thanks for #3 b, Paul Rodgers
There is no where for them to go, but forward. Alas, backwards means war crimes, forward the can hide under National Security. Do or die. They have painted themselves into a corner, and us with them. Ray gun’s* M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction)2.0 in a new context. Soon Jr. will be a lame duck pResident, who’s delusions of grander (i.e. messianic mania) cares not one wit about DU or DU dust, as has been discussed recently, because DU dust is nothing compared to shifting fallout. Jesus will fix it all, and if not, eitherway, he believes future generations will see him as some kind of man of vision, an Instrument of the Divine, a hero touched by God. Cheney has poor Jr. gassed up to think he is revolutionary man of God. How did we get in the mess!
*Reagan

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 16 2006 7:21 utc | 4

Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature

While the Israelis began their withdrawal, hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable.
In Sreifa, a Hezbollah official said the group would offer an initial $10,000 to residents to help pay for the year of rent, to buy new furniture and to help feed families.
…
Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.
“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”
Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather “a state within a nonstate, actually.”

Posted by: b | Aug 16 2006 7:44 utc | 6

. . . this is an administration that no longer makes any sense at all — not even on the most formal, semiotic level. Shrub’s speechwriters have literally been reduced to babbling . . . .
And its not just the Shrub. If we look around it seems like the whole right side of the political spectrum is not making any sense. They never did, but it went unnoticed. We have apologies popping up from Senators and from news anchors. We have the far right going beserk at the Shrub for failing to turn Lebanon into a sandbox. U.N. Ambassadors giving interviews with, uh, blogsluts in the middle of a crisis. Sec of Defense sounding like he just stepped through the looking glass, hookah in hand. Just to name a few signs of chaos that have appeared on the right recently.
I’m pretty much beyond thinking that anything good can come out of the disintegration of the right wing facade. But at least its reassuring in a weird way to know that the laws of physics still operate and the pendulum cannot swing in one direction forever. Even if its only a mini cycle.

Posted by: DonS | Aug 16 2006 14:13 utc | 8

Uncle $cam: “How did we get in the mess!”
The election supervisor in Palm Beach County rearranged the ballot in the 2000 election into a butterfly shape.
God: the greatest comic writer in the history of this or any other universe.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 16 2006 15:53 utc | 10

“As an American, I’m certainly in no position to criticize. We’ve spent the lives of over 2,600 of our soldiers to conquer a piece of desert —
The Tigris and Euphrates valleys were the ‘Cradle of civilation’, probably ‘The Garden of Eden’ or ‘The land of milk and honey’, coveted by marauders long before oil was ever discovered.

Posted by: pb | Aug 16 2006 16:06 utc | 12

Haven’t read any Bush for a while. He sounds like he’s crossed the line over to howling insanity, but one has to admit, the position does not rest on reason, logic, or ‘reality’ so is very difficult to defend.
The gist is: He blames the Hezb., Syria and Iran, for the conflict. Forces of terror, etc.
Nevertheless, the outcome is good: Lebanon wins, because its democracy is strengthened, and the Hezb. win in a way as well, do score indirect points:
if I were Hezbollah I’d be claiming victory, too. But the people around the region and the world need to take a step back and recognize that Hezbollah’s action created a very strong reaction that, unfortunately, caused some people to lose their life, innocent people to lose their life. But on the other hand, it was Hezbollah that caused the destruction.
Israel is strangely absent both from the speech and the Q and A. It is mentioned as a territory, and as an actor in the remark below, and of course, the ‘right’ of Israel to ‘defend itself’ is re-affirmed at the end.
(Do they script these occasions that carefully or is it just natural and unconscious?)
The US is furious, and showing muscle:
America’s actions have never been guided by territorial ambition.
—
We know that free nations are America’s best partners for peace and the only true anchors for stability. So we’ll continue to support reformers inside and outside governments who are working to build the institutions of liberty.
—
I believe that Israel is serious about upholding the cessation of hostilities.
—
Meaning: Israel’s appetite for land does not thrill us at all (the expression ‘territorial ambitions’ is code); free nations are cool but right now Israel also needs reform; you guys better listen, and shape up.
But on the other hand – that is very telling.
link from Billmon

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 16 2006 17:01 utc | 14

from b’s #6 link

Rami G. Khouri, a columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, wrote that Sheik Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties.”
“In tone and content, his remarks seemed more like those of a president or a prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering,” Mr. Khouri wrote. “His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.”
Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.
“The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not,” he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that “the resistance,” meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.
Sheik Nasrallah sounded much like a governor responding to a disaster when he said, “So far, the initial count available to us on completely demolished houses exceeds 15,000 residential units.
“We cannot of course wait for the government and its heavy vehicles and machinery because they could be a while,” he said. He also cautioned, “No one should raise prices due to a surge in demand.”
Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger, Professor Saad-Ghorayeb said, because of the weakness of the central government.
“Hezbollah has two pillars of support,” she said, “the resistance and the social services. What this war has illustrated is that it is best at both.
Referring to Shiek Nasrallah, she said: “He tells the people, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to protect you. And we’re going to reconstruct. This has happened before. We will deliver.’ ”

Posted by: annie | Aug 16 2006 17:37 utc | 16

“If Western Jews were awake, they’d immediately recruit people, esp. Jews to form brigades to go over & rebuild the country, all financed by Jews.”
given that they’re currently complaining about how the International Donor Conference for Lebanon isn’t about donations to Israel, that doesn’t sound very likely.

Posted by: someone | Aug 16 2006 18:34 utc | 18

Ha, Uncle Scam mentioning butterflies made me think of the butterflly effect – two people are captured in Lebanon and a rich chick has to give up her 100 dollar perfume, a special gift, at O’Hare … Amazing.
Don wrote: I’m pretty much beyond thinking that anything good can come out of the disintegration of the right wing facade.
In a time of plenty, the ‘left’ (socialist, on the whole, in the OECD) became a kind of victim of its own success. Its insistence on redistribution (no more than that) and its championing of PC values, its support on occasion of people’s causes (pro or anti nukulear, pro or anti subsidising culture, pro or anti GM foods, pro personal liberation, i.e. homosexuals, etc.) saw to its popularity; they ensured that the present state of affairs would continue, as they were there to provide balance, help the little people, and so on. It worked for a long time, they had some clout. No longer. The US Democrats are the prime example ..
The left picked about on the edges of the capitalism and ‘globalisation’ and implicitly accepted the model, thinking they could improve on it, render it more ‘human’ or ‘humane’ with twiddling about.
When the ugly face appeared – in the shape of New Labour in GB, or the fact that Le Pen beat Jospin in the first round or Presidential elections in France – they had nothing important to say.
Silence, i. e. : The left wasn’t projecting its ‘values’ efficiently, boo hoo, lots of hand-wringing, the electorate was leaving, which basically means that funds dry up, plum positions are no longer to be had, power and control skid straight down, a plunging red arrow on the graph.
Hangers-on and Johnny come latelies tend to be tolerated for a while if they serve a purpose.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 16 2006 18:51 utc | 20

They were even able to spin the fact that HA is now involved in rebuilding southern Lebanon into a thing which is bad for peace and bad for Israel.
Well, it IS bad for Israel and could be bad for peace, too — if you take Israeli aggressive designs on Lebanon as an a priori assumption. In that case, anything that strengthens Hizbullah’s popular support and deepens its roots in southern Lebanon makes another war more likely.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 16 2006 20:03 utc | 22

Ah the first Jewish immigrant is irrelevant it seems

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 17 2006 1:27 utc | 24

I think it’s very significant to Muslim Iraqis that someone they consider their forefather, and the founder and father of the people Israel, was a native from their land, an Iraqi – just as important as to them as the idea that it is in their land that civilization began. Religion (or “mythology” if you wish to call it that) is certainly not irrelevant to the Middle East situation.
“Crone” is an archetypal mythological term btw – if “mythology” is used as a disparaging pejorative then I suppose “Old Female” would do just as well, in the empirically provable preferential vein of things.

Posted by: 2nd anon | Aug 17 2006 18:44 utc | 26