Well, what with the summer heat, an unavoidable home renovation project and various other leaky pipes and infrastructure “malfunctions”, I’ve been running out of time and energy to blog. As well, my blogal lobe has been trying to process the events in Lebanon and unfortunately it’s doing a “heckuva good job” (in the Mike Brown/FEMA sense of the phrase). I keep hearing about the need for “nuanced” discussion and understanding of the conflict. But I can’t seem to get anywhere near such a thing. I’m not sure I want to although “On the Face” provides a thoughtful — and mostly nuanced — Israeli point of view.
But in the less-nuanced world, today we saw pictures of a happy, smiling Condoleezza Rice meeting with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Earnestly, she told him how the U.S. is “deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring”. But the U.S. has many concerns. In April 2005, Israel asked the U.S. to sell them 100 guided bunker-busting bombs and (several days ago) asked that the sale be fast-tracked. Yesterday Bush agreed so an unspecified number of two-ton bombs may already be en route to Israel. Has anyone checked the FedEx tracking number to see exactly where these things are? So how do you reconcile Condee’s “deep concern” with the fact that the U.S. is selling/giving a good chunk of the hardware to Israel for use in this war. Anyone?
So what’s with the Ladybug? Well… I didn’t manage to snag any decent bird photos this week. We checked out the local sewage ponds for interesting shorebirds on Sunday morning and all my camera has to show for it is this Ladybug with aphids. So, imagine if you will, that the green leaf represents some remote corner of the world. The Ladybug represents a large, technologically advanced army. There are at least two kinds of aphids. One color represents ordinary citizens and the other may be some sort of militant organization. The point of all this is that, as Marissa K. Bergman proved in the 2002 California State Science Fair, Ladybugs are color-blind and can’t tell which is which. Essentially, almost all of these aphids are about to become the Ladybug’s lunch. Given the number of Lebanese families that have been destroyed and the number of Lebanese children that have been killed or maimed, this is about as nuanced as I can get.
I felt compelled to blog the last few entries on Israel’s “incursion” into Lebanon because it struck me that bombing a country into oblivion and killing hundreds of people is an absurd response to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. In addition to the human toll, I’m also saddened by the environmental implications of this war — by the waste of energy and resources that will be needed to rebuild Lebanon and by a growing suspicion that part of Israel’s strategy is to secure water resources such as Lebanon’s Litani River.
So, although I have my peculiar opinions, I’m a rank amateur at this. I find it too easy to fall into the trap of trying to appropriate an “authoritative” voice of a pundit or analyst. What I really mean to say is just too obvious, I guess: simply that war is such an ugly, repugnant thing, it is difficult to believe we still have ‘em. I believe violence and war really are “the last refuge of the incompetent”, as Robert Heinlein used to say. It’s interesting that “civilized” nations seem to have more than their fair share. But such things are easy to say, aren’t they? Especially for someone who has never experienced the real thing.
So I’ll defer to better expressed opinions and information at antiwar.com. As harsh as his words are, much of what Paul Craig Roberts writes in “The Shame of Being an American” rings true to me and applies equally well to Canada, the UK and Australia and any other country giving Israel a free pass to use terror tactics to subdue the people living in southern Lebanon.
Gwynne Dyer’s piece in the June 12 Toronto Star, Same War, Different Players, is a concise but cogent analysis of the military and political state of affairs in Afghanistan. As Dyer notes, the Afghani’s have borne many invasions and occupations over the past two centuries and have had to learn to “ambush, harass and bleed the foreigners for as long as it takes” in order to survive. Now Hamid Karzai has started to negotiate with various warlords and may soon (according to Dyer) begin talks with what is left of the Taliban. In spite of the West’s (one hopes) best intentions, Afghanistan will most likely end up with some form of power-sharing arrangement that is more in keeping with the actual culture(s) of the region. Perhaps this new arrangement will be based on a democratic framework. Perhaps not. As Dyer dryly concludes: “There is time for lots of killing yet. But Afghanistan stands a reasonable chance of sorting itself out once the Western armies leave.
Dyer’s argument resonates with me because he is essentially suggesting that we might all be better off obeying the “Prime Directive”, and, it is probably true that leaving people to their own devices to work things out for themselves is often be the best policy. Before the era of instantaneous communication, that was the way the world worked. A fifth century Mongolian would never know if there was a war or a famine among the Aztecs of Central America. Vikings would have been blissfully unaware of the plight of Polynesian islanders. When it comes to war, famine and all other geopolitical “bad things”, does instant communication always mean we must bear instantaneous moral responsibility? That’s a hard one, is it not?
Of course, the Prime Directive is a slippery concept. It can look like an attractive option for those on the outside of Afghanistan or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It can appear to be an utterly immoral option from the perspective of those who have rockets whistling over their heads and bulldozers ripping up their homes. Things get even more slippery when you realize that some external powers have already interfered by providing some combination of weapons, personnel, etc.
As much as I admire Dyer’s argument, it is hard to imagine that Middle East hotspots will be quickly defused after the withdrawal of “Western armies. I’d much rather imagine a global, cowardly retreat of all armies. Perhaps on a global scale, the applied use of cowardice will bring about the end of most of the world’s armies. (Ha!) Wouldn’t that be a grand thing?
[July 16 - Today at least 8 7 Canadians were killed during Israel's bombing of Lebanon. It's all too easy to forget there are thousands of foreign nationals living in that country. It is depressing to think that Stephen Harper actually mimed Bush's exact words about Israel's right to defend itself. As others have pointed out, every bomb Israel drops may as well be emblazoned with a big "Hiya, from Uncle Sam!". Hezbollah and other militant groups will not forget the country that has been bankrolling Israel's military escapades.]
It is hard to imagine what (besides alcohol) was sluicing through the brains of the clowns who urinated on the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa this past Canada Day. But the sad truth is that armies can only go to war to protect the citizens they have — not the citizens they would like to have. The id10ts who pissed on the War Memorial committed a thoughtless, terrible act that has earned them a lifetime’s worth of shame and embarrassment. The only consolation is that thanks to retired Major Michael Pilon (who obtained photographic evidence) these guys have already been caught with their pants down so it should be just a matter of time before they are physically reeled in. While the Harper government decides whether or not assign an honour guard to patrol the national Monument, an unemployed citizen, Don Dawson, has taken on the task. Wearing a red maple leaf sweater and bedecked with a vintage Canadian Legion flag, Dawson spent a full day at attention in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He told the Canadian Press “I got up this morning and asked myself what I could do about this, and I decided to come here out of respect for all the soldiers who died fighting for the freedom of Canada”. Well done, Mr Dawson.
[Too late! -- I haven't had a chance to post this and the 3 culprits have been identified by police in Ottawa. Two under 18 kids from Ottawa and a 23-year-old from "out of town".]
Glad to hear they got ‘em. I was merely going to add that all of this concern over the symbols of war and remembrance detracts from real problems faced by vets. Canadian soldiers who were subjected to Agent Orange sprayed over a New Brunswick military base have been fighting for compensation for decades (and many have already died). Now we read about American veterans of the Iraq war who have returned to face poverty and homelessness in addition to their physical and psychological wounds. It has been noted that the relatively low death rates among soldiers in modern wars means a higher number of severely wounded soldiers that have survived horrific injuries, amputations and other medical complications Still other Canadian veterans continue to fight for recognition and pensions that have been denied for bureaucratic (and racist) reasons.
So, there is little help or money for veterans, but apparently, Harper’s minority government is poised to spend more than $15 billion on new military hardware. Canada has already spent $1.5 billion in Afghanistan, only a fraction of which has been used for actual aid and reconstruction of that country. I still think John F. Kennedy’s observation should be trotted out whenever the military demands more toys: “The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution”.
Well, what with the summer heat, an unavoidable home renovation project and various other leaky pipes and infrastructure “malfunctions”, I’ve been running out of time and energy to blog. As well, my blogal lobe has been trying to process the events in Lebanon and unfortunately it’s doing a “heckuva good job” (in the Mike Brown/FEMA sense of the phrase). I keep hearing about the need for “nuanced” discussion and understanding of the conflict. But I can’t seem to get anywhere near such a thing. I’m not sure I want to although “On the Face” provides a thoughtful — and mostly nuanced — Israeli point of view.