Seymour Hersh "The Redirection" - a question about Palestine . . .

[patrice]

"Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, depicted the Saudis' cooperation with the White House as a significant breakthrough. 'The Saudies understand that if they want the Administration to make a more generous political offer to the Palestinians they have to persuade the Arab states to make a more generous offer to the Israelis.'"

So, someones wants us to believe that the Redirection is supposed to do something(?) positive for Palestine (free it?, maybe, maybe not.)

Hersh goes on in describing the actual mechanisms of the Redirection to say the Saudis are using Asbat al-Ansar, which is a radical Sunni group situated in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, to help the Siniora government in Lebanon resist the influence of Hezbollah, which as I understand it supports a Free Palestine.

So how is that supposed to work? If you split Palestinian support between pro-American/Siniora and pro-Hezbollah factions in Lebanon, where does that leave Palestine?

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070305fa_fact_hersh

[magellan]

1. God knows.

I was thinking about all this last night and for the life of me I can't see how arming/funding groups of radical terrorist thugs results in anything but groups of radical terrorist thugs gaining power and legitimacy, which one day we'll have to deal with.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS YET AGAIN?

It's the common people who are consistently left out of this idiot equation and suffer. But it's not about making their lives better in the first place. And that's the problem.

[patrice]

2. It IS Evil.

To torment the tormented, to use the most powerless so callously, is it ANY wonder that Terrorism is a real threat?

To use Palestine as part of a Marketing Campaign to sell this Oil War, I tremble to say, this thing is damned. And it IS a marketing campagin because Cheney knows full well that a lot of us would trade quite a bit for a Free Palestine . . . BUT . . .

Just as burning "heretics" never did anything good for "the Church" - two wrongs never make a "right".

[magellan]

3. We're all pawns in a giant chess game

These bastards see terrorists as just one more group of ready-made armies we can strike deals with to get jobs done to secure our place in the world. And the dangers of that practice will only increase unless we can throw off the neocon idea of American global supremacy at all costs and put the military industrial complex back in its box. Until then (and it won't happen soon or easily, if at all, before the whole thing collapses), there's too much money and influence corrupting people -- it just feeds on itself while the societies we wreck grow more radicalized and resentful of us.

I fear Chalmers Johnson is right: we're living the final days of the Republic.

[patrice]

4. You describe what Noam Chomsky calls "Gangs",

multi-national gangs that is, which accounts for the fact that they do not act in the best interests of the United States. I've linked some snips from an interview with Chomsky here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x285282 in which he gives a pretty good overview of the current situation.

Part of the problem ALSO is that our Oil Gang is headed up by * who thinks he's playing checkers, when, in fact, what is going on is more like 3D Chess. Cheney knows this, but doesn't care.

[magellan]

5. Yes, all very good points

I learned all this by listening to the big thinkers on the subject and hanging out here, so I'm not saying anything new! :)

The tragedy is precisely that the situation is known, that you and I and countless others know what needs to be done to begin to fix it, but those with the power to actually do something positive stand in our way. Same as it ever was, I suppose.

It's a shame we can't put the world to rights merely by understanding (and striving to understand) and applying group will to it. But it's a sure bet that if the world were the way 80-90% of its population wanted it -- fair, humane, with equal rights and opportunities for all -- then greedy evil filth like BushCo and their global partners in crime would have all been sent to rot in prison long ago.

[patrice]

6. Maybe more of that 80-90% is beginning to free itself from

the oppressors, any/all of them, because they've revealed themselves by Invading Iraq and exploiting so many people all over the World. Not saying that justifies ONE death, but like "Jesus" maybe they didn't die for nothing.