The Spin We're In

Today The New York Times reports how assiduously the U.S. has worked to promote a cease fire in the Hezbollah/Israel war.

A bit naive in some of its premises -- for example the notion that Hezbollah would "fill in right behind them" if the Israeli forces just up and left, ignoring the reality that Hezbollah is in large part the indigenous population of south Lebanon -- still the article paints what seems like a straightforward picture of U.S. diplomatic involvement.

The article also indicates that the U.S. initially strongly backed and, by its hands off policy, reinforced Israel's ostensible plan to wipe out Hezbollah.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html?hp&ex=1155614400&en=c96ac098ba68482f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

But, as we also learn in the Guardian today, a lot more was going on behind the scenes before Israel rolled out their off the shelf plan to deal with Hezbollah. Specifically, the Guardian highlights a report by Sy Hersh that the U.S. consulted, one would have to use the word collaborated, with the Israelis in the plan to kick off massive aggression. Why? The article alludes to the Byzantine twists and turns of fixation on Iran and its nuclear capability.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Israel/Story/0,,1844021,00.html

The Independent also puts the story on the front page, starting with the observation that

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light"
to Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah ­ with plans drawn up months
before two Israeli soldiers were seized ­it has been claimed.

[snip . . .and concluding with the White House spin]

Last night the White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the President describing it as "patently untrue". Mr Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: " The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and co-ordinated an attack on Hizbollah ­ and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran ­ is just flat wrong."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1219021.ece

I'm convinced. Aren't you?

Delving into the adminstration's stratetgy behind this alleged collaboration, Hersh writes in The New Yoker article

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of
Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were
convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me,
that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollahs heavily
fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could
ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential
American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of
which are also buried deep underground

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact

Is there any doubt that the US is fixated on Iran? Should it be beyond question that the Neocon apparatus has promoted that fixation and built much of their worldview around confrontation with and destruction of the political structure of Iran, fanciful as that fixation might seem in light of the Iraq quagmire, and now the Israeli debacle in Lebanon? Listen to William Kristol on July 19 of this year.

the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be
– the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political
pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether
they really want to have this regime in power.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/19/kristol-iran/

Words spring to mind: simplistic, naive, reductionist, vacuous. arrogant, patronizing, ethnocentric and ignorant.

And finally Robert Lisk, writing in the Independent, gives us a taste of what might be in store under the cease fire going into effect today, and more importantly, if it collapses.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the
Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this
war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but
already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears
to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and
apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army
they swore to liquidate.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1219037.ece

So, now we have the assertions by Hersh, really by his sources, usually a rather well informed and well connected lot of military types, who appear increasingly fearful that the administration has gone 'round the bend in an apocalyptic fog, and can only think in terms of increasingly fantastic and dangerous risk/reward scenarios. And we have the initial denial by the White House, unsurprisingly. We have the reporting brought to us by British newspapers, once again. Surely the US media wouldn't want to be out in front on this. Wouldn't want to compromise our, or is it Israel's, national security? Oh, what's the difference. As the neocons and fundies have been triumphally exhorting about the Lebanon invasion: "It's our war".