Hi All My friend, Hilton Obenzinger (poet, scholar, novelist),
occasionally writes meditations on politics and events of which this one I
found not comforting but as balanced with clarity as I imagine that one can
get in this current madness. (When will madness not be current?).
Stephen Vincent
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
Meditations in a Time of Delusions and Lies - 12
Hilton Obenzinger
I write these meditations from time to time in an attempt to stay
sane. If you find them tedious, apply the magic of delete. If you want to
share them with others, feel free to do so.
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Adding Up the Score
August 14, 2006
Now that there’s a cease-fire in the works, let us count up the war crimes.
Hezbollah manages to toss unguided rockets randomly at civilian targets,
blood-letting for no strategic reason. I suppose the attempt to demoralize
the population counts for something – a little satisfaction that at least
the Israeli population should feel some pain – could count for a kind of
political-military accomplishment. Still, there’s no doubt that hurling
weapons randomly at civilians is criminal – not to mention the fact that
close to 40 percent of the victims were Arab citizens of Israel.
On the other hand, Israel does it with precision. Precision guided laser
bombs, precision rockets that hit pinpoint targets, plus the good manners to
send leaflets telling people that they need to flee. So, precision weapons
hit civilian apartment buildings, precisely blast UN outposts, precisely hit
marked ambulances, precisely blow up humanitarian convoys, and precisely
kill the very civilians they had told to flee. Hezbollah hides among
civilians, goes the Israeli rationale, which may be at least partially true,
in so much as the militia is completely intertwined with the civilian
population. Even so, precision targeting of civilian targets – the
destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, for one thing – is a war crime.
By quantity and quality, I would say Israel wins this competition hands
down.
And who won the war? It’s easier to say who lost.
Israel lost because it finally could not get its unilateral way through
military force. The goal was to destroy Hezbollah, and they discovered the
toughest, best trained, best equipped fighters they have ever encountered.
The goal then shifted to pushing Hezbollah away from the South. Then Shimon
Peres appeared on American TV to say that, since Israel didn’t start the
war, all Israel had to do was to stop it to win. Nope, Israel lost. It
wasn’t a loss that meant “the Jews will be pushed into the sea,” etc., etc.,
but it was a loss nonetheless. This could be the best thing to come out of
the miserable mess. Israelis may decide to re-think aggression as policy
and turn to actual negotiations. They can start with the Palestinians.
Maybe, but I’m doubtful. Much more arrogance needs to be cracked before
Israelis start seeing reality rather than delusions.
Hezbollah lost because – well, what was their goal to begin with? To gain
freedom for their prisoners? To liberate the Sheeba Farms? To distract
from Iran’s nuclear intentions? I’m not sure, although putting up such a
ferocious defense accounts for a major victory, of sorts. They fought
Israel to a standstill, the first Arab army to do so. But precipitating the
destruction of Lebanon was the price, religious fanaticism that leads to
rubble. If they were smart, they would declare victory, disband as a
militia, join up with the Lebanese military with all of their arms, and
dominate Lebanese politics. We’ll see about that . . .
No question, Lebanese civilians of all faiths lost this war. The beautiful
country, rebuilt after civil war and Israel’s last debacle, has been wrecked
again. Displacement, fear, horror, death for the ordinary people. Likewise
the people of northern Israel, although, again, at only about one tenth the
scale of the Lebanese. The young soldiers of both sides killed . . . but
that’s to be expected of war: sorrow and bitter loss.
War is always vicious and stupid, but some wars are more stupid than others.
Many people compared this war to World War One, especially for the way it
started over a minor incident and its absurd futility. Exactly why do these
armies and militias need to kill civilians? Why did Israel need to destroy
Lebanon to get at Hezbollah? Why lob exploding stones at Haifa?
Finally, the Bush bozos are big losers. They backed Israel’s assault all
the way, cheering on, declaring that it was necessary to destroy Lebanon in
order to save it – until they realized they had lost. As practice for the
U.S. invading Iran, this war taught a lot, mainly, DON’T DO IT! That is, if
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld can learn any “reality-based” lessons. As soon as
Bush and his crowd realized Israel wasn’t going to cut through Lebanon like
cheese, they decided that diplomacy was a good idea, after all.
The American people also lost. We had the opportunity to watch mayhem paid
for by our tax money non-stop on 24-hour newschannels – if we wanted.
Mostly, the American public was relieved it wasn’t our troops caught in
close combat. Of course, Iraq is exploding into chaos, and all of America’s
Middle East adventures seem shakier than ever. With Bush in power, that
could be dangerous, since his solution usually ends up meaning more war.
The fact that the great airplane-bomb-red-alert took over just as the
ceasefire was being negotiated was a bad sign. It’s always been useful to
inject a sizeable dose of FEAR into Americans, just to bolster Bush’s
imperial power. If indeed this mass-murder plot is real – and I’m always
suspicious – and the suddenness of the arrests is not engineered for
political effect, the war has given Muslims, Arabs, and pretty much the
entire world more reasons for hating Americans (or at least our foreign
policy). Our bombs dropped by “our” Israelis. When someone asks, why do
they hate us, just point to Lebanon.
So ends the first phase of the American Israeli War Against Lebanon.
Everyone loses! Hurrah!
Hilton Obenzinger
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