- The idea that you can solve social and political problems
militarily from the air is, on the face of it, ludicrous. The historical
record is filled with the dead dreams of air power solutions to ground-based
problems. But that stops no one.
-
- http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=106273
-
- Just yesterday, for instance, as part of the new American
operation to -- somehow -- seize control of the situation in civil-war
wracked
-
- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/washington/06memo.html? _r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
-
- Baghdad, American forces launched an attack on Muqtada
al-Sadr's Mahdi militia in the capital's heavily populated Shiite slum,
Sadr City.
-
- As a Bloomberg News Service
-
- http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news? pid=20601087&sid=ajU7iB.UPimE&refer=worldwide_news
-
- piece put headlined its piece: "Iraq, U.S. Forces
Raid Sadr City to Calm Baghdad." Aha. "Calm," it seems,
was to be imposed not just by ground troops but from the air by helicopter
assault (though even the best accounts
-
- http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-
iraq8aug08,1,4279717.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true
-
- of the operation offer few details on just what those
helicopters did). We do know that this calming raid managed to kill three
people, including a woman and a child, wound others, and destroy three
homes. It also left the Iraqi Prime Minister
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1839817,00.html
-
- a good deal less than calm. Simply firing into urban
areas this way should be considered inconceivable rather than, as now,
a problem-solving approach to the disaster that is Baghdad.
-
- In Lebanon, here's what "precision" bombing
seems to mean. "On Saturday,
-
- http://zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=35401
-
- an Israeli offense consisting of more than 250 air attacks
dropped 4,000 bombs within seven hours The total death toll from the attacks
is approaching 1,000. One third of those deaths are from children under
12." I don't know who is counting all this or whether such figures
are accurate, but there can be no question that parts of Lebanon are being
turned into little more than rubble; that with main highways and bridges
destroyed, unmanned aerial drones
-
- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH08Ak02.html
-
- and F-16s overhead, airports shut down, and the coastline
blockaded, supplies are not arriving; that hospitals are at the edge of
closing, and that a staggering percentage of the country of only 3.8 million
are now refugees -- abroad, in Syria, or simply on the move and homeless
in their own country. Christian areas
-
- http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Lebanon/10057969.html
-
- of Lebanon are now being bombed -- for this, see a vivid,
and horrifying post by Juan Cole
-
- http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/bush-islamic-fascism-and-christians-
of.html
-
- -- and the bombing campaign is widening with, for instance,
ever more central areas of Beirut being hit. It seems that even some Israeli
pilots are having qualms
-
- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838437,00.html
-
- about the targets being offered. The message is, I suppose,
precise enough, even if the bombs and missiles aren't: Nowhere is safe;
there will be no refuge. In Baghdad as in Lebanon, this, it seems, is
where the Bush "crusade"
-
- http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1781
-
- has indeed left us all. It's a place without pity or,
evidently, a shred of mercy. It is no place for diplomacy
-
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2
006/08/07/ BL2006080700569_pf.html
-
- or even for words (so much more precise and yet frustrating
than bombs). Hezbollah's "words" are, of course, its rockets
which land indiscriminately
-
- LINK
-
- across northern Israel.
-
- And our President? He's evidently unfazed by the spreading
chaos in the Middle East (and perhaps sooner or later in our wider world).
Recently, Steve Holland
-
- http://today.reuters.co.uk/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?
type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-08 -07T080835Z_01_NOA729254_RTRUKOC_0_WITNESS-BUSH.xml
-
- a Reuters correspondent, took a more than vigorous bike
ride with Bush around his Crawford vacation home. ("'Riding helps
clear my head, helps me deal with the stresses of the job,' a sweat-soaked
Bush said after an hour-and-20-minute ride that shot his heart rate up
to 177 beats per minute at the top of one climb.")
-
- Holland reports that the occasion for the ride was the
President's sense that "a U.N. resolution on southern Lebanon was
essentially complete." George Bush, it turns out, does not bike in
silence. Here's an example of his bike-riding exclamations. Think of it
as well as a presidential Rorschach test: "'Air assault!' he yelled
as he started one of two major climbs, up Calichi Hill, which he named
for the white limestone rock from which it is formed."
-
- (c)2006 Dahr Jamail
-
- All images, photos, photography and text are protected
by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to
reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright
notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website.
Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com
. Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but
not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward
Dahr's dispatches via email.
-
- More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images
at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
|
