Politics

I see that Condi has taken time off shopping long enough to pay a surprise visit to Beirut. That must make everyone feel better. All those homeless Lebanese undoubtedly, and at last, can understand why their homes needed to blasted off the planet, and why their children should have no safety to grow up in. It’s all part of the grand plan to rid the world of evil. Devestation wrought by the good guys is fine. Just wait, the Americans will promise to send some aid to help rebuild those villages. Condi will explain why being homeless is all in a good cause. She’ll tell the Beirutis that they didn’t need those houses becasue if they had been good people all along none of this would have been necessary. But they weren’t good people and so … POOF!! Israel has the right to inflict mayhem. No one else does. Just the Israelis. It’s all in self defense.

And what should the Beirutis do to defend themselves? Attack Hezbollah. Except Hezbollah wasn’t raining bombs down on them. So attacking Hezbollah wouldn’t have been self-defense. It would have been defending Israel. Hmmmm …. you can get a headache from trying to follow Condi’s logic. So let’s just clarify for everyone: anything Israel does is OK; everything else is wrong. That seems to sum up US policy.

And while she’s there do you think she’ll actually visit South Beirut? Don’t bank on it because that’ll mean confronting the humanitarian disaster Israel is inflicting.

Nothing so far tells me that peace is anywhere close. Condi certainly won’t contribute.

The American Bar Association, hardly a bastion of liberal activism, has issued a report condemning George Bush’s habit of signing legislation while at the same time announcing that he does not feel bound by it. Such activity, the ABA says, is unconstitutional. The Washington Post has the report here: Bush’s Tactic of Refusing Laws Is Probed

Apparently Bush has done this more than any other president. Does that surprise anyone? Certainly not me. Bush has been acting as if he were a dictator for pretty much his entire regime [it’s behaviour like this that makes me call it a “regime”]. Cheney and his ilk have no qualms about enhancing the power of the executive. And George Bush, being the spoilt brat that he is, will try to get away with whatever mayhem he can until the adults among us take away his toys. It seems as if the ABA is trying to wake the adults up.

Bush has ruled in glorious monarch like fashion because he has a totally supine, compliant, Congress. A Congress that seems not to mind passing legislation and then having the president say he will ignore it. Unfortunately Congress is inhabited by weak minded extremists who put the ideological needs of revolutiuon ahead of obedience to the consitution. Such is the helter skelter rush of Congress to push through an extreme right wing agenda that it failed to notice the lasting damage Bush is doing to the American system of government. When the ABA says we are heading toward a constitutional crisis the more sober among us should pay heed.

Having strong partisan views is one thing, exercising monarchical powers to push through an agenda that less than half the population support is verging on dictatorship is another.

Before Americans get worked up over their supposed “land of the free” perhaps they should pay attention to what is being done to them by the Republican led moralists. The slope downward is getting steeper by the day. The ABA is to be congratulated for firing a shot in defiance of the king.

Here’s the way to look like a peace broker: send weapons to one side in a conflict. Apparently that’s what the US is doing. Here’s the report late tonight from, the New York Times: U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

Could we be any more blatant about our one sided approach to the Middle East? And we all wonder why the Arab “man in the street” hates us. We send the bombs that kill their children. What’s not to hate?

Well now. It seems that the Styate department has realized that something is going on in the Middle East. Our Condi is off to smooth things over. Or at least that’s what I like to think. Reality is somewhat different. Here’s the news from the New York Times: Rice Outlines Plans for Trip to Middle East – New York Times

Seems like the Americans deliberately stood on the side while Israel pummeled the Lebanese and extracted biblical retribution for the kidnapping of a couple of soldiers. After all the Israelis have a right to defend themselves. Now after the blood has been sufficiently spilled to teach those Lebanese a lesson Condi can go off and speak to her contacts about a “lasting peace”.

Fat chance. Hezbollah has not been wiped out. Nor will it be. But a lot of angry locals now have no homes or jobs, so they may be more likely to support Hezbollah in the future. Southern Lebanon has been reduced to a wasteland, a parched and destroyed buffer zone that the Israelis can watch over so it never grows back. Rather like the state they left Gaza in. But it’s nice to see that the US will help out in reconstruction assistance. Maybe. Sometime. And would that be at the same rate of support that the Israelis get? Just asking.

Note the bias: Israeli occupation of the West Bank, a violation of UN dictated international borders, elicits not a word of objection from the US. Daily Palestinian deprivation is “their own fault”. But a couple of Israeli soldiers? How dare Hezbollah cross the border in defiance of the UN! And notice the reference to “hundreds of Israeli and Lebanese deaths”. Excuse me that would be hundreds of Lebanese deaths and dozens of Israeli deaths.

I suppose that’s the Boltonian moral equivalency thing at work.

And we should all notice that the Arab nations who are rallying to the Israeli/American cause are all authoritarian dictatorships. Do I assume we don’t advocate democracy in the Middle East any more?

What a mess. And still no policy.

Here is an example of the unrelenting pro-Israle bias in American policy. Buried in this article in the Washington Post is a reference to John Bolton: Lebanese Civilian Deaths May Embolden Terrorists – Early Warning

Get that? A dead Lebanese civilian is not at all the moral equivalent of a dead Israeli. What the …. ?

Just imagine the recruiting power that this has for Hezbollah, Hamas, or Al Qaeda! An Israeli is worth a lot more than a dead Palestinian, a dead Lebanese etc. What a windfall for the extremists we are fighting. Here, in black and white, for all the world to see is a simple proclamation of the immunity and special status given to Israel.

All deaths, except those of the perpetrators of violence, are precisely morally equivalent. To say otherwise is a wicked and immoral stand against humanity. Does America have so poor a moral compass that it cannot even understand the simple equivalence of all human life?

John Bolton is both a fool and an immoral man. And he has harmed American interests by uttering such an evil statement.