It all goes tits up in the Middle East

I had thought about bringing this up earlier, but couldn't think of anything to really say about it other than "This is really terrible and wrong". Still can't.

I'm expecting a Qana style massacre in the next few days.

God, if there's one region in this world that could use a bunch of heavy-handed American self-interest, it's this one. But it needs the right kind of heavy-handed American self-interest, though. I think the United States should just completely abandon all its scruples (ha, ha) and invade both Israel and Palestine, set up martial law, divvy up Jerusalem (or declare it a neutral zone) and install puppet governments for both. Stupid and unthinkable? SHORE! You think anybody has any better ideas aside, apart from more impotent attempts at dialogue?

Incidentally, has it ever been confirmed that Israel does indeed have nuclear capabilities? Because it would kinda suck if it did.

Aren't Palestine and Israel, like, the same place?

When do we invade Iraq?

Graham: depends who you ask.

Mike: yes, Israel is nuclear & we know because they still have the scientist who blew the whistle imprisoned.

Also, U.S. or UN intervention would only be a bad thing. Who created israel in the 1st place? (UN). Who still needs Israel as a strategic ally (US).

invade both Israel and Palestine, set up martial law, divvy up Jerusalem (or declare it a neutral zone) and install puppet governments for both

I was sorta having similar thoughts myself, frankly.

(the guy = mordecai vanunu i think)

Who still needs Israel as a strategic ally (US).

Well, if it was a quasi-colony of the U.S., wouldn't Israel still serve the same functions that a strategic ally would? If not more?

I'm sure I don't understand the situation completely, but Israel is valuable to the US as a strategic ally in the region - if anything it would be a liability to the US. It seems more like Israel is supported by the US because it is important to American Jews and seemed like a good idea after WW2.

Israel is valuable to the US as a strategic ally in the region

isn't, I meant.

This suggestion of the US "stepping in" reminds of me of when thet Vlad Dirinovski (sp?) guy from Russia was asked about the Northern Ireland problem and he said Britain should take over all of Ireland and thus sort it.

As dumb as this may sound, just because it's a solution doesn't mean it's the right solution. I mean I'm not sure if the repercussions of leaving things as they are wouldn't be far worse, but I'd still have a major problem with the idea of major US intervention.

I don't think such intervention would ever happen, Ronan, just that it seems like a tempting solution. The problem is when those who have the ability to put such 'tempting solutions' into reality actually do so...

i kept reading it "strategic Ally" as in our very own Ally K. must... realise... that there is life... outside... ILE...

I can't get worked up about this nonsense cos it's just going to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until they hear the music of Wyld Stalyns, of course.

Yeah, if this crisis were an 80s flick, a rock band could play a free concert and save the whole neighborhood.

haha (note sour version of popular phrase): I was arguing in the pub on sunday with g&t abt the middle east and other disasters and we began to realise that ALL of them are basically the outfall of the British Empire — on which the sun nevah set and the blood nevah dried — "stepping in" to sort out some problem or other (or sometimes being "invited" in, sorta, by local tyrants/poltroons in need of troops and/or a quicky loan). Immediate solution now => huge range of insoluble problems a century down the line. (ps this btw is ONE reason why Blair etc have little choice but to bow down to Bush etc in public: if TB pipes up "you should do this instead", everyone in the world wd simply say, "Excuse me, when did the British suddenly have a good record — and no secret agenda — in these matters...?"

UK's strength always came from its mongrel nature (many cultures cheek by jowl, often for hundreds of years: first black Britons arrive WITH THE ROMANS!!!), yet its way of dealing with recalcitrant local politics ELSEWHERE was division/cantonisation etc etc. viz Ireland, India, Cyprus, Africa (e. w. and s.)... and Israel/Palestine/Jordan

not godzilla vs the smog monster, tracer: there a rock band puts on a free concert, and it doesn't work and everything turns to rubbish, globally

godzilla vs the smog monster (orig.jap cut) = best movie evah made btw

(possibly this is not the thread to continue discussing it however)

Mike, your solution implies that the US is some kind of disinterested observer to the Israel-Palestine issue. It isn't, it is an ally of Israel and any invasion of that part of the world it made would doubtless be aimed at shoring up the interests of its little friend. What might be better would be if it stopped giving Israel loads of money to buy tanks and airplanes with, so the Israelis would have to make friends with their neighbours and not rely on their military superiority to avoid making meaningful concessions.

Agreed, the U.S. lavishes an obscene amount of money on Israeli military tech. If anything, the U.S. is the opposite of a disinterested party -- it's the most potent nation in the world, quickly heading towards hegemony, and thus the interests of all other nations fall under its shadow. In order to calculate what the interests of Great Britain, or Israel or Palestine might be, you have to figure out how that interfaces with U.S. interests. There's no such thing in independence, anyways.

What sickens me is that there really is such a huge different between the way the media in the U.S. and Britain reports world news, specifically the current 'war' in Afghanistan. It's the kind of thing that you think of as paranoid conspiracy until you actually pay attention and compare. Just the other day, I was reading an article on CNN.com with the headline '7 Israelis killed in Palestinian attack' or something very similar to that. The next day the followup article was 'Israel launched counterattack' ... after absorbing the many paragraphs, you learn that at least 20 to 30 Palestinians have been killed by the advancement of Israeli army forces! Where was that in the headline?

So I am glancing at the root BBC news directory, http://news.bbc.co.uk/, and Nick's article is the main story on the page. On CNN.com:

* Lawyer: Yates an 'extremely sick woman'
* Man allegedly stored cyanide in Chicago subway
* Priest, parishioner killed at New York church
* Lawyer: Settlement on alleged priest abuses
* FAA: Air travel to rebound in 2003
* Oprah to call it quits after 2005-2006 season
* Letterman re-ups with CBS, 'Nightline' to stay put

There is a headline ("Six Israelis Dead in Attack") that links to a large article that has certain parallels with the BBC article, but also a number of discrepancies. The BBC article clearly establishes the scope of the advancement ("The Israeli army has sent thousands of troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships into Palestinian areas"), the current bodycount ("Thirty Palestinians are reported to have been killed and hundreds taken into custody"), and the Palestinian response and implications appear in the fourth graph: ("Palestinian officials accused Israel of starting to reoccupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip so that no progress could come from US envoy Anthony Zinni's mission to the region which begins on Thursday.")

The CNN.com article mentions "at least 50 tanks" and "at least 10 tanks" far down in the article, and the impression of the troops they give is that of housewives purging rats: "soldiers scouring the West Bank and Gaza to root out what they call the Palestinian 'terrorist infrastructure.'" Then we have: "Israel is chasing down other assailants, military sources said, and civilians have been asked to stay indoors." How convenient, just like the worldwide coalition chasing down the fugitive terrorists! You have to go down six paragraphs just to find an equivalent description of how many Palestinians have been affected.

FOX News, on the other hand, usually manages to frustrate me by its subtle bias. Their article on the situation has paragraphs and paragraphs on the implications for the Israelis ("A truck driver, a woman and her daughter in a car, a shepherd who was nearby and two other Israelis were killed in the attack, the army said."), but then later on manages to get in a few about the Palestinians:

"Ambulances rushed toward the camp but rescue workers could not reach all of the wounded and some lay bleeding in the streets, witnesses said. Dozens of Palestinians, some in pajamas and others on donkey carts, fled the camp for a nearby Gaza City neighborhood.

'They are killing us,' said Laila Ayoub, 38, carrying a baby girl in her arms. 'They used helicopters to fire on us while we were leaving.'

Israeli government spokesman Dore Gold said Israel was showing restraint and 'not using the full strength of its air force against the refugee camps.'"

if US "war on terror" is modelled — as sometimes seems to to be the case — on Sharon's way of "dealing with" the Palestinians, is this erm tits-upness going to encourage or discourage Bush? (assuming he doesn't just get HIS information and analysis from CNN)?

Mike, your solution implies that the US is some kind of disinterested observer to the Israel-Palestine issue.

Oh God, no, not at all. In fact, I said my solution, if carried out, would be done out of "heavy-handed self-interest": not only to stop the bloodshed but to further shore up its influence in the region.

Mike Daddino's "solution" is cretinous.

Bush and Blair ("Jump, Tony" - "How high, George?") are using Hussein's refusal to co-operate with UN weapons inspections as a major pretext for the planned war, as after 6 months of research/spying the CIA and MI6 haven't come up with a shard of concrete evidence indicating links between Al Quaeda (sic, probably) and the Iraq regime.

I mean, for fuck's sake! Since when have the US and the UK cared about UN resolutions?!!!!

The US/UK axis of evil are perfectly happy to let Israel continue defying UN resolutions as they have been doing for, ooh, 30 years or so. The US government is the world's biggest terror organisation.

"We"'ve already killed between 300,000 and 1,500,000 Iraqi civilians in the past decade and many, many more will surely die in a sustained campaign to topple Saddam. Is it really "worth it" as Maddy Albright would say?

FACT: George Bush Jr was on the board of directors of the biggest oil company in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion.

FACT: The Kuwaitis were illegally tunelling under Iraqi territory to steal oil from Iraq prior to the invasion.

FACT: Kuwait was part of Persia/Iraq little more than a century or so ago, and was cordoned off by the British as a malleable puppet state mainly due to it being the most oil-rich region in Persia/Iraq.

so what's your solution chris?

Persia turned into Iran. Iraq was the Mesopotamian provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Persia did get screwed over by the Great Powers, oil-wise, but that was nothing to do with Kuwait, whose independent existence IIRC predates that of Iraq. The sheikhdoms of the Gulf Coast, including Kuwait, were autonomous even under Ottoman rule.

I'm sure your other "FACT!"s are right though.

Your heart is in the right place, Chris -- and yet I have a suspicion of any theory that doesn't take into account that *all* sides may well be rat bastards, which they are, really.

Mike Daddino's "solution" is cretinous.

Wait a minute! I can adapt. I can adapt!

How about this? What if Japan...no, no.

What if AUSTRALIA...yeah, that's it! Maybe AUSTRALIA should invade Israel and Palestine.

Happy now?

I mean, for fuck's sake! Since when have the US and the UK cared about UN resolutions?!!!!

The US and the UK care about UN resolutions when it serves their interests. I mean, duh.

FACT: George Bush Jr was on the board of directors of the biggest oil company in Kuwait at the time of the Iraqi invasion.

Yeah? And? Are you tyring to suggest that if he wasn't, things would be different? 'Cause, you know, you don't need non-trivial ties to big oil to believe that what's good for the oil industry is good for the U.S.A., or that amoral military and diplomatic decisions are perfectly defensible if they protect America's interests.

The US government is the world's biggest terror organisation.

That's about as fatuous as Bush's "axis of evil" line, which I see you've used but in a good ol' SWITCH-ER-OO! Touché!

FACT: Kuwait was part of Persia/Iraq little more than a century or so ago, and was cordoned off by the British as a malleable puppet state mainly due to it being the most oil-rich region in Persia/Iraq.

This is not true. Kuwait has a longer continuous existence than Iraq, existing as a semi-independent country from at least the early 19th century. Iraq on the other hand only popped into being with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.

dang, I'm just re-hashing a comment of Tom.

Hey Tom, have you been reading that book I recommended?

Yes, that is where I got my fantastic Kuwait facts. Thanks DV.