The Salient Condition

Amos Oz, longtime Israeli peace activist, whose 2003 account of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations brought a human face to both sides of that debate, last week defended Israel's recent incursions into Lebanon "as long as this operation targets mostly Hezbollah, and spares, as much as possible, the lives of Lebanese civilians". Israel Hezbollah Lebanon

I must ask Mr. Oz if his salient condition has been met when I read reports from Human Rights Watch such as this account of Israel's use of cluster bombs corroborated elsewhere in the media and not denied by Israel. I find less, but some recent corroboration for the Lebanese President's accusation that Israel is employing white phosphorus as a weapon. The characterization of Israel's recent military operations as targeting mostly Hezbollah, certainly seems well off the mark.

I'm more than a little troubled by Oz's phrase "targets mostly" anyway. I would have opted for "strictly targets, with an emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties." If a significant minority of the targets are not demonstrably Hezbollah or terrorist, and the munitions used against those that are are prone to inflicting indiscriminate civilian casualties as well, then I find this action indefensible. Certainly Amy Goodman's daily broadcast summarizing events in Lebanon on Democracy Now leaves this listener horrified, even as others are appropriately horrified by the indiscriminate shelling of Haifa by Hezbollah.

Here is an interview Amy conducted with Noam Chomsky and others in the early days of the conflict. I know Goodman and Chomsky will be dismissed by right leaning pundits as extreme or "far left", but while I'll not take every word they say at face value, I cannot dismiss so easily the voices they bring to us which the mainstream media so easily ignores.

Damned Week

Violence in Mumbai.

Violence in Iraq.

Violence in Lebanon & Israel.

Violence in Sri Lanka.

May the peacemakers persevere. It would be so easy to give up in this world.

I'll take solace in knowing that for many the week past was a damned good one. Celebrations must be allowed in the midst of horrors, else we cannot refuel to fight future horrors. Current horrors will always be with us, whether open or hidden. This past week just seemed especially bad.

And so it was good to see Bunnatine Greenhouse almost giddy over the Army's announcement finally that Halliburton's gig as a no-bid contractor has been cancelled.

But let's not forget the pain of those who lost so much this week. And let's not abandon the peacemakers.

Disaster Fatigue, but remember Pakistan

It's been barely over two weeks since a natural disaster which in most ordinary years would be the deadliest of the year. The enormity of the tragedy, though, took a few days to impinge on my consciousness, and then I was off for a week to attend a high school reunion, and realized just this week that the whole event had slipped my mind.

Over 80,000 confirmed dead, hundreds of thousands homeless, disaster relief the most difficult ever, and it had slipped my mind? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with our media? Did someone make an executive decision that Americans were just too fatigued by disaster, and we would spare them the 'hype' of this particular set of unfortunates?

I just scanned the major news outlets on the web, and most of them don't even have a link from the front news page related to this tragedy. Sure Wilma is bearing down on Florida, and deserves the top spot right now, but over a dozen other stories are sharing its headlines, while this deadly quake has been shoved to a scant mention and link on the World page. If I recall the tsunami remained front page news for weeks, yet here with a tragic dearth of emergency response, the major news media seem to be choosing to just skip this inconvenient tragedy.

A recent diary by media girl at DailyKos decries the lack of attention being paid to this by bloggers as well. Well, it's not too late to help, so let's get creative and think of ways to challenge others to dig deep, even as we challenge ourselves to do the same.

I know I am suffering from donation fatigue myself this year, with the tsunami, West Africa and Southern Africa famine, and Katrina already making this a record donation year for me. But Mercy Corps and other relief agencies are still out there ready to turn our cash into relief, so I am recommitting myself to fundraising for Pakistan two or three times as much as I shelled out myself for tsunami relief. If your company matches your donations, and you are not already at the limit of what they will match, I urge you to dig deep yet again and be a part of alleviating this suffering.

Swatting at flies

Here's how I would sum up the efforts of the Supreme Court's candidate for president in 2000. Dubya was handed a golden opportunity for two terms guaranteed, a Nobel Peace Prize, a gilded place in the history books, to be a best-selling author and a $25,000 per appearance lecturer. All he had to do was harness the international support in post 9/11 period (and don't go all moral on me about using that tragic event for political gain, every holder of elected office in the nation has used it to their advantage, to use it for a shot at world peace would have been acceptable) and take an international force into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, seize Al Qaida operatives & assets and help locals (not ex-patriots like they've done in Iraq) set up a government and leave. He could have had every nation in the world seizing the assets of suspected terrorist organizations and sharing intel regarding activities of the same. Those who remained supportive of terrorists would have been cut from all trade and foreign support. He should have shut down all US military bases in predominantly Muslim countries (why put resources into their economies if we're infidels?) and removed females from diplomatic positions in all old-school, predominantly Muslim countries (not a chauvinist act just respectful of the host's culture). He should have begun efforts, IN EARNEST, to reduce and eventually eliminate the West's dependence on foreign oil. He should have frozen all foreign aid to the Mideast, yes that includes Israel.

If this whole thing was about stopping terrorism then some of these things would have been done, but clearly it isn't about terrorism and never has been. Conde Rice, who can do the DC two-step with the best of 'em, summed it up most eloquently when testifying before the 9/11 commission by saying that Mr. Bush was "...tired of swatting at flies..." in reference to the White House focus on Iraq and not on Al Qaida. So let's get this straight, the Bush team unilaterally invaded a sovereign nation, ruining any chance to form an international coalition to fight terrorism not to mention losing what little support we had with Muslims and other allies, sacrificed several hundred American military personnel and wounded thousands of others, spent a few hundred billion of the tax payers hard earned dollars, and added fuel to the terrorist cause on this planet because he was annoyed by the actions of the ruler of Iraq. Seems rather petty...are you sure he's earned your support?
Regards,
John