From what I understand, coordinating anything with any other nation by an American is treason. Or did I miss something in Civics class? But consider the source. How would al-Jazaeera know?
Still, the perception created by such stories has disastrous ramifications. ...
Via Siege of LebanonAl-Jazeera released a story entitled, "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)."
The story reads: "It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney [the true president of this "administration".] The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country."
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Al-Jazeera: Cheney Okayed Israeli Invasion
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2 comments:
Hello Cynic Librarian,
I am a daily reader of Glenn's site and you were always my favorite commenter there. I don't like the new format and will not be posting there anymore. The thing that upsets me the most is that I no longer have access to some of the links you posted on prior threads. I had worked my way through about half of them and was slowly going back and opening your comments to get the others which I intended to read. Oh well....
One thing you wrote on Glenn's blog today really got to me and made me very depressed. It's the comment you put about the Israeli who advocated marching Hezbollah prisoners through the streets in their underwear.
Sounds like a little thing compared to death, maiming, mayhem, destroyed families and ruined lives.
But I had read that the tactics that Cheney, Rumsfeld et al were using at Gitmo and the foreign black op torture chambers worldwide were originally devised by Israeli military intelligence experts.
The one that's most disgusting to me is the attempt to humiliate other human beings. It reflects a warped view of life that has a deep rooted hostility for the very concept of human dignity.
I saw pictures in the National Enquirer of Sadaam in his underwear in his cell and even though I have nothing but moral indignation for a despot like Sadaam, I still found those pictures very objectionable.
It was the humiliation aspect of Abu Graib that kept me up nights crying because I never thought Americans would do something like that.
If this is something that the Israeli people go along with as opposed to being a particularly ugly aspect of the values of their military leaders, then I would conclude that's not a nation state that any longer has a claim to the very thing that the world most respected about Israelis: the compassion that they were thought to have because of the brutality to which they themselves (as a religious people) had been subjected.
I was glad that was the section you put in bold print on Glenn's blog. That indicates to me you have that same abhorrence for the depravity of wanting to humiliate other human beings that I do. BTW it is that aspect of your own sense of life that I always enjoyed most in your posts on Glenn's blog.
I'm glad you exist. I learn a lot from you and find you an inspiring human being.
nomad, Thank you for your comments. I agree with you about the desire to humiliate and degrade the Hezbollah prisoners--this will only inflame the perception among many Arabs/Moslems that Israelis think of them as non-humans.
How the US can abide by these tactis I don't know. There's something deeply unsettling to me in thinking that many Americans find such behavior acceptable.
Is this because we have come to think of life as some form of consumer product that those who have get to enjoy and exploit more than those who do not have? I know that's a rhetorical-sounding question but it is not meant to be. I firmly believe that we are products of the various social, cultural, and economic factors that comprise our everyday life.
The current capitalist system seems to promote a valuation of life in purely quantitative terms. All morality is reduced to the abstract values of money.
That the Israelis should have adopted this way of valuing others is, as you note, beyond fathoming since their history of persecution and humiliation would lead you to think that their suffering would have wounded them so deep they could not resort to such inhumanity.
I think that Kierkegaard has talked about this best. Ethics is an individual project--they cannot be taught on a mass scale but must be gone through by every individual in every generation.
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