Month: July 2006

For up-to-the-minute news on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, see our Lebanon news page.

Frank Rich notes (“The Peculiar Disappearance of the War in Iraq“) that the Iraq occupation has been going so badly for so long that Americans are tired of hearing about it:

CNN will surely remind us today that it is Day 20 of the Israel-Hezbollah war — now branded as Crisis in the Middle East — but you won’t catch anyone saying it’s Day 1,230 of the war in Iraq. On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60% between 2003 and this spring.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined.

President Bush at last started counting those Iraqi bodies publicly — with an estimate of 30,000 — some seven months ago. (More recently, The Los Angeles Times put the figure at, conservatively, 50,000.)

Niall Ferguson is one of the few supporters of the Iraq invasion whose writing is worth reading. He argues that a US-led classical liberal empire should dominate the world, as the British Empire once did.

Back in 2003 Ferguson participated in a fascinating debate on “The British Empire and Globalization,” in which he concluded that “British rule was on balance conducive to economic growth.” Evidence includes the British Empire’s encouragement of free trade, British institutions’ wealth-creation record, and the failure of post-colonial economies to match Britain’s economic growth rate. Ferguson sites Jeffrey D. Sachs and A. M. Warner’s 1995 paper, “Economic Reform and the Process of Global Integration,” [pdf file here], which found that among poor countries in the ’70s and ’80s, “the open economies grew at 4.49% per year, and the closed countries grew at 0.69% per year.” Since economic openness encouraged economic growth in the ’70s and ’80s, it probably did the same in earlier times, and since the British Empire enforced economic openness it probably encouraged economic growth.

Ferguson and his critics agree that the “white dominions” (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), the United States, and Britain itself — nations founded on British institutions and predominantly peopled by the British and their descendants — are some of the world’s most economically successful nations.

Continue reading “Some Thoughts about Colonialism on Day 1,230 of the Iraq Occupation”

Israeli government public relations encountered a significant challenge today when the IDF killed dozens of children in the same location that they killed more than a hundred civilians a decade ago.   The fact that both attacks occurred in Qana, Lebanon is the sort of thing that might make even a newspaper correspondent look into Israel’s prior history of wreaking carnage on the Lebanese. (The discussion of Qana from my 2003 Terrorism & Tyranny is posted below).

One point that few people are making:  George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress bear some of the responsiblity for the 500+ Lebanese civilians who have thus far been killed by the Israeli Defense Force.  The House voted 411 to 8 to cheer on Israel after the IDF’s attacks began, and congressmen sneered at efforts to get any substantive complaint about civilian casualties in the pro-Israel resolution.  And Bush gave his blessings to the IDF even after the Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon announced on Israeli Army radio last Wednesday that “All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.”  

When you see the photos of corpses of young children being dragged from the Qana rubble, remember:  These are not human beings.  These are terrorists.  And Israel announced ahead of time that, because they were in south Lebanon, they were legitimate targets.  

From Terrorism & Tyranny (2003):

On April 18, 1996 the IDF artillery shelled a United Nations compound near Qana that was overflowing with 800 Lebanese civilians “who had fled from their villages on IDF orders.” The barrage killed 102 refugees and wounded hundreds of others. Hezbollah guerillas had fired Katyusha rockets a few hundred yards from the compound. A spokesman for United Nations forces in Lebanon quickly denounced the attack as a “massacre.” Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the commander of the Israeli offensive, insisted that the shelling of the camp could not possibly have been deliberate because “that thing cannot happen in a democratic country like Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared that “the sole guilty party, still on the ground, is Hezbollah. . . . We are dealing here with a horrible, cynical and irresponsible organization. Hezbollah’s grand strategy all along has been to hide behind the backs of civilians.” A United Nations investigation concluded that “it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.” The IDF insisted that it was unaware that the camp was chock full of refugees; the UN report retorted: “Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters
and a remotely piloted vehicle [drone] were present in the Qana area at the time  of the shelling.” An Amnesty International report concluded that the IDF “intentionally
attacked the UN compound.” A few weeks after the attack, two of the Israeli gunners involved in the shelling were interviewed by a Jerusalem newsweekly. One of the gunners commented: “In a war, these things happen. . . . It’s just a bunch of Arabs.” A second gunner said that, after bombarding the refugee camp, a commander told the gunners that “we were shooting well and to continue this way and that Arabs, you know, there are millions of them.” Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, who had fought at Qana 18 years earlier while serving in the IDF, observed: “An Israeli massacre can be distinguished in most respects from an Arab massacre in that it is not malicious, not carried out on orders from High Above and does not serve any strategic purpose. . . . An Israeli massacre usually occurs after we sanction an unjustifiable degree of violence so that at some point we lose the ability to control that violence. Thus, in most cases, an Israeli massacre is a kind of work accident.”

[As I noted in my first blog on this subject, Hezbollah is also guilty of murder for its missile attacks on Israeli civilians.  Neither side in this conflict is exonerated by the other side’s methods or goals.]

Joshua Frank responds to Ran HaCohen’s thoughts on the Hezbollah capture of two Israeli soldiers:

First I should say thanks to Ran HaCohen and Antiwar.com for posting a response to my piece, “Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon,” which attempted to raise the question of whether or not Israel’s story that Hezbollah entered Israel and captured two soldiers was indeed accurate or not.

From my own research on the issue of where the Israeli soldiers were actually captured, I’ve come away with a few things. First, my main point in my original post was to bring this issue to light, not spread a conspiracy theory. Second, I really think that the reports on both sides should raise alarm — for neither proves anything concretely.

I am on the fence myself and not convinced one way or another as to where the soldiers were actually captured by Hezbollah soldiers. One thing is a fact, however: the original story (i.e., the AP) changed everywhere after Israeli military released their statement.

If one reads most every story written about the incident in question, most outlets initially quoted “Lebanon Police,” but failed to use their quotes after Israel released their official statement sometime later. So really, it seems this all boils down to the IDF version vs. Lebanon Police.

Hezbollah’s early communiqués seem to validate the Lebanon Police account, but Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah officials have not officially released a statement as of this writing. From the few contacts I have with people close to Hezbollah and in Lebanon, the organization purportedly refutes the official Israeli version, i.e., the rumor that there was the use of a ladder, etc. But they seem to insist they in fact provoked the attack but captured the soldiers in Lebanon. Who really knows at this point? I’d like to see Hezbollah come forward to tell their side. But I certainly would never say that the Israeli version is in any way trustworthy in the interim. Time, hopefully, will tell all.

Like I noted above, I think we all need to keep in mind that there hasn’t been a war waged in the past 60 years that did not use lies and propaganda to seduce the public. Why would Israel’s latest invasion of Lebanon be any different?

At 7:30 p.m. ET on C-SPAN, Antiwar.com contributor Leon Hadar talks about his book, Sandstorm, at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.  James Pinkerton (Newsday, Fox News) and Geoffrey Kemp (Nixon Center) provide commentary. During the Q&A portion of the event, the panelists talk about the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Satire Alert!

If I ran this as a regular story, I would get in so much trouble.

Andy Borowitz on the latest military scheme for Iraq. One of the best parts is the quote from General Schoomaker, which is partially accurate.