War Handwavium

After the election, Obama and Clinton demanded that Israel “freeze” all settlement construction. They demanded a “complete halt”.

As of today, Clinton announced that Israel has made “unprecedented” progress towards peace, and no longer calls for a “freeze” but rather calls for “restraint”.

Where “restraint” is a code word for “as much settlement expansion as Israel wants”.

What? No? Well, the US certainly isn’t defining the terms anymore. Neither are the Palestinians, who are watching the Israelis bulldoze their houses in East Jeruselem on Palestinian land to build more illegal Jewish settlements.

Instead of saying anything unequivacol about Israel, the US is saying that Palestinians should start peace talks without “preconditions”. The main precondition being that Isreal stop stealing Palestinian land.

When the US was willing to condemn Isreal for its illegal and immoral stealing of Palestinian land, I thought that peace in the middle east, or at least peace between Israel and Palestinians, might be possible while Obama was still in office. But now, with the US backpedaling to the status quo of ignoring Israel’s thievery while condemning Palestinians for not ignoring Israel’s thievery too, it’s pretty obvious that peace just got dragged out into a dark alley and shot execution style.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/2009103121332825958.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/2009111194139773721.html

Salon reports that Senator Joe Liebermann’s (Independent Jerk – Connecticut) wife was employed by a lobbying firm as a “senior conselor” helping pharmaceutical and insurance companies. It also reports that Senator Evan Bayh’s (Democrat Corporate Shill – Indiana) wife has been getting some very big paychecks (several hundred thousand dollars just last year) from the same powerful companies who want health reform killed.

Not surprisingly, both Senators have said they will fillibuster with Republicans against any health care reform that contains a public option.

Your Senators have been bought and paid for.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2009/10/29/joe_lieberman

http://boldprogressives.org/majorityvote/p-e3s

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/lieberman_po/?r=4980&id=6523-2212680-0xef6kx

This is what a soldier said about his time in Afghanistan:

I went to Afghanistan believing in “fighting terrorism” and “liberating Afghans.” During my first mission, we were protecting refugees escaping an area that was under attack… I was deeply affected by their misery, and by the poverty and suffering of the Afghan people in general. In my mind, our presence was “helping Afghans,” particularly with educating women and children. My combat unit participated in “humanitarian aid” – accompanying doctors and delivering food, fuel, clothing, school and other supplies to Afghan villages.

Sound Familiar? Many American military personel who are or have served in Afghanistan have described similar feelings about their mission in Afghanistan.

Except this was from a soldier in the Russian Army talking about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980’s.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/10/28/propaganda/index.html

Israel has been tearing down Palestinian homes in East Jeruselem.

Israel says the buildings didn’t have the proper “permits”. East Jeruselem is Palsetinian territory. Israel is occupying it militarily. So, the Palestinians and their government should be the ones to decide whether the buildings meet the local building codes, not Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel is demolishing Palestinian homes in Palestinian land so Israel can build more Jewish settlements on that Palestinian land and claim it as Israeli territory that cannot be part of a Palestinian state. These Jewish settlements have been consistently ruled illegal by the international community.

So, Isreal is tearing down Palestinian homes on Palestinian land because Israel says they are “illegal”, and then Israel uses that land to build Jewish settlements on Palestinian land that violates international law.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/200910282211496109.html

A Harvard University study found that the more someone is tortured, the more other people perceive that person as guilty.

This sounds like the flip side of the Ingram Experiment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026152818.htm

That pretty much sums it up.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009615202848261945.html

Amnesty International says that Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate clean drinking water but illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands are enjoying swimming pools.

About 200,000 Palestinians have no access to running water. And Israel’s consumption per capita if four times larger than that of the Palestinians.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/20091026132714361238.html

Glenn Greenwald reports that Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, resigned from his position from the Foreign Service. Hoh was the the senior U.S. civilian in the Taliban-dominated Southern Afghanistan province of Zabul. In his resignation letter, Hoh states that our war in Afghanistan will not only inevitably fail, but is fueling the very insurgency we are trying to defeat.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/10/27/afghanistan/index.html

A relatively new Jewish lobby has come onto the scene. It’s called “J-Street”. It is pro-Israel, pro-two-state-solution, anti-Jewish-settlement, and pro-peace.

Here’s hoping the voice of J-Street gets heard.

digby quotes Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, who was General Petraeus’ counter-insurgency advisor in Iraq. He says that US aerial attacks on the Afghan-Pakistan border have killed 14 al-Qa’ida leaders, at the expense of more than 700 civilian lives.

Let’s just say that every civilian we kill has, two surviving family members or friends who decide to join al queda to avenge the death of the innocent. That means when we killed those 14 al queda leaders, we created 1400 new al queda recruits. And some of the hawks want to send another 60,000 troops and keep America in Afghanistan for the next five years so we can do more of this.

It reminds me of a scene from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey is the apprentice of a powerful sorcerer and Mickey creates a broom to do some manual labor for himself, carrying water from a well to a cistern in the sorcerer’s work room. When things go wrong, when the room is flooded with water, Mickey realizes that he can’t stop what he started.

So, Mickey takes an axe to the broom and chops it into a hundred little pieces. Mickey thinks he’s solved the problem, but every one of those slivers turns into another broom. And now Mickey is awash in brooms and over his head with water.

At least Mickey realizes that it wouldn’t be a good idea to take the axe to the brooms and create more. It seems that some of the war hawks want to do just that in Afghanistan. They’re over their heads and they’re flooding the counry with war. What should be remembered is these hawks are simpletons like Mickey. They’re mere apprentices who dream of how powerful they’ll become once they master the sorcery of war.

For every al queda leader we kill, we kill 50 innocent civilians and create a hundred potential new al queda recruits. The sorcerer’s apprentices are over their heads in Afghanistan.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/golden-years-by-digby-elizabeth.html