Category: The Dish

"I watched in horror as [Nasrallah’s] maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis’ psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don’t like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah’s attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah’s actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers," – Juan Cole, Monday.

It’s great to see the Advocate publish a truth-telling essay like this.

"He’s working it. He’s working it harder now," – a Ralph Reed campaign staffer on Reed’s future business operations after his humiliating defeat in Georgia.

More visual response to the bombardment can be found here.

It seems to me that two facts are slowly emerging. The first is that Iran is increasingly serious about becoming a regional power, extending its reach into Lebanon and Iraq, and perhaps attempting a putsch in Syria – for a Shiite crescent. That Iran has sent some very serious missiles into Hezbollah’s hands and is egging on Hezbollah for more provocation is yet another signal that Ahmadinejad really does want a regional conflagration, and will brandish his nukes belligerently whenever he gets his hands on them.

The second is that Iraq is in a de facto civil war. I don’t know what else to call a hundred deaths a day, and 6,000 every two months. If you occupy a post-totalitarian, bitterly divided country and provide enough troops to adequately police, say, Texas, then you’ll get the civil war Rumsfeld asked for and insisted on. And so, thanks to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the policy of democratization never had a chance of having a peaceful example in Iraq and has instead destabilized the region further – showing for good measure that Islamist parties who gain power democratically will use that power immediately to wage war. Their target will be Jews, and any Muslims who don’t subscribe to their vision of the new Caliphate or whatever theocratic lunacy they are currently pursuing.

The scenarios are various. In an escalating civil war in Iraq, the Shiites will surely win – and massacres of Sunnis will become the daily headlines. What we do with our troops at that point will depend on events, but active involvement on one side or another would be a disaster. The potential for a wider Sunni-Shiite war across the Muslim Middle East is also now a real one – like the religious wars in Europe in the seventeenth century, only with far more destructive potential. Some might advise the U.S. to strike a deal with the beleaguered Assad regime in Syria, or put its weight behind the now-very-nervous predominantly Sunni autocracies as a counter-weight to Iran. I’m not so sure. Decades of backing such autocrats helped create the Islamist wave. Picking another losing side looks like short-sighted masochism to me.

I guess what I’m saying is that a period of appalling warfare may now be inevitable, and the only way for the region’s tectonic plates to find a new and more stable platform. The real danger is a newly emboldened Islamist region with a chokehold on the world’s oil. But that danger already exists, and has existed for a while. 9/11 was a symptom of something far wider – a struggle within the Muslim world for meaning and power in the modern world. We can pretend we can affect that outcome, but I fear we cannot. We can only watch and redouble our efforts to get energy from sources other than from a region on the verge of full-scale conflict.

(Photo: Haitham Mussawi/AFP/Getty.)

Just a reminder of the 24 vigils being held today for the two Iranian teens hanged a year ago for a gay affair. If you’re on the Cape, or visiting Provincetown, please drop by our small-town vigil outside Town Hall on Commercial Street at 5 – 6 pm. Some of us are lucky enough to live in idyllic seaside towns in freedom; others live in fear and terror. They need our support and our solidarity. The web will distribute images and news of these vigils and give hope where it is most needed.

Santa Ana, California, 9.30 am.

"Today many nations are stirred up by Israel’s response to the Hezbollah rocket attack and kidnapping. They say it’s extreme, not appropriate to the circumstances. Many believe that Syria will soon try to provoke a Jewish response, and Israel’s 72 hour ultimatum may be their cue. If that should cause a further escalation we can easily envision a scenario that includes the final fulfillment of Isaiah 17, the destruction of Damascus.
The phrase "rushing of many waters" is often used to describe a loud voice. Such an escalation would certainly cause an incredible uproar among the nations, and many loud voices.
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah," – evangelical writer, Jack Kelley, on the GraceThruFaith website. Kelley’s bio can be read here.

A reader writes:

You write:

"As for my later comments about opponents of the Iraq war being "objectively pro-Saddam," that seems to me to be indisputable. If they’d had their way, he’d still be in power."

Oh, great. I guess those of us opposed to war with North Korea are "objectively pro-Kim Jong Il." Does that include you?

For someone I consider to be pretty smart, this is an incredibly simplistic, stupid and dangerous viewpoint. I opposed the Iraq war, and I’m no more objectively pro-Saddam than you are objectively pro-thousands of Iraqis and Americans killed and injured (I’ll be happy to list some of the other fallout from this war if you’d like).

There are pros and cons to most things. Believe it or not, for most of us who opposed the Iraq war, we thought the costs would outweigh the benefits, never mind not trusting the Bushies.

Well, objectively (and it’s Orwell’s original usage), I am pro-Kim Jong-Il, and if he didn’t have the capacity to take out Seoul, I’d be far less sanguine about it. Yes, there are costs and benefits to all actions. One of the costs of inaction with respect to Iraq would be Saddam still in power, his psychopathic sons waiting for accession, continued starvation and immiseration of thousands, more money being sent to bribed UN officials, and merely a delayed (and thereby ultimately more virulent) spiral into the kind of civil, sectarian chaos we are now witnessing. Look: I got a lot wrong. But I am still glad that monster is in jail.