Bolton eschews "moral equivalency"

[spindrifter]

Bolton defends Israel's actions in Lebanon

Sunday, July 23, 2006; Posted: 5:19 p.m. EDT (21:19 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Against growing international criticism that Israel's response to Hezbollah's July 12 attack has been disproportionate, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Sunday defended Israel's use of force.

"I think it's important that we not fall into the trap of moral equivalency here," Ambassador John Bolton told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

"What Hezbollah has done is kidnap Israeli soldiers and rain rockets and mortar shells on innocent Israeli civilians. What Israel has done in response is act in self-defense. And I don't quite know what the argument about proportionate force means here. Is Israel entitled only to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire a couple of rockets aimlessly into Lebanon?

"The situation is that Israel has lived under the terrorist threat of Hezbollah for years, and these most recent attacks have given it the legitimate right, the same right America would have if we were attacked, to deal with the problem. And that's what they're doing."

<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/23/mideast.bolton/index.html

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Even A Stopped Clock is Right Twice A Day [eom]

[whalerider55]

2. not if the cuckoo doesn't work n/t

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Oh, I Reckon Bolton's Cuckoo is the Only Thing of His That's Working [n/t]

[whalerider55]

8. funny...

and every time he opened his mouth, i always thought it was his forked tongue that protruded.

whalerider

[TahitiNut]

3. They eschew "moral relativism" when it suits them and

... "moral equivalency" when it suits them. To describe that as a "flip-flop" would portray it as far more principled than it is - hypocrisy.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Hey, boys & girls, this is the honest truth

we know better than you, so shut up.
We have a plan, and you don't.
There is no moral equivalency here, because our friends are right and everyone else is wrong.
god is on our side, not yours.
So shut up and take your orders.

[earthside]

5. What an Idiot.

Bolton says: "And I don't quite know what the argument about proportionate force means here. Is Israel entitled only to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire a couple of rockets aimlessly into Lebanon?"

In other words, capturing a couple soldiers and dropping a couple of rockets isn't really a very big deal. And that is exactly what this discussion about "proportional force" is all about. Israel simply used this as a pretext for something it had been planning all along.

Furthermore, it was Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and occupation for fifteen years that caused the formation of Hezbollah ... so the people of south Lebanon have lived these last few years after Israel's retreat with that 'terror' in their consciousness.

Bolton is an idiot and this whole mess is in large measure a result of this Bushite, neocon idea that 'might makes right'. Our parents taught us that that doesn't work and is wrong. In this case, like Iraq, Bush and Bolton and Rice and the Israeli government are wrong.

[TahitiNut]

11. Exactly. "Only" is the betrayal word. "Only."

In that single word is betrayed the incomprehensible arrogance of the bully with military force - where there exists no empathy for the human lives and hardships of the "other." Just as the arrogance of all Empires have slaughtered the "uppity" people for eons, even Bolton realizes that the ocean of sufferings and hardships into which the mighty would add "only" a couple of kidnappings and a few rockets is nothing ... not compared to the "entitled" whose small ponds of sufferings were overflowed (after amplification by demagoguery, that is).

After all, how do you make people who are already suffering suffer more? And how much more does it have to be so it's hugely visible and satisfies the vicarious blood lust of the corrupt?

Revenge, like greed, is insatiable and knows no bounds in its appetites.

[sweetheart]

7. bolton is a white supremecist

Of course he doesn't believe in moral equivalency. How else can white
men keep up the represssion of women and brown peoples.

[TahitiNut]

14. While there's certainly congruence, I wouldn't narrow it down to that.

He's a "kiss up kick down" kind of guy. Authoritarian. Bully. Sociopath. Like all such soociopaths, he has a "world view" that places him at the top of the gender/race/nationality/religion/younameit pyramid. All the bullshit about demographics is mere posturing nonsense, adopted to serve only one goal: power lust.

[sweetheart]

15. Though he hangs with the racists

and fights their battles along race lines, like coup 2000, i concede that his
primary modus seems to transcend pure racism for ethnocentric elitism, but
when its all boiled down, he stands for plantation corporate government and
is as grey a dixie traitor as ever there lived one.

[bigtree]

9. from an earlier post

Normally, when we make the calculation that our military actions will result in collateral killings, the mission is perceived to outweigh the deaths. Yet, in Lebanon, there are a reported 300 civilians dead and 1,000 maimed. What mission has Israel accomplished along with these deaths? There are only a few actual Hizbollah militants reported killed.

Were the deaths worth 'targeting the financial institutions used by Hizbollah'?

Did the airstrikes on the residential areas, the Hizbollah 'strongholds', or on the downtown headquarters outweigh the killings and injuries suffered by the innocent Lebanese civilians?

There is certainly a 'moral equivalency to their deaths, no matter what Bolton and others mean to convey with their callous language. The killings of the Lebanese are deliberate in that the Israeli forces have made a calculation that their deaths are outweighed by the objective. They know there are Lebanese civilians under their bombs. Their 'warnings' to civilians are in the form of flyers with cartoons mocking the Hizbollah, as well as the leaders of Syria and Iran. Their efforts to 'warn' the Lebanese population were hollow.

The airstrikes may turn out to have been justifiable, but there is absolutely no evidence so far that these deadly strikes are doing much more than killing innocent Lebanese. It seems like revenge killing. Their deaths do not appear to have made Israel any more secure. In fact, the aggression by Israel have folks on the ground in Lebanon questioning their move for independence from Syria, since it appears they have no protector; no one seems to be doing anything to protect the innocent lives of the Lebanese who are in the way of Israel's airstrikes.

Everything Bolton described as pernicious can be attributed to the actions of the Israelis as the Lebanese civilians are being mowed down by the dozens, without any evidence that Hizbollah militants have been at all impacted. Apparently, his 'grave concern' hasn't manifested itself in any way that would cause him or his regime to press Israel to halt the airstrikes on residential areas, suburbs and cities which are inhabited by Lebanese civilians unassociated with Hizbollah except, perhaps, by geography.

These deaths, along with those of the innocent Israelis caught in the way of the rockets lobbed into Israeli neighborhoods by Hizbollah, are more than a 'tragedy' as Bolton described. They are the deliberate acts of combatants who know well of the effects of the munitions they launch into these populated areas. There is no justification, and there has been no evidence produced that the Israeli reprisals are doing anything more than inflict the same pain on Lebanon as the Israelis must feel over their own meaningless deaths. There is certainly a 'moral equivalency between the killings; between the deaths and the maiming. They are both morally wrong.

[Ms. Clio]

10. well, let's see, Al-Qaida attacked, and the U.S. invaded Afghanistan

Did I just miss all the parts where they bombed Kabul to bits and took out all the civilian infrastructure in the country?

[TahitiNut]

12. It was a war crime, imho, "popular" or not.

It's pretty clear that the evidence does not exist to implicate Osama bin Laden sufficient for any court - which is why he's not indicted by the FBI and why the Bushoilinis didn't negotiate his extradition. "Classified"? Bullshit.

"Carpet of gold or carpet of bombs" ... and the pipline goes through. War crime.

[Ms. Clio]

13. yes, I agree

the Taliban offered to turn Bin Forgotten over to the U.S., they just required some of that pesky evidence, first.

Just all part of the PNAC master plan.

[Clarkie1]

16. Bolton is a terrible ambassador, but I agree with him on this. nt