeli soldiers are captured. Prisoner exchanges have occurred as a result. To blame Syria and Iran for Israel’s latest offensive is frivolous. Until the question of Palestine is resolved and Iraq’s occupation ended, there will be no peace in the region. A UN force to deter Hezbollah, but not Israel, is a nonsensical notion.

Email to: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Blasting Bush’s double standard on the sovereign use of force to combat terrorism, Erdogan has announced troop "contingency plans" to storm over the border. The U.S. has been warning Turkey to restrain itself, but the alliance between the two nations is in shambles. Three years ago, former Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz chided Turkey when its parliament refused to allow the U.S. to use its country as a transit point for the Iraq invasion, and even suggested that the military should have pressured the government into complying with U.S. edicts. Adding double insult to injury, he pledged to root the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) out of northern Iraq, but instead directed the U.S. to bolster the autonomy of the Kurdish region. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld last year, in one of his more risible statements, blamed the Iraqi insurgency on Turkey.

Denied a homeland in the 1923 carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world to be stateless. Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk prohibited the outward signs of Kurdish culture from his newly formed democratic state, banning Kurdish schools, music, dress, and language. To this date, overt support for Kurdish causes is criminalized. The two factions reached a fragile truce after the capture of Abdullah Ocalan (head of the PKK) in 1999, but over the past two years Kurdish groups have claimed responsibility for bombings in Istanbul, resort towns, and elsewhere. Turkey’s biggest nightmare is a growing separatist movement for an autonomous Kurdish state.

Complicating this matter is Iranian activity against the Kurds. Iran has supposedly shelled some Kurdish enclaves in Iraq making it a complicit partner with Turkey in Kurdish eradication.

The ramifications of Turkey waging war against the PKK in Iraq amid the chaos of so many armed soldiers could certainly lead to confrontation and skirmishes between U.S. and Turkish forces, similar to what happened in Sulaymaniyah in 2003. The Turkish army is no ragtag outfit, having forcibly ousted four governments in the last 45 years. The scenario of pitting two supposed democratic allies, both members of NATO, against each other was already laid out in the Anatolian best-selling book Metal Storm, in which Turkey, allied with its former nemesis Russia, ended up detonating a nuclear suitcase bomb in Washington, D.C.

When Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul visited Washington earlier this month, he met with Condoleezza Rice in a canned TV appearance to announce a " shared vision document." The president was too busy to meet with him. Apparently, a country that’s 98 percent Muslim but officially a secular democratic republic since 1923 and shares borders with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, and Georgia doesn’t merit his attention. And let’s not forget that it hosts oil pipelines that skirt beyond Russian territories and terminate at the Mediterranean – one pumping from the Caspian port of Baku, the other from Kirkuk.

On Saturday, the White House announced Bush had phoned Erdogan and promised more concrete help in some sort of tripartite alliance of U.S., Iraqi, and Turkish forces in dealing with the PKK. How Kurdish civilians get spared in this venture is anybody’s guess. Unfortunately, the Bush administration may be unaware that Turkey views the whole Kurdish population as a terrorist nest.

Thirty thousand dead have seemingly failed to satisfy the blood lust between Turks and Kurds. The Turks proved their ferocity in World War I when they repelled the Allies at Gallipoli, a battle that resulted in 250,000 dead. Armed with the Bush doctrine of taking the fight to the enemy, Turkey, by adding a new staging area to the conflict, could be pouring an inextinguishable accelerant upon the region.

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/berga.php?articleid=9393

The official lines of the US and Israeli governments are that the destruction in Lebanon and Gaza are due to two Israeli soldiers being taken prisoner. This incredible display of willful amnesia omits the fact that at least 9,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, 1,000 of which have had no charges brought against them. It also conveniently omits the fact that over 14,000 Iraqis are languishing in US prisons inside Iraq, most of whom have been charged with approximately nothing.

While the slaughter of innocents continues unabated, we must be very clear as to who is responsible for creating the conditions for it. "Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid every year since 1976," Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute in New York told Inter Press Service recently.

On top of providing Israel with billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry, in 2005 alone the US provided the Israeli government $2.2 billion. This amount is expected to increase incrementally in the coming years.

Israel has the largest fleet of F-16 fighter jets in the world, outside of the US. Thanks to the US, these deadly warplanes are responsible for most of the death and destruction we’ve seen thus far in Lebanese cities, suburbs, and ports.

Most of the critical infrastructure of Lebanon has been reduced to smoldering ruins, as countless Lebanese are now living by generators and scavenging for food wherever possible. Bombings have included electrical stations, fuel storage depots, gas stations, hospitals, ambulance convoys, ports, factories, bridges and roads. As of this writing, the death toll in Lebanon is now over 350, all but 14 of which were civilians. There are over 1,000 wounded.

It’s called collective punishment. It is a war crime. It is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

An entire country is being collectively punished while the world sits by and watches.

The US military did it and continues to do it as you read this in Iraq, and now the Israeli military, after practicing it for decades in the occupied territories of Palestine, is carrying out this tactic /en masse/ against the country and people of Lebanon.

Let me be clear about which international laws are being violated by the Israelis.

Article 51 from the 1949 Geneva Conventions states, very clearly, that, "The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited."

Al-Jazeera, who has been doing a remarkable job of covering the catastrophic situation in Lebanon, had one of their journalists shot in the leg while reporting in Israel. Jazeera showed the footage-of his colleague in front of the camera jumping out of the way so as not to be run down by an Israeli military vehicle-then she raced over with others to assist her shot colleague into an ambulance. The day before, Jazeera reported on the convoy of ambulances, along with civilian cars, being bombed by the Israelis.

Israeli warplanes are bombing ambulances and cars in Beirut.

The Geneva Conventions clearly specify that, "/Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited/."

According to Protocol I, Article 85, Section 3 of the Geneva Conventions, "An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions."

Hezbollah militants are also guilty of war crimes by targeting civilians in Israel, where at least 12 have been killed by their indiscriminate rocket attacks into Haifa and other locations. However, 12 Israeli military personnel have been killed by Hezbollah attacks. Thus, Hezbollah fighters have been approximately 50% accurate in their attacks against the Israeli military, when in contrast the Israeli military, according to latest figures, have killed 14 Lebanese soldiers, lending a 4% accuracy rate by comparison. Overall, for every one Israeli killed, 14 Lebanese die.

This disparity is due to the fact that people like the prime minister of Israel, George W. Bush and "Democrats" like Hillary Clinton clearly do not value the lives of the Lebanese people on par with those of Israelis.

Underscoring this stance are the recent remarks of the UN "Ambassador" for the US, John Bolton-who the Jewish lobby group JINSA nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Bolton told reporters that there was no moral equivalence between Lebanese civilian casualties generated by Israeli air raids and Israelis killed by "malicious terrorist acts," as if there is a difference in these two "terrorist acts."

"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he said.

Recently at the northern border of Lebanon and Syria, a 25 year-old American social studies teacher who was staying with his family in downtown Beirut before fleeing for the border, told me, "Everything is being bombed. It’s a terror! We’ve literally been terrorized!"

The teacher, Abdul Rahman, added, "We have not slept for three days because we were living in terror and never new when the Israelis would bomb us since they were hitting everything. If they want to hit Hezbollah, let them hit Hezbollah, but not the civilians-but civilians are all that they are hitting!"

Article 48 from the 1949 Geneva Conventions states that the "basic rule" of the Geneva Conventions is to protect the civilian population:

"In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives."

Bolton also said, in defense of the Israeli military, "It’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."

Cannot the same be said of Hezbollah?

Bolton went on to show his true colors-that the lives of westerners are of value, whereas the lives of the Lebanese are not. He was asked to comment on the deaths of eight Canadian citizens as the result of an Israeli air strike. "it is a matter of great concern to us …that /these/ [emphasis mine] civilian deaths are occurring. It’s a tragedy."

The Canadians had three of their Lebanese relatives die as well, but Bolton wasn’t speaking about /those/ deaths.

Let me clear about this-Bolton is a war criminal. Cheney/Bush, with their shameless aiding and abetting of the Israeli military and Prime Minister Olmerts’ policy in Gaza and Lebanon, are war criminals and should be treated as such. Several other past US presidents, including Bill Clinton and his golfing buddy Bush Senior, are war criminals for this same aiding and abetting.

Others who aid and abet and cheerlead, like the corporate media in the US, are Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, to name but a select few.

The slaughter continues day and night. Today, in one air strike alone, Israeli warplanes killed 13 civilians, all from two families in southern Lebanon. Nine of the dead were children.

It’s going to continue for at probably "a few weeks," according to Israels’ deputy army chief, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky. "We need more time to complete our very clear goals. When we fight terror it is a war that needs to be very accurate, very schematic and it takes time," he said hypocritically in his radio address, before adding that a ground invasion of Lebanon was not being ruled out.

"Very accurate," he says.

On Tuesday, Israeli air raids struck the Christian coastal town of Byblos north of Beirut and the eastern city of Baalbek.

At the northern border I also interviewed a man named Abud Aziz, a 31 year-old Lebanese pastry chef from Beirut who carried his suitcase under a sweltering sun as he crossed the border into Syria for refuge. Having just fled Beirut, Aziz told me, "Lebanon is in a terrible state. I left everything but some cash and the clothes on my back. I ran for my life because of the hellish bombing!"

Aziz said there was no water or electricity since yesterday, anyone who could was leaving Beirut for the borders or mountains, and the bombing from Israeli war planes was rampant. "Yesterday I saw two hospitals bombed with my own eyes," he told me, "Nobody who remains in Beirut can be safe. No way."

A 25 year-old construction worker named Hamed also told me he witnessed war planes bomb a hospital in Beirut. "I left just hours ago, and I saw them bomb a hospital yesterday. They are bombing everything-houses, casinos, fuel stations and so many bridges."

"Very accurate," said Kaplinsky.

In 1946, in Nuremberg, an American Judge wrote: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

And this is exactly what Israel is doing in Lebanon. And this war of aggression which "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" is being aided and abetted by the leaders of the US government and all those who support them.

_______________________________________________

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

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First, last week, David Twersky, the Tel Aviv correspondent for the New York Sun, a mouthpiece for the Israeli hardliners, compared the kidnapping of a corporal in Gaza to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the incident that triggered World War I.

The parallel was planted.

Then, just yesterday Sunday June 16, Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker and still a darling of the GOP right, stated as a matter of fact on Meet that Press that a new war is already underway in the Middle East. It is, he insists, already a world war. “THIS IS, IN FACT, WORLD WAR 3,” he said for emphasis, with no regrets and an apparent longing to “bring it on.”

Columnist Dave Postman elaborated on his message in his Seattle Times blog:

"Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says America is in World War III and President Bush should say so. In an interview in Bellevue this morning Gingrich said Bush should call a joint session of Congress the first week of September and talk about global military conflicts in much starker terms than have been heard from the president.

"We need to have the militancy that says ‘We’re not going to lose a city,’" Gingrich said. He talks about the need to recognize World War III as important for military strategy and political strategy.

“Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republicans facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush’s record.”

Hmmm…, a world war to save the Bush Administration? How convenient.

But there is more. The always aggressive and often obnoxious Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle, a leading booster of war on Iraq, is now lobbying the Administration to finish off the “axis of evil.” In print pieces and TV appearances, he is calling for a wider war now.

Hold on. Also on Meet The Press, Martin Fletcher, the NBC veteran Israel correspondent revealed that the Israeli war plan that is now being carried out is not simply a response to current risks or attacks, and that it has been FIVE years in the making. It was a plan just looking for a pretext.

“I think they will never say that publicly,” he added, explaining that this war plan was not made by the current Israeli government but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party mate Ariel Sharon & Sharon’s generals. Fletcher says Tel Aviv calls it a “work plan.” He says it is being implemented “step by step.”

He added, “It will go on until someone steps in and stops them.”

The United States is not currently that “someone”­not now. President Bush is backing Israel although with an unheard PR appeal asking that they be gentler in their attacks. He, like, Israel, is blaming Hezbollah which insists it is acting defensively and reactively, not offensively.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who appears in my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) has been running war games Vis a Vis Iran. He wrote to me on the weekend after talking to Pentagon insiders. His conclusion: “It would be hard to overestimate the danger of a major war,” he says. They say the Israeli soldiers they captured were fighting illegally in Lebanon.

He says be believes the US and Israel are coordinating their strategies. While he believes that Iran is orchestrating Hamas and Hezbollah through Syria, he also says: “That does not mean that Israel is not taking advantage of the events. They have decided on regime change in Gaza and on punishing Hezbollah while establishing a buffer zone to prevent rocket attacks. As closely as the US and Israel have been coordinating, one has to assume coordination.”

Former Israeli independence fighter and now peace activist Uri Avnery goes further: ”As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US. As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.”

And who wants this war? The Toronto Star’s Linda McQuaig challenges the dominant view in DC that it is only the Iranians.

“Is it really Iran that is pushing for war? Think about it. Why would Iran want to provoke a war with Israel and the U.S. ­ both heavily armed nuclear powers ­ when it has no nuclear weapons itself?”

Summer is often called the silly season. While the Bush Administration is losing one war in Iraq, and another with public opinion here at home, it seems to be opting for more conflicts as its backers bang the drum for a new world war.

Years ago, Che Guevara called for “1, 2, 3” Vietnams. The Busheviks today may be moving toward ‘1, 2, 3’ world wars.

Sound crazy? In our Orwellian political climate, a new generation of Dr Strangelove’s are in command. Only this time, they don’t act like loonies. They have mastered the art of the TV interview and can, with selective facts and ideology packaged as information, make insanity sound oh so sane.

They have convinced themselves, and now want to convince us, to join a new hegemonic adventure to expand their failed “GWOT,” (Global War on Terror), whatever the cost.

And where is the media in all this, to rein them in, to connect the dots, to offer the missing context and background, to make vital distinctions between the aggressor and those agressed upon, and to stand up for international law, human rights, and sanity? NBC is giving the Gingrichs and Pearls of the world a platform to advocate more killing with no one to challenge them effectively.

We need more critics like Cenk Uygur, who challenges William Kristol on Huffington Post in these terms:

“Bill Kristol has never seen a war he didn’t like. No, that’s too soft. A war he didn’t love and lust after. Here’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing pretending to be serious, sober minded analyst on television when in reality he is trying to get us sucked into horrific wars that other people will die fighting.”

Why didn’t Tim Russert have the guts to say something similar to Newt Gingrich?

Has mainstream media devolved so far that a world war is now considered a legitimate subject to advocate? Doesn’t this new “mission” add up to more madness?

Has it come to this? Is the summer heat corroding our senses? Is global warming melting our brains?

Danny Schechter is “blogger in chief” of www.Mediachannel.org   His latest film seeking distribution is In Debt We Trust. ( www.Indebtwetrust.com   ) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

The figures don’t lie. At the end of the eighth day of fighting, a total of 29 people had been reported killed on the Israeli side of the border, including 14 soldiers and 15 civilians. But the majority of Lebanese deaths have been civilian – and only a very few, less than a handful, according to any number of Lebanese-based news media, were Hezbollah military.

Civilian Lebanese are thus being killed, in proportion to Israelis, at a rate of more than 10:1. This implies that Israel is not targeting Hezbollah, but above all Lebanon’s infrastructure.

Israel’s war has nothing to do with Hezbollah’s ideology, as the Israeli public relations machine spins non-stop; it’s already configured as collective punishment unleashed over the Lebanese civilian population. Israel officially ordered the entire population of southern Lebanon in essence to become IDPs (internally displaced persons). Southern Lebanon’s population, overwhelmingly poor Arab Shi’ites, overwhelmingly supports Hezbollah.

Hezbollah for its part may have fired about 1,000 Katyusha rockets toward Israel. Hezbollah may possess 12,000 rockets in total. At the current rate, it could keep firing rockets non-stop for more than two months – while Israel bombs Lebanon back to the Stone Age. The decision anyway has been made. According to diplomatic leaks in Washington, London and Brussels, the Israeli offensive will last at least for another week to 10 days.

You deserve to die
Although there is no direct evidence pointing to Iran and/or Syria behind Hezbollah’s strategy, US President George W Bush has blamed Syria ("What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" – as overheard during the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg on the weekend).

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his part has blamed Hezbollah as being in cahoots with Iran. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there were no "conducive circumstances" for a ceasefire; she will land her Ferragamo-clad feet on Middle Eastern soil only when it’s "appropriate", "necessary" and "helpful to the situation" (perhaps "appropriate" would mean the "international community" waiting until Lebanon is totally destroyed and hundreds or thousands more Lebanese are dead).

At any rate, Lebanon is fast joining Bush’s "democratic" Iraq. The latest UN report states that more than 3,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in June, and no fewer than 14,338 civilians were killed in the first six months of 2006.

The US ambassador to the UN, notorious neo-con John Bolton, believes "it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts". Israel’s bombing for its part is "self-defense" that has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths".

Translation: dead Lebanese civilians are collateral damage, expendable and not worth the life of a single Israeli. After all, the Israeli foreign minister had the gall to proclaim that "many civilians in southern Lebanon have Katyusha and other rockets under their beds".

Former Israeli congressman and committed pacifist Uri Avnery, on the Israeli website Gus Shalom, says that Israel’s real objective is "regime change in Beirut, and the installation of a puppet government". It’s what Israel wanted – and didn’t get – with the 1982 invasion led by Ariel Sharon. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy goes one step further, accusing Israel of being a society in "moral collapse". Israelis overwhelming support the bombing of Lebanon to dust.

Even if you survive, no one will help you
The tragedy is that the "international community" has totally deserted the Lebanese people; they are the new Palestinians. The minutes at the recent Arab League meeting in Cairo were leaked. The Arabic-language press could not fail to notice what Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis and Kuwaitis were up to; basically a united front to smash and "disarm" Hezbollah. The specter of the Shi’ite crescent – brandished by Washington neo-cons and dictatorial Sunni Arab governments – is alive and kicking.

The ultra-wealthy Persian Gulf emirates could not give a damn – their only interest is oil at US$80 a barrel. Both Egypt and Jordan are US client regimes – and non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies – and in addition have signed peace treaties with Israel. Turkey is also a US-Israel-axis ally. And US-controlled Iraq is smashed, destroyed and mired in its own "Lebanonized" civil war.

Even by its own standards of irrelevance, the European Union has excelled – with the added spectacle of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meekly toeing the US line. Britain, France, Germany and Italy may condemn – rhetorically – the gulag established by Israel in occupied Palestine. But they are afraid of Hamas and they are also afraid of Hezbollah – what if these Arabs started striking right at the heart of Fortress Europe? Under this rationale, the indiscriminate killing of Lebanese civilians would never rate as a priority.

All according to plan
The world has seen this movie before. The seed for understanding the New Middle East war was sown 10 years ago, in 1996. Everything keeps pointing back to the infamous paper "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", prepared by neo-cons such as Richard Perle, David and Meyrav Wurmser and Douglas Feith for Likud hardliner Benyamin Netanyahu. [1]

The "getting rid of Saddam" part has already been accomplished. The total degradation of the Palestinians is ongoing. The "destabilizing of Syria in Lebanon" took place last year. The next step would be hitting at both Syria and Iran via Lebanon.

Five months ago, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, warned in a public speech that if Israel did not release the Lebanese prisoners it was holding, "we will try to get an Israeli soldier". That’s exactly what happened. Israel knew it and had five months to prepare for an invasion and/or the current "pinpoint" bombing of Lebanon’s infrastructure – something that any military strategist knows cannot be prepared in a day or two.

The fact that the Bush administration and the Olmert government in tandem blame both Syria and Iran follows the Clean Break plan to the letter. And the plan could have been fine-tuned very recently. Former Likudnik Olmert went to the US in May and Likud chairman Netanyahu followed him in June – and landed in neo-con heaven, participating in a meeting with US Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a conference organized by the American Enterprise Institute in Colorado.

As far as Bush’s "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit" is concerned, it makes absolutely no sense: it was Bush himself who forced Syria out of Lebanon last year, to clear the way for Israel to attack Lebanon facing no resistance. As for the Israel-Iran confrontation, it has nothing to do with ideology, as the Bush administration puts it. It’s pure power play. Israel and Iran are two regional military powers entangled in a battle for regional supremacy. And even the guessing game on Syria and/or Iran supporting Hezbollah is also irrelevant.

The US/Israel axis has historically supported plenty of Islamist groups all over the Arab world – in tune with the supreme objective of fighting what it always considered the real enemy, pan-Arab and secular nationalism. Hamas has been supported by Israel in the past. The US supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the US (blowback, anyone?) also supported the Afghan mujahideen in the anti-Soviet 1980s jihad.

Give me a (Clean) Break
There is simply no solution whatsoever to the ongoing Middle East disaster until "David" Israel (with its nuclear weapons) stops stealing Arab lands and returns all occupied territory to the "Goliaths" – the Sheba Farms to Lebanon, the Golan Heights to Syria, the West Bank and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

Arab puppet regimes will inevitably fall, by the force of their population’s rage. The Washington elite may even realize one day (no one is counting on it, though) that the US gains absolutely nothing from Israel’s wag-the-dog tactics. Israel inevitably will be forced to negotiate with its neighbors. Then and only then, if still no peace can be reached, Israel might find some legitimacy to keep attacking Arabs at random.

There are diplomatic rumblings about a peace agreement of sorts. Israel and Hezbollah would exchange prisoners; the Lebanese army (what army?) would be deployed up to the Israeli border, and Hezbollah would pull back north of the Litani River; and a new, bigger, UN monitoring force would step in.

There are reports that Israel "might" accept these blue helmets – but only temporarily. Israel, though – as Clean Break rules – does not feel any incentive to accept this solution. Its military logic points to a devastating preemption of both Hamas and Hezbollah – so Iran would have much reduced means to retaliate against Israel in the (likely) event of a US or US/Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations.

No one at this point may predict with certainty what the Bush/Blair/Olmert troika is actually cooking. But there is the terrifying possibility that these may be the early stages of the Great Middle East war outlined in A Clean Break; the chance for the US/Israel axis to strike at both Syria and Iran – with no one, be it Russia, China or the cowardly EU, being able to stop it.

Note
1. Readers can access the essential points on www.iasps.org/strat1.htm.