July 21, 2006

Siniora's Dismay

I don't know if any of you caught Larry King's recent interview of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, but if so, you'll see it yet again put the lie to Rich Lowry's breathtakingly ignorant reportage below:

Rich Lowry: "Just talked to someone very close to U.S. policy-making on the Mideast. I didn't cull much new or different from what we've been hearing and reading. The sense is that the Lebanese government is happy to see Israel pound Hezbollah, but can't say it out loud."

Anyway, if you missed the show, don't miss this speech he gave in Lebanon to the assembled diplomatic corps, and then think anew of Rich Lowry's credibility (and indeed that of NRO generally) on this issue:

I have convened the diplomatic corps in Lebanon today to launch an urgent appeal to the international community for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and assistance to my war-ravaged country.

You are all aware that seven continuous days of an escalating Israeli onslaught on Lebanon have resulted in immeasurable loss. The toll in terms of human life has reached tragic proportions: over 1,000 wounded and 300 killed so far; over half-a-million people have been displaced; in some areas, the hospitals have been crippled and are unable to cope with the casualties; there are shortages of food and medical supplies; homes, factories and warehouses have been completely destroyed; UN facilities in Maroun al-Ras and Naqoura have just been shelled, so have army barracks and posts of the Joint Security Forces; a Civil Defense unit has been wiped out and foreigners are being evacuated.

As I speak, the trauma, the desperation, the grief and the daily massacres and destruction go on and on. The country has been torn to shreds.

Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens of other countries? Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by Israel is inflicted on us?

Will you allow innocent civilians, churches, mosques, orphanages, medical supplies escorted by the Red Cross, people seeking shelter or fleeing their homes and villages to be the casualties of this ugly war?

"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?

Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions? Is this the message to send to the country of diversity, freedom and tolerance?

Only last year, the Lebanese filled the streets with hope and with red, green and white banners shouting out: Lebanon deserves life!

What kind of life is being offered to us now?

I will tell you what kind: a life of destruction, despair, displacement, dispossession, and death.

What kind of future can stem from the rubble?

A future of fear, frustration, despair, financial ruin and fanaticism.

Let me assure you that we shall spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted and continues to inflict upon us, knowing full well that human life is irreplaceable.

You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation.

On behalf of the people of Lebanon, from Beirut, Baalbek and Byblos, to Tyre Sidon and Qana, to each and every one of the 21 villages at the Southern border, declared a no-go zone by Israel, to Tripoli and Zahle, to every other town, I call upon you all to respond immediately without reservation or hesitation to this appeal for an immediate cease-fire and lifting of the siege, and provide urgent international humanitarian assistance to our war-stricken country.

I would also like to thank the international organizations and the friendly countries that have already extended their valued help.

I would like to thank all those who are also preparing to do so.

The Israeli war machines continue to inflict destruction and killing without any hesitation.

Excellencies, we the Lebanese want life. We have chosen life. We refuse to die.

Our choice is clear.

We have survived wars and destruction over the ages. We shall do so again.

I hope you will not let us down this time. Thank you.

So much for Rich Lowry's sources. Or perhaps this is all theatrical verbiage, and the PM is happy to see the bombing campaign increase in coming days, eh? Methinks not. The key reason the Lebanese PM is so aghast at what is happening to Lebanon is obviously the inordinate loss of life among civilians.

Carpenters are running out of wood for coffins. Bodies are stacked three or four high in a truck at the local hospital morgue. The stench is spreading in the rubble.

The morbid reality of Israel’s bombing campaign of the south is reaching almost every corner of this city. Just a few miles from the Rest House hotel, where the United Nations was evacuating civilians on Thursday, wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the village of Hosh, officials said.

Officials at the Tyre Government Hospital inside a local Palestinian refugee camp said they counted the bodies of 50 children among the 115 in the refrigerated truck in the morgue, though their count could not be independently confirmed.

Abdelmuhsin al-Husseini, Tyre’s mayor, announced on Thursday that any bodies not claimed in the next two days by next of kin would be buried temporarily in a mass grave near the morgue until they could receive a proper burial once the fighting ends.

“I am asking the families, if they can come here, to claim the bodies,” said Mr. Husseini, whose bloodshot eyes hinted at his mad scramble to secure food rations and bring some order to the city. “Otherwise, we have no choice but to bury them in mass graves.”

With the roads and bridges to many surrounding villages bombed out, few families have come to the hospital to claim their dead.

Even if they could make the journey, they would fear being hit by airstrikes along the way, Mr. Husseini said. Emergency workers have been unwilling to brave the risk of recovering many bodies left along the road, leaving them to rot.

For those relatives who reach the morgue, conducting a proper burial is impossible while the bombing continues. Many have opted to leave the bodies at the morgue until the conflict ends.

The morgue has had to order more than 100 coffins with special handles to make it easier to remove them from the ground to be reburied later.

“What? He wants a hundred?” a local carpenter said, half shocked, half perplexed. “Where the hell am I going to get enough wood to build that many coffins?”

At the hospital, members of the medical staff now find themselves dealing with the dead more than saving the living.

“This hospital is working like a morgue more than a hospital,” said Hala Hijazi, a volunteer whose mother is an anesthesiologist at the hospital. Lately, Ms. Hijazi said, she has begun to recognize some of the faces arriving here as the scale of the Israeli bombings has continued to widen. “A lot of the people are from Tyre, and we know some of them,” she said of the bodies.

Rich Lowry says the Lebanese government is happy this pounding is taking place. As Groucho Marx said, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Look, I harp on this because, soi disant, NRO is a serious magazine, and people ostensibly believe what they read there, and it reflects a certain swath of Beltway conventional wisdom. If people think the Lebanese government is happy as peach for their country to be bombed back 20 years, it makes it easier for Americans to support unequivocally the Israeli action, and also leaves Americans less concerned about Condoleeza Rice's tortoise-like pace towards effectuating a cease-fire. But the assumptions undergirding such journalistic forays are just wrong, not to mention overly breezy, self-important, and simplistic.