Ignoring the recent and not so recent past...
Newton’s Third Law states that for every action there is an EQUAL and OPPOSITE reaction...the domino theory, while beautifully simple on paper, did not work before; there is not reason why it should now. Iran has gained relative power because the US overstretched itself to invade Iran's regional counter-weight, Iraq. It is therefore US projection of power rather than weakness that has empowered Iran.
Not surprisingly, William Kristol disagrees but the FT being a balanced paper, printed his article. . . more FT, read on!
NB: This post should be read in conjunction with the 'Lessons from the past' post below
Why Bush should go to Tel Aviv - and confront Iran
By William Kristol
Published: July 16 2006 17:38 | Last updated: July 16 2006 18:51
Why is this Arab-Israeli war different from all other Arab-Israeli wars? Because it’s not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of Israel’s traditional Arab enemies have checked out of the current conflict. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say the least, indifferent to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine Liberation Organization (Fatah) isn’t a player. The prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war is a non-Arab state, Iran, which wasn’t involved in any of Israel’s previous wars.
What’s happening in the Middle East, then, isn’t just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What’s happening is an Islamist-Israeli war. You might even say this is part of the Islamist war on the West--but is India part of the West? Better to say that what’s under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States.
An Islamist-Israeli conflict may or may not be more dangerous than the old Arab-Israeli conflict. Secular Arab nationalism was, after all, also capable of posing an existential threat to Israel. And the Islamist threat to liberal democracy may or may not turn out to be as dangerous as the threats posed in the last century by secular forms of irrationalism (fascism) and illiberalism (communism). But it is a new and different threat. One needs to keep this in mind when trying to draw useful lessons from our successes, and failures, in dealing with the threats of the 20th century.
Here, however, is one lesson that does seem to hold: States matter. Regimes matter. Ideological movements become more dangerous when they become governing regimes of major nations. Communism became really dangerous when it seized control of Russia. National socialism became really dangerous when it seized control of Germany. Islamism became really dangerous when it seized control of Iran - which then became, as it has been for the last 27 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons for needing Iranian help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shi’ite Iranian revolution, far less of an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini’s claim for leadership of militant Islam - and thus no Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and perhaps no Hamas either.
It’s of course true that Hamas - an arm of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood - is at odds ideologically with Shia Iran, and that Shia and Sunni seem inclined to dislike, even slaughter, each other elsewhere in the Middle East. But temporary alliances of convenience are no less dangerous because they are temporary. Tell the Poles of 1939, and the French of 1940, that they really had little to worry about because the Nazi-Soviet pact was bound to fall apart.
The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn’t going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harbourers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders - Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.
For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.
The right response is renewed strength - in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg - a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision - to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too.
William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard; this article appears by arrangement with that publication
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Not surprisingly, William Kristol disagrees but the FT being a balanced paper, printed his article. . . more FT, read on!
NB: This post should be read in conjunction with the 'Lessons from the past' post below
Why Bush should go to Tel Aviv - and confront Iran
By William Kristol
Published: July 16 2006 17:38 | Last updated: July 16 2006 18:51
Why is this Arab-Israeli war different from all other Arab-Israeli wars? Because it’s not an Arab-Israeli war. Most of Israel’s traditional Arab enemies have checked out of the current conflict. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are, to say the least, indifferent to the fate of Hamas and Hezbollah. The Palestine Liberation Organization (Fatah) isn’t a player. The prime mover behind the terrorist groups who have started this war is a non-Arab state, Iran, which wasn’t involved in any of Israel’s previous wars.
What’s happening in the Middle East, then, isn’t just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What’s happening is an Islamist-Israeli war. You might even say this is part of the Islamist war on the West--but is India part of the West? Better to say that what’s under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States.
An Islamist-Israeli conflict may or may not be more dangerous than the old Arab-Israeli conflict. Secular Arab nationalism was, after all, also capable of posing an existential threat to Israel. And the Islamist threat to liberal democracy may or may not turn out to be as dangerous as the threats posed in the last century by secular forms of irrationalism (fascism) and illiberalism (communism). But it is a new and different threat. One needs to keep this in mind when trying to draw useful lessons from our successes, and failures, in dealing with the threats of the 20th century.
Here, however, is one lesson that does seem to hold: States matter. Regimes matter. Ideological movements become more dangerous when they become governing regimes of major nations. Communism became really dangerous when it seized control of Russia. National socialism became really dangerous when it seized control of Germany. Islamism became really dangerous when it seized control of Iran - which then became, as it has been for the last 27 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons for needing Iranian help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shi’ite Iranian revolution, far less of an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini’s claim for leadership of militant Islam - and thus no Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and perhaps no Hamas either.
It’s of course true that Hamas - an arm of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood - is at odds ideologically with Shia Iran, and that Shia and Sunni seem inclined to dislike, even slaughter, each other elsewhere in the Middle East. But temporary alliances of convenience are no less dangerous because they are temporary. Tell the Poles of 1939, and the French of 1940, that they really had little to worry about because the Nazi-Soviet pact was bound to fall apart.
The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn’t going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harbourers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders - Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.
For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.
The right response is renewed strength - in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.
But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg - a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision - to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too.
William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard; this article appears by arrangement with that publication
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
posted by Germain at 23:55
22 Comments:
Hi there Gman. Feel you're on slightly shaky ground with the third law. Although it applies pretty well to my ongoing debate with Kevin underneath "Legal system and the WoT" below.
Love the way Kristol says Bush should leave the "silly G8 summit." Multilateralism? Pah!
It's typical of the right to see "moral confusion and political indecision" where the reality is a measured response reflecting a complicated and ambiguous world.
Yes. Low-browed, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that we are. Blind to nuance, subtlety, complexity, finesse, ambiguity, ambivalence, polyvalence, intricacy, shades of gray (grey), degrees of all sorts, fine distinctions, and all but the most brute differentiation.
When no one's looking, we spend our days eating giant roasted drumsticks of wild game and clubbing women over the head to drag back to our caves. But we clean up okay, no?
FWIW, I have to join Peter in objecting to the application of physical laws to human behavior. Though perhaps it's unfair to think that's what Germain was doing -- maybe he was just being analogical. The discourse of French people is just too nuanced for my little brain.
Hi there again Kevin. I'm a physically and mentally weak individual who doesn't have the balls or the brains to use force when it mattters or take any tough decisions. I'd rather rush back to my ivory tower waving a white flag than bear to see a Muslim terrorist so much as scratched.
Forgive me: I'm a little drained from reading a comment piece by Newt Gingrich on the GU website (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/newt_gingrich/2006/07/the_third_world_war_has_begun.html) , and much of the subsequent vitriol. I'll get over it.
Well the third law was not to be directly applied but it is perhaps useful to keep in mind given the origins of Hezbollah and various other resistance movements. But I could tease you a little more by reminding you that we are, primarily and essentially physical beings.
As for the rest, well what can I say, I am just a smelly arrogant Frenchman who loves to go on strike, oppose anything the US does, and to drink wine and eat cheese while placating everyone so that I do not get my beret dirty. Ohh I also smoke too much and love women with hairy armpits.
Shall we get back to it gents...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
There is something in all that fun-having that warrants clarification. The caricature of the left from the right rarely has anything to do with intelligence. It wouldn't be funny because most on the right don't actually think the left are stupid. Such caricature is much more likely to play upon the perceived weakness, moral turpitude or confusion, and sophistry. That is, if I were to caricature y'all, I'd never say you were stupid -- but I would exaggerate and call you self-regarding, condescending, morally vertiginous, and as afraid of your shadow as Punxsutawney Phil; and it would be funny because, while hyperbolic, there's a tinge of truth there. But I love y'all anyway and you know it.
Those on the left are far more likely genuinely to believe that those of us on the right are stupid if not downright mentally defective. E.g. Pete's post that says both that the right doesn't understand reality and is obtuse.
A couple years ago an American psychologist published a much-lampooned paper attempting to establish conservatism as a mental illness. With folks like that, Noam Chomsky, and George Galloway around, caricature is getting to be tough work.
Dividing the world between 'good' and 'evil' or, coincidentally, those 'with' us or those 'against' us sound pretty obtuse to me...doesn’t allow for much freedom of opinion.
I admit: I started this. And it was a pretty lazy caricature. But you know, it was a caricature, and the fact it referred to "the right" as a group like that meant that as a sentence it was virtually impossible for it to be accurate. I'd add that my description of "the reality" with regard to a G8 communique is probably optimistic as well.
It's something you see the whole time, though, if you start reading political or newspaper blogs: "the left" and "the right" lambasting each other for their perceived weaknesses, already detailed quite comprehensively above. It's likely that there is something of the intellectual snobbery Kevin describes in the left's criticisms of the right; it's perhaps not surprising given the strength of the left's majority among academics of all disciplines (my Dad's an engineer and he's practically a communist).
Anyway, I don't like it! Personally I do not want to be considered "of the left," it would be terribly restricting, and this drawing of battle lines is unhelpful. Not much room for nuanced opinion when you're either with us or against us, eh? I'm a little surprised at Kevin placing himself so firmly in the one camp, but there you go.
It seems typical of antagonistic situations for opposing sides to define their differences ever more clearly, glorifying what sets them apart. I'd call it fundamentalization (I'm not claiming to have coined that, sure someone else has already), and it seems to characterise a lot of the debate about the world, its direction and what to do about it. Whether reality is the same, I don't know. It's not the world I want to live in, and I do think people tend to have more in common than they think (certainly with globalization etc then we have plenty of common interests and challenges with everyone).
I would think and write a little more, but I really need to do some work.
Pete, just when you were going to accept responsibility, the G-man came to the rescue and said something silly about obtuseness and freedom of opinion.
Germain: um, were you drunk when you made your last posts yesterday? No offense intended, but I'd guess based on the content of the posts that you were "into your cups", as my Granny says.
Kevin: accept responsibility for what?
My comment was in response to yours, not Germain's. He can go jump in a frickin' lake, he dooesn't respond to emails.
If you want me to call myself "left" and try to prove that the left wing is the best wing, you'll be disappointed.
Oh, should have been clearer: responsibility for the caricature thingamajig.
No, I wasn't drunk, but I was in a rush...yeah I do think that dividing the world into polar opposites is obtuse and restricts freedom of expression if not freedom of thought. FYI I was responding to Kevin saying 'E.g. Pete's post that says both that the right doesn't understand reality and is obtuse.'
PS- Kevin tell your ganny I have jumped in a lake and am a bad friend...will email shortly Pete, sorry but you know, some of us work ;)
G-man, the reason I asked about the drink was because the post didn't make any sense. Quite literally unintelligible -- I'm not being speaking metaphorically.
But I must take notice that you confirmed my point that it's getting to be rather less a caricature and more truthful when ones says of the left that its sympathizers assume the stupidity (or obtuseness if you like) of anyone who disagrees. That's not playing nice in the sandbox.
Kevin,
I re-read my comment again and to me it makes quite a lot of sense. Judging by the extrapolation you made from it, eg that I was claiming all those not on the left were stupid, you did in fact misunderstand me...I was not making a general 'left' 'right' claim but describing an aspect of the ‘right’s’ argument which boils the world down to a battle between good and evil…while this quite pleases the electorate, the position is intellectually dishonest, entirely subjective, and those who BELIEVE it are enjoying the common human past-time of lying to themselves.
For the record, the left-right dichotomy, though also a USEFUL simplification, is also intellectually dishonest…there is no globally exhaustive definition of the ‘left’ or the ‘right’…it remains both contextually and temporally relative.
G, your clarification still leaves some items unexplained:
1. What does all that stuff in your clarification have to do with restricting the opinions people may have? Moreover, how can any particular truth-claim restrict opinions?
2. I thought you didn't believe in objective truth. If that's still the case, how is one to make sense of your claim that people are confirming for themselves something that is not true (i.e. the bit about people "lying to themselves"). Entailed in your statement is that the truth on this matter a) exists b) exists apart from subjects c) exists apart from recognition by subjects d) is knowable by people across cultures e) is known by you.
3. All this business about dichotomies is intellectual window-dressing and a pretense to sophistication. There are dichotomies aplenty in life -- either it's raining or it's not raining, choose this job or that one, take this class or that one. You dismiss the claim in question out of hand without considering whether or not it's true and then jump immediately to psychologizing those who make the claim. That led you to draw two conclusions that had nothing to do with the proposition, which is what elicited my response.
4. The structure of your post was to provide a specific example in response to a general claim. The implication is that the instance proves the rule. I think, clarifications notwithstanding, that's what you were doing, but I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong and can leave it be.
Ian, good to have you ! You managed to elaborate on what I was saying in regards to the bi-polar issue much better than I could have hoped to…
On laws of physics, while I will stress, again, that I am not claiming such laws apply directly to human or societal behaviour, I think they are more than reductionist metaphors. It is quite likely that Hezbollah will come out of this Israeli proto-invasion with greater legitimacy (thus, strength) in Lebanon and the wider region (think back to what happened in 1982). Similarly, look at the US reaction to 9/11. Also, it is no secret that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have led to record recruitment among ‘terrorist organisations’. I do not know if such reactions are always ‘equal’ but they are ‘opposite.’ You push me, I push you back; it starts in the schoolyard and continues on the battle-field.
Germain, on the point about opposite reactions, I couldn't agree more, particularly after the weekends events that serve to fuel the legitimacy of resistance. Whatever the nature of the reaction (lesser than, equal to or greater than the initial 'push), it is an opposite reaction nonetheless.
Fueling these reactions is also a sense of injustice and inconsistency in the language and actions of the 'international community', especially that of the US and UK.
After spending the weekend in Kosovo, i thought it would interesting to share with you all a comparison of the discourse of Blair and the English media with respect to Lebanon, and that used to support the case for bombing Serbia.
Demolishing Lebanon
In launching an emergency appeal for aid on July 24, the United Nations estimated that the lives of 800,000 Lebanese civilians have been disrupted by Israeli bombing. Hundreds of bridges and virtually all road networks have been systematically destroyed across the country, making relief efforts almost impossible. BBC and other journalists report many civilians trapped in the rubble of villages in the south of Lebanon cut off from medical aid by air strikes. ReliefWeb comments:
“As the conflict continues, food stocks in many parts of Lebanon are running low. Shortages of water are already a reality in parts of southern Lebanon due to a lack of electricity and fuel. The possibility of shortages of medical supplies in health facilities in the coming weeks is of growing concern. While medical and food stocks are available delivery is almost impossible in many parts of the country.” (‘Flash appeal on the Lebanon crisis launched today,’ ReliefWeb, July 24, 2006; http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/SODA-6S23GF?OpenDocument)
To date, some 377 Lebanese and 17 Israeli civilians have been killed in the conflict. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1828142,00.html)
Save The Children reports that 45% of the Lebanese dead are children, as are 200,000 of the 500,000 refugees forced to flee the bombing. (Save The Children, ‘Crisis in middle east - children hit hardest,’ July 21, 2006; http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/scuk/jsp/resources/details.jsp?id=4281&group=resources§ion=news&subsection=details&gawcam=mec&gawadgrp=mec1
The Red Cross reported (July 23) that five of its volunteers and three patients were wounded when Israeli aircraft attacked two ambulances in successive missile strikes. The attacks took place near Qana when an ambulance arrived to evacuate three patients from the border town of Tibnin. The drivers said that two guided missiles were fired at each ambulance. Three injured patients - a woman, her son and grandson - were all injured again, the son losing his leg to a direct hit from one of the anti-tank missiles. (Ed O'Loughlin, ‘Ambulances fired on by Israel, says Red Cross,’ Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2006)
According to Human Rights Watch, Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. Researchers on the ground confirmed that a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed one and wounded at least 12 civilians, including seven children. Eyewitnesses and survivors described how the artillery shells dropped hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, commented:
"Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians. They should never be used in populated areas." (‘Israeli cluster munitions hit civilians in Lebanon Israel Must Not Use Indiscriminate Weapons,’ HRW, July 24, 2006; http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EKOI-6S2458?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=lbn)
Blair - We Must Act
The day before British and American bombers began attacking Serbia on March 24, 1999, Tony Blair told the House of Commons: “We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe.”
Blair explained:
“Let me give the House an indication of the scale of what is happening: a quarter of a million Kosovars, more than 10 per cent of the population, are now homeless as a result of repression by Serb forces. 65,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last month, and no less than 25,000 in the four days since peace talks broke down. Only yesterday, 5,000 people in the Srbica area were forcibly evicted from their villages.”
Blair also reported deaths:
“Since last summer 2000 people have died.” (Blair: 'We must act - to save thousands of innocent men, women and children,' The Guardian, March 23, 1999; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,,209876,00.html)
No one, of course, not even Blair, was suggesting that the killing was all on one side - the Kosovo Liberation Army had been responsible for hundreds of deaths. But journalists lined up to declare Serb actions ample justification for military intervention. On the day of his speech, a Guardian leader backed Blair all the way:
“The only honorable course for Europe and America is to use military force to try to protect the people of Kosovo... If we do not act at all, or if there is a limited bombing campaign which still fails to change Milosevic's mind, what is likely to be Kosovo's future? The Serbs would certainly try to wipe out the Kosovo Liberation Army completely. They might well go in for large-scale evacuation of villages, so as to control the population more effectively, and deny popular support to what KLA fighters might remain.” (Leader, ‘The sad need for force, Kosovo must be saved,’ The Guardian, March 23, 1999)
Warnings that resonate strongly in July 2006 as the media report, with minimal discernible outrage, Israel’s enforced “large-scale evacuation of villages“ in Lebanon. Thus the Independent on July 22:
“Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over southern Lebanon yesterday warning civilians to leave border villages. The area is normally inhabited by about 300,000 people.” (Donald Macintyre, ‘Israel calls up 3,000 reservists to prepare for ground invasion,’ The Independent, July 22, 2006)
The Evening Standard reported in an article titled, ‘The “get out or die” text message’:
“Israel is waging war by text message as it steps up attacks on Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Mobile phones are being bombarded with messages and voicemails telling civilians to leave areas earmarked for bombardment or risk being killed.” (Evening Standard, July 24, 2006)
In March 1999, the Guardian editors’ outrage at the suffering of displaced civilians was palpable:
“The Serbs are even now attacking in the Pagarusa valley, where 50,000 displaced Kosovars are sheltering behind makeshift Kosovo Liberation Army defences, and those people could, within a very short time, be fleeing, or being brutally herded, toward Albania. Among the many obligations the Nato countries owe these suffering folk is that of meticulously recording their stories, so that when they return to Kosovo full restitution can be made for their losses and full justice meted out to their persecutors. The Serbs have stripped them of their possessions and their documents and have tried to strip them of their dignity. All three must be restored, beginning with the last.” (Leader, ‘The human cost,’ The Guardian, March 31, 1999; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,,209737,00.html)
Compare and contrast to this recent, more matter of fact, Guardian editorial:
“For Israel, a ceasefire would mean respite from deadly rocket strikes, such as the one that struck a railway station in Haifa on Sunday, killing eight civilians. For Lebanon, it would have meant allowing its dysfunctional government to deal with the sudden population convulsions taking place as its citizens flee in panic at Israeli air attacks, and try to restrain the fanatics intent on provoking Israel further.”
The leader concluded:
“Israel has the right to defend itself, a task made harder by the hidden arsenal of Hizbullah, and it should object to any one-sided calls for restraint. But it cannot control its enemies' responses: it can only control its own.” (Leader, ‘Middle East: On the brink of chaos,’ The Guardian, July 17, 2006; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1822165,00.html)
A week into the bombing of Serbia and the Independent was struck down by war fever:
“High-altitude hit-and-run bombing missions will have to be supplemented by lower- altitude attacks on infantry and vehicles... Second, Nato will need to decide how this campaign is to end. It has already gone on long enough without a focused picture of the status quo post bellum. Nato should send in ground troops to establish a protectorate over Kosovo.” (Leader, ‘NATO cannot delay in sending troops to protect Kosovo,’ The Independent, March 30, 1999)
John Sweeney wrote in the Guardian one day later:
“And still they come, a severed artery of human misery, spurting through the high mountain pass, beneath jagged peaks lost in sunlit clouds.
“And still they come, the sick, babies, women, rheumy-eyed old men and wild-eyed young boys, sardine-packed in rickety trailers pulled by clack-clacking tractors, some weeping, a few happy, but most just staring into the far distance.
“And still they come, past the concrete dragon's teeth on the Serb side of the border, to the grotesque, pitiful but not murdering chaos of the poorest country in Europe.” (Sweeney, ‘Tide of misery flows into Albania,’ The Guardian, March 31, 1999)
How freely the tears flow when the compassion is government-approved. Last Sunday, the Observer made its position on the current conflict clear enough. Compare the moral outrage and impassioned literary flourishes above with this new-found ‘pragmatism‘:
“Ideally, Israel's reflex action to any threat would not be to respond with such massive force that significant civilian casualties become inevitable. Ideally, Hizbollah would not want to provoke the Jewish state by firing missiles into Israeli territory that kill Israeli civilians, or by capturing its soldiers... But we do not live in an ideal world. And in the Middle East it is reality that counts.”
Ideally, half a million ordinary Lebanese civilians would not, in a matter of days, be transformed into refugees struggling to survive. Ideally, close to 400 Lebanese civilians would not be killed by indiscriminate bombing as an entire country’s infrastructure - roads, bridges, power stations, petrol dumps, sea ports, milk factories, TV transmission masts, mobile phone masts, and much else - is simply demolished.
The Observer continued:
“The only path is that of pragmatism. In other words, a compromise based not on rhetoric or ideals but on a realistic appraisal of our capabilities and influence. The immediate task is to try to ensure that Israel does not attempt to re-establish its occupation of southern Lebanon or trigger a full-scale escalation of a Middle Eastern war. We need to solve the problem, not pontificate.” (Leader, ‘Britain still has a role in our less than ideal world,’ The Observer, July 23, 2006)
Just four months ago this same newspaper claimed that, in response to conflict in the Balkans, “a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention emerged. It was led at first by President Clinton over Bosnia, and again in Kosovo. The rationale behind those interventions was then invoked for the invasion of Iraq...”
The “wisdom” of the latter had been questioned, the editors noted: “But the principle that a brutal regime does not have inalienable rights to do as it pleases within its borders... is a good one.” (Leader, ‘Let a dictator's death remind us of the evil of unchecked nationalism,’ The Observer, March 12, 2006)
The Observer‘s hypocrisy makes sense - “ideals” and “principles” are useful when brutal realpolitik can be sold as ‘humanitarian intervention’. But not even the Observer could sell US-UK support for the demolition of Lebanon as a moral cause.
As in Kosovo, crimes are being committed on both sides. Unlike Kosovo, the “humanitarian interventionists” have little to say. The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland wrote in 1999:
"How did the British left get so lost? How have its leading lights ended up as the voices of isolationism? How did it come to this...? Why is it the hard left - rather than the isolationist right - who have become the champions of moral indifference? For, make no mistake, that's what opposition to Nato's attempt to Clobba Slobba (as the Sun puts it) amounts to... either the West could try to halt the greatest campaign of barbarism in Europe since 1945 - or it could do nothing." (Jonathan Freedland, ‘The left needs to wake up to the real world. This war is a just one,’ The Guardian, March 26, 1999)
Last week, with the destruction of Lebanon well under way, Freedland's tone had changed:
“Both Hamas and Hizbullah captured soldiers. To outsiders, that would seem to be fair play under the rules of guerrilla warfare. But soldiers carry an almost sacred status in the Israeli imagination. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is a conscript army, so the rhetoric about ‘everyone's son or daughter’ is literally true. Its personnel are not seen as professionals hired to kill or be killed, but as citizens.” (Freedland, ‘There is a way out of this crisis, but the legacy of hatred will endure,’ The Guardian, July 19, 2006)
Where once Freedland was resolute in his “Clobba Slobba” view of international relations, he now gropes for answers: “Israel pounds Lebanon out of all proportion to the original provocation and Hizbullah replies with rockets landing deep in the Israeli interior. What might make this storm pass?”
In reality, Palestinian and Lebanese civilian deaths are mildly troubling for our media, little more. As with the early days of the Iraq catastrophe, there is the overwhelming sense that ‘It will be over soon’, that bitter medicine sometimes just has to be swallowed - there’s nothing much anyone can do. Previously outspoken commentators have sought shelter in the bunker of ‘objective’ journalism. The BBC’s Paul Reynolds wrote from Washington in 1999 of the NATO assault:
"One often wonders why America bothers. Kosovo, after all, is a far away place of which they know little. And yet the crisis shows that there is room in this great land for a sense of justice and responsibility, just as there was in imperial Britain... Great powers are capable of great oppressions, but also of great gestures. The Balkans, it seems, have not lost their fascination for the West, though luckily, this time round, the powers are not pitching in against each other as they did in 1914.
"Some progress has been made in this violent century." (Reynolds, ‘Kosovo: Clinton's greatest foreign test,’ April 4, 1999; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/311438.stm)
Media innocents might be forgiven for shuddering at the thought of the fierce managerial censure that surely followed this outpouring of personal opinion - BBC journalists, after all, are supposed to keep their views to themselves. We asked Reynolds last week if he thought Israel’s attacks on Lebanese roads, bridges, petrol stations, milk factories, and other civilian infrastructure were illegitimate - something he had not stressed in his BBC online articles. We wondered if perhaps the United States should again “bother” with some kind of “great gesture” of “justice and responsibility”. Reynolds replied:
“My views are not relevant.” (Email to Media Lens, July 20, 2006)
The rules are clear but never discussed - corporate reporters are free and happy to declare their personal views insofar as they accord with state interests, but not when they conflict. To criticise the powerful is to be ‘biased’ and ‘crusading’. To support the case made by power is to be ‘measured‘, ‘objective’ and ‘balanced’. Journalists' moral outrage is not relevant when the West does not give a damn about the men, women and children dying under its bombs.
I agree with Kristol. W should leave the g-8 summit after being rebuffed by the German Chancellor in his backrub advances. That's all you need to know about the sophistication of American foreign policy under the current administration.
Are we really giving credence to Newt Gingrich here on these pages? The man who sought to impeach Clinton for an extra-marital dalliance at the same time that he himself was sleeping a staff assistant? The clown is running for president not because anyone would vote for him, but just to raise money and increase his profile in a party that still holds firm to the belief that Saddam had ties to al Qaeda. Should we pursue balance in reporting or a semblance of integrity?
From the standpoint of the Democratic leadership, I can assure you that any comments by Gingrich are to be treated with extreme skepticism and derision. Gingrich seeks only to enable the unlikeliest of Presidential bids in a period in which Republican politicians are trusted as much as Michael Jackson at a day care facility.
World War III? Really? Repeating the arguments of Gingrich only reinforces his message of continuous war and conflict.
Better yet to focus on the plummeting ratings of Republicans from President down to incumbent House Members.
In the 9/3 Washington Post, the President's own advisor rates the likelihood of a Democratic takeover of the House at 90%.
Gingrich has no place in American electoral politics except as a reminder of how that country found itself in such a quagmire.
Hi Jonathan. The link to Gingrich's comment piece wasn't intended to give him credence. I had been reading it and wanted some sympathy for the pain my brain was in. I have a self-destructive compulsion to read right-wing vitriol; you can get hold of plenty by going to the links on Kevin's blog.
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