Monday, July 24, 2006

US to Israel - "Kill 'em all!"

Actual headline: "U.S. won't push for immediate cease-fire"

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also participated in the Oval Office meeting before making a surprise visit to Lebanon on Monday in a show of support for that country's weakened democracy, which is struggling to contain the fighting between the Hezbollah militia and Israel.

"We all want to urgently end the fighting. We have absolutely the same goal," Rice told reporters traveling with her.


I think if we all had the same goal, then the position of the administration wouldn't be to let them keep fighting.

A White House spokeswoman, Eryn Witcher, would not comment on the Saudi proposal. She said Bush and the Saudis have "shared goals of helping the people of Lebanon and restoring sovereignty of the government of Lebanon and building stronger Lebanese armed forces."

I thought that the Lebanese people had elected members of Hezbollah to the government. How is that not sovereign? Oh, I forgot, we only like sovereignity when they elect people of whom we approve.

4 comments:

schmidlap said...

As much as I agree in priciple, I have to ask: what could the US realistically do to quell the fighting right now?

We have no credibility, so words of condemnation mean less than usual. Our troops are stretched past thin to the breaking point, so committing a bunch of them isn't really an option, and if we did, that would probably only fuel Arab resentment in the region further.

So, right now, today, what can the Adminstration do that wouldn't be an empty gesture?

drmagoo said...

We could stop sending more missiles to Israel.

And while our credibility worldwide is shot, we could, just for the hell of it, stop acting like jackasses, which could have the effect of starting our recovery sooner than January 2009.

schmidlap said...

You're right, cutting off the missile supply would be a good start.

But they have plenty in stock, and other toys too. So I still don't think there's much we can really do to stop this. You have a bunch of people there who are hell-bent on killing as many of the other team as possible, just for the sake of the killing. That's not the type of dispute that's easily mediated.

drmagoo said...

We could nuke Jerusalem and all other "holy" sites. That would stop a lot of the bitching.