Politicians stink

July 24 2006

Okay, I've been holding off for a couple days because I needed to calm down from all this jibber jabbing happening in the US and the Middle East.
No matter what people say, the bottom line is that INNOCENT PEOPLE are DYING! Unfortunately none of these politicians seem to care.
So what's my beef? Where to begin, honestly!

ap·a·thy (p-th)n.
Lack of interest, concern, or emotion; indifference.

Source: The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical DictionaryCopyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

So now that we know we're talking about the same thing, I shall proceed. I loathe the apathy demonstrated by this bloody travesty in Lebanon. The US doesn't care, period. Neither does the rest of the "civilized" world. And the Arabian brethren aren't doing a very good job of setting themselves apart from the, quite frankly, expected and predictable Western reaction.
I was reading Monday's issue of The Times and there's reports of well, unprovoked slaughter, Israeli choppers bombing easily distinguishable civilians and civilian vehicles that are "leaving the South like they were told to by Israeli fliers before the onslaught began"!

Hmm... THEN the Israeli soldiers have the cojones to claim that Hezbollah militants are "well prepared and must have been planning this for years", bla bla bla bla. Okay, not to be Jane StatetheObvious here, but, wasn't that kind of a given? I mean, would HZ have provoked the sleeping cranky bear that is Israel because they'd stumbled on a box of missiles? Or is it just another roundabout way of saying, they didn't think HZ would be smart enough to learn from the failures of the past and actually train an army as opposed to whatever methods they used before? Or is it just another propaganda move to show how they are justified in doing this, and that HZ is not really a scraggly bunch of disgruntled 'ragheads' --> I don't think of them that way but certain people do.

Here's what I say to that;
1. Haha you might have underestimated them this time
2. see number 1
3. You are not justified, you can NEVER justify indiscriminate carnage and destruction
4. I'm pretty sure the entire Lebanese population does not = HZ

And here's where Western indifference really shows through, because it is not only immoral but it is absolutely ridiculous that simply because it's not happening in the West they shouldn't rouse themselves to actually doing anything. I mean everyone knows that innocent people in the West will suffer in the future for this! So it is in their best interests to do something!

And I personally don't think I want to live in anymore fear than I currently do. Everytime I get on a tube and it stops suddenly in a tunnel (which is more often than I'd like) I feel powerless and I hate to feel powerless. But it's the same thing when I get on a bus, especially double deckers. Anyhoo that is a subject for another day, but the bottom line is, violence begets violence which kills innocent people and untold neverending suffering which begets violence which begets more violence and... you get the point.

But I guess the point is, all the countries that have been victims of terrorism or sent their young off to Iraq (uh huh that's another topic for another day) or Afghanistan and haven't come back are not so secretly cheering Israel on. Let's forget the fact that Lebanon actually has a government and is a nation in the processes of rebuilding after the devastation of the last 20 odd years of bloodshed.

My favorite irony of all of course being Cond. Rice's "surprise" (in the sense that it wasn't cause it was all over the news headlines this weekend before it happened) visit to the Middle East which culminated with that oh-so awkward picture with her and the Lebanese Prime Minister. Shout out to Jon Stewart's Daily Show for picking up on that.

It's nice to know that the world learned valuable lifechanging lessons from oh say, JENIN! Anyhoo, onwards and upwards to my next point.

The conflict in Lebanon reminds me of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, out of all the atrocities in WWII there were people who felt that it was better to drop the bomb as far away from the West as possible. (All of y'all who paid attention in Leopold's IB history class know what I'm talking about). Or maybe it's the entire Middle East which represents those two doomed cities. Hmmm... I don't think I need to say anymore than that.

Lastly, there's the inaction of everyone but Syria, I'm not saying that Syria should support and/or terrorism but this is not about HZ anymore (in my opinion) it's about Lebanon. And at least someone might help take the heat off those poor folks over there, and force Israel to stop being such a bully, sit down and talk like the so-called 'civilized folk' they claim to be.
I think I'm done for now so feel free to click on the link below!

Quote

Israelis face determined foe - Mideast/N. Africa - MSNBC.com

Here's another one - more recent from the BBC website:

Four United Nations peacekeepers have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an observation post in south Lebanon.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "shocked" at the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the post. Israel has expressed "deep regret".
Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed the group would continue its rocket attacks on Israel.
Israel earlier said it would control an area in southern Lebanon until international forces deployed.
The force will be discussed at crisis talks to be held in Rome on Wednesday.
Observers sheltering US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be at
the talks after ending her tour of the Middle East on Tuesday.
More than 380 Lebanese and 42 Israelis have died in nearly two weeks of conflict in Lebanon,which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
The UN in Lebanon says the Israeli air force destroyed the observer post, in which four military observers were sheltering.

FOR MORE see the actual website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5215366.stm