Dialectical Confusions

Faute de mieux - and I'm having trouble coming up with mieux at the moment - I think it's worth recalling, as Israel appears to want to re-occupy southern Lebanon, that the supposedly intolerable status quo ante bellum, from the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 up until June of this year, seems pretty good compared with the last four weeks or so, and probably compared to any likely post bellum situation. At any rate, it would have taken about thirty years of that "intolerable" situation for Israel to suffer the casualties it has in this - tolerable? - escalation. By the same calculation, it would have taken Israel approximately 300 - that's three hundred - years before it would seen as many of its citizens die as Lebanon has in slightly less than a month.

It's entirely possible, of course, that things might have gotten somewhat worse even if Israel hadn't chosen so to escalate, but this is all worth bearing in mind. Also, in terms of violations of the Blue Line since 2000, Israel appears to be the more guilty party.

Both those links via "Lenin" by the way, whose leap onto the Hezbollah bandwagon one would have to wonder about. I mean, while it does appear that Hezbollah's combatant/civillian kill ratio is way, way better than the IDF's, that doesn't seem to be for want of trying on its part. And I have to say that this line of argument by the SWP's Lindsey German:

I don't agree with the politics of the Iranian regime, or the Syrian regime or Hamas or Hezbollah - but when I see what's happening, and who they're up against, I know whose side I'm on. People say to me 'well, there are two sides to this'. Yes, there are. On one side, there is a country being invaded and bombed, and its people are being killed. On the other side is the country doing the invading and bombing and killing.

strikes me as eerily similar to some things said once upon a time by patriotic American liberals about George Bush, Bin Laden, and "knowing what side" to take.

Now I happen to think it can be OK to lend a certain support to unpleasant political forces, or political forces with very unpleasant streaks, when they're doing some "objectively" desirable thing - overthrowing the Taliban, say, or Idi Amin, or Hitler, or US imperialism in Indochina, or the French variety in Algeria etc. - according to whatever political and moral analysis one makes of what the other Lenin might have called a concrete situation.

But I don't see why one ought to do so uncritically.

Oh, and while I'm doing the balance thing, I should say that I don't like this picture too much. I know the US would like Chavez to be so isolated that he could only make pragmatic alliances with pricks, but I'm not so sure that he actually is that isolated. Yet, while my casual-enough following of Venezuala makes me think he's done much more good than bad there (and in Latin America generally), and makes me very sympathetic to him, I am a little unnerved that he appears to go out of his way to pick out the Saddams, the Ahmadinejads, and, yes, even the Castros as especial friends.