Anarchopacifist Poet

Must Read Books

2007-03-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

Arkin, William M. Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and

Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005.

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.

Nieto, Clara. Masters of War: Latin America and U.S. Aggression. New York: Seven

Stories Press, 2003.

Rieff, David. At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention. New

York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

Sullivan III, Michael J. American Adventurism Abroad: Thirty Invasions, Interventions,

and Regime Changes Since World War II. Newport, CT: Praeger, 2004.

Vidal, Gore. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated. New

York: Nation Books, 2002.

I'm still here; more to come soon!

2006-12-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

I'm still here. I'll post more in 2007!

namaste,

glen

The Distance from Guernica to Lebanon

2006-08-04T15:01:00.000-07:00

The Distance from Guernica to Lebanon

by Ramzi Kysia

Published on Monday, July 17, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

As I write this, I can hear Israeli warplanes flying overhead, breaking the sound barrier and rattling all of our windows. In the distance there are explosions. I don't know where the bombs are dropping, but it's not close to me. I can't hear the screaming of the survivors from where I sit.

Hezbollah and Hamas may possess the ability to kill dozens of Israeli civilians and terrorize countless others, but they are not an existential threat to Israel. As events on the ground have unmistakably demonstrated over this past month, today it is Israel that is a clear and present danger to the further existence of the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples. A danger, if not to their very lives - then certainly to the continuation of their nations.

This is the third, catastrophic attack I've lived through. I was in New York City on September 11. I was in Baghdad during "Shock and Awe." It's not something you ever get used to. That so much hatred can live in the world, so much indifference to human suffering-- living under that hatred and indifference is almost as hard as living under the bombs.

As I write this, over two hundred Lebanese have been killed. Almost all of them were civilians.

I think of Guernica.

On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the German Air Force, siding with fascist dictator Francisco Franco, began a bombing campaign against the city of Guernica. Some 1,600 people were killed, and the city was reduced to rubble. Guernica is remembered as the first time air power was used against a civilian population with the intent of causing complete destruction.

When it happened, Guernica shocked the world. Today, we do not shock so easily. Lebanon is being sacrificed without so much as a casual protest.

Israel has bombed power plants, roads, and bridges all across Lebanon. Israel has bombed gas stations and fuel depots, grain silos, lighthouses, the seaports in Beirut, Tripoli, Jounieh and Tyre. Beirut's airport is in flames. Beirut's Shi'a suburbs have been almost completely demolished. Firefighters are pleading for help, because they do not have enough water to put out the blazes. (1)

I think of Guernica.

Israel has ordered all of the people living in Southern Lebanon to flee their homes and villages. Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister of Internal Security, told us that "tens of thousands of Lebanese who will flee towards the north will create the right pressure on Hezbollah." (2)

Two nights ago, eighteen people in the South were burned alive when Israel bombed their fleeing convoy with incendiary shells. Eleven of the dead were children under the age of twelve. Mahmoud Ghannam, the father of two of the killed children, broke down when he saw their bodies. He struck himself in the head repeatedly and cried, "my God, my God. I can't make out the faces of my children. They are burnt black... Which ones are my children?" (3)

A copy of Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the annihilation of Guernica was hung outside the chambers of the UN Security Council, as a reminder of why the United Nations was created, and of what the Security Council is supposed to prevent. In 2003, the United States ordered the eleven foot painting covered, so as not to even subtly embarrass American diplomats pressing for a war against Iraq. (4)

We are supposed to forget what modern warfare means.

Living in Lebanon today, I cannot forget. I remember Guernica.

Today, Lebanon is being forced toward total ruin. If Israel's intent is just to destroy Hezbollah, then why are they bombing Christian and Sunni neighborhoods and towns? Why did Israel wait until July 15 to bomb Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut, making sure to first bomb power plants, bridges and roads throughout the entire country? Israel's clear intent is to trash this entire country, smash everything that makes Lebanon a modern nation, and demolish all of the work the Lebanese have done over the last fifteen years to rebuild their country.

As Lebanon is ravaged, U.S. President George Bush loudly and proudly asserts Israel's right to "self-defense." (5)

As Lebanon is ravaged, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rica announces that Israel should continue bombing to "reduce the threat" from Hezbollah. (6)

Do Arabs possess the right to defend themselves from Israel?

As Lebanon is laid to waste, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has secured himself newfound adulation within Israel. Everyone apparently loves a killer. (7)

As Lebanon is destroyed, Olmert has announced that he will refuse to meet with a UN delegation attempting to secure a cease-fire (8), George Bush has publicly refused to call for a cease-fire (9), and the United States is blocking other nations on the Security Council from calling for a cease-fire (10).

On "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Condoleezza Rice not only defended Israel's actions in Lebanon and U.S. policy in Iraq, but said "[Mid-East] hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on Sept. 11, and so the notion that somehow policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism, I find grotesque."

Grotesque. As if Lebanon or Iraq--or even Hamas or Hezbollah--had anything whatsoever to do with September 11.

I remember what is grotesque. I remember Guernica.

When Westerners speak of "smashing the infrastructure of terror," it is understand that they mean all of the Arab peoples themselves. Arabs are "the infrastructure of terror."

Speaking against a cease-fire, Rice added, "We have to go at the root cause. . It's fine to have a cessation of violence. .But unless we go to the fundamentals here, we're going to continue to have these spikes of violence in the Middle East as we have had for the past 30 years." (11)

According to the Washington Post, going to these fundamentals means that Israel and the United States are going to prevent any cease-fire and continue bombing Lebanon for "several weeks" in order to establish their version of peace in the region. (12)

Indeed. I remember Guernica. I understand the peace of the jackboot and whip.

Dare any American or Israeli ever again ask, "Why do they hate us?"

The clear conviction being spoken by all of the politicians in Israel and America is that their absolute security is absolutely dependent on the complete insecurity of Arabs everywhere. And the clear lesson being taught to generations of children growing up in the rubble of what once was the shining jewel of the Middle East is simply this: their security can only be dependent on the future insecurity of America and Israel.

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also took the opportunity to strongly defend this point of view. In an interview on Saturday, Gingrich said that Israel and America must be forceful because, "we need to have the militancy that says 'We're not going to lose a city.'"

So, apparently, Lebanon is going to lose several.

Gingrich belittled the idea of negotiations or a possible ceasefire by saying, "this idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts." (13)

A hundred years ago President Teddy Roosevelt famously told Americans to "talk softly and carry a big stick." Today the spiritual, if not political, heirs to Generalissimo Franco are riding high in Tel Aviv and Washington D.C., and they've gone one better than Roosevelt.

Today, they don't talk at all.

Ramzi Kysia is an Arab-American essayist and peace activist. He spent a year in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness, the Chicago-based predecessor to Voices for Creative Nonviolence. He is currently living in Lebanon, and working on a book about his experiences.

Sources

1. "Israelis intensify bombardment of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure," Daily Star (17 July 2006)

2. "Lebanese villagers ordered out," AFP (17 July 2006)

3. "Jets 'incinerate' fleeing family," AFP (16 July 2006)

4. "The Lessons of Guernica," Toronto Star (9 February 2003)

5. "Mideast flare-up follows Bush to Russia," AP (14 July 2006)

6. "Rice Says Israel May Need to Prolong Offensive," New York Times (16 July 2006)

7. "War Gives Israeli Leader Political Capital," New York Times (16 July 2006)

8. "Lebanon bows on border demand," The Australian (17 July 2006)

9. "Bush won't pressure Israel for cease-fire," AP (14 July 2006)

10. "Lebanon: U.S. blocking call for cease-fire," AP (15 July 2006)

11. "Rice Defends Israel, Calls Criticisms of Bush Policy 'Grotesque'," ABC News Online (16 July 2006)

12. "Strikes Are Called Part of Broad Strategy," Washington Post (16 July 2006)

13. "Let's face it, it's WWIII, Gingrich says," Seattle Times (16 July 2006)

Collective Punishment (it's a war crime)

2006-08-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

Collective Punishment (it's a war crime)

This week it's impossible as a Jew and as an American to not notice a new human rights violation by Israel....

Anyone who has ever faced the crippling heat of the desert-like conditions of southern Israel or the Gaza strip knows the desperation for water that comes each summer. So when Israel bombed and destroyed the electricity system for 1.2 million Gazans and thereby made all electric pumps inoperable, they inflicted a collective punishment on the entire Gazan population.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

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Pictures of the bombing of Lebanon

http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.org

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Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel,

edited by Seth Farber

reviewed by Steve Kowit

In the Jewish-American community one can exhibit complete indifference to Jewish culture and be an outspoken atheist and yet remain a perfectly acceptable member of the tribe. On the other hand, any Jew who openly disapproves of the State of Israel is at risk of being branded a traitor, a dupe of the ubiquitous anti-Semitic enemy, and a self-loathing Jew. Most of the writers and activists represented in Seth Farber’s Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers are unapologetic anti-Zionists, and thus “traitors” in precisely that most honorable sense.

Farber’s book, lively and provocative, reflects not only the author’s commitment to social justice, but, according to a brief biographical note, “his faith in prophetic Judaism as a medium of spiritual/social transformation.” So these conversations serve a dual purpose: on the one hand they explore the Palestinian/Israeli struggle from a progressive Jewish point of view and, on the other, they engage the question of contemporary Judaism itself, a post-Holocaust faith that has largely replaced the love of Yahweh with the worship of Israel.

Noam Chomsky, in his conversation with the author, asserts that the very concept of a state that is not the state of its citizens but of the Jewish people is an illegitimate principle upon which to have founded the nation of Israeli. He clarifies his advocacy of the two-state solution by explaining that he conceives such a political configuration to be no more than a stepping stone toward a binational state, but just how the creation of a tiny Palestinian state can lead to Israel and Palestine becoming a single binational nation Chomsky does not make clear, and it is not impossible that his current position reflects his own ambivalence about that issue. He also hedges his bet on the right of return: the Palestinians must not be forced to give up that right, he declares, “but the expectation that it will be implemented is completely unrealistic. And to advocate that is just to cause pain and disaster to the refugees.” Although this is a common enough position among progressive Zionists, it is much the sort of logic Alice encountered after tumbling down the rabbit hole. In similar fashion, Chomsky admits that the Jews had no more right to establish a state on land that was not theirs than did the American colonists, but then dismisses this most sticky and fundamental of issues with the casual comment that he doesn’t “see a lot of point in these discussions.”

Joel Kovel, author and former psychoanalyst, is less equivocal: “Zionism is a horrible mistake.” Israel is illegitimate in much the way Apartheid South Africa was illegitimate. Because of its privileging of one racial group above others, it is not capable of “joining the community of nation states that are grounded in universal human rights.” Nor does Kovel have a particularly high opinion of ancient Judaism, observing that despite the “transcendent ethical potential” of its beliefs, ancient Judaism had “not just a sense of superiority but a rejection of everybody else.”

Adam Shapiro, one of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement, who became momentarily newsworthy in the United States when his parents were threatened by outraged Brooklyn Zionists, observes that “any anti-Semitism that you find in Muslim countries today is the direct result of the policies of Israel vis-à-vis Palestinians.” When Farber suggests how ironic it is that the Jews turned into oppressors, Shapiro replies that he does not find it at all surprising. “Over and over and over in human history those who have been oppressed have turned into the oppressors.” And when Farber suggests that something in Jewish ethical tradition might have kept them moral for all those centuries, Shapiro reminds him that those supposed Jewish values are nowhere in evidence in those colorful biblical stories in which various peoples are exterminated by the pious Hebrews under God’s mandate.

Phyllis Bennis, author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, reminds us of something that is rarely acknowledged: even if the three-quarters of a million Palestinians had fled in 1948 at the bequest of the Arab invaders, as the Israeli version of history had for so long insisted, “those refugees still would have the right to go home. It doesn’t matter the reason they fled. Their right to return is not conditional on having fled for the right reason.” Bennis also makes the important point that the US Mobilization for Peace and Justice, by making opposition to US support for Israeli occupation a central component at its mass anti-war demonstrations, has helped break through the solid wall of US support for Israeli aggression.

Another conversation is with Steve Quester, an activist with the New York organization Jews Against the Occupation who remarks, in a fascinating aside, that being queer allowed him to figure out that everything he’d been taught about Israel was a lie: “Whereas for straight Jews who’ve never gone through this process of realizing that they’ve been systematically lied to by all aspects of the society, it’s much harder for them to let go of all the lies they’ve been taught about Israel.” Another conversation is with Ora Wise, the passionately outspoken daughter of a “very Zionist” Conservative rabbi, a young woman who worked with Rabbis for Human Rights in the West Bank and was a founding member of the Ohio State Committee for Justice in Palestine. Dealing head on with the criticism that the Palestinians should organize non-violent resistance, she reminds us that terrorist attacks are “the product of a brutal, vicious, controlling, oppressive military occupation that is destroying the lives of millions of Palestinians and is deliberately destroying Palestinians’ ability to organize in non-violent ways….”

The conversation with Norman Finkelstein, perhaps, by now, the most famous Jewish-American critic of Zionist machinations, is peppered with statements by various eyewitnesses to Israeli crimes and with chilling remarks by such luminaries as Moshe Dayan and David Ben-Gurion and is followed by a brief essay by Finkelstein on Israel and Zionism. Finkelstein’s discussion of Israeli “race-nationalism” in particular, and Zionist ideology in general, is sharply focused and forceful, in that incendiary take-no-prisoners polemic style that makes his own books such a sizzling read. When Farber quotes to Finkelstein a remark by the Jewish theologian Marc Ellis, to the effect that those Jews struggling for Palestinian rights “may ultimately decide the future of the covenant… and the Jewish people,” Finkelstein dismisses the notion saying “I have no interest in covenants. I don’t know who the Jewish people are. These are all metaphysical, extraneous terms for me.”

But they are not extraneous for Farber. Rather, for him, they are absolutely central. To focus on such questions, Farber has chosen to include conversations with Norton Mezvinsky, an advocate of the universalist humanism promoted by early Reform Judaism, and with two orthodox Jewish thinkers: Daniel Boyarin and Rabbi David Weiss, both of whom are anti-Zionists.

Mezvinsky, who was singled out by Daniel Pipes’ Campus Watch for “spewing anti-Semitic calumnies,” is another who believes that Zionism is inherently a racist ideology. On the matter of the two-state solution, he argues that what the Israeli leadership has always meant by a Palestinian state is a small “autonomous region” without any real sovereignty. Considering that 40% of the water for all Israel comes from aquifers the Israelis have built in the West Bank, it is hardly likely, he argues, that they will return the West Bank to the Palestinians. If neither a single state nor two genuine states is currently realistic, why not opt, Mezvinsky suggests, for the better, more democratic and just approach― a binational state.

The two orthodox Jews have a difficult time squaring their hatred of Israel’s military aggression with their biblical literalism. Though Daniel Boyarin believes that Zionism is “out-and-out heresy,” he is clearly uncomfortable when Farber reminds him of Yahweh’s commands that the Israelites commit genocide against various peoples. He insists that such questions are simply “not relevant anymore,” though clearly, if one is a literalist, they are indeed relevant. When Farber poses the same sort of question to David Weiss, a rabbi of the Neturie Karta community, the rabbi can only fumble helplessly in response:

But it’s not my issue to try to answer for G-d why he would want such a thing which is in the bible which is accepted. I could look and try to find, according to the Kabbalah, reasons, you know… that’s secret as far as, you know, there’s a deeper meaning for everything…

For Weiss, the reestablishment of Jewish legitimacy over the holy land is a perfectly legitimate goal ― so long as it occurs after the return of the Messiah.

If Farber’s least favorite Jewish progressive is Rabbi Michael Lerner, who has famously argued that Jews had the right to steal the Palestinian homeland as an act of “affirmative action,” the figure whose position the author most fully seems to respect is the theologian and philosopher Marc Ellis, who apparently refused or was unable to participate in this project. Farber has included a brief essay by Ellis and has made that author the subject of both his introductory and concluding essays. Like Mezvinsky, Ellis advocates a Jewish theology of liberation based on the tradition of the later prophets and is opposed to “Constantinian Judaism,” the notion that the secular power of a national state is the true fulfillment of the Jewish covenant. His is another variation of Reform Judaism’s early but long abandoned commitment to universal brotherhood.

It would have been useful for Common Courage Press to have hired a decent copyeditor to correct the shocking number of distracting typos and help the author organize the material a bit more gracefully. The conversations seem to have been transcribed to the page unedited, interviewer and interviewee constantly - and at times disconcertingly - interrupting one other. A good editing of the individual conversations would have helped. Those caveats aside, for anyone seriously interested in the question of Zionism, Israeli colonialism, and the Palestinian struggle, Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers will be a provocative and absorbing read. The complexity and richness of the discussions are not the least of the book’s virtues. And for those struggling with the issue of how believing Jews can frame their faith and confront the disconcerting issues of Israeli aggression and Zionist supremacism, it will prove doubly provocative and doubly a pleasure.

Steve Kowit has won two Pushcart Prizes and an NEA fellowship for his poetry. His latest collection is The Gods of Rapture from City Works Press. His poem Intifada, a poem of Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian people, can be purchased from the publisher, Caernarvon Press in San Diego, or directly from the author, skowit@aabol.com. He teaches at Southwestern College in Chula Vista.

Logos 5.2 - spring/summer 2006

Fleeing Lebanese Speak of Indiscriminate Bombing

2006-08-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

Fleeing Lebanese Speak of Indiscriminate Bombing

by Dahr Jamail

Published on Monday, July 17, 2006 by the Inter Press Service

ADDABBAOUSIYEH (northern Lebanese border) - People fleeing the bombing of Lebanon say the Israelis are targeting civilian neighbourhoods and vital infrastructure, and not just Hezbollah centres.

The bombing has killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians so far.

Several border points between Syria and Lebanon are being deluged with refugees. Lebanon has a long border with Syria towards its south, east and north. The refugees include both Lebanese and tourists.

"Everything is being bombed," a teacher from the United States who was on vacation in Beirut told IPS. "It's terror. We've literally been terrorised."

Twenty-five-year-old social studies teacher Abdul Rahman was living with his family in downtown Beirut near the United Nations building before they all decided to flee.

"We have not slept for three days because we were living in terror and never knew when the Israelis would bomb us since they were hitting everything," he told IPS.

"If they want to hit Hezbollah, let them hit Hezbollah, but not the civilians. But civilians are all that they are hitting."

His mother feared for her 96-year-old father who they had to leave behind. "We cannot move him because he is too frail," she said. "And now all we can do is worry, since the Israelis are taking it out on the innocent people."

On Sunday, the Israeli army also re-entered the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip. According to reports from Gaza, three members of Hamas were killed after Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered Beit Hanun town early morning.

Gunfire and shelling by the Israelis is also reported to have killed a 75-year-old woman and wounded 10 others, along with a baby.

Israel launched several air strikes in Gaza as well. An Israeli army spokeswoman claimed they destroyed a Hamas operations room in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Israel's stated goal in Gaza is to free a soldier captured by Hamas. So far Israeli actions there have left one Israeli soldier dead, along with 82 Palestinians.

Hamas is demanding the release of prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for the Israeli soldier.

Israel is now embroiled in fighting on two fronts. The impact of the fighting with Lebanon is being felt widely in Syria.

Abud Aziz, a 31-year-old Lebanese pastry chef from Beirut crossed the border into Syria carrying his suitcase and looking for food and water. There had been no water or electricity in Beirut since Saturday, he said.

"Yesterday I saw two hospitals bombed," he told IPS. "Nobody who remains in Beirut can be safe. No way."

A 25-year-old construction worker named Hamed also said he saw warplanes bomb a hospital in Beirut.

"I saw them bomb a hospital yesterday," he told IPS. "I left just hours ago. They are bombing everything -- houses, casinos, fuel stations and so many bridges."

Meanwhile, on Sunday Hezbollah fired more than 20 rockets into the city of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, killing eight and wounding at least a dozen.

The Hezbollah clearly have the means to strike back at Israel. They are a well-armed and well-organised political and military group of Shia Muslims in Lebanon. Sustained military attacks by the Hezbollah forced Israel to vacate southern Lebanon in May 2000.

But the Hezbollah are not supported by all Lebanese. About 60 percent of the 3.8 million population of Lebanon is Muslim, most of them Shia. This is where Hezbollah draws its support.

The rest of the population is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war between Muslim and Christian groups ended in 1991. The Hezbollah are believed to draw more support from outside the country than from many within.

In the wake of Hezbollah strikes into Israel, Israeli authorities have declared a 48-hour period of martial law over the northern part of the country. Hezbollah groups have fired more than 400 rockets into Israel, killing at least 16 civilians in the last five days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Lebanon of "far-reaching" consequences after the rocket attacks. The Israeli army said that it had warned all civilians to leave southern Lebanon.

Many of those who have left report panic conditions in Lebanon. "The Israelis bombed a bridge to the airport near us and killed many people," 26-year-old Hasna told IPS. "When other people went on the bridge to help the wounded, the planes bombed it again."

Ambulances are usually not available because of the danger, she said. "We were the last people to leave our area. The road there was nearly empty."

Alham Aras, a Danish woman who was vacationing in Tripoli in Lebanon, drove up to the border with her six children Sunday. She said she had left on instructions from her embassy.

"The warplanes bombed the Palestinian camps in Tripoli," she said, "They are attacking up and down the coast, and the port in Tripoli was also attacked."

Her 14-year-old daughter Barihan al-Jassim said, "Somebody should stop this madness. How is it possible for a country to be bombed like this and nobody stops them from doing it?"

What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage

2006-08-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

What I am watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage

By Robert Fisk in Mdeirej, Central Lebanon

07/15/06 "The Independent" -- - - The beautiful viaduct that soars over the mountainside here has become a "terrorist" target. The Israelis attacked the international highway from Beirut to Damascus just after dawn yesterday and dropped a bomb clean through the central span of the Italian-built bridge a symbol of Lebanon's co-operation with the European Union sending concrete crashing hundreds of feet down into the valley beneath. It was the pride of the murdered ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri, the face of a new, emergent Lebanon. And now it is a "terrorist" target.

So I drove gingerly along the old mountain road towards the Bekaa yesterday - the Israeli jets were hissing through the sky above me - turned the corner once I rejoined the highway, and found a 50ft crater with an old woman climbing wearily down the side on her hands and knees, trying to reach her home in the valley that glimmered to the east. This too had become a "terrorist" target.

It is now the same all over Lebanon. In the southern suburbs - where the Hizbollah, captors of the two missing Israeli soldiers, have their headquarters - a massive bomb had blasted off the sides of apartment blocks next to a church, splintering windows and crashing balconies down to parked cars. This too had become a "terrorist target.

One man was brought out shrieking with pain, covered in blood. Another "terrorist" target. All the way to the airport were broken bridges, holed roads. All these were "terrorist" targets. At the airport, tongues of fire blossomed into the sky from aircraft fuel storage tanks, darkening west Beirut. These too were now "terrorist" targets.

At Jiyeh, the Israelis attacked the power station. This too was a "terrorist" target.

Yet when I drove to the actual headquarters of Hizbollah, a tall building in Haret Hreik, it was totally undamaged. Only last night did the Israelis manage to hit it.

So can the Lebanese be forgiven - can anyone here be forgiven - for believing that the Israelis have a greater interest in destroying Lebanon than they do in their two soldiers?

No wonder Middle East Airlines, the national Lebanese airline, put crews into its four stranded Airbuses at Beirut airport early yesterday and sneaked them out of the country for Amman before the Israelis realised they were under power and leaving.

European politicians have talked about Israel's "disproportionate" response to Wednesday's capture of its soldiers. They are wrong. What I am now watching in Lebanon is an outrage. How can there be any excuse for the 73 dead Lebanese blown these past three days?

The same applies, of course, to the four Israeli civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets. But - please note the exchange rate of Israeli civilian lives to Lebanese civilian lives now stands at 1 to more than 15. This does not include the two children who were atomised in their home in Dweir on Thursday and whose bodies cannot be found. Their six brothers and sisters were buried yesterday, along with their mother and father. Another "terrorist" target. So was a neighbouring family with five children who were also buried yesterday. Another "terrorist" target.

Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist. There is something perverse about all this, the slaughter and massive destruction and the self-righteous, constant, cancerous use of the word "terrorist". No, let us not forget that the Hizbollah broke international law, crossed the Israeli border, killed three Israeli soldiers, captured two others and dragged them back through the border fence. It was an act of calculated ruthlessness that should never allow Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to grin so broadly ay his press conference. It has brought unparalleled tragedy to countless innocents in Lebanon. And of course, it has led Hizbollah to fire at least 170 Katyusha rockets into Israel.

But what would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had actually unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel's troops crossed into Lebanon? What if the Lebanese air force then killed 73 Israeli civilians in bombing raids in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and Israeli West Jerusalem? What if a Lebanese fighter aircraft bombed Ben Gurion airport? What if a Lebanese plane destroyed 26 road bridges across Israel? Would it not be called "terrorism"? I rather think it would. But if Israel was the victim, it would also probably be Word War Three.

Of course, Lebanon cannot attack Tel Aviv. Its air force comprises three ancient Hawker Hunters and an equally ancient fleet of Vietnam-era Huey helicopters. Syria, however, has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv. So Syria - which Israel rightly believes to be behind Wednesday's Hizbollah attack is not going to be bombed. It is Lebanon which must be punished.

The Israeli leadership intends to "break" the Hizbollah and destroy its "terrorist cancer". Really? Do the Israelis really believe they can "break" one of the toughest guerrilla armies in the world? And how?

There are real issues here. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - the same resolution that got the Syrian army out of Lebanon - the Shia Muslim Hizbollah should have been disarmed. They were not because, if the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, had tried to do so, the Lebanese army would have had to fight them and the army would almost certainly broken apart because most Lebanese soldiers are Shia Muslims. We could see the restarting of the civil war in Lebanon - a fact which Nasrallah is cynically aware of - but attempts by Siniora and his cabinet colleagues to find a new role for Hizbollah, which has a minister in the government (he is Minister of Labour) foundered. And the greatest now is that the Lebanese government will collapse and be replaced by a pro-Syrian government which could re-invite the Syrians back into the country.

So there's a real conundrum to be solved. But it's not going to succeed with the mass bombing of the country by Israel. Not the obsession with terrorists, terrorists, terrorists.

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Triumph of the authoritarians

2006-08-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Triumph of the authoritarians

By John W. Dean | July 14, 2006

CONTEMPORARY CONSERVATISM and its influence on the Republican Party was, until recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners' bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving manipulation of the political processes, and their policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest -- none of this struck me as based on anything related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth be told, today's so-called conservatives are quite radical.

For more than 40 years I have considered myself a ``Goldwater conservative," and am thoroughly familiar with the movement's canon. But I can find nothing conservative about the Bush/Cheney White House, which has created a Nixon ``imperial presidency" on steroids, while acting as if being tutored by the best and brightest of the Cosa Nostra.

What true conservative calls for packing the courts to politicize the federal judiciary to the degree that it is now possible to determine the outcome of cases by looking at the prior politics of judges? Where is the conservative precedent for the monocratic leadership style that conservative Republicans imposed on the US House when they took control in 1994, a style that seeks primarily to perfect fund-raising skills while outsourcing the writing of legislation to special interests and freezing Democrats out of the legislative process?

How can those who claim themselves conservatives seek to destroy the deliberative nature of the US Senate by eliminating its extended-debate tradition, which has been the institution's distinctive contribution to our democracy? Yet that is precisely what Republican Senate leaders want to do by eliminating the filibuster when dealing with executive business (namely judicial appointments).

Today's Republican policies are antithetical to bedrock conservative fundamentals. There is nothing conservative about preemptive wars or disregarding international law by condoning torture. Abandoning fiscal responsibility is now standard operating procedure. Bible-thumping, finger-pointing, tongue-lashing attacks on homosexuals are not found in Russell Krik's classic conservative canons, nor in James Burham's guides to conservative governing. Conservatives in the tradition of former senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan believed in ``conserving" this planet, not relaxing environmental laws to make life easier for big business. And neither man would have considered employing Christian evangelical criteria in federal programs, ranging from restricting stem cell research to fighting AIDs through abstinence.

Candid and knowledgeable Republicans on the far right concede -- usually only when not speaking for attribution -- that they are not truly conservative. They do not like to talk about why they behave as they do, or even to reflect on it. Nonetheless, their leaders admit they like being in charge, and their followers grant they find comfort in strong leaders who make them feel safe. This is what I gleaned from discussions with countless conservative leaders and followers, over a decade of questioning.

I started my inquiry in the mid-1990s, after a series of conversations with Goldwater, whom I had known for more than 40 years. Goldwater was also mystified (when not miffed) by the direction of today's professed conservatives -- their growing incivility, pugnacious attitudes, and arrogant and antagonistic style, along with a narrow outlook intolerant of those who challenge their thinking. He worried that the Republican Party had sold its soul to Christian fundamentalists, whose divisive social values would polarize the nation. From those conversations, Goldwater and I planned to study why these people behave as they do, and to author a book laying out what we found. Sadly, the senator's declining health soon precluded his continuing on the project, so I put it on the shelf. But I kept digging until I found some answers, and here are my thoughts.

For almost half a century, social scientists have been exploring authoritarianism. We do not typically associate authoritarianism with our democracy, but as I discovered while examining decades of empirical research, we ignore some findings at our risk. Unfortunately, the social scientists who have studied these issues report their findings in monographs and professional journals written for their peers, not for general readers. With the help of a leading researcher and others, I waded into this massive body of work.

What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, ``enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral." And that's not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism's impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they've often been supplanted by authoritarians.

John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel, just published his seventh nonfiction book, ``Conservatives Without Conscience." []