Antiwar.com Blog

But what else are you going to do – watch CNN? Read it.

Seems like only yesterday you guys were the bee’s knees. Now you’re back to being nameless, faceless Arabs, which is all you really ever were to the neocons and neolibertarians who made such a fuss about the Cedar Revolution. Your value as props has disappeared. Go die quietly.

The American media makes no secret of its allegiances in all matters Mideast, but CNN’s coverage of Israel’s attack on Lebanon today has been something else. Talking heads Carol Lin and Kyra Phillips have earned their AIPAC gold stars today, as they hilariously chant “we’re showing you this from all angles” – all angles from Bibi Netanyahu’s left and right shoulders, maybe.  

UPDATE: Why should you care what happens in Beirut? Dennis Perrin:

War is what Israel does best, and we’re about to get a full bloody plate of it.

Well, not we good Americans — not directly, anyway. Not until some pissed-off jihadists decide to answer our bankrolling of this present round of aggression with God knows what. Because, like it or not, every Israeli missile that hits residential Beirut (and elsewhere) comes courtesy of our collective pocket. Might as well have “Howdy From The USA!” painted on each shell. When Israel attacks, we attack, a reality that a lot of Americans either ignore, dismiss, or in some corners, celebrate. …

The Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians (55 dead so far today) continues. Chomsky goes into a brief history of Israeli aggression against Lebanon in this article. Chomsky writes:

From the early 1970s, Lebanon was drawn into the conflict as a result of cross-border PLO terror and far more destructive Israeli attacks on Lebanon, sometimes retaliatory, often not. Thus in February 1973, Israeli forces attacked north of Beirut, killing many civilians, in a raid justified as preemptive. In December 1975, Israeli bombing killed over 50 Lebanese in an attack Israel described as “preventive, not punitive”; it appears to have been a reaction to the UN Security Council meeting debating the diplomatic settlement that Israel opposed and Washington vetoed. There are many other examples.

The indiscriminate murdering of Lebanese civilians is also recognized as being futile, even by the Israeli government, despite their public statements placing blame for Hezbollah on Beirut, as documented in this Stratfor piece:

Hezbollah has demonstrated time and again that it has retained the ability to paralyze the Lebanese government and thwart any attempt to disarm the militant movement. Though Olmert has blamed the Lebanese government for Hezbollah’s actions, it is well known in Israeli political circles, and throughout the region, that Hezbollah acts unilaterally and that Beirut lacks the ability to rein the group in

Israel’s actions include not only bombing the international airport’s runways so that no planes can land, but also blockading Lebanese ports. The blockades and bombing have cut off not just contraband, such as arms and ammunition, but also cut off any non-contraband trade such as food and medicine, as this story reports:

Israeli naval vessels enforcing the siege turned away three ships carrying fuel to Beirut, a shipping source said. A local shipping agent said seaborne trade was at a standstill at the port, which handles 95 percent of Lebanon’s commerce.

As usual in the case of Middle-East strife, the US and Israel stand virtually alone against world opinion, as in the title of this report, "World Slams, US Defends Israel Lebanon "War"".
While the international community condemns Israel’s actions as being (the word of the day) “disproportionate”, and calls on Hezbollah to release the two IDF soldiers they’re holding, the US government deflects the criticism of its favourite client state in remarks like this one, from Bush:

“Syria needs to be held to account”

It is therefore Syria that is blamed, when Israeli aggression results in murder and destruction of property. Yet another shameful but unsurprising example of the moral cowardice of US officials regarding the actions of their client in the region.

Reader C.S. sends the following screen captures of Operation Summer Rain in Gaza. These aren’t the worst images – maybe later – they just seem to feature the most likely culprits in the abduction of Cpl. Shalit.

 

 

 

In an update to my Wednesday column on the “Other Russia” conference of anti-Putin Russian activists being held in St. Petersburg in the run-up to the G-8 summit, I note that the issue of U.S. government funding and the presence of the neo-fascist National Bolsheviks has already come up. The Washington Post reports:

“The conference was partly underwritten by the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, federally funded organization that promotes democracy world-wide. ‘Our main hope is that it will help promote Russian civil society,’ said Carl Gershman, the endowment’s president. Asked about the controversial presence of National Bolsheviks leader Eduard Limonov, Gershman said, ‘The overwhelming majority of people here are people with long-standing democratic credentials and if they can be here, that’s the best guideline I can follow.’”

The guidelines followed by Gershman and the NED have nothing to do with “democratic credentials,” and everything to do with who can be manipulated to serve the purposes of U.S. foreign policy. Limonov and the National Bolsheviks join a long list of similar sock puppets, including Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and the Nicaraguan contras, who enlisted as servants of the Empire.

U.S. tax dollars funding a platform for Russian neo-fascists – and all in the name of “democracy promotion”! In the Bizarro World of the Bush administration, all things are possible ….