Bombastards. Israel’s hysterical use of largely U.S. supplied firepower continued unchecked this week, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the prison known as Gaza and raining destruction on a virtually defenseless Lebanon. On this side of the pond, pundits, ex-pols, and talking heads of every stripe are blathering their support of the indefensible. Long discredited ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich joined fellow armchair reactionaries Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity in describing this as World War III. (Hallucinogenic neo-con Michael Ledeen took time out from lobbying for war with Iran to announce the advent of something he calls “World War IV” – did I miss something?) Meanwhile, from his impregnable pillbox in the editorial pages of hundreds of U.S. newspapers – a safe distance from the fighting, to be sure – Chuck Krauthammer fulminated about how Israel is fighting for its life… though how a resistance organization of maybe 1,000 full-time fighters with second hand munitions can pose an existential threat to the world’s 4th most powerful military state (one with perhaps 300 nuclear weapons) is a bit of a mystery, frankly. 

The U.S.’s position on this severe breach of the peace is clear – let the killing continue. Presidential spokesman and First Cousin Tony Snow told reporters that the president was not in favor of a cease fire that would leave Hezbollah in place, a sentiment later echoed by Secretary Rice. True to the traditional American position regarding Israel, we have blocked any meaningful action by the Security Council. So much for the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy in the Middle East. How many times have we heard junior babble on about how democracies don’t attack their neighbors? Well, the Israeli democracy is now destroying what was recently hailed by the administration as a budding democracy in Lebanon, effectively ensuring that the dominant political force in southern Lebanon, whether Hezbollah or some successor, will be even more hostile towards Israel. Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel is busily attacking the democratically elected Hamas government, killing its constituents and kidnapping its ministers – essentially an escalation of its ongoing policy since the “disengagement” from Gaza. Clearly our support for democracy is based more on outcomes than on principles. No surprises there. 

Admiral Krauthammer’s second column of the week lamely attempted to frame Israel’s action in Lebanon as similar to the U.S. expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. That’s probably the most ass-backwards analysis I’ve heard yet this year. If anyone here resembles Saddam Hussein’s wehrmacht it’s the IDF, unleashing the full fury of its arsenal on a far weaker nation, targeting civilian infrastructure, and killing hundreds of non-combatants so far. Not the first time, either. Furthermore, Hezbollah is anything but a foreign occupier of southern Lebanon, much as it may serve the neo-con paradigm to paint them as terror legions under orders from Tehran and Damascus. Hezbollah is an indigenous political organization deeply rooted in Lebanon’s Shi’a community, the nation’s single largest religious group comprising 40 percent of Lebanon’s population. Like Hamas, they are an Islamist group that has both political and military wings, and provides some level of basic services to a population that has been neglected by its own government and battered by the Israelis. It is Israel that is the invader, and it is they who will ultimately be driven out — now or ten years from now. 

Oh…. and Iraq is going septic. But lucky for Rumsfeld, now there’s another major conflict squeezing it off of the front page.  

Hats off, friends – Uncle Dick Cheney, president of these here United States, came to my home town this Friday to do a fundraiser for a local GOP geek who’s running for an open seat in the House of Representatives. The visit has generated a range of reactions, from expressions of delight at what an honor it is for Utica to host such an illustrious guest (like that nice general Pinochet… oh, and Mrs. Pinochet!) to a fair-sized protest march and rally (see www.creepyveep.com for details). Personally, I’m glad that this 300 pounds of condemned veal in a gray suit (as Gore Vidal so aptly described him) is going out of his way to endorse the Republican in this district’s first truly competitive congressional race in a quarter century. Cheney is a political leper, quite frankly, even less popular than his mutant ninja boss; a clip of him saying what a great congressman Ray Meier would make is just the kind of free advertising the opposition needs. 

Many people ascribe a kind of satanic darkness to this bloated object, but I have to say that I agree with Alex Cockburn on Cheney – he’s largely a fuck up, and thick as a plank. I mean, when has he gotten anything right? If it weren’t for the fact that there is, in essence, no opposition party and that the corporate press is a pack of subservient curs, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld would have been out on their incompetent asses a long time ago. As it is, the vice president is now probably the most despised politician in America. Pity he’s running the country, really. I mean, the guy is so lame that even Vladmir Putin — VLADMIR PUTIN, for chrissake! — got a laugh line out on him the other day. I always think of that day down in Mississippi when Cheney was doing a post-Katrina photo op in his shirt sleeves and some guy shouted, “Fuck yourself, mister Cheney!” Probably the high point of his presidency… I mean, VICE presidency. Well… I suppose that would beat Bush’s high point — catching a big fish in his private pond. These boneheads could wreck the entire American empire simply by strolling through it. 

Speaking of the empire, things are really going septic just lately. If some kind of imperial order does exist, there is currently no one at the helm. Israel is pounding the living hell out of Gaza and Lebanon at the same time, while Hizbullah (in Lebanon) is vowing all out war on Israel in retaliation. They are, of course, a Shi’ite organization, and attacks on them will ripple through the majority population of Iraq, as well as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Probably 100-150 million Shi’ia Muslims in the world, and I can’t think that very many of them are happy to see clerics’ homes being flattened and their children beheaded by Israeli munitions. Our official response? Israel has the right to offend itself. Did I get that right? Oh, yeah… a good offense is the best defense, right? So our way of helping is by lecturing the victims. That’s the stuff, Bolton. You tell ’em. 

This is getting pretty scary. That’s all I’ve got. Hang in there, folks. And keep your heads down. 

As you know, the North Koreans launched their deadly ICBM this week — the one our entire political office-holding class has been obsessing about for weeks on end. Turns out the missile that was supposed to be capable of reaching the U.S. couldn’t even make it to North Korea. Essentially the same thing happened back in the 1990s – dud missile makes world headlines and puts NORAD on high alert for a fortnight. Why is this treated like a credible threat to our very survival? Yes, North Korea may have nuclear weapons, but what the hell are they going to do with them? Even if that long-range missile worked, they couldn’t put their nukes on it… and even if they could, firing one at us or our allies would be like firing a pistol at a machine gun nest — a “suicide weapon” in the truest sense of the phrase. It is strange that we tend to behave as though we are threatened by these impoverished societies when, in fact, it is we who pose an existential threat to them. And we’ve demonstrated our willingness to attack without provocation.

Unfortunately, this tendency towards jingoistic alarmism is unlikely to change should Congress flip back to the Democrats this year, or if a Dem is elected to the presidency in 2008. There is a bipartisan consensus on this idiocy such that the party that’s out of power is always pushing the ruling party towards more extreme measures. Just as Kerry criticized Bush in 2004 for not hitting Fallujah hard enough, mainstream Democrats regularly chastise the administration for being too soft on Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc. Everybody wants to go for the “tough” guy routine – it’s a no-brainer in an election year (quite literally). Some of the stuff I hear Hillary Clinton saying is enough to make me want to picket her office and burn her publicity photo. You’d think a Senator would feel it less necessary to hew to a reactionary line in a state that’s one of the nation’s most liberal. Trouble is, she really believes that trash she’s talking, aging Goldwater girl that she is. 

When you’ve got support for the Iraq war at well below 50%, you have to wonder why so many Democrats are avoiding the issue like a new strain of the SARS virus. Why is a conservative Dem like John Murtha among the only ones saying anything substantive about this conflict? My guess is that they’re looking around the next electoral corner. They, in essence, are still trying to inoculate themselves against being on the wrong side of a victorious campaign, just as they tried to do during the 2002 election. Many, I’m sure, still believe in this war in as much as they think it is a worthy cause that’s being ineptly handled, rather than a bankrupt enterprise that is bad for Iraq and bad for us. About the only ones who still love this war are Dubya’s crew and Osama. 

Hey – both need recruits, right?