It's been a while since I've heard any updates on this story, but the State of Israel should not give an inch in any negotiations with the Hezbollah terrorists. It should not release any Arab criminals in exchange for its own three captured soldiers, despite domestic pressure from within Israel to do so.

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal, yesterday September 16th when this interview took place.

San Diego University's Associate Professor of Religion, Khaleel Mohammed, PH.D is a controversy magnet. Born in the South American republic of Guyana and educated at Montreal's McGill University, Professor Mohammed is a Muslim who believes Israel belongs to the Jews. Indeed, Professor Mohammed even references the Koran to support this claim. In an interview with FrontPageMagazine.com two years ago, he cited this passage:

The Koran in Chapter 5: 20-21 states quite clearly: `Moses said to his people: O my people! Remember the bounty of God upon you when He bestowed prophets upon you, and made you kings and gave you that which had not been given to anyone before you amongst the nations. O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God has written for you, and do not turn tail, otherwise you will be losers.'"

We should prepare to go on the offensive.  Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria.  The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine.  We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us.  We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."~~David Ben-Gurion, May 1948

I have been stunned by many things on the US political scene since I was jerked violently awake on Nov. 22, 1963.   However, one thing that simply flew under the cuckoo's nest of my awareness was the total influence on our Congress; the control of our media, our courts, our universities, our entire society -- even our religion -- by the state of Israel. I had no idea.

There's something about Bush declaring a smackdown of Hezbollah that reminds me of the Pharoah Ramses II and his truthiness version of the battle of Qadesh. In 1273, Ramses declared victory over the Hittites despite massive Egyptian casualties and the loss of Syria. Lo and behold, as Bush does his hamster dance of hegemony, here comes Hezbollah's announcement of historic, strategic victory.

Sometimes people commit suicide.  Sometimes they do it passively.   Sometimes they do it deliberately.   Sometimes it is over in an instant.   Sometimes it takes years.  Sometimes it is done out of anger, or desperation, or madness, or ignorance.   Sometimes it is a final defiant act in the face of untenable choices.   But one thing never changes.   It always hurts the people left behind.

When I think about the Hezbollah rockets and the Israel's recent decision to expand the fighting, they both strike me as suicidal, but in very different ways.  This brings to mind a third example very different from both of those two. 

In another example of the idiocy of using air war against targets mixed in a civilian population, Israel has announced a policy of bombing everything that moves.  

The Israeli military stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah militants in an area of southern Lebanon on Tuesday, dropping leaflets that warned people not to drive or their vehicles would be shelled.

Dateline, August 5, Baghdad:

200,000 flood the streets, shouting their backing for Hezbollah in downtown Baghdad.  Now Israel and the United States are being denounced in Iraq, while the U.S. has forced taxpayers to fund the Republican Administration's colossal, deadly civil war debacle.

It would seem as if every choice George Bush makes, every political decision, is the wrong one.  If he resigned today he no doubt would still go down in history as the worst White House resident in the history of the U.S.A.

I refer to George as the "White House Resident" as there is every reason to believe that Bush never legitimately won either presidential race.  The first time around the Supreme Court gifted the presidency to him.  

AFP/File/Nicholas Asfouri

A crime of immense proportions that will now see more blowback. That is, unless people of conscience stand up to this terrorism on all sides, and soon.

Doctors Without Borders In Southern Lebanon

July 25, 2006

Christopher Stokes, MSF Director of Operations:

Relief materials needed in south Lebanon, but supplying is almost impossible

Listen to full report [mp3 - Running time 3:06]

Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Director of Operations, Christopher Stokes, describes over the phone from Beirut what he has seen traveling to the south of Lebanon and back.

When an unplanned event happens once, it can rightly be considered an accident.

56 Die in "Mistake" at Qana.

Mistake kills Four UN Observers.

Fleeing Civilians Hit by Mistake.

US Bomb Hits Wrong House by Mistake.

US Bombs Wedding Party by Mistake.

Bombing Mistake takes 14 lives.

US Bomb Kills Adghan Civilians by Mistake.

US Bombs Journalists by Mistake.

Canadian Soldiers Bombed by Mistake.

US Bombing Mistake Kills Afghan Civilians.

To paraphrase Ian Fleming, once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but when you kill the wrong people over, and over, and over, that's depraved indifference.  And it's time for it to end.

From the White House press briefing July 27:

Q In terms of world opinion, you keep saying the "what if" game, if it seems as though the strategy is to isolate Hezbollah. Is there a risk with the United States and Israel gets isolated in terms of world opinion by not saying, let's cut the shooting now, cut the rockets now, and work it out? I hear what you're saying about --

MR. SNOW: Let me counterpose.  &nb sp; There's an even greater danger that if the U.S. looks ineffective in doing this, that you not only have a loss in terms of world opinion, but credibility.  And you cannot -- we've said it many times, you cannot run foreign policy on the basis of public opinion polls.    Quite often there are perceptions that people may get from fractional coverage of the situation that don't expose the real realities on the ground.    We are in very constant consultation with people in the region to try to find out exactly what the facts are.

The AP reports:

"Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an 'anti-Semite' for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel. ... 'The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite,' the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. 'We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion dollars bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah.'"

As the Washington Post reports, Maliki "declined to disavow his critical comments on Israel's incursion into Lebanon or denounce Hezbollah's killing and kidnapping of Israeli troops that precipitated the fighting, handing Democrats a wedge that they eagerly used." In addition, President Bush's "promise to fortify troop presence in Baghdad virtually foreclosed major troop withdrawals before November's midterm election."

Tonight at 7 PST and 10 EST, Link TV will be doing another special edition of Mosaic.  Mosaic is a really cool show that brings together news segments from all over the Middle East.

The diary below was originally posted earlier today on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

In July 1947, George F. Kennan published an article in the quarterly edition of Foreign Affairs entitled "Sources of Soviet Conduct." Kennan originally drafted the article as a paper for Defense Secretary James Forrestal. When he submitted it to Foreign Affairs, Kennan used the moniker "Mr. X." The piece was known as "containment" and is credited with guiding American foreign policy under presidents of both parties during the cold war.

The following paragraph appeared on the International Page of the New York Times in its July 18, 2006 issue in its coverage of the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia:

"After a day in which aides stressed they had achieved international unity here on the Middle East violence, Mr. Bush complained about Mr. (Kofi) Annan's approach to the crisis and for holding a view of many leaders here that Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah should cease fire and hash out their differences.   The Americans have said that Israel will probably stand down only if Hamas and Hezbollah return the soldiers they have captured and cease the shelling of small Israeli towns.

"'I don't like the sequence of it,' Mr. Bush said.  `His attitude is basically cease fire and everything else happens.'"

Bush apparently does not mind the bloodshed just as long as the blood isn't his own.  Just think back a few years in what now seems like an eternity to what life was like in the United States before Bush.