Hassan M. Fattah and Steven Erlanger report for the New York Times that “President Bush rebuffed a Lebanese request that he push Israel for a cease-fire.”
In St. Petersburg, Russia, where President Bush arrived today for a weekend meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight major industrial nations, the White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that Mr. Bush had spoken with Lebanon’s prime minister, Fouad Siniora, but would not press Israel for a ceasefire.
Mr. Bush “believes the Israelis have the right to protect themselves, and that in doing so they should limit as much as possible so-called collateral damage, not only to facilities but also to human lives,” Mr. Snow said.
Right.
Asked specifically if Mr. Bush would call for a ceasefire, Mr. Snow said, “No. The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel.”
Other world leaders condemned Israel’s actions. Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France said that Israel appeared to “wish to destroy” Lebanon. Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, said that “all sides should immediately end their military actions” as a “starting point for resolving all other problems.”
Since Bush won’t do it, I wonder if another world leader will emerge as the peace broker?
Update: What Billmon says:
There is something qualitatively different about the latest cycle of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although I’m having trouble in my own mind hanging a label on it.
Maybe it’s the fact that the Israelis have more or less abandoned the pretense that they’re fighting specific “terrorist” groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and are openly waging war on the Palestinian people (and now the Lebanese people) as a whole.
Maybe it’s because the proximate triggers for the current fighting — the Palestinian raid on an Israeli outpost on the Gaza frontier and Hezbollah’s ambush of an Israeli patrol just inside the Israeli border — were both military attacks against legitimate military targets, instead of explicit acts of terrorism, like the 2000-2001 Palestinian suicide bomb offensive. This suggests a major change in both tactics and capabilities (although terrorism, in the form of rockets randomly shot into Israeli towns and cities, obviously remains a key part of the Hezbollah and Hamas arsenals)
Maybe it’s simply the speed and scale of the escalation, which has progressed from a limited incursion in the Gaza Strip to the wholesale dismantling of the Hamas government to a full-scale blockade of Lebanon in just two weeks. If the Israeli expectation was that an initial display of overwhelming force would send a message to the other side that there are red lines that must not be crossed, then the operation has already failed. Indeed, the other side has sent some surprising messages of its own — one of which landed yesterday in downtown Haifa.
If I had to pin it down, I would say the big difference between this crisis and similar past episodes is how completely off balance the Israelis seem to be — lurching from reaction to reaction without any clear plan or strategy. The Gaza incursion was thrown together, more or less on the fly, which led to some embarrassing public squabbling within the Israeli cabinet. The attempt to decapitate Hamas’s civilian leadership by arresting the entire Palestinian cabinet smacked of improvisation, and largely failed. Hezbollah’s intervention clearly took Jerusalem by surprise, which is probably why the response has been so disproportionate: the Israelis are rather desperately trying to regain the initiative.
There’s more at Whiskey Bar.
Peace broker? Why hasn’t anyone called for a “peace broker” over the years as Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations have relentlessly attacked innocent Israeli citizens? Seems like we all ignore the daily terror Israel lives with but rise up in arms when they fight back.
I applaud Bush and any other leader who understands the Israeli right to defend themselves.
RR.
Israel is America’s darling child. Therefore they can do no wrong. Bush and the GOP are too indebted to the religious right to act honestly and without bias. It’s a small wonder that Bush thinks the World Trade Center was attacked arbitrarily in a need to express evil. I have a suspicion that it goes deeper than that.
God bless America, and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
The Real Republican, pretty soon that willl sound alot like – “Hey look at me, I am gay!” Better keep that to yourself, anyone proclaiming to be a Republican these days, dying breed… Like the dinosaur, you too will become extinct.
If there were no George W. Bush, would there be a Middle East crisis, unrest, civil war? Peace-Broker, no our great ‘Decider’ certainly is not… bring it on!!!
Tom R.
Atlanta GA
Nostradamus predicts the end of the world (World War III) instigated and initiated by a leader in a blue turbin… he is close, the guy is actually in a big ‘White House’ and wears cheap blue suits…
Bring it on!!! Cowboy politics, now that’s winning strategy!
Tom
Atlanta GA
I applaud Bush and any other leader who understands the Israeli right to defend themselves.
Well, you gotta give him credit for the accuracy of his handle..sounds like a real republican to me.
Tom, liberals have been claiming the GOP is a dying breed for 30 years now, but we’ve won five out of the last seven Presidential elections. The predictions don’t seem to be going so well for you.
Nor is your ignorance to the Middle East. This “crisis” has been going on since Muslims invaded jewish land in 400BC, invoking the Jewish Despora. Like I said, Israel pulled out of Lebanon. They pulled out of Gaza. They released prisoners. They’ve been the most willing component for peace talks. Yet the suicide attacks on innocent Israelis continued. At what point do you let them defend themselves? Or is it politically incorrect to fight back against a muslim state now?
Why hasn’t anyone called for a “peace broker†over the years as Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations have relentlessly attacked innocent Israeli citizens?
So, RR, did you just hatch out of an egg last week? You never heard of the Oslo Agreements? The Wye River Memorandum? The Wye River negotiations were the ones King Hussein of Jordan went out of his way to attend even though he was dying, so there was one peace broker for you, although I believe President Clinton was the one who really busted his butt trying to work out a peace agreement.
And before that there were the Camp David Accords, which were cited by the Nobel Peace Prize committee when it awarded the 2002 prize to Jimmy Carter.
Nations do have a right to defend themselves, but there’s doing it smart, and there’s doing it stupid, and righties like you can never see the difference. Right now, IMO, Israel is doing it stupid and will come to regret what it’s doing now.
Tom, liberals have been claiming the GOP is a dying breed for 30 years now
I don’t believe that’s true, except in righties’ overheated imaginations. Liberals are all too aware that for the past 35 years the GOP has been mopping the floor with us, politically, most of the time.
However, that’s a cycle that’s about run its course.
Truthfully, I’m not surprised you all are confused by this conflict, which is another element of the greater War on Terror. Liberals have been confused about peace since the ’60s.
Hoping evil in the world will leave you alone is a very dangerous proposition. Smoking weed in Berkeley will never stop the Hezbollahs of the world from killing the innocent.
So, RR, did you just hatch out of an egg last week? You never heard of the Oslo Agreements? The Wye River Memorandum?
You help make my point…how many times has the world tried to engage both sides in this fight and exercise peace? Many! And how many times has Israel stuck to these accords? Always!
And yet when terror organizations funded by these Lebanon and Palestinian state elements continue to operate, how many world leaders have condemed their actions? Very few!
We are so quick to condemn Israeli reaction, yet forget the years and years of provocation by these terror organizations.
I’m not surprised you all are confused by this conflict,
No, son, you are confused, and since everything you believe about liberals is a lie planted in your head by the VRWC, how would you know we are confused? You have no idea what we think.
You are welcome to continue lurking here, but I’m cutting off your commenting privileges. Commenting here is reserved for intelligent discussion.
RR, Maha…
RR, well said, and also welll documented… I stand corrected. It seems that we ‘Liberals’ are always righting a ship that gets steered into the rocks by the GOP. Always have, always will… This ship has been in the rocks for years, beached, and no incoming tide… that’s the GOP now my friend. When we get control (as is almost certain), we’ll again steer the ship off the rocks… Like Reagan and the S&L ‘Crisis’, that has/still is/hasn’t been paid off… $1.4 Trillion bailout… see – Resolution Trust Corporation, and Neil Bush… OOOppps there is that name again…
So, in a nutshell, when you let a Bush steer the ship, you are most assured to have your hull in the rocks… GOP…
Tom Russo
Atlanta GA
Nor is your ignorance to the Middle East. This “crisis†has been going on since Muslims invaded jewish land in 400BC, invoking the Jewish Despora.
Umm. not to be petty, but Islam wasn’t founded until after the advent of Christ….like maybe 400 AD.
I stand corrected. It seems that we ‘Liberals’ are always righting a ship that gets steered into the rocks by the GOP.
Pretty much. The GOP can politic up a storm but can’t govern its way out of a paper bag. A WET paper bag.
You help make my point…how many times has the world tried to engage both sides in this fight and exercise peace? Many!
No, YOUR point was to whine about how there haven’t been any peace brokers, when in fact (as you admit) that there have been many peace brokers. So, you agree that I am right and that your point was wrong.
And how many times has Israel stuck to these accords? Always!
Well, no. Among other things, Israel has has a history of bad faith regarding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories it agrees to dismantle and then, sorta kinda, doesn’t get around to it.
I think there is plenty of blame on several sides for what’s going on now. All claims that any group in this mess is just an innocent victim of some other group’s oppression and/or terrorism is bullshit.
And yet when terror organizations funded by these Lebanon and Palestinian state elements continue to operate, how many world leaders have condemed their actions? Very few!
Many have condemned their actions, but Israel at the moment is about to turn the entire Middle East into a bloodbath, possibly setting off World War III, over three captured soldiers. This has created a lot more condemnation because a lot more is at risk. Hezbollah’s actions were criminal, yes, but Israel’s are disproportionate.
Islam wasn’t founded until after the advent of Christ….like maybe 400 AD.
I looked it up; it was around 600 AD.
And of course RR is way confused about the diaspora, which began ca. 70 AD when the Romans burned the Temple. He’s confusing Romans with Muslims, which is quite a trick.
There was a diary on DKos yesterday, US Policy in Lebanon, containing a letter by someone who worked in the Middle East shortly after Israel was founded; he introduced himself like so:
“My first job for the CIA in the early 1950’s was establishing an informant network in the Palestinian refugee camps in Southern Lebanon — in a region where my ancestors had established Christian mission schools starting a century before…”
The letter begins:
“One of the definitions of madness is the repetition countless times of the same action, always expecting a different result. For more than half a century, the Israelis have been applying the tactic of massively disproportionate retaliation to every provocative act of resistance attempted by the Palestinians, expecting every time that this would bring peace and security to all the people of the Holy Land. Every single time they have done this this, it has backfired. Every single time.”
To RR and all those on the right who are slow to learn: Yes there is evil in the world (we agree on that), but there are intelligent and there are stupid ways to deal with it, as maha pointed out.
Peace is difficult to achieve in this region, but there have been people, times, and agreements that made it within reach. And as the diary above points out, there was relative peace in the area, between Jew and Arab, before the state of Israel was created. I’m not saying turn the clock back, I’m only saying that peace existed at this time. It’s not quite so simplistic as the “they’ve hated each other forever” cliche trotted out by the warmongers.
If peace is difficult but doable, the alternative is a massive war that only the most cruel and sociopathic want. They seem think that by turning this region into a bloodbath, that somehow our country will be safe, this puerile notion of “fight them there instead of here”. This type of thinking might’ve been valid in the middle ages, when travel and communication was difficult, but it makes no sense whatsoever in today’s integrated global village.
Or, the most childish warmongers think that somehow, evil will be conquered, once and for all, possibly by the arrival of Jesus, who of course is on Our Side. This latter notion reflects the appalling lack of self-reflection on the right, the unwillingness to see the evil in their own hearts, indeed the failure to acknowledge that all humans are a mix of good and evil, including themselves. It also ignores the historical tendency of tyrants to enlist God: the SS troops in WW2 had the phrase “God With Us” emblazoned on their belt buckles. God apparently was a no-show for that team.
What goes ’round comes around. Karma’s a bitch. Iraq has weakened us in many ways, and has inflamed the hatreds for us that already existed. Do you not think there are more people than ever plotting ways to get back at us, to destroy us? So much more do our enabling actions in this latest conflagration fuel our own demise.
All of this could be changed or at least ameliorated if our leadership were interested in peace, but blindly, they are not.
…actually what RR probably did was confuse Muslims with the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar, who distroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C., starting the first Diaspora. Missed the date by a century and the agent by a millenium…
…our ignorance of the Middle East?
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I’m not sure I totally agree with Billmon here. Oh, for sure the Israelis are screwed now, they’ve closed off nearly every option at this point… But it sounds like Billmon was saying the unilateral withdrawl strategy was always doomed to failure.
There, I disagree. What was doomed to failure was the relatively tiny withdrawl from just the Gaza Strip. They gave up control over territory and politics while at the same time maintaining most of the reasons why the Palestinians are pissed at the Israelis in the first place…
If they had done a complete unilateral withdrawl from Gaza AND the West Bank … that could have worked. Not immediately, no. But long term, that was about the only thing that WOULD have worked. It’s still possible, barely, to get there from where they are now … but it will take many years, at best.
-me
I think Israel is trying to escalate. Perhaps hoping that Hisbollah, Hamas or Al Queda will attack the U.S. and bring us into the fight.
They might want to do this before the Repubs lose control in Nov. or 2008. I smell a draft coming.
Wow, and I thought the Northern Irish Protestants were whacked for obsessing over a battle that happened 300 years ago. Now along comes a Real Republican (no argument here), to resurrect events from something-something BC (accurate numbers being to RR’s crowd, like, totally irrelevant, dude).
One of the many insane things about Al Qaeda is its failure to let go of the Crusades of the 1200s. So yeah, three cheers for Israel, for sinking (yet again) to the level of terrorist state, and destroying innocent lives out of what amounts to racism.
Am I the only liberal never to smoke weed at “Berkeley”?I hear righties say such things all the time, but I never got my liberal weed smoking invitation from” Berkeley” …it’s too late now,, but gosh 10 or 20 years ago I would have been” so there dude!”maybe we should load up all the terrorists and insane politicians and send em to “Berkeley” for a good old fashion stone fest…someone load those boys another bong hit!!!
I am sorry I know I should take RR seriously but his comment have to be a joke.. first of all if he were a real republican he would not approve of king georges latest conquest, he would not approve of the debt, and the sale of our debt to china,…”real” republicans are conservative… therefore a real republican would never applaud bush. RR has an identity crisis right off the bat.
And a “real republican” supporting mid east instability???LOL…stop before I spit soda thru my nose again!He is a real something alright, but it aint republican. These people don’t even know what their party is suppose to mean anymore… how could bongs in college be anyworse than being brainwashed?
And I love the straw man argument about nations having a right to defend themselves…I would be willing to bet he doesn’t feel that way about Iran or north korea… they don’t seem to have that right in rightie world… Like anyone ever suggested in the first place nations didn’t have a right to self defense?Not here that I can recall,, the rightie blogs have that covered.As I think Maha pointed out TWICE… once in the post and once spelled out for ya in the comments there is a right way and a wrong way to do things…this is the wrong way.
Why are righties so anti arab, anti muslim,anti thought?They accuse the left of wanting to hug arab extermists and ask them why they are angry…(I for one never got my liberal terrorist hugging card either…first no invite to the bong-a-thon,, and now this).. But on the right the mission seems to be some sort of arab ethnic cleansing thing…I really don’t think anything short will be enough for them.. do they know they are outnumbered like 20 to 1?Maybe that is what they fear?
Then the finger wagging and scolding!LOL I love that….”Don’t you know this is serious and we have to get these bad guys!!”DUH! So why did dear leader disband the unit looking for bin forgotten over a year ago and forget to tell us, then go on national tv and LIE saying the story was not true?People from that unit have come forward to say that it IS true…If anyone needs a reminder about the “bad guys” it is very much the right who seem to think it is ok to leave bin laden out there to plan another attack while we find revenge in Iraq for something no Iraqi was involved in. Perhaps REAL REPUBLICANS should get their shit together and remember who they are and we would be “defending our nation” by finding bin laden rather than butting in where we never belonged in Iraq..Nations lead by example, and now nations are following by example.. but never forget they can fall by example too…the instability that those on the right are calling for are setting us up for that fall.
Even Condi tried to tell Israel it was the wrong way,, and was suppose to have been told by Israel to “back off”..RR would be well served to listen to Condi before grabbing his pom-poms rather than listen to king george deliver his preprogrammed one liners.
I could go on but I have to go check my mailbox for some invites that seem to have gotten lost….Do I need to add my name to a list or something? LOL…Contact the Kos Gods?…LOL…
justme — don’t ask me; I didn’t go to “Berkeley,” either. I’m not sure I know anybody who did.
I missed the Summer of Love and Woodstock, too. 🙁
maha: I’ll cop to being a “Cal” alum, but I attended well past the decade that’s romanticized and demonized. Given its size, there was political activism across the spectrum, and the Cal Republicans were one of the largest groups on campus. So, to me, hearing people refer to Berkeley as some sort of master symbol of leftist hippies is a little bit funny.
justme: I think you’re comment about some of the right’s Arab ethnic cleansing mindset was totally & frighteningly correct. At least Rice, as you noted, is acting like somewhat of a realist in telling Israel to show restraint (I’m trying to find something hopeful in the situation).
I never smoked weed at Berkeley either. But I dropped some ass kickin’ Kryptonite at Mount Clemens Community College. I was wired for days.
Swami — yeah, we heard about those Mount Clemens Community College boys. Freakin’ far out. 🙂
Swami… you are going to put Mount Clemens on the map of top ten party schools with talk like that!…keep it up and the bush twins may enroll…
Temperance.. can you get us an invite to the party??? Just 5 more punches in my liberal events card and I get a badge
Sorry to comment so much but moonbat’s comment about “God is with us” or “Gott mit uns” made me think of a piece I read back in 2004 by Maureen Farrell (it took me this long to recall where I read it) here is a link.. I hope it works…
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/12/far04041.html
It is off topic from the post.. but on topic with the comments so I hope it is ok I mentioned it ..if not accept my apology and delete?
Maha, you gotta know I’ve been jonesin’ to get back and my computer has been actin’ up. The Mid East is being set on fire by God’s favorite people, fundies I know are freakin’ out because they say the “Tribulation” is at hand.
I’m wondering if Israel is hoping to draw the U.S. into their mess when one of our Naval vessels takes a silk worm hit while evacuating the 2,500 or so Americans from Beruit, and pins it on Iran. Looks like Israel made their oun “Clean Break” to secure the realm.
Real Republican is a fool, how can one even think about punishing the people of Lebanon for something that happened centuries ago?
Israel is guilty of collective punishment in both Lebanon and Palestine.This is the here and now, Lebanon is a democracy, throw the old testament out, screw the fire and brimstone, and cut all funding for Israel, least we be dragged into the fire also.
Remember the U.S.S. Liberty!!
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