In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Administration’s support for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resistance to an immediate cease-fire and its staunch support of Israel have made it more difficult for [US “Secretary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with other nations, including some American allies, as they search for a formula that will end the violence and produce a durable cease-fire.…
Several State Department officials have privately objected to the administration’s emphasis on Israel and have said that Washington is not talking to Syria to try to resolve the crisis. Damascus has long been a supporter of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and previous conflicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shuttle diplomacy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are causing irreparable harm to the U.S. image in the Middle East. High-sounding words about democracy ring hollow when we forsake diplomacy.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ syria
Lebanon and Syria
March 5, 2005
The resignation of the government is Lebanon is being hailed as a “boost for democracy” Reports describe Beirut as “a sea of excitement”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1428151,00.html. ABC News and others are reporting that “Syria is about to announce its withdrawl from Lebanon”:http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=553479. How wonderful it would be if “Beirut could emerge”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut from its thirty years of chaos with the start of the “1975 civil war”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War.
Even good change can cause turmoil. David Hirst, writing in the guardian, wonders whether the upheaval threatends to “destabilize Syria and turn it into another iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,13031,1430243,00.html: “After the example of elections, however flawed, in occupied iraq and Palestine, has come this new, unscheduled outbreak of popular self-assertion in a country [Lebanon] where a sister Arab state, not an alien occupier, is in charge.”
For the latest news, you can turn to the “Guardian’s special report on Syria and iraq”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/0,13031,928812,00.html. To jump in the fray, you can turn to the Nonviolence Board’s thread on the “resignation of the Lebanese government”:http://www.nonviolence.org/comment/viewtopic.php?t=3297