Bombastards.

Bombastards. Israel’s hysterical use of largely U.S. supplied firepower continued unchecked this week, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the prison known as Gaza and raining destruction on a virtually defenseless Lebanon. On this side of the pond, pundits, ex-pols, and talking heads of every stripe are blathering their support of the indefensible. Long discredited ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich joined fellow armchair reactionaries Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity in describing this as World War III. (Hallucinogenic neo-con Michael Ledeen took time out from lobbying for war with Iran to announce the advent of something he calls “World War IV” – did I miss something?) Meanwhile, from his impregnable pillbox in the editorial pages of hundreds of U.S. newspapers – a safe distance from the fighting, to be sure – Chuck Krauthammer fulminated about how Israel is fighting for its life… though how a resistance organization of maybe 1,000 full-time fighters with second hand munitions can pose an existential threat to the world’s 4th most powerful military state (one with perhaps 300 nuclear weapons) is a bit of a mystery, frankly.

The U.S.’s position on this severe breach of the peace is clear – let the killing continue. Presidential spokesman and First Cousin Tony Snow told reporters that the president was not in favor of a cease fire that would leave Hezbollah in place, a sentiment later echoed by Secretary Rice. True to the traditional American position regarding Israel, we have blocked any meaningful action by the Security Council. So much for the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy in the Middle East. How many times have we heard junior babble on about how democracies don’t attack their neighbors? Well, the Israeli democracy is now destroying what was recently hailed by the administration as a budding democracy in Lebanon, effectively ensuring that the dominant political force in southern Lebanon, whether Hezbollah or some successor, will be even more hostile towards Israel. Meanwhile in Gaza, Israel is busily attacking the democratically elected Hamas government, killing its constituents and kidnapping its ministers – essentially an escalation of its ongoing policy since the “disengagement” from Gaza. Clearly our support for democracy is based more on outcomes than on principles. No surprises there.

Admiral Krauthammer’s second column of the week lamely attempted to frame Israel’s action in Lebanon as similar to the U.S. expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. That’s probably the most ass-backwards analysis I’ve heard yet this year. If anyone here resembles Saddam Hussein’s wehrmacht it’s the IDF, unleashing the full fury of its arsenal on a far weaker nation, targeting civilian infrastructure, and killing hundreds of non-combatants so far. Not the first time, either. Furthermore, Hezbollah is anything but a foreign occupier of southern Lebanon, much as it may serve the neo-con paradigm to paint them as terror legions under orders from Tehran and Damascus. Hezbollah is an indigenous political organization deeply rooted in Lebanon’s Shi’a community, the nation’s single largest religious group comprising 40 percent of Lebanon’s population. Like Hamas, they are an Islamist group that has both political and military wings, and provides some level of basic services to a population that has been neglected by its own government and battered by the Israelis. It is Israel that is the invader, and it is they who will ultimately be driven out — now or ten years from now.