“And we wonder why they hate us . . .”

By PHK

"And we wonder why they hate us . . ." Pat Buchanan

It’s clear that the Bush administration gave the Israeli government the high sign to launch an attack against Hezbollah and destroy Lebanon as part of the collateral damage well before the bombardment began. This administration’s “hands-off” so as to allow the Israelis time to “crush” Hezbollah before sending twinkle-toes Condi to the region to do the diplomatic shuffle at least a week too late is so different from every other U.S. administration’s approach to wars in the Middle East that it should be viewed with incredulity. But then, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. And one can only speculate as to the role the controversial and pro-Israel Elliott Abrams, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, played when he was in the region representing the White House just as this latest crisis was about to spin out of control.

This is not "our war"

Bill Kristol may claim that it’s “our war” and Ken Mehlman, of the Republican National Committee, may exuberantly exhort at a gathering of Christians United for Israel that “today, we are all Israelis!" and they may all think that it’s just fine to allow the once-upon-a-time victim now neighborhood bully to destroy schools, churches, mosques, shops, homes, grapes, grape arbors as well as kids playing in the schoolyards, but I come down on the Pat Buchanan side of this conflict.

We are not Israelis; this is not "our war;" we did not provoke Hezbollah and Hezbollah did not provoke us. Or vice versa, depending upon how one chooses to characterize the relationship. Just as it is not in our interest to set Hezbollah against us, it is not our interest to have our public face abroad besmirched even further than has already happened under this administration simply because this time the Israelis can’t control their own military and W won’t remind them that the U.S. foots the bill.

And just how many Americans including those “Christians United for Israel” know that Lebanon has a sizeable and influential Christian population? Or that our tax dollars paid for the IDF bombs used against them too?

CHANG06

I saw an Arizona license plate on a car when I was driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe last week that read CHANG06. Now, I suppose one could interpret it to mean Chang in 2006 – but I prefer to read it as CHANGE 06. Think about it: CHANG06 appearing on a car from conservative Arizona, not liberal northern New Mexico where the bumper-sticker wars have been lopsided displays of choice and not so choice anti-Bushisms for the past several years.

Did the Israelis choose to start this war now because 1) it is summer time, the “livin’ is easy” and the universities are out of session hence student demonstrations are harder to organize, and/or 2) W could lose his blank-check Republican Congress in November and it would become far more difficult for him to carry out his ill-conceived foreign policies without greater scrutiny? Or what? And what message did Abrams carry - and in which direction?

I understand that the split between Americans who support Bush’s policy of giving the IDF its head and those who oppose it and think Israel’s invasion of choice should never have been allowed to happen divide closely along party lines. This may well be true for the U.S. public at large since the administration is far better at propagandizing its own than at selling its policies abroad. But at least this time, about half of America does not agree with our first frat-boy. This is a major change from the overwhelming popular support W received in March 2003 in support of his ill-fated invasion of Iraq.

It’s interesting to note that even some traditional conservatives are breaking with the Republican line. Pat Buchanan is one; Bill Buckley appears to have had it with this administration on a number of issues and thirty-something Greg Djerejian (Belgravia Dispatch) is livid with W’s one-sided, counter-productive approach to the Middle East and calls for replacing Rumsfeld with pragmatist Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell. It would interesting to know where James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Greg’s father Ambassador and Baker School Dean Ed Djerejian stand on these issues too.

Why Condoleezza Rice thinks that she can “peel Syria away from its alliance of convenience with Iran,” as Praktike puts it, while refusing to talk to Syrian President Bashar al-Asad seems to me to be patently absurd. But this is the way the administration prefers to conduct “diplomacy.” It’s modus operandi? Bluster, bluff and attempt to cajole willing or less than willing surrogates to carry its water, e.g. undemocratic Egypt and Saudi Arabia - in this latest case.

This same head-in-the-sand don’t talk one-on-one with the adversary approach has taken us a long way towards a negotiated settlement with the North Koreans and the Iranians, now hasn’t it? Also made us really popular at the UN. According to a NYT report based on any number of interviews with other countries’ Ambassadors to the United Nations, John Bolton’s bull-in-the-china-shop, bang-the-shoe-on-the-table diplomatic touch has alienated even our friends there. Great way to not get what you want.

In diplomacy, you have to give a little to get a little.

You have to make your case persuasively. That means talk and lots of it. It means research, facts and marshaling your arguments. It means taking the time to “drink sweet tea” as PLS likes to put it. It means putting yourself in the other party’s shoes. It means sorting out and getting to the bottom of disagreements. It means using creativity to find solutions that will meet everyone’s bottom line whether the parties involved number two or over 190. It means patience and perseverance. It may also mean finding just the right shape and size for the negotiating table.

In this latest Middle East case, it also means mediation – playing broker and trying to stop a nasty conflict before it really spins out of control and engulfs an entire region in petty hatreds and unresolved sovereignties. This is not done by allowing a surrogate to bomb a city to pieces or through re-supplying just one side.

Instead of trying to tamp down the conflict, the Bush administration, however, is rushing in new bombs and other weapons to the IDF so that this out-of-control military can bomb ever more Lebanese civilians and destroy more Lebanese cities and infrastructure.

Who is going to pay to put Lebanon back together again? Who is going to put Lebanon together again? Who is going to help this country assemble its own military forces capable of patrolling its borders – and why, if the US has been so concerned about Hezbollah and the Iranian influence on it, didn’t it begin to help the Lebanese gain better control of the situation before?

Did anyone in the administration ask why Hezbollah had become popular among Lebanon’s Shiites? Could it possibly have been because the organization also is – like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – a service organization that provides for the basic needs of a poor people neglected by their government as well as an organization that operates politically through legitimate and illegitimate means?

Maybe if we’d put our taxpayers’ dollars into helping improve the life of economically disadvantaged Lebanese Shiites instead of buying Israel more missiles, then Hezbollah would not have made the inroads into the community that it did. The time was there when this could have happened. The Israelis could have helped, too. Please tell me what good did it do for the IDF to force the PLO out of the same regions of Lebanon in 1982 only to have a more virulent group sprout up in its place.

Grade F- for US public diplomacy - yet again

Meanwhile, Marc Lynch’s July 22 post in Abu Aardvark entitled “Al-Jazeera’s war coverage” speaks volumes. In this war of the newscasts broadcast throughout the Arab world, he explains, the gold star thus far belongs to Al-Jazeera.

In contrast, Lynch reports, Al Hurra, the U.S. surrogate Arabic language station established with great fanfare over a year ago as America’s voice to the Arab world is so pro-Israeli in this conflict that it has lost whatever little credibility it might have had.

Finally, there’s our usually garrulous public diplomacy czarina Karen Hughes (who’s that?) who has, as John Brown pointed out in Truthout on July 18, disappeared. As far as I can tell, she’s hidden away from the cameras she “loves so much.” So who put the lid on? And why?

Do we still have to pay her six figure salary?

A Monday morning update: guess so, at least for a while longer. Karen seems to have reappeared just in time to travel with Condi to the Middle East. This could become interesting.

For the record from SF Gate, July 23, 2006:

Since fighting started
-- Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.
-- Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.
-- At least 330 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.
-- 32 Israelis have been killed, among them 17 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least 12 soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.
-- Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian.