A Few Modest Proposals Posted by Heather Hurlburt

While everyone's catching their breath post-cease-fire, here are a few initiatives I'd like to see:

1.  A bi-partisan initiative to rebuild Lebanon.  Lebanese-American GOP Senator John Sununu and Democratic Rep. John Dingell (whose district includes one of the biggest Lebanese communities in the US) should jointly take the lead in directing the State Department to open the floodgates of not just humanitarian assistance but real aid in rebuilding all the infrastructure Lebanon just lost, to help put its economy and tourism industry back on track.

1a.  Public diplomacy around a bi-partisan initiative to rebuild Lebanon.  That's a greta example of a substantive policy that might go some tiny way toward repairing the pr disaster this conflict is for us in the Arab world.  Democracy Arsenal's favorite Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes should be up on the Hill full-time trying to make it happen.

2.  Charles Krauthammer explains it all to you.  I want the conservative columnist and his neo-con friends, especially Dick Cheney, to tell me why it's good for right-wing Israelis and their American supporters to criticize their government's conduct of the Lebanon war but unpatriotic for US Democrats to criticize our government's handling of the Iraq war.

3.  Come to think of it.  Perhaps some of our readers and bloggers who live in the region will  correct me, but it sure looks from here like the Israelis are doing an excellent job of having a fierce, existential debate about the use of military power and the threat they face while not actually weakening their ground position in any way.

4.  And one for the home front:  could Tom Mazzie at MoveOn.org please check the authorship of his talkingpoints before suggesting that progressives write letters to the editor telling their fellow Americans how much less safe we are than before 9-11?  Last I recall, that's Karl Rove's playbook.  That stimulus of fear is well associated with conservatives, and as Rove has said over and over this year, it'll work... for conservatives. 

Well, enough dreaming on a sunny day.  Back to work, all of you.   

Comments

[Demosophist]

tell me why it's good for right-wing Israelis and their American supporters to criticize their government's conduct of the Lebanon war but unpatriotic for US Democrats to criticize our government's handling of the Iraq war.

That's sort of a silly question isn't it? I mean, there's virtually no "peace" movement in Israel at all, but if there were such a movement routinely alluding to Olmert as a Nazi or fascist there might well be good reason to think of such "anti-Israeli-victory" advocates as, well "unpatriotic", or even worse. At the moment the only criticism of Olmert is that he hasn't been sufficiently aggressive, and even that has been rather muted while the war was going on. For instance, Netanyahu has specifically avoided criticism, something to which Stratfor has referred on a number of occasions.

Or was the question just rhetorical so that you could get an "amen" from the audience?

Anyway, anyone who has doubts that those calling Bush and the Neocons "fascists" and referring to the genuinely fascistic "insurgency" in Iraq as "freedom fighters" probably doesn't give a hoot about arcane concepts like national patriotism anyway, so what's the beef?

As for rebuilding Lebanon, it's a little early I think. I'm afraid this war is far from over. But there'll probably be an hiatus while Hezbollah recruits and rearms... for the "big one" as it were. The most merciful thing for Lebanon would be if the antagonists could just get on with it now, until one side loses decisively. That'd be the time to rebuild.

[John]

Ed Kilgore gives us an example of a belief that is common among conservatives in his neck of the woods. We haven't been attacked since 9/11 so Bush has made the world safer. Any indication that he has failed in this task could be used to hurt the Republican Party.

If "Bush has made us less safe" catches on, we'll be doing very well. We have the whole Dubai ports affair, Iraq and lack of ability to confront North Korea/Iran to use.

[Judah]

Demosophist, I'm confused by your comments. Have you ever been to Israel or, um, read an Israeli paper?