Wedding Photos
I've uploaded some wedding photos from last weekend. Here
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I've uploaded some wedding photos from last weekend. Here
Starting tomorrow I will be here.
Yet another article on "Security Theatre". Worth reading.
I found a coupld of good HuffPo articles today.
Jeff Heffernan: When are we Going to Learn that War is the Worst Possible Way to Fight Terrorism?
and
James Zogby: Apologists for Immorality.
Both well worth the read.
My brother is working for the Peace Corps. He keeps a blog here.
My Mom's house flooded last week. Here's some articles.
So, Arianna is a little nutty sometimes, but I really like what she said in her post today.
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The U.S.-French cease-fire plan for Lebanon is getting the same reaction at the UN as a group of Connecticut bloggers at Lieberman campaign headquarters. Delegates from the Arab League arrived in New York to push the Security Council for a major rewrite, while Bush interrupted his vacation brush-clearing to brush aside the Arab world's concerns, saying the UN should approve the plan now and worry about the details later.
Neither Condi Rice nor John Bolton seemed in too much of a hurry to pull the plug on Israel's Lebanon offensive. "We're going to take a little time and listen to the concerns of the parties and see how they can be addressed," said Rice at the Crawford ranch. For his part, Bolton was happy to hold off until the Arab foreign ministers made their case: "We're not going to rush to have the text finished before they arrive." Both managed to stifle a yawn -- but just barely.
Meanwhile, the body count continued to rise as the fighting escalated -- the bombs and rockets being unleashed by both sides proving far more on target than the attempts at diplomacy.
Also escalating is the debate over whether Israel's efforts to wipe out Hezbollah are having the desired effect -- or whether they are, in fact, proving counterproductive.
This was the question I was asked to debate with Dennis Prager last night on Larry King Live.
For Prager, the discussion was all about the morality of Israel's actions (he has called support of Israel's battle with Hezbollah "the most clarifying moral litmus test of our time"). For me, it's a question of strategy and effectiveness. There's no question that Israel has the moral right to defend itself against a fanatical terrorist organization that seeks to destroy it. But, as I've asked before, does Israel want to be right or does it want to win? And can victory be defined as anything other than the ability of Israel to guarantee the security and safety of its people?
Ultimately, the long-term security of Israel depends on isolating and marginalizing the vile, violent extremists in the region from the rest of the Arab and Muslim world. As Prager wrote in a recent column, not every Arab or every Muslim is an enemy of Israel. But Israel's current tactics are pushing more and more Middle East moderates to embrace the extremists.
As Robin Wright of the Washington Post put it on Larry King: "A staggering poll last week -- in a country with 17 different recognized religious groups, 87 percent said they backed Hezbollah, which is unprecedented in the history of Lebanon." Even more ominous for Israeli -- and American -- interests, Israel's all-out approach is bringing together the traditionally divided religious factions in the country, with 89 percent of Sunnis, 80 percent of Christians, and 80 percent of Druze siding with the Shia terrorists of Hezbollah.
And we're seeing similar unsettling shifts throughout the Middle East. When the current conflict started, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan all condemned Hezbollah. Not any more.
It's extremely dangerous when you have the hearts and minds of the Arab world being filled with sympathy and understanding for a terrorist organization led by a man, Nasrallah, who has said, "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew", and backed by the radicals in Iran, whose president said last week that the "main solution" to the Middle East crisis was the "elimination" of Israel.
Prager also tried to frame the debate over Israeli strategy as a left/right issue. In truth, the idea that Israel is doing itself more harm than good is shared by those on both sides of the political spectrum. Chuck Hagel, the second ranking Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee, recently declared "The war against Hezbollah and Hamas will not be won on the battlefield." He cautioned that a continued air and ground assault by Israel "will tear apart Lebanon, destroy its economy and infrastructure, create a humanitarian disaster, further weaken Lebanon's fragile democratic government, strengthen popular Muslim and Arab support for Hezbollah, and deepen hatred of Israel across the Middle East."
And Pat Buchanan, as identified with the Right as anyone, summed it up this way: "Whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing."
During our debate, Prager drew the comparison between Israel's response to the kidnapping of its soldiers and America's response to 9/11. That was Israel's "final straw," he said. "It's just like our final straw was 9/11."
It was an unfortunate example -- not because of the disparity in the magnitude of the two incidents, but because of the depressing similarity between the reaction to them.
After 9/11, America had the world on its side. We were undeniably in the right; no one that mattered doubted that we had the moral high ground. But we went after the wrong enemy -- Saddam and Iraq instead of bin Laden and al Qaeda -- and, as a result, find ourselves suffering in so many ways, not the least of which is the loss of our ability to be an effective power broker in the Middle East.
Just 26 days ago, Israel had the world on its side and the moral high ground. It now finds itself fighting an increasingly bloody ground war against a surprisingly effective enemy -- and the object of outrage throughout much of the world. Shades of America and Iraq.
America went after the wrong enemy. Israel went after the right enemy in the wrong way. Both decisions have left the world a far more dangerous place.
Interesting report on Privacy that I want to get around to reading.
Below is a video of Burning Man 2000.
I leave in 9 days for Burning Man 2006!
I have to apologize. I've been doing a lot of one line, link to somewhere posts lately, and I've realized that I've never articulated my opinion on what's going on between Lebanon and Israel.
I'm not going to address the greater issues right now, that would take a far longer post than I really have time for, but let me address the current situation.
Both sides are wrong.
Lets start with Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been launching missile attacks into Israel for years now. Hezbollah has also been kidnapping Israeli soldiers and civilians for years now. In the past, missile attacks were met with silence more or less and Israel would negotiate with Hezbollah to do prisoner swaps in exchange for kidnapped soldiers. Hezbollah pretty much figured it was in for more of the same when it started this, latest round of violence. Hassan Nasrallah has stated as much. I don't think I need to actually explain why firing missiles and kidnapping is wrong. It's important to understand that while the political wing of Hezbollah represents about 40% of the Lebanese population, not everyone in Lebanon is part of Hezbollah, and even fewer Lebanese support Hezbollah's attacks on Israel.
In the other corner we have Israel. Israel has been suffering from continual attacks from Lebanon since Lebanon became independent from France. Most recently these have taken the form of the missile attacks and kidnappings noted above. Israel has tried in the past to stop these attacks though invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. That didn't work.
This leads to my issues with Israel right now. I might support it's current actions if I thought that they had a chance of stopping the missile attacks or stopping the kidnappings or even weakening Hezbollah, but they have not, and are not going to accomplish any of these things. As we can see, Hezbollah is now stronger than before and has even more support. What's amazing to me is that Israel's current actions have actually united Hamas and Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Shi'a. Hamas is Sunni. They basically represent two groups of people that have sought the eradication of each other since the creation of Islam. Israel has brought them together, however tentatively, and given them a common enemy.
Beyond the fact that this isn't going to work, Israel has sent mixed signals and messages throughout the whole war. They say they want the Lebanese army to take control of the border, then they bomb the Lebanese army. They say they want the UN to enforce a cease-fire, but then they bomb the UN. They tell the civilians to leave, but only after they've bombed every road and bridge that would allow the civilians to do so. They tell the civilians to leave and then they bomb the cars the civilians are leaving in. Finally they bomb the ambulances going to rescue the civilians.
I don't buy the excuse that Hezbollah are hiding amongst civilians and therefore it is okay to kill the civilians. There's almost a scary Katrina-esque parallel here. Israel has told the civilians to leave, where exactly are they supposed to go, and how are they going to get there? It seems that the poor and disabled are just doomed to die because they don't have the means to get out of the way of the Israeli hurricane.
I donated money to the International Federation of the Red Cross because I wanted to help the Red Cross provide for the hundreds of thousands of refugees that Israel has created.
Where do we go from here? We need an immediate cease-fire. We need to find a way for Israel to declare victory and go home before things get any worse. Israel has backed itself into a PR corner. It can't win and it can't stop the bombing until it wins, maybe it should just admit that this latest adventure was a mistake. Hezbollah needs to give the soldiers back, and it needs to agree to be disarmed or it at least needs to be integrated into the Lebanese army.
This whole thing just strikes me as so sad and so pointless. I really think that Hezbollah would have been disarmed sooner had it not been for this whole mess. Lebanon was beginning to have a real, vibrant economy and functioning political infrastructure. The militants were getting weaker. It was all going in the right direction. I just don't believe that Israel's actions, however justified, will bring it the peace it says it wants.
As a final note, I'll share this analogy that I came up with while lying in bed this morning. Israel and Hezbollah are like two kids fighting in the back seat of a car. Hezbollah (the little sibling) keeps poking Israel, so finally Israel (the older sibling) reacts and starts beating the crap out of Hezbollah. Mom (the UN) in the passenger seat screams at the kids to stop fighting, and dad (the US) stands up for the older sibling saying that maybe this time the Hezbollah will learn it's lesson. Eventually dad is going to have to pull over and pull the kids apart. I know it's flawed, as all analogies are, but I thought it fit anyway.
I leave for the desert in a week. I'll be totally out of touch with the outside world for almost 4 weeks. I'm looking forward to it.