More War

I’ve been fretfully and frustratedly wondering if the questions I have, as I increasingly see the words “Iran” and “Syria” being thrown into the reporting on what’s going on in the Middle East, are tinfoil-hat worthy, or if they’re legitimate questions. Either way, I’m not the only one who has them.

Yglesias gets at it perfectly:

I'd also like to know how Ken Baer knows that "both attacks [on Israel] were green-lighted by Iran." Similarly, TNR's editorial boldly proclaims that "The Hamas action in Gaza appears to have been ordered by Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader who resides in Damascus--which is to say, it is also a piece of Syrian intrigue." But why does the fact that an attack "appears to have been ordered by" a guy who lives in Damascus demonstrate that the attack itself was "a piece of Syrian intrigue?" Surely the one thing doesn't follow from the other.

The same editorial also argues that Syria was behind the Hezbollah attack because "Nor can anything of significance take place in Lebanon without the sanction of Damascus."

This is mighty fuzzy stuff and it's popping up all over the place. But I'm not seeing the evidence for it.

…It all looks to me like a story we've seen before. If you've been paying attention, a lot of people have been agitating for the United States to commence more active efforts to overthrow the Syrian and Iranian governments for some time now. Then some stuff happened and -- miraculously and without real evidence -- that stuff's occurence is suddenly the reason we need to implement the very same policy that was being pushed for previously. I'd like to see some proof.

I would, too. Color me cynical, but I wasn’t a fan of fixing the intelligence around the policy the first time around, and I certainly don’t want to go down that road again. I’m not saying that’s definitely the case here, but I want some clearer explanations, and I don’t believe that’s too much for which to ask.

Meanwhile, the US and pretty much everyone else disagree on the tone of Israel’s response, if not their right to respond:

Russia and France condemned Israel's strikes in Lebanon on Thursday as a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict but the United States said Israel had the right to defend itself…

Bush and Merkel made clear at a joint news conference they felt Israel's actions in seeking kidnapped soldiers and responding to Hizbollah rocket attacks were justified.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced both Israel's attack on Lebanon and its operations against the Palestinian territories.

"This is a disproportionate response to what has happened and if both sides are going to drive each other into a tight corner then I think that all this will develop in a very dramatic and tragic way," he told reporters on a flight from Paris to Moscow, Interfax news agency reported.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy also described Israel's bombardment of Beirut’s international airport "a disproportionate act of war", and British Prime Minister Tony Blair “called on all sides in the Middle East crisis to exercise restraint, act proportionately and get back to the negotiating table as soon as possible.”

The US, meanwhile, vetoed a UN resolution that sought to condemn Israel for a "disproportionate use of force.” We were the only one of the 15 Security Council nations to vote against the resolution. (Britain, Denmark, Peru, and Slovakia abstained.)

And Israel bombarded Beirut again today, “blasting the airport for a second day, shattering bridges, igniting fuel storage tanks and cutting the main highway to Syria,” after Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said that “‘nothing is safe’ in Lebanon and that Beirut itself, especially Hezbollah offices and strongholds in southern Beirut, would be a target.”

Look, I’m in complete agreement that Israel has the right to defend itself, but I’m also inclined to agree that the level of their response was disproportionate and served primarily to escalate the situation unnecessarily. The primary responsibility lies with Hezbollah, who clearly want to provoke Israel. I want to make it clear that that is my opinion, as well as that Israel had a right to respond. That said, I’m in agreement with Jill, who notes:

The best solution here, obviously, would be for Hezbollah to release the Israeli soldiers. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen without Israeli action.

But attacking the entire country of Lebanon, shutting down one of the biggest cities in the Middle East, and causing all kinds of damage (humans and infrastructure) along the way? The actions that Israel has taken have been entirely disproportionate and excessively violent. And while it’s easy to argue that “Hezbollah started it” — and in this narrow case, they did — nothing is ever that simple in Middle Eastern politics, is it?

Israel has cut Lebanon off from the rest of the world. There is no way to get in or out of the country. It has warned all citizens of Beirut to leave. And this isn’t a small town or insular locale we’re talking about here — it’s a major city, with busy ports and a thriving tourist industry. It can be easy for Americans to orientalize cities in the Middle East, and stereotype the people there as desert-dwellers. But Beirut isn’t small beans. It’s the approximate equivalent of, say, San Francisco in the United States. Imagine that city having its airport and seaport blocked, and its major highway to LA destroyed. What do you do? Where do you go?

Can the US not support Israel’s right to defend itself while simultaneously condemning the scope of the defense? Not everything really is fair in love and war.