Viewing Lebanon as if Through a Bombsight (Page 2 of 2)

Such popular forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the United States and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon.

In the current crisis even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's oldest (and most important) ally in the region, was compelled to say, "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hezbollah and Hamas, just as U.S. violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, former air force commander, "views the world below through a bombsight." Much the same is true of Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who wield most of the means of violence.

Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current violence in "apocalyptic terms," warning that possibly "all hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the U.S.-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shiite community is seething with resentment at Israel, the United States and the government that it perceives as its betrayer."

The core issue—the Israel-Palestine conflict—can be dealt with by diplomacy, if the United States and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in "apocalyptic terms."

Noam Chomsky, the author, most recently, of Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, is emeritus professor of linguistics and philsophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.