Saturday, July 22, 2006

Let's Side With Israel and Say We Didn't

The New York Times reports that today that the U.S. is " rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon."

From NYT's David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper:
The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah. [Italics added.]

This paragraph contains a few interesting statements.

If we're supplying munitions to the Israelis in the middle of a shooting war, we don't appear to be aiding them, we are aiding them. And such actions don't threaten to anger Arab governments, they're a sure bet to anger Arab governments.

As to efforts on Iran's part to resupply Hezbollah, the source of that story appears to be Israel's Haaretz newspaper. Propaganda, you think?

Did Cloud and Cooper do any double-checking on this story, or did they just echo what their sources in the administration fed them?

Let's Take Sides and Say We Didn't

I won't make any judgments on whether or not we should be supporting Israel in this war, but you can't pitch in on one side--which we have done--and pretend that you're still neutral.

But that's precisely the kind of Rovewellian poppycock we're trying to pull. Condi Rice will be on her way to the region tomorrow to try to broker some kind of ceasefire. How in the world does she expect to be viewed as an honest broker when her country clearly favors one of the belligerents over the other? Maybe she'll try to tell everybody she didn't know about American sending Israel more bombs. That would be about as credible as anything else she can say.

Just when I think the Bush administration's conduct of foreign policy can't get one bit less cognizant, it proves me wrong. The best way to describe the kind of diplomacy we're conducting right now is "negotiating into a fan," and the blowback will likely smell to high heaven.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

8 comments:

  1. Jeff, it boggles my mind. What boggles my mind even more is the fact that Americans (the majority of them including media) will not and cannot counter any of their gov'ts actions. Regardless of your side of the issue, I think this is blatantly wrong. Morally wrong. Even Israelis question the use of all this warfare against Hezbollah to be effective. Do you think that this is an intended indirect provocation that is supposed to draw Iran out into the open so as to have the perfect excuse for going to war? Do you think that this whole orchestration of 'we'll provoke them they'll no doubt bite, and then we attack, give it a few days, Hezbollah will response and then we can go to war in Lebanon..' what do you think? I am getting more and more concerned about the bigger picture, of which this whole conflict is just a small part of. It really bothers me to no end..but then, I shouldn't. At least I won't have to worry about any precision bombing (and we all know how effective that can be)..
    Ingrid

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  2. Well, I think it all depends how many people really want World War III (or IV or V or VI, however you're counting.)

    Newt does. Bill Kristol does. Plenty of writers in the "mainstream" conservative periodicals do.

    Will they get their way?

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  3. Anonymous7:11 PM

    Facinating. IDF buys precision guided bombs from us. We buy 33 million+ rounds of small arms ammunition from Israel for the Iraq fiasco. Nice arrangements.

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  4. Anonymous11:23 AM

    Didn't Israel already get a large shipment of bunker busters? Did they run out already? Nice that they have such a good appetite.

    God how can these people in the WH think they are doing any kind of diplomacy? They haven't done a damn thing but stay silent and ship bombs for 6 years.

    Roadmap for Peace my eye...more like Roadmap to Disaster

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  5. More like driving around without a map at all to me.

    I'd so rather see us do nothing than the kinds of things we've done the past five plus years.

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  6. Anonymous8:08 PM

    Odd, I'm a Canadian and I didn't get the impression the Bush administration is "pretending" to be neutral. I don't think your President could have made it any clearer which side he is backing.

    And what does "angering" the Arab Governments have to do with the price of eggs in China? Unlike the terrorist organizations Saudi Arabia and her sister governments are guided by self-interest not emotion. If you're on the winning side you will have them as allies.

    And if you're on the losing side it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference how they feel about you.

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  7. Losing friends and alienating people isn't supposed to be the point of diplomacy.

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  8. Rovewellian! Love it. Glad I wasn't drinking at the time, it woulda come out my nose.

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