Otherwise sane people lose their minds when it comes to the Middle East conflict -- now lurching into its fourth week -- and side with Hezbollah.Let's get this straight:
Hezbollah is evil incarnate.Yes, Israel may have overreacted to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers and murder of three others by Hezbollah. And there is much to not like in its execution of the war, including its request that the U.S. rush it shipments of anti-personnel rockets with warheads designed to increase the carnage of people caught in their path.
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization sponsored by Iran, the most powerful radical Islamist nation in the world and a nuclear power in the making, and to a lesser extent by Syria, which no one would confuse with Switzerland.
Hezbollah hates you and wants to destroy you, your loved ones and your way of life unless you happen to be a Muslim who worships Allah as it does and plays by its extremist rules.
Hezbollah builds health clinics, schools and apartment blocks and then situates missile launching pads and ammunition dumps next to and sometimes literally atop them.
Hezbollah is a cancer and must be destroyed -- if not now, later.
My heart bleeds for the innocent victims in Lebanon, a weakling nation that once again has been caught between a rock (Israel) and a hard place (Iran and Syria) because it does not have the strength to confront Hezbollah.
Yes, the Bush administration's slavish support for Israel has undercut its ability to help broker a ceasefire.
Yes, there is much wrong with the American imperialist behemoth and it's not hard to understand why the U.S.'s cred is so low on the Arab street.
But the war in the Middle East is not a contest in which you have to choose sides.
Disagreeing with Hezbollah doesn't mean you side with Jerusalem or Washington. It means that you have your own values and do not necessarily subscribe to theirs.
* * * * *
What do Hezbollah and the people who killed 35 Iraqis on Thursday when they blew up the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf have in common? They have the same sick mindset.What do Hezbollah and the people who plotted to blow up jetliners bound for the U.S. from the U.K. have in common? They have the same sick mindset.
How long will it be before Hezbollah's Iranian-made short-range ballistic missiles are tipped with more lethal warheads? How long will be it before Hezbollah's Iranian-made missiles are capable of hitting targets beyond Israel?Some people, including the Middle Eastern emigrees now living in the U.S. who are quoted here, say they support Hezbollah as a civic and religious entity and disavow its militancy. That's like saying you are so fond of your crazy Uncle Mohammed when he's volunteering at the community school or praying at the mosque, but not when he's moonlighting as a bomb thrower.
Hezbollah is a cancer and must be destroyed -- if not now, later.
There also is a quaint notion embraced by some bloggers that Hezbollah is the Viet Cong of the Middle East and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, a later-day Che Guevara.
Juan Cole is a leading facilitator of the notion that Hezbollah is misunderstood, currently on view in an essay entitled Bush, Islamic Fascism and the Christians of Jounieh.No, I am not inferring that Cole is an anti-semite. But anti-semitism often underlies support for Hezbollah and that pops up in the most curious places, like the doctoring of war photographs published in the mainstream media. Anti-semitism in the blogosphere and MSM is worth another whole rant, but I'll save that for another day.
Can we assume that Cole has not lost a loved one in the 9/11 attacks or from one of the hundreds of Hezbollah rockets that have rained on Haifa and other Israeli communities?
Or is his ivy-covered universe discolored by a dislike of Israel -- and is populated by ideas and not real people? People whose fathers' bodies were vaporized by fuel-filled jetliners flying into the World Trade Center? Or babies torn from their mothers' breasts by the impact of Hezbollah's Zelzal missiles, the pride of Irani aeronautical engineering?
It takes many years to destroy movements bent on terrorism under the guise of national liberation. Look at Northern Ireland, the Basque separatists, Shining Path in Peru or Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. No matter.
Hezbollah is a cancer and must be destroyed -- if not now, later.
Hey, I'm a big fan of your blog and I've liked what you have had before, but I guess this is the time where I say I disagree with you.
ReplyDeleteFirst, where are you getting this quotes from. You seem to quote a lot on your site, but you never have the links posted. I would like to sometimes read more on this stuff.
Second, why are you slamming Juan Cole, who was one of the only guys who actually wrote about the Middle East before 9/11. His article had nothing to do with praising Hezbollah, just pointing out that it is linguistically incorrect to say that Hezbollah is a fascist organization. And to accuse him of being an anti-semite? Did Sean Hannity kidnap you and start blogging in your place? Just because someone points out the fact that Israel's indiscriminate bombing has killed hundreds and left hundreds of thousands homeless, that does not make him an anti-semite.
All Cole is doing is describing the subtlety of this conflict. One of the liberals many complaints against Bush&Co is that everything boiled down to "kill them all."
Third, if I were you, I would be much more worried about the people that want to turn this into World War III by invading Syria or Iran.
Ah yes, the "subltety" of broken body parts!
ReplyDeleteI will acknowledge that my natterings on Hezbollah are a bit over the top, but I am sick and forking tired of bloggers and people in the MSM whinging about how this organization is so misunderstood.
Hezbollah has done many good works. I allude to them. But by my moral calculus, putting rocket launchers atop day care centers tends to cancel that out.
You are welcome to your priorities, and there is indeed a chance that the knuckleheads in the White House could turn the Israel-Hezbollah conflict into WW3.
But my focus at the moment is on terrorism. I am blazing through "The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright's fabulous new book on Al Qaeda pre-9/11, and then the U.S.-U.K. bomb plot is revealed, so people who want to kill me and destroy my way of life because it doesn't conform with theirs are much on my mind. That includes Hezbollah.
Finally, what "quotes" am I not linking to? All of the Hezbollah post was original content. I put up links where I thought readers might want to read some original source stuff.
Ah, the fight against straw continues... I have no idea where in his essay Joun Cole made Hezbollah's leader out to be Che Guevara, or where he made anti-semetic remarks.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, did either of us say Hezbollah was good? Did Cole say that Hezbollah's attacks were good? Let me know where he said that.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Chris, the "quotes" you are both referring to is when Shaun writes stuff and indents the grafs on both sides so it looks like a quote, but it really isn't one. It's the hot new style but a pain in the ass to read. I still haven't gotten used to it.
Thank you for the head's up on the indents. I do understand that some folks might confuse this "hot new style" (which is three centuries old) as quotes without attribution. Apologies.
ReplyDeleteI did not say or infer that Cole was an anti-semite and I have edited that part of the post to allay anything confusion. But he is an Hezbollah suck up and I find that intolerable for a man of his reach and intellect.
Shaun here.
ReplyDeleteSomeone who goes by "Lenin" was deeply afronted by the Hezbollah post and sent a lengthy reply to me but not to the comments section. Here it is in its entirety:
The penny drops. I've read this a few times, and it is increasingly evident that you offer this in all seriousness. I want, therefore, to outline briefly what's wrong with that post:
1) Emotionally potent oversimplification. Your piece is rife with that. Hezbollah being "pure evil" or a "cancer", for instance, is not a political category or even a sensible analysis. These bald assertions do not amount to argument. They are tabloid headlines, stop-gaps for thought. It is not the case that Hezbollah "hates you and wants to destroy you, your loved ones and your way of life unless you happen to be a Muslim". That is, to be blunt, a pack of idiotic lies. Hezbollah has no interest in "you" as it happens. If Hezbollah could not stomach the thought of non-Muslims and wished to destroy them, you'd have to explain this to the Christians and Lebanese communists who are presently working with Hezbollah. You'd also have to explain it to Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, all of whom have received the approbation of Hezbollah. There are two reasonably good books about Hezbollah available. One is by Judith Palmer Harik, 'Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism", IB Tauris, 2006. The other is Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, 'Hezbollah: Politics and Religion', Pluto Press, 2002. Despite the misleading title, the former book absolutely destroys the claim that Hezbollah is a 'terrorist' organisation.
2) Cliche. You rely too much on what you don't know, but assume to be the case, because it is the kind of hackneyed drivel that gets repeated in Western media sources. For instance, the assumption that Hezbollah places rockets next to the welfare institutions it has built up is not a well-founded one. In fact, Human Rights Watch have investigators on the ground and have not found a single instance of what you describe. It is only because this Israeli embassy guff is repeated on ABC News and such that people uncritically swallow it. It is because it has become cliche: see 'terrorists', 'evil', 'cancer'. Similarly, the assumption that Israel's action was an 'overreaction' to something Hezbollah did is as dumb as can be in light of the revelations that Israel had planned this assault for some time, and in light of the fact that Israel has made repeated prisoner exchanges, has kidnapped thousands of Lebanese and therefore cannot be simply given the benefit of the doubt.
3) Metonymy substituting for logic. Rather than proceeding logically from step to step, illustrating important connections and facts, you simply think it is sufficient to devise a montage. Hence: "What do the people who plotted to blow up jetliners bound for the U.S. from the U.K. and Hezbollah have in common? They have the same sick mindset." Now, whatever a 'mindset' is, let's assume that it has something to do with ideology. Al Qaeda and Hezbollah do not have the same ideology. They do not share goals, they are not from the same branch of Islam, they do not operate in the same way. See Saad-Ghorayeb's book for more on Hezbollah's ideological mix.
4) Unsupported and insupportable assertions as emotional blackmail. See much of the above, and: "Then there's the anti-semitism that often underlies support for Hezbollah, never far from the surface in the writings of Cole and other terrorist suck-ups, but I'll save that for another rant." This is simply inexcusable slander. It is beneath stupidity and beyond chutzpah. Then this: "Can we assume that Cole has not lost a loved one in Al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks or from one of the hundreds of Hezbollah rockets that have rained on Haifa and other Israeli communities? Or is his ivy-covered universe populated only by a loathing of Israel -- and by ideas and not real people? People whose fathers' bodies were vaporized by fuel-filled jetliners flying into the World Trade Center or babies torn from their mothers' breasts by the impact of Hezbollah's Zelzal missiles, the pride of Irani aeronautical engineering?" You cannot and do not attempt to base this on anything that Cole has actually said. You do not begin to illustrate what you mean, which suggests that - quite despicably - you think it is appropriate to make such preposterous accusations without proof.
5) Direct factual inaccuracy. Again, see much of the above, but let's add: "It takes many years to destroy terrorist movements. Look at Northern Ireland or the Basque separatists." In fact, neither movement was destroyed: the IRA was approached by the British government for talks, and a peace deal ensued, which was mandated overwhelmingly in referenda both north and south of the border. The Basque separatists continue to exist and operate, and there has been negotiation. You cannot 'destroy' a national liberation movement simply because you call it 'terrorist' unless you intend to destroy its constituency of civilian support.
I hope I'm not being obtuse. The post is so absolutely filled with ignorant bilge, so absolutely despicable in its attempts to bully, browbeat, smear and slander, so absolutely dumb as a post in its nerve-deadening lack of sense, that I can hardly eat enough to vomit enough. I would wish shame on you, but on this evidence, shame is somewhat beyond and above you. And there I think we can decently end our correspondence. Please do refrain from sending further links, posts, info etc.
Regards,
'lenin'
Guilty as charged.
ReplyDeleteWhy does everyone seem to assume that you have to chose sides between Hezbollah, and Israel?
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority who are suffering in this conflict are neither, just ordinary Lebanese civilians.
And that is why this conflict is so immoral, and must be stopped immediately.
ThomasMc:
ReplyDeleteThat is why it is so difficult for many of us to sort through the competing propoganda messages being put out by Israel and Hezbollah and their proxies.
We are conditioned to make right vs. wrong choices -- Republicans vs. Democrats, Yankees vs. Red Sox, PC vs. McIntosh -- and are oblivious to the possibility that neither side is right. Or correct. Or superior to the other.
If it's not obvious from my post, I don't think either side is "right" in this particular conflict. I just happen to believe that too many people with public voices are soft soaping Hezbollah and not portraying it for what it is.