Stephen Colbert:

Pollsters are claiming that many Canadians disagree with Prime Minister Harper’s support for Israeli aggression against Hezbollah. According to the Strategic Counsel poll in today’s Globe and Mail, 45% of Canadians polled do not approve of his support. The poll also claims that three quarters of Canadians want their country to remain neutral in this latest Middle East conflict.

I have my reservations about popular opinion polls. In fact, I am downright cynical.

Do I think Canadians fundamentally disagree with the Prime Minister? Do they support neutrality because it makes sense? No, on both counts.

The poll questions are abstractions. They do not provide clarity. In fact, I think they muddy the waters for many Canadians, reducing our present role in the world to the lowest common denominator of our history.

For the last decade, the form and function of our nation’s role in the world has remained static. Informally, Canadians cling to the vaporous idea of Canada as a nation of peacekeepers. Formally, there has not been a foreign policy review in this country since 1994.

If, for example, peacekeeping is going to be an essential form of Canadian foreign policy, then we must define the function of that peacekeeping in modern conflicts. We have not adapted Canadian foreign policy tools like peacekeeping for contemporary conflicts. As a result, Canadian foreign policy has not advanced and the public is not able to comprehend Canada’s potential role in the current conflict in the Middle East. We do not know what peacekeeping in Lebanon means.

Anachronistic notions have become a substitute for clear action. The Strategic Counsel poll is a stunning example. It does not reflect any clear options for Canada in the current conflict. The poll is a reaffirmation of Canadian foreign policy from the early 1990s, asking questions framed on the subjects of neutrality, consistency, peacekeeping, and support for either side of the conflict.

The current conflict in Lebanon does not have clearly defined sides. It challenges the meaning of neutrality, and changes too quickly to warrant consistency.

If this poll indicates anything, it is that we have an abstract way of discussing Canada’s role in the world. It is not informative, and as a gauge of popular opinion, it is irrelevant. Worse, it pulls our attention away from the more fundamental problem: that we really don’t know what we’re going to do in Lebanon.

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This post was written by alevo

[tags]Israel, Lebanon, Canada, politics, foreign policy[/tags]

This one deserves its own post to make sure no one misses it. Too funny.

Click here for the clip.

America’s stance on the situation in Israel and Lebanon has now entered the realm of the truly bizarre. Three days ago, on July 21, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration was rushing a shipment of bombs to Israel so it could continue its air assault against Lebanon:

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

Today, Forbes reports that the Bush administration is also rushing humanitarian aid to Lebanon:

President Bush has ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to provide humanitarian aid, but he still opposes an immediate cease-fire that could give relief from a 13-day-old Israeli bombing campaign.

[…]

“At the order of the president, humanitarian supplies will start arriving in Lebanon tomorrow by helicopter and by ship,” [White House press secretary Tony] Snow announced at the White House. “We are working with Israel and Lebanon to open up humanitarian corridors.”

Yep, that’s right: the US is sending more bombs to Israel so Israel can continue its bombing campaign in Lebanon, and then the US will hand out aid supplies to the Lebanese who are lucky enough to merely be injured, starving, or homeless – instead of dead – as a result of the Israeli bombing campaign.

[tags]Israel, Lebanon, USA, Bush[/tags]

Israel continues its savage assault on the civilians of Lebanon, bombing apartment buildings, ambulances, construction vehicles, a milk production factory, a factory that produces cardboard boxes, roads, bridges, gas stations, power stations, grain silos, and oil depots.

Imagine you lived in this apartment building, or next to it, when Israel bombed it.

This is just one image in a series of photos. Be warned, some photos are quite graphic. Others are unbearably tragic.

Do these people look like terrorists to you?

This is not about “excessive force” or a “disproportionate response” by Israel. This is about the systematic destruction of an entire country. As Robert Fisk, who lives in Beirut, wrote on July 19:

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis – in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside – tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties – 240 in all of Lebanon by last night – with Israel’s 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

There is no equivalence between the actions of Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah operates entirely out of the control of the weak and powerless Lebanese government. Many Lebanese do not support Hezbollah, but there is nothing they can do about them.

Israel, on the other hand, is a nuclear superpower with a mighty army that knows fully the devastation it is wreaking on an innocent people. There are no words that properly describe these actions: war crimes, murder, unfettered aggression.

As innocents die in the explosions of American-manufactured missiles and bombs, Prime Minister Harper does nothing but voice support for Israel and arrange photo-ops. I am ashamed to be a Canadian today.

The Terrorists: Children and Old Women

A Lebanese boy in hospital.

With nowhere else to go, this woman has to sleep in a park.

[tags]Israel, Lebanon, war crimes[/tags]