TAKING EXCEPTION

firstroughdraft

In memory of the innocent civilians from Marjeyoun killed by the Israeli air strike on their convoy of 3000 people on August 11, 2006.

(Below: The Islamic Middle East)

THANK YOU

Thank you to those who’ve contacted me to tell me that they appreciate the analysis in SaudiPolitics and have come to rely on it. I extend particular thanks to those who, in their progressive circles, have taken the initiative to link this website to progressive ones. In addition, I extend a special thank you to the reader in Oklahoma who has linked this site to some he believes represent the realist perspective within the Republican Party. I apologize for not responding individually.

The fact that I get ample commentaries when I write about Lebanon tells me that Americans hold that country dear. The analysis provided by SaudiPolitics about the sponsorship by the harmful idiots of their bully’s latest devastation of Lebanon–-the murder of its civilians, the $15 billion destruction of its economy (the United Nations’ figure)-- seems to have been a terrific magnet for readership.

That said, some Lebanese took exception.


MY FAVORITE COUSIN

My favorite cousin took exception to the conclusion by SaudiPolitics that the Lebanese were more united than ever before, as a result of the bully’s intentional murder of Lebanon’s civilians and the destruction of its economy.

He said that the Lebanese were aware that Hezbollah had its own economy, which was not impacted at all by the bully’s use of cluster bombs and possible use of uranium-laden bombs. In contrast, he said, the wider economy was set back a couple of decades. Accordingly, he maintained, Lebanon’s national unity had a huge hole in it: There were those who lived within the Hezbollah economy, so to speak, and were economically not affected by the bully’s devastation of the larger economy. And there were those, like himself, who lost money and, more importantly, hope. He himself had to take his business to Syria and continue on from there at a relatively tremendous cost to him, and having lost a significant amount of income.

My cousin was angry both with Hezbollah and with the United States, a country he admires.

(Israel in this aggression didn’t count as much: All are aware that it was acting on orders by the desperate harmful idiots. Israel’s people in Washington have now been fed the ridiculous line that Israel was doing “the job” for the “failed” Lebanese government. Wonder why Israel doesn’t do the larger job for itself by defusing the most important destabilizing issue in the Middle East: the absence of a Palestinian state. Israel was responsible for the rise of Hezbollah (18 years of occupation of south Lebanon) and for the rise of Hamas and Islamic Jihad ( nearly 40 years of occupation and American-funded settlements.) So it should be reluctant to throw stones at others’ houses or do the job for them.)

(NOTE: About the desperate and harmful right-wing idiots: They have marshaled their energy to staying in Iraq until this President’s term ends. Why? Though mediocre in foreign policy, they do know their domestic politics. They know therefore that our defeat in Iraq, which already had taken place, should have dire political repercussions for their Judeo-Christian right. Accordingly, they will sacrifice the life of troops to save that right’s hide, so to speak. Later, when a Democrat takes over the White House and orders a withdrawal, they can blame that party for the Iraq defeat. )

To understand my cousin one needs to understand that he comes from a conservative background. Accordingly, years after the Christians’ defeat in Lebanon’s civil wars, he now belongs to a shrinking minority within the Christians of Lebanon. This minority hasn’t acclimated itself to the fact that, in the new Lebanon, the Christians no longer wield the political power. The Shiites have the numbers; and the Sunnis the money. He is not of the flexible Michel Aoun people, and those now are in the Christian majority. Aoun has discovered that coalition-building and alliances can preserve a role for the Christians in Lebanon’s consociational democracy. (Aoun will lose that majority if Iran doesn’t produce cargo that compensates the Christians for their losses. Iran seems to understand that; it’s now offering to contribute to the reconstruction through the Lebanese state not through Hezbollah.)

The harmful idiots’ proxies in Lebanon, which include the leadership my cousin respects, should produce pittance. After the Bush Administration took out $15 billion of the small country’s economy, and callously caused the death of over a thousand civilians, it is sending Lebanon less than $300 million! (Saudi Arabia has come to the rescue; but it is unclear whether the one billion dollars it had sent to the Lebanese Central Bank was a loan/deposit (to avoid the state’s bankruptcy) or a grant. Saudi Arabia is dispatching thousands of Saudi contractors to help in the reconstruction. I’ll wait for press reports to assess Saudi generosity and compare it to Iran’s.)

What my favorite cousin should understand is the following: that the harmful idiots are not only harmful. They’re idiots, too. Couldn’t they have seen that Hezbollah’s economy would not be affected by the carpet bombing of Lebanon? If this fact had been obvious to my cousin, a businessman and not an analyst, shouldn’t it have been obvious to the idiots? Oops! Forgive my attention deficit disorder: Of course not.


A GREAT FRIEND

My great friend, idle during the harmful idiot’s valiant assault with American cluster bombs on Lebanon’s children, had time to read www.SaudiPoltics.com. I can imagine him fuming. He protested the language used in the newsletter: idiots, stooges, mediocre.

I’ve already answered him, in part, in the above section.

In a cooperative spirit, he suggested that these words diminish the credibility of the newsletter. Surprise: His own young son disagreed with him. A blog, his son said, was meant to be direct in its approach.

(NOTE: I should make it clear that I condemn Hezbollah’s bombing of Israel’s civilians. I was a student of the Lebanese civil war and have reviewed my fair share of massacres against civilians. This blog therefore has no tolerance whatsoever with policies by states and para-military groups which use massacres for political purposes. All parties in Lebanon, Israel (e.g., Sabra and Shatila, Qana) , and Syria (e.g., Qaa, Damour, Bhamdoun) had committed their fair share of those. It needs to be said, though, that the operation which allegedly motivated Israel’s raining of cluster bombs on children and families had been a military operation. Hezbollah had killed and captured Israeli soldiers following repeated warnings by its leadership that it would be pursuing that policy; that such was its only way to obtain the release of Arab prisoners. If it were able to conduct such a fearless operation, couldn’t it have conducted the same against Israeli civilians in northern Israel? In other words, Israel bears most of the blame for the initiation of the policy of massacres against civilians:

1. Because it reacted to a military operation by Hezbollah with a a punishing military campaign directed in good part at civilians, therefore starting the vicious cycle of murdering those both in Lebanon and Israel.

2. Because it started first the killing of civilians and intended these massacre to achieve policy objectives: Punish the Shiites for their support of Hezbollah, place pressure on the Lebanese body politic to disarm that party.


3. Because its American-supplied weapons, in particular cluster bombs and possibly bombs containing depleted uranium, were significantly more deadly against civilians than those in its foe’s possession.


This over-reaction was a studied one. The harmful idiots and Israel’s leadership had planned this operation beforehand, and one could go back quite a time to the threats, borne out of frustration and defeat issued by Vice-President Cheney, to unleash Israel against Iran. (According to a perceptive Egyptian author who wrote for the Al-Hayat–Israel’s campaign had planned at a right-wing “think”-tank in Washington, D.C.–the same think tank which is doing lots of spin to portray our occupation of Iraq an ongoing success–until a Democrat is in the White House, that is, at which time that same think tank will chastise the Democrats for the IRAQ DEFEAT.)



Back to the friend and his advice that I use more “credible language.” He’s laboring under the false impression that the harmful idiots would seek reasonable advice. (When very young, Zbigniew Brzezinsky cornered me at a party and showered me with questions about Lebanese-Palestinian relations. You would think he had ample sources of information and would not need analysis from a young man writing his dissertation. But that was an inquisitive man who did not hide his thirst to understand. In contrast, the harmful idiots...oh well.) So the harmful idiots are not amenable to advice. They listen to narcissists, delusional double-agents, ethnic entrepreneurs, Uncle Tom-emigres; and to Israel-obsessed right wing ideologues (“neo-con”). These groups of idiots tell the harmful idiots what they want to hear. Worse, some of these advising idiots think that they know what’s good for Israel better than that country itself. They do know that that country relies on cargo from the United States (“strategic alliance”) as Hezbollah from Iran. It can therefore ill-afford not to listen to them as Hezbollah can ill-afford not to listen to its Iranian benefactor.

PALESTINIAN STATE

The great best friend adds that www.SaudiPolitics.com is too preoccupied with a Palestinian state and would want it to be preoccupied with Lebanon.

My answer: SaudiPoltics is an American blog, not a Middle Eastern. It’s all inter-connected, anyway. To make the point to a Lebanese Christian: Can he, who had lived through Lebanon’s civil wars, deny that the Lebanese civil wars which began in April 1975, and which brought untold misery onto the Lebanese, would have been thirty time less severe had there been a Palestinian state?

Not to mention that there are over 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who are disposed to carrying the gun and fighting should the opportunity arise–should Empire escalate.

In addition, the harmful idiots and their bully owe Lebanon hundreds of billions of Euros in reparation for their ceaseless wars of aggression waged on its lands against the Palestinians—all of them caused by the absence of a Palestinian state and the non-payment of reparations.


THE NEW ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST

One of the harmful idiots’ spokes-people arrogantly stated from Israel, during the bombing of Lebanon’s children with American-made cluster bombs, that a new Middle East will be born out of the murder of defenseless children and families.

I have news for her-–not that I expect her to understand what I’m talking about.

The new Middle East will be one where the U.S. will have significantly less influence than it had before its war of aggression on Iraq, and only with governments (and not fully) who hardly represent their people. (I say “not fully” because even within these governments, there unavoidably will be a lot of sympathy with the fighting Islamists, be they Hamas or Hezbollah.) In fact, the people ruled by these governments think their leaders are traitors.

The Arab Street’s view is extreme. Still, one really wonders whether the leaders of such important countries as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are governed by Arabs at all!

(NOTE: Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, recently bemoaned the loss of Arab identity, conveniently ignoring that Saudi Arabia and the harmful idiots had worked feverishly to defeat that identity and replace it with an Islamic one. He not-so-subtly leveled criticism at Syria for its alliance with a non-Arab country, Iran; and he proposed awkward steps to re-invigorate Arab pride by strengthening the Arab League. I laughed. (My apologies to Prince Saud.) Oh, well. SaudiPolitics’ short answer: When Saudi Arabia is able to regain Syria its lost Joulan, and the Palestinians their state...then that criticism would be warranted. For now it’s not. Besides, as this newsletter has maintained, the Kingdom itself needs some Arabs at the top. The old King Abdallah aside, the Kingdom can hardly claim that it is being ruled by Arabs. Besides, Prince al-Faisal’s comments reflect: (1) a revived and typically sophomoric attempt by the harmful idiots to drive a wedge between Arabs and Persians. (I’m now in tears.); and (2) the Prince’s (possibly) tiredness in enunciating a sophomoric policy by the harmful idiots that he himself finds ridiculous–though obliged to do it.)

LOST CAUSE

The Arab Street has nothing in common with the United States and Israel, the camp opposing the Iranian-Syrian. America had destroyed the last vestige of connectedness Empire had with the Arab Street, one which had the ability to neutralize Islamism–-Iraq. There’s no Palestinian state and no return of the Joulan. And the Arab Street will not believe anything the harmful idiots will say or promise on these matters. Worse, Empire, when it comes to a direly-needed peace offensive, finds itself paralyzed. Its two political parties in the United States are busy spinning the Jewish community and are therefore highly unlikely to come up with a credible peace and a just resolution. (We’re not gonna have a Bill Clinton every day who would charm the pants off the Jewish community and con it into a path of peace.)

In other words, Iran, if it doesn’t make a grievous anti-Arab mistake, owns the Arab Street.

Change therefore has to come from Israel itself, not from the spinned, politically manipulated, and hyper-mobilized American Jewish community. Sadly, however, Israel’s most recent defeat in Lebanon is breeding a more acute move to the right and to harm. This is the problem with national unity governments. An opposition party should stay out of these so not to partake in policies that lead to defeat. In Israel, the defeat in Lebanon has tainted all but the politically-lucky and massacre-minded Likud. A move towards that party is therefore a possible result of the defeat in Lebanon.

Not to mention that Israel can ill-afford to lose its cargo from the United States (“strategic alliance”) and will now have to prove itself to its benefactor–-the Pentagon–-to correct its failed military image with the generals. So, its reaction to defeat will hardly be a new policy of peace. It’ll be more massacres.

With no Palestinian state on the horizon, and no reparation to the refugees and to Lebanon, the most destabilizing issues in the Middle East, Islamism should forge along , successfully.

If Iran doesn’t make a mistake–-like being drawn to a conventional confrontation or undertaking a patent act of terrorism–-we can expect (eventually) Arabs, thanks to Israel’s wars, to evolve with Iran’s help a new pan-Islamism that binds together Shiites and Sunnis and spreads out of Iraq. It could be friendly to Iran at first; but its long-term direction is anyone’s guess. The United States could, for instance, end up financing it, as it is now the Muslim Brothers of Syria.

If Iran makes a mistake...You’ll have to wait for SaudiPoltics to post the promised article about the new direction of the Arab Street. I think I’ll write it before Iran and the troops-stretched-too-thin U.S. go at it.

Or Israel goes at it. (I'm laughing, again!)