Late Thursday reading...
Syria is involved with the assassination of a former Lebanese premier and...what? No call for sanctions yet? No call for suspension of Syria's membership from the UN with a demand for reparations to Lebanon? There is a part of me that would like to convene the UN in special session to agree to forcibly remove the Syrian president, but...then again, the world is preoccupied with another nation or two in the Middle East already...and meanwhile, we have this place in South Asia to worry about and this guy our Terrible President once promised to keep on hunting down...
And in the "read it and weep for our nation" department, Human Rights Watch has issued its report on the "firsthand acounts" of US torture of Iraqi detainees. The NY Review of Books has published an excerpt here. This scandal went to the top of the US military and the White House, but those who took part cannot claim immunity, either. The ones who spoke up are truly heroic as it is tough to step out of the pack in a situation our soldiers find themselves in every day, wondering if this day will be their last.
And finally, another article from NY Review of Books; this one, on Iran. Well worth reading as we find more to be hopeful about young folks in Iran taking on the mullahs, but, as with any nation, people want to possess nuclear bombs--even if they oppose the regime that is building them.
posted by Mitchell J. Freedman @ 10:34 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Mitchell -
We seem agreed that something needs to be done and nothing will.
We probably disagree on one point.
You imply that it is up to the US to do this work - as if we call the shots at the UN. We clearly don't.
I don't see Europe, or Canada, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or any African nation taking up the moral duty to address this. And we have Russia encouraging Syria's tyranny.
To supposes that it is up to the US - exclusively - to confront tyranny is to deprive any assertions about "global tests" and "international concensus" of all legitimacy.
I read my post again to be sure I was clear. I was talking about the US going to the UN. The US is on the permanent Security Council and if our nation's leaders want to convene a meeting, our leaaders can do that.
The problem is that the Terrible President's cynical and mendacious policies have probably deprived our nation of a good part of genuine outrage. And for the first time, the Terrible President seems to understand that. Notice in the article how muted Bolton seems to sound. That was quite surprising.
Finally, what do YOU propose we do? Would we do more harm than good by just assassinating the Syrian president, particularly when there is no reason to believe a majority of Syrians care what their government leaders did with regard to the Lebanese former premier--and consequently would take up arms if we tried to occupy Syria? We are outraged, but deciding what to do is not as easy as our outrage feels. I have to say I think Syria calculated that our nation, bogged down in Iraq, wouldn't do anything or even capable of rallying the UN.
I’m fed up with all these self-proclaimed Middle-East “experts” avidly commenting excerpts from the Mehlis report as if it were some kind of exercise in exegesis.
OK some Marxist/Syrian “Mukhabarât” thugs might have contributed to the killing of one of their former protégés… and, after all, so what?
Rafiq Hariri was a notorious Saudi-sponsored fraudster and embezzler who had stolen billions from the Lebanese government’s coffers with the complicity of resident Syrian Gen. Ghazi Canaan who skimmed his infamous “khamseen” percent commission for the big boys back in Damascus and Qardâha.
Faux “sheikh” Hariri was most likely killed in a settling of accounts between rival Syrian mafia gangs: that type of crime happens every now and then in Palermo and in the south side of Chicago without eliciting the appointment of a German special prosecutor or impromptu meetings of the UN’s Security Council!
Contrary to the tall tales peddled on Fox News, Future TV, Al-Nahar-al-Wahhabist and other Saudi and/or Hebrew controlled media outlets, “sheikh Rafiq” was no “disinterested defender of freedom”
Actually, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Saddam’s Iraq and the French government were the only members of the international community who stood squarely on the side of Lebanon’s sovereignty while the country was being ripped/raped by Syria and Saudi Arabia: in those days, the White House courageously looked the other way while Syrian generals tortured at will from Beirut to Zahleh and “sheikh” Rafiq handed no-bid government contracts to his family’s construction firms and organized Oriental orgies cum crystal waterpipes and deluxe Lebanese sex slaves for his Saudi masters.
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