Lebanese children play in front of a tent in Debbine Village, southern Lebanon, Aug. 25. (Reuters Photo)

It has been said that Israel has made the same mistake in Lebanon as it did in 1982: using overwhelming military force to solve a political problem. It failed then and it has failed now.
In fact, this war is a greater political and moral disaster, even though it was shorter (34 days vs. three months), caused a lower Lebanese death toll (1,600 vs. 18,000) and ended without Israel occupying large swaths of Lebanon. Here’s why.
Whereas the Palestine Liberation Organization was dealt a near death blow and driven out of Lebanon, Hezbollah has emerged politically strengthened. Yasser Arafat and his entourage were foreigners who had overstayed their welcome, whereas Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah represent indigenous forces.
In 1982, Israel had several Lebanese allies but this time it has none to do its bidding.
Whereas Israel has demonstrated, yet again, that it can cause death and destruction at will, its aura of invincibility has been punctured. Hence the talk in Israel of “the next round“ to restore that image. On the other side, Arab/Muslim militants feel emboldened.
So, unlike the post-1982 lull in hostilities, “both sides will now be looking for an opportunity to advance their cause,“ says professor James Reilly, a University of Toronto expert on the Middle East. “That makes a renewal of conflict more likely, not less likely.“
There are several other, less obvious, reasons why this war has left a greater impact on world consciousness.
While the North American media sanitized the horrors of this war, media elsewhere, especially in the Arab/Muslim world, showed the full impact of the indiscriminate bombing.
This is a repeat of the pattern we’ve seen in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli Occupied Territories; one version of events shown in North America and quite another elsewhere.
This inability to control the narrative enrages George W. Bush and other conservatives. They accuse the burgeoning, and increasingly free, Arab media of being biased and sensationalist--a ludicrous proposition coming from the fans of Fox-TV and CNN.
Human rights advocates played a much more forceful role this time. Besides UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour raising the spectre of war crimes, the UN Human Rights Council condemned “the grave Israeli violations of human rights and breaches of humanitarian law,“ and the “massive bombardments of civilian populations, especially the massacres in Qana, Marwaheen, Al Duweir, Al Bayadah, Al Qaa, Chiyah, Ghazieh and other towns, and the displacement of 1 million civilians.“
For those who accuse the UN agency of anti-Israeli bias, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also said Israel may have committed war crimes. Rights Watch condemned Israel’s use of cluster bombs. The unexploded ones in people’s homes and in fields now pose a danger to returning refugees, and may take a year or more to diffuse.
Thursday, Amnesty said the destruction of thousands of homes, roads, bridges and water and fuel storage plants “was an integral part of Israel’s military strategy, rather than `collateral damage’ resulting from the lawful targeting of military objectives.“
The Israeli-U.S. selectivity in insisting on implementing UN resolutions on Lebanon while ignoring earlier ones calling Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories is no longer lost on the world.
Nor is the hypocrisy of calling on Hezbollah to disarm while turning a blind eye to scores of militias in Iraq and Afghanistan.
THESTAR.COM

Smoke billows from a suicide car bomb attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Aug. 22. (Reuters File Photo)

Reclaiming Afghanistan from the Taliban remains a crucial element in America’s global struggle against terrorism. So it should be setting off alarm bells in Washington that Afghans are becoming disenchanted with the performance of the country’s pro-American president, Hamid Karzai.
The democratically elected Karzai government is a big improvement over any of its recent predecessors. But it has not brought security, economic revival or effective governance to most of the country. That has left it vulnerable to complaints about blatant corruption, the pervasive power of warlords and drug lords, and escalating military pressure from a revived and resupplied Taliban.
Nearly five years after American military forces helped topple a Taliban government that provided sanctuary and training camps to Osama bin Laden, there is no victory in the war for Afghanistan, due in significant measure to the Bush administration’s reckless haste to move on to Iraq and shortsighted stinting on economic reconstruction.
The Taliban, operating from cross-border sanctuaries in Pakistan, has exploited Washington’s strategic blunders and Karzai’s disappointing performance to rebuild its political and military strength, particularly in the southern region where it first began its drive to power more than a decade ago. Daily battles now rage across five southern provinces. Civilian and military casualties are rising sharply, including those among the NATO forces that have recently moved into these areas.
Karzai cannot deliver security and redevelopment without sustained and effective international help. But he should be doing a lot more to curb the corruption of his political allies and appointees.
Their ostentatious greed has widened the gap, and sharpened political antagonisms, between the favored few and the desperately poor majority in one of the world’s least developed countries. Such venality is a gift to austere Taliban recruiters.
So is the notorious corruption of the police and judges, which makes it impossible for people to win redress of simple grievances. Frustration with the courts is again driving people to look to the swift and brutal punishments that have always been a Taliban specialty.
Americans are coming to see the war in Iraq as something apart from the war against 9/11-style terrorism--and a distraction from it. The war in Afghanistan has always been an essential part of that larger struggle. That makes it a war that America simply cannot afford to lose.
NYTIMES.COM

The Bush administration’s imposition of sanctions on two Russian companies this month for selling military technology to Iran certainly sends the Kremlin a message--but it won’t be the one the White House has in mind. The penalties will only deepen the hostility that Russia’s political establishment feels toward the United States.
That attitude came through loud and clear in many discussions I had with Russian academics, foreign policy specialists and senior officials during a recent trip to Moscow. President Vladimir V. Putin echoed it in his caustic dismissal of Vice-President Dick Cheney’s recent complaint that Russian democracy was eroding. And his condemnation of the sanctions as an “illegitimate“ attempt to foist US laws on Russian companies was no less acerbic. He will doubtless respond in kind.
The anti-American nationalism so palpable in Russia today is rooted in the 1990s, the decade of Boris N. Yeltsin, whom many Americans credit with ending Soviet totalitarianism and introducing the country to democracy. Russians have a different take on those years. They remember the chaos; the economic contraction; the extreme poverty; the robber barons who, with the connivance of the government, made billions after taking over state-owned industries at bargain-basement prices; and the Yeltsin family’s rampant corruption. Rightly or wrongly, they associate these bad experiences with the United States. As one Russian official told me, “We followed your advice, and look where it landed us.“
NATO’s expansion also feeds Russian anti-Americanism. During the debate here, US experts confidently predicted that Moscow would adjust to the induction of its former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the alliance just as it had when Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined. They were wrong.
The Russians I met see the US drive to enlarge the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as unfriendly and unnecessary, undertaken when Russia was weak and without regard for Russian sensibilities. They believe that the US continues to trample over vital Russian security interests, particularly in the post-Soviet republics, where, as they see it, Russia has the right to be dominant by virtue of history and geography.
The revolutions in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, hailed in Washington, are viewed in Russia as a US gambit to undercut Moscow’s influence in its own backyard by creating what one official sneeringly called “puppet governments.“
Russia’s anti-American nationalism also reflects current circumstances. Although their country has many problems, Russians feel stronger and more confident than they did in the 1990s and are determined to be taken seriously as a great power. The economic disaster of the previous decade is over. Russia’s gross domestic product has annually increased, on average, by 5 per cent under Putin. Yeltsin’s drunken antics, which made Russians cringe, have been replaced by Putin’s authoritative and confident air on the world stage. One young Russian, who finished high school and college in the US, told me, with evident admiration, that Putin conducted himself at the G-8 summit with the assurance of an adult tending child.
When Russians look ahead, they feel that they are on a roll. Thanks to sky-high oil prices, Russia is flush with cash. It has paid off much of its foreign debt ahead of schedule. Europe is increasingly dependent on Russian energy, and Western oil and gas companies want to partner with their Russian counterparts, most of which are under state control. The West is desperate for Russian help on Iran and North Korea, and the US is bogged down in Iraq and hated in much of the world. All this makes Russians determined to push back when they feel that they are pushed.
It’s folly to assume that a new, post-Soviet generation will seek greater harmony with the US or that Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (certain to occur) and market forces will necessarily integrate it into the West. When I asked the US-educated Russian whether he shared the anti-American nationalism, he said he did.
Rajan Menon
LATIMES.COM

Even though Cuban President Fidel Castro appears to be recovering from intestinal surgery, his illness has forced the Cuban people to face the fact of his mortality. While the strongman’s younger brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, has assumed power in his absence, there is little likelihood of a dynasty ruling the island 150 km off the Florida coast. Key to Cuba’s future is its relations with the United States. A light diplomatic touch is required. A heavy-handed attempt by Washington to intervene in Cuban politics could very well strengthen the Communist Party bureaucracy.
President Castro is a canny survivor. He has fended off Cuba’s huge neighbor to the north for more than four decades, defeating invasion attempts and dodging assassination plots. He has used U.S. opposition to consolidate his rule, standing firmly atop Cuban nationalism. Indeed, he delights in tweaking Washington. When the U.S. demanded greater freedom for the citizens of Cuba in 1980, he responded by emptying the country’s prisons and mental asylums, and sending tens of thousands of them to the U.S. in what is known today as the Mariel boatlift.
President Castro’s customary five-hour harangues had given Cubans and the world that feeling that he was not aging. That image was shattered July 31 when Havana announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery and handed power over to his brother while he was recovering. There were fears that the situation was much worse when there were no reports of his condition and neither he nor his brother was seen in public for two weeks. Concerns were assuaged last week when Defense Minister Castro told Cubans that his brother was recovering. Video of him with visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was released.
Nevertheless, the photos were a reminder that President Castro is not immortal after all and have forced the Cuban people to consider life after his death. His immediate successor would be his brother, reputed to be both the “muscle“ of the Communist government as well as a supporter of moderate economic reforms, like those in China. Unlike the president, who has been an implacable foe of private enterprise, Defense Minister Castro introduced Western management practices in the armed forces, which run the country’s most efficient and profitable companies.
But the defense minister is 75 (the president is 80) and does not have his brother’s charisma. The survival of the Communist government thus rests on the shoulders of the next generation of leaders. President Castro has not permitted a third person to rise through the hierarchy. As a result, a collective leadership is most likely to rule, although a power struggle cannot be ruled out.
Even if President Castro recovers and reassumes power, the Communist government must prepare for a transition. The rest of the world should, too. That means polishing the carrots that can be used to encourage political and economic reform. Those efforts must be subtle, however, as overt interference in Cuban politics will only strengthen the hand of nationalists and hardliners who benefit from Cuba’s relative isolation in the world. The goal should be to help better the lives of the 11 million Cuban people.
JAPANTIMES.CO.JP

This file handout picture given by NASA and taken Feb. 22 by Hubble Space Telescope shows Pluto and two new moons. (AFP File Photo)

Pluto has been downgraded, reduced to the ranks with the status of a planetoid. It never deserved its superior status. Its admission to the club, in 1930, was based on the misapprehension that it was several times larger than the planet we live on ourselves: if Earth belonged in the astronomical premiership, then logically, Pluto must do so too.
Subsequent research, however, caused Pluto to be downsized. It retained its place within the collection on sufferance until another, larger celestial presence was discovered last year, and alarm began to spread that if present trends continued, the number of planets might rise as high as two dozen. On the basis of GK Chesterton’s teaching--one sun, he maintained, is sublime; six would be merely vulgar--this might devalue the concept.
Accordingly, about 400 scientists voted at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague that Pluto would have to be relegated. The decision in Prague is also a posthumous triumph for the composer Gustav Holst, who, invited after the discovery of Pluto to add one more item to his Planets Suite, completed in 1917, said he would rather not.
Since then, another composer has tacked one on. Its survival must be in doubt: on the face of it, you can scarcely have something that isn’t a planet in a Planets Suite. It is not quite clear how this issue might be resolved, unless by a vote of 400 musicologists, if such a number exists, on the model of the recent assembly in Prague.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK