I've gone well beyond the outrage I feel at this administration's every action into a realm of pure disgust. The neo-conservative chickenhawks want the destruction we are seeing in the Middle East from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan. They crave the conflict.
That was the introduction to an article I wrote in July 2006, US Blocks Call for Ceasefire in Lebanon. It seems nothing has changed, as the AP reports today that Diplomats say US blocks UN statement on Gaza.
The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers, diplomats said.
Several other council members, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were closed, also said the U.S. was responsible for the council's failure to issue a statement.
It is not just that the Bush administration and the neo-conservative cabal that runs it are actively trying to push war on middle eastern countries, they are actively engaged in ignoring or supporting conflicts there. It is absolutely despicable to me that the United States provided the munitions Israel used to attack Lebanon, and it is clear that those same tactics that were decried as war crimes by human rights groups are being used against a helpless population in Gaza.
There is simply no reason for this offensive. It is precisely the kind of nonsense spewed by Tzipi Livni and other Israeli leaders that infused the Hamas movement with such grassroots support in the first place. It was the other invasion of Lebanon that led to the rise of Hezbollah. When there is an aggressive Israel, there will be an aggressive opposition to Israel.
This story needs no debate. Those that fired rockets at Israeli homes are criminals. Find them, prosecute them. Bombing their neighbors with cluster bombs didn't get the job done in Lebanon with respect to eliminating Hezbollah, and it will not succeed in Gaza in eliminating Hamas.
I'm no pacifist, but the ruthless and aggressive wars of the past decade are just ridiculously unnecessary, and no neo-conservative leader, either in the US or in Israel, has any regret about that fact. These people have to be removed from any active role in public policy before the world will begin to heal itself. With nearly every continent on the planet engaged in ethnic conflicts or brutal power struggles, it is ever more critical that we rejoin the world community as a responsible moral leader. That means rejecting wars of choice such as the conflict in Gaza.