Or, "How in the the hell did Israel manage to gin up sympathy for the Devil?"
In which a nonexistent “International Force” becomes the empty vessel into which everyone pours their hopes and fantasies.
Reminds me of every “We’ll get a Database! And...and…and a Website!” discussion I’ve had clients and users over the years. The concepts themselves are meaningless syllables uttered by people who have no idea WTF they are talking about but do believe in The Majyks. They are the Conjure Words that will somehow summon forth a miraculous be-all, end-all, cure-all that will increase your market share and phallic dimension by 20%, help you lose that last 11 pounds, and cure both your rockin’ pneumonia and your boogie-woogie avian influenza.
Funny thing about that pathology is that there are two kinds of users – the ones that will pay you to tell them the truth, and the ones that’ll pay you to tell them what they want to hear and will fire your ass if you get within a parsec of the truth.
The latter will erode your soul, but will almost always pay much more lavishly (lying and denial being harder and much more demanding in the long run, even when you have the entire federal treasury to ransack.): the former keeps you in good with Dr. Karma but you’ll never get rich since half the time you’ll be called in by the survivors to splint up something that a previous swarm of locusts and users have fucked up for a premium price.
And that’s where we are now – nearing the bottom of the bust-out cycle. When all those crabby room-temp IQ dullards on the Right begin to wake up to the notion – vaguely, in a head-up-your-ass-darkly kind of way – that they been greased, fleeced and decreased (as the saying used to go) by the GOP poltroons they hired to tell them, “Hell Yes! A database and a website, a few easy, lucrative wars, coupla tax cuts and a little “process reengineering” will set everything to rights."
Now just sign this blank check here…and here…and here…and initial here…and give us your children and we’ll get right to work!
And now they are fucked, and will only have pfennigs to spend on fixing what they allowed to be gleefully smashed to bits in their name. And as mute-as-interstellar-vacuum as they have been as their Party raped and ruined this old world...that is exactly how loudly they will bitch about the price to fix it, and whine that we're not doing it right.
Things as of this moment (Monday) are shaking violently out of control: Israel has – in one day – agreed to and then violated a cease fire. Syria has gone on alert. Civilian deaths are piling up. And Bush is so freaked out that he has actually stopped wiping his ass with the UN and is now saying they need to do something.
So things on the ground have changed, but there were themes that emerged Sunday that are still relevant, so...
Fox News Sunday: As was true last week, you can tell that The Real has broken through in a hard, ugly way when actual reporters with microphones start the show reporting on actual news an arm’s length from death and misery from inside Lebanon. From Tyre, Lebanon and Kiryat Shmona, Israel.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns: Our next step is “to try to convince the UN” to send a force into Lebanon.
My my, how the worm has turned and flipped you off. Hey, why don’t we roll out that vintage Dubya rhetoric now, Burnsy?
Why don’t we just force the UN Bolton-style, bucko?
Or hey, why don’t we ask “the New Europe” for a hand? Or did you forget about Poland!!
Where’s your Messiah now?
I would be heartened if “looking into the abyss” had actually chastened these punk-assed Pinochets but it so clearly hasn’t. They will not take an ounce of responsibility for the wreck they have made, nor step away from the rhetoric of “critic = heretic” that keeps the pig people who prop up their party squealing with delight.
And they never will.
So fuck ‘em. Their sun is setting and the shadows are long, and when the accounting comes, we must demand that it be meted out in full, ferocious measure. Pegged to the exchange rate they themselves set: If a blowjob is worth an impeachment, surely lying, spying, denying and sending other people's kids out to do your dying is worth hard time in a stone room.
But I'll settle for trials. Endless, humiliating, public, splashy, mutual rat-out trials.
Hume: How do you have a cease fire without talking to the people on the other side of the border who are shoot at you?
Man, when Brit Hume is actually forced to ask reasonable questions you know the situation is so much worse than anyone is letting on.
Burns: But they’re Bad, Brit. Bad, bad Zoot! They’re Bad. They have to realize they’re Bad! And then they have to stop being Bad! Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!
Hume mumbles on the verge of asking the same question that – horrors! – Liberals have been asking now for the last 5 years
“Or…what?”
Perhaps a spanking!
Iran: You must spank Lebanon well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like... and then... spank me!
All: And me! And me too! And me!
Iran: Yes! Yes, you must give us all a good spanking!
Because, hey, that’s worked so fabulously so far.
Burns: The ceasefire has to be permanent and durable. We won’t talk to Hezbollah. And Israel won’t. Lebanon must.
Burns: This has not been a good 2.5 weeks for Hezbollah. Militarily.
Burns (In a voice not unlike a creepy little sot trying to convince the woman who dumped him of his staggering popularity): There are a number of countries who have expressed an interest in joining an International Force.
Hume: What, are you shitting me? “A number”?
Burns: Yes. Several. Lots. Scads.
Hume: Who?
Burns: Ohhhh. Lookit the shiny object! All you need for a force line this based on our experience in Afghanistan. Lookit!
Afghanistan? You’re using Afghanistan as your sterling example of how to Get It Right?
Uh-oh.
Burns: Hezbollah cannot profit militarily from this.
One needs to understand that when Burns says that “Hezbollah cannot profit militarily from this” he omits two crucial words from his oratory –
“…be allowed…”
Much to our horror, and thanks to that confluence of insanity, ideology, arrogance and incompetence that we call “Neocon” in English, Hezbollah is clearly already profiting from this, and so Burns is reduced to waiving his Erectiley Dysfunctional Saber around on behalf of his Electorally Malfeasing Party and asserting, in so many words, that “This Shall Not Stand.”
As another GOP Tickle-Me-Gitmo Doll uses whats left our nation’s credibility as POTUS’ Port-a-Potty.
And who, exactly, Ambassador Burns, is going to disallow Hezbollah from doing whatever it pleases?
Us?
Israel?
Jebus?
Who exactly?
And as to this meta-theme of “we’re not gonna even talk about a cease fire until we get a just and lasting peace first” I have two words:
Ko-Rea.
Fifty-three years ago the Korean cease-fire was signed. It was signed without all the details worked out, and without a perfect plan for peace ready to be slotted into place.
For fifty-three years a technical state of war has existed between the North and South.
Fifty-three years of tension and antagonism and aggravation…but no mass graves. No mushroom clouds. No more tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans dead on the other side of the world.
Who in their right minds thinks that that was a bad idea? That we should have waited for perfection before seizing the possible.
And two more words: Benjamin Franklin.
“There never was a good war, or a bad peace."
And then Presidential Medal of Honor Winner and Archfuckup L. Paul Bremer breezes his pocket square and manicure to Fox to hold forth on Iraq, because only on Fox would Bremer be Rolodex Guy Number One when it comes to that debacle.
Shorter Bremer: Nothing was my fault. The military screwed it all up.
We had enough troops to stop the looting – 40,000 – but the troops were never give orders to stop it. THAT was the real mistake.
The strategy (for those who were not paying attention) is for 3,700 new soldiers (And add “Drawdown = more troops” to the long sad Bush “War is Peace” lexicon) to “disarm the militias”. Forcefully.
Going block-by-block, kicking in doors?
Yes.
Going after the Sadr Brigades that way?
Yes.
Are you out of your fucking MIND?
Yes.
Bremer on Ricks’ book – “Fiasco” – wherein you, L. Paul, are taken to the woodshed:
“There was no Iraqi army to disband.”
But there was a structure. There were people with uniforms and guns.
No. There was no Army to “disband”. They all just went home. There was nothing we could have done about it.
Later…
The Army was Bad. Like Zoot. Bad. And “recalling” the Army would have been a disaster.
Shorter: We didn’t recall the Army because they were Bad like Zoot...but there was no Army to begin with...and there was nothing whatsoever we could have done.
Bremer: The “real” problem is that we did not have a military plan to defeat the insurgency.
Just my musing, you understand. I would never wish actual harm on another, but the next asswipe who starts braying that “Liberals hate the military” seriously needs to be garroted with L. Paul Bremer's Medal Of Freedom sash.
On Face The Nation -- Real News again. Lara Logan in Tel Aviv.
Lebanon kicks Condi to the curb...
The Prime Minister of Lebanon.
And Shimon Perez. – We don’t want anything from Lebanon but good relations. Lebanon is a great nation. But they are being held hostage by evil men. Hezbollah is cynical -- they targets civilians and they hide among civilians
Q: Aren’t you concerned that this may wreck the Lebanese government which is already very fragile?
A: A government…governs. But if a government has no influence on its own lands then it is not a government.
Me: A linebacker tackles, but the infant he was 22 years ago crawls. Do not mistake one for the other and demand that a baby bench-press 400 lbs, or you’ll end up with a lot of stupid homilies and crushed babies.
On This Week...: Mohamad Chatah -- Prime Minister of Lebanon’s Senior Advisor.
Cliffs Notes Version:
Q: Hezbollah is using children as a shield.
A; Israel is using self defense as a shield.
Followed by Nicholas Burns...trying to genially unpack his Majyk International Force conjure words on the desk like Ed Wynn's sidewalk pitchman character hawking ties and thread
in "One for the Angels".
Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon: The War Crimes are Hezbollahs, not ours. It is unfortunate. It is tragic. But with Hezbollah, cease-fire = reloading.
On the Panel...
George Will: We’re facing a cascade of events reminiscent of 1914.
Fareed Zakaria: The idea that you could eliminate Hezbollah is ridiculous. It makes not sense. Ask yourself this question – is Hezbollah stronger or weaker today than they were six weeks ago? They are gaining sympathy. They are getting allies. The are coming off as heroic.
driftglass: Counting coup on Israel has always been the path to power and prestige. They are the Scary House on the block, and if you want to stand tall in your clique, you hop the fence, bust a window, and get away with it. Arafat dined out on that trick for forty years.
Zakaria: We continue to misjudge the importance of public opinion in this region of the world.
Draw down? Noooo. And we are sending more troops into Baghdad. Because the capitol city of the country we conquered three years ago is still not under control.
Zakaria: We are now quite close to deciding that the
Will: Worse than dysfunctional. A case can be made that the Interior Ministry is a terrorist organization.
Jay Carney : And this government was the last, best hope.
Carney: There are so many issues which are bad for Republicans, but the war is everything.
Zakaria: If I were a Democrat, I’d make up a campaign commercial makde up of nothing Donald Rumsfeld’s press conferences. It’s not just that he’s wrong; it’s like he’s living in a parallel universe. Like he’s slightly deranged. Living in a different world, not just a different country.
Well Thank God Rummy still has the unwaivering support of the Junior Senator from Connecticut.
On Meet The Press: Andrea Mitchell in Jerusalem. With Tim Russert “shouting” to her for some reason? No volume control on the tin-cans-on-a-string they use at NBC I guess.
Richard Engel – on-the-scene reporting of the death of children.
God forgive our fucked up species.
Permanent Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman: Hezbollah is everywhere. Not just in the South. “You cannot distinguish between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanese society.” Those were the words of the leaders of Lebanon. That’s why we must attack to the North. We must go after their supply lines. We may be doing the dirty work, but we’re doing this on behalf of the rest of the world. On behalf of Civilization.
Gillerman: What would you want us to do? What would you do if it was you? If Miami were bombed from Cuba? If Chicago were bombed? These people are taught and raised to hate us. We have no quarrel with the Lebanese people. Or the Syrian people. But these people must rid themselves of the monster they have let run amok in their societies.
Gillerman: We never target civilians, but when civilians die as a result of our actions, we apologize. I have never heard anyone on the other side apologize for anything. Because it’s OK to kill Jews.
There’s a lot to agree with in what he said. And I genuinely don’t know what I would do if I lived in a country where my neighbors were trying to kill me and were quite open and aggressive about.
What I do know is, a big man can’t win a long fight. It doesn’t matter how many times the little prick in the corner calls you out and talks shit about your mother, if you’re a head taller and 100 lbs heavier you get about two minute and three or four punches to lay the little fucker out, and then the crowd starts to turn on you. And the more he keeps getting up, the more “Rocky” they see in him.
It’s not fair. It’s just true.
Lebanese Ambassador Nouhad Mahmoud: Not since Rick Santorum’s bravura fucktard fall-apart on “This Week...”, or Josh Bolten, pooping himself over his boss’ ludicrous position on stem cell research, have I seen a man so uncomfortable with his own Party and Party Line.
I can’t tell whether it’s a language thing, or if Hezbollah militiamen have his kids tied up in a basement with a gun to their heads, but here is a man who throws syllables around like gold bricks and sounds like he must have had his molars replaced with tungsten to prevent himself from grinding them to powder.
Then...Flathead Tom. Oh joy!
Let’s take that up in Part 2, shall we?
