Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Lebanon, Bush, and the Sunni-Shia War













As the fighting rages in Lebanon...Robert Fisk dodges bullets and asks some disturbing questions. Who are these mysterious Sunni fanatics battling the Lebanese army? What are they up to and what does it all mean?

And who were the dead men I saw yesterday, perforated by bullets, partly torn open by grenades? Silent testimony is all we receive from the dead. One of them had big eyes above his fluffy beard, eyes which stared at us and at the police who jeered at his corpse. I wonder if they will not come to haunt us soon...

And Seymour Hersh provides an equally disturbing answer. The Saudis and the Bush regime are their backers.

"We're in the business of supporting the Sunnis anywhere we can against the Shia. ... "We're in the business of creating ... sectarian violence." And he describes the scheme of funding Fatah al-Islam as "a covert program we joined in with the Saudis as part of a bigger, broader program of doing everything we could to stop the spread of the Shia world...

In other words to curb the rising power of Iran, which it created by eliminating its traditional enemies Saddam and the Taliban...and by turning Iraq into a Shia Islamic Republic...and by allowing Israel to turn Hezbollah into Lebanese heroes...the Bush regime is not only taking sides in a religious war. It's actually encouraging it.

To divide and conquer in the name of oil.....and destroy the Shia Crescent.

If the Bush administration is successful in its current efforts to divide Islam by pitting Shi’ites against Sunnis it will revitalize the old colonial tactic of divide and conquer, and maintain the domination of the Middle East by authoritarian elites allied with the U.S. and the international energy industry..

But first they have to whack Iran. Remember that movie that had its release date delayed?












It's back in production and coming soon.

If Iran is to blame for EVERYTHING how long will it be before it is bombed?

Which will only unleash another wave of deranged terrorists upon us and make us more vulnerable rather than safer. Is that crazy or what?

Which reminds me...you know that story about the young woman who was stoned to death in Iraq that I wrote about the other night? In a post about that other religious fanatic Tony Blair.













Well now there's a video. If you can bear to watch it.

If not the clip from Hotel Rwanda just about says it all.

About the savagery human beings are capable of inflicting against each other in the name of religion or tribalism or whatever. And the dangers of turning one group against another. And setting the beasts of genocide loose.

When will we ever learn?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Collectively, we don't learn. Ever. I want to slap people who say ridiculous shit like "I wish I had been born in the middle ages when honour meant something." Just delusional people with rose-coloured blinders reluctant to deal with reality and embracing a total zero-sum of historical context.

RIverbend and her family are leaving Iraq. I know a brilliant young woman living and teaching in Lebanon right now...there have been attacks in the most "secure" areas, showing that nobody in Lebanon is safe, just like in Iraq.

It is a whorrible, bloody mess...and we (collectively as a race, nation, culture, what-have-you) keep repeating it.

Anonymous said...

humans as a whole in general do not learn, and hte ones that do are usually pushed aside.