three weeks ago if you would have told me that the u.s. could take it's current debacle in the middle east and make things even worse in such short a time, i wouldn't have believed you. but this unfortunately is what you get when you toss out the window the united states' traditional role of intermediary between israel and the arab world.
there's something a little odd about the backlash being set off by this particular incident. children have been killed by israeli raids since the beginning, largely because so many civilian areas have been hit. i have little doubt that among the 450+ civilian deaths over the past 20 days there were probably more than 17 or 22 or 50 (or whatever the final number is) dead children in that mix. but i guess the images of so many dead kids at once was the straw that broke the camel's back.
while i'm glad that the bush administration finally buckled down and demanded the israelis stop, they seem to have made sure to squeeze one more major screw-up out of this whole crisis. instead of convincing the israelis to announce a halt of their bombing campaign, condeleeza rice's spokesperson j. adam ereli announced the suspension. who came up with that brilliant idea? having the u.s. announce the suspension of an israeli military operation, only confirms the view that israel is nothing more than an american puppet. if they could get israel to agree to a halt, they should have also been able to get israel to utter those words themselves. doing it like this is beyond stupid, weaking both american and israeli credibility.
and then, just to add insult to injury, the israelis are now saying they will not halt their bombing in support of their ground offensive. in other words, they are still going to support their military operation in the south, they just won't bomb the rest of the country because that endangers civilian areas.
which begs the question why that wasn't israeli policy all along. i mean, if they could effectively support their operations against hezbollah without flattening south beirut, and a whole lot of lebanese villages, why exactly did they flatten whem in the first place? the distinction they're making now only makes the last 20 days of bombing even more cruel and unnecessary.
and if the u.s. could get israel to halt its overall bombing campaign, does that mean it okayed their continued ground offensive and bombing in the south? doesn't that completely undermine whatever damage control the bush administration hoped to get by announcing the halt? the bush administration should at least make a statement clarifying that point.
and i'm not even sure what to do with this.
i guess what i really find so shocking about the bush administration's bumbling incompetence on this issue is just how ignorant they still seem to be about the entire middle eastern region. i mean, we're seeing one miscalculation after the other, each one entirely predictable to anyone who is paying close attention to middle eastern politics. and yet this is an administration that has been engaged in arab politics for most of its five and a half years in office. don't they have a learning curve or something? do we really have to wait until 2009 to get some real grow-ups in charge?
UPDATE: billmon suggests that maybe the announced halt was just a ruse to make rice feel better and that the israelis have no intentions of stopping anything. if that's so then, at least, it would not make israel look like a complete american puppet. we shall see...
