Ms Rice Does the Middle East

Before bustling off to Israel with a so-called surprise touchdown in Beirut, Secretary of State Rice said her aim was to create the conditions for a “sustainable cease-fire”. Fortunately for her, no one asked how she planned to do this. It surely was not by spending time in Beirut. One protester in Beirut was quoted in the New York Times saying, “She left faster than she came, and no one will listen to her.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent two hours with Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, one hour with Parliament speaker Berri Nabih Berri and 45 minutes with a group of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians to whom she promised $30 million in aid. “Thank you for your courage and steadfastness,” she told Mr. Siniora. For his part, Mr. Sinora was unmoved by Rice’s canned sympathy. He said the Israeli bombing had set Lebanon back “50 years.” Once she got to Israel, Rice said in her halting, prissy, Church Lady way that an “urgent and enduring peace” was needed in the Middle East. And today, the Fool’s Fool is running around from this official to that in Israel reiterating her demand for an enduring Mideast truce while contending that peace can only be accomplished after Hezbollah is neutralized. The Bush administration plan for peace in the Middle East is war. This insane strategy makes sense only to Israel and to the Bush administration. It sounds like madness to sane Americans and to all normal people who live in the Middle East and the rest of the world. So who benefits from war? Any corporation or entity that gets paid to produce armaments, men who invent armaments, men who deploy armaments, men who think about armaments, and men who talk about thinking about armaments all benefit. The top bunch in this group is The Carlyle Group, the Pentagon, Republicans and any company that has ever been in Dick Cheney’s stock portfolio. All persons that get paid to scare the crap out of the sane world benefit. All countries (read, United States, Great Britain, Russia, the Vatican) that no longer have any power but who want to be seen as having power benefit from weenie-waving and saber rattling. Governments of countries that don’t have power but want power (read any government in the Middle East) benefit from legal and illegal arms sales and excuses for nuclear arms build-up. In brief, all craven, greedy, powermad, unethical people in the world benefit from war. And all sane, reasonable, peace-loving people get screwed by war. That’s it.