Agust Flygenring - semsagt.net

Líbanon

Nicholas Kristof í gær: In Lebanon, Echoes of Iraq?

But one of the oldest lessons in international affairs is that not every problem has a neat solution. The first rule in foreign policy, as in medicine, should be “Do no harm.” Unfortunately, the legacy of today’s Lebanese adventure, like the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and our invasion of Iraq, may be plenty of strategic damage.

Granted, there’s a counterargument that fills my mailbox and goes like this: What else can a country do when it is subjected to rocket attacks and cross-border raids by a terrorist organization committed to its destruction? If that terror group finds a safe haven just across an international border, and the government and the army there cannot control it, then what other option is there but to destroy that menace?

[...]

The problem with that argument is that it’s wrong.

One day before the Hezbollah incursion that provoked this war, terrorists bombed train lines in Mumbai, India, killing nearly 200 people (about 10 times as many as had been killed in all the Hezbollah attacks on Israel since the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, until this month). The Mumbai bombings were the latest in a string of attacks against India that have gone on for years, at the hands of terrorists operating with support from across the border in Pakistan.

Many Indians complain that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has been too wimpish in responding (a previous prime minister threatened war with Pakistan after a major terror attack in 2001). Yet Mr. Singh has wisely recognized that military action would only make the problem worse. [...]

For now Israel’s Lebanon adventure is playing out a bit like America’s Iraq adventure. It is bolstering hard-liners (like Bashar al-Assad of Syria) and undermining moderates (like King Abdullah of Jordan), while handing propaganda victories to Iran and Shiite militants.

Arab television channels have shown an unending stream of pictures of dead Lebanese children. We put our Arab allies in an impossible position when militants ask how they can work with a U.S. government that supplies the munitions that kill those children.

“Those of us who had welcomed Bush’s vision of democracy in the Middle East still believe in the promise of a free Iraq and a free Lebanon,” The Daily Star of Lebanon wrote in an editorial on Monday. “What a pity to see Bush’s vision engulfed in the flames of the current shortsighted American foreign policy. What was once a dream of democracy is fast becoming a nightmare of unstoppable civil war and terror.”

(C) New York Times 2006. Unauthorised citation.

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Agust skrifaði 26.07.06 15:55

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