A week after Israel's air war on Lebanon, with some 250 civilians killed and much of the country's infrastructure destroyed, US President George Bush issued a threat against Syria. Declaring that Syria was "trying to get back into Lebanon," he warned against any attempt to invite Syrian forces back into the devastated country little more than a year after Syrian troops were forced to leave as a result of a campaign orchestrated by the United States and France.
Bush's statement was typical of the declarations coming from both Washington and Tel Aviv - all of which go unchallenged by the European Powers and the Western media.
Bush charged Syria with meddling in the affairs of a country that is being reduced to rubble by bombs, missiles, ships and warplanes supplied by the US to its closest Middle East ally. And as he painted Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as the aggressors, he continued to oppose any cessation of Israel's bombing of civilian targets throughout a defenceless Lebanon - a violation of international law that defines its perpetrators as war criminals.
Bush's comments crowned a day of much vaunted diplomatic initiatives by the major powers and the United Nations to resolve the Lebanese conflict along lines dictated by the United States and Israel. For its part, Israel made clear that it would accept nothing that cut across its current drive to destroy Hezbollah and transform Lebanon into a tool of Israeli policy, or its ability to launch future attacks against any and all forces or States that resist its imperialist designs.
The "international peacekeeping force," proposed jointly by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan, is advanced in order to police such a victor's peace. Its stated mission is to oversee the removal of any Hezbollah presence from the southern areas bordering Israel.
At the same time, the international force proposed by Annan and Blair would directly serve the interests of the major imperialist Powers. It would provide Washington with an opportunity to establish a permanent military presence, working directly with the Israeli defence forces (IDF). White House national security spokesman Frederick Jones said, "We're open to the possibility of that force being necessary." Other US spokesmen, however, discounted the proposal.
But even such a UN-run police force is deemed by Israeli Prime Minister Edhud Olmert to be an unacceptable limitation on Israel's freedom of action. Military violence is the preferred method of both the American and Israeli ruling elites.
Israel will, moreover, be satisfied only with complete subjugation of Lebanon and its reduction to an impotent client regime. As the Israeli daily Haaretz pointed out, the creation of a security zone in the south is considered insufficient by the Israeli defence forces as it would "not... prevent Hezbollah from deploying long-range rockets and missiles further north in Lebanon."
As the onslaught against Lebanon enters continues, Israeli troops are poised for a full-scale invasion that has been prepared by aerial bombardment and the far-reaching imperialist aims of the war have become all too clear.
With the full political, financial and military backing of the United States, the Zionist regime is attempting to transform Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. This military operation is a continuation and escalation of the imperialist geo-political restructuring of the Middle East and Central Asia that began with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose goal is the establishment of US domination of the entire region.
The immediate aim of this war - the elimination of Hezbollah as a military and political force within Lebanon - is directed against all mass resistance to Israeli and American domination of the country. The Bush administration and its allies in Jerusalem see this as an essential step towards: 1) the removal of the Syrian Baathist regime, and 2) the launching of a full-scale war against Iran.
While the Israeli government and the Bush administration endlessly repeat propaganda claims that the attack on Lebanon is an act of "self defence" prompted by the seizure of two soldiers, this assertion enjoys no credibility among knowledgeable observers.
As the Financial Times, London, wrote in its lead editorial, "Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon by land, sea and air in response to Hezbollah's cross-border raid is now about a great deal more than recovering two Israeli soldiers seized by Islamist guerrillas - and it probably always was."
Similar assessments have been published in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous newspapers internationally. They simply state what is by now obvious: the Israeli attack on Lebanon is the realisation of a long-planned act of aggression.
The current war is not only about wiping out Hezbollah, but destroying any resistance within Lebanon to US and Israeli domination. This desired end goes a long way in explaining the means that are being employed. Israel is carrying out an indiscriminate bombardment of the south, the home of the poor Shiite population and the main base of support for Hezbollah. The Israeli military is deliberately targeting the entire civilian population, destroying whole villages and making the entire region uninhabitable.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Israel has ordered all Lebanese living in the southern sector below the Litani River to evacuate the region within 24 hours.
The goal is to turn south Lebanon into a no-man's land so as to prepare the ground for the entry of either Israeli troops or a combination of Israeli and American forces, with perhaps other national contingents operating as an "international peace keeping force" with the imprimatur of the United Nations.
The Israeli offensive is above all a war against the Lebanese poor. The more affluent residential neighbourhoods of Beirut and other parts of the country have been largely spared. This is in keeping with US and Israeli policy during the civil war, when they were allied with the Phalange against the Shiite masses and the Palestinian refugee population.
The unleashing of death and destruction against southern Lebanon is combined with a bombing campaign aimed at the southern suburbs of Beirut and against airports, ports, roads, bridges and power stations in the rest of the country. The objective is to wreck the country's infrastructure.
In order to remake Lebanon politically, it first must be gutted physically. This gives some idea of what US imperialism and its junior partner, Israel, have in store for the people of Syria, Iran and beyond.
Nor is there any reason to believe Israel's disavowals of plans for a full-scale ground invasion. The more Israeli leaders discount such a move, the more likely it becomes. While the scale of the bombing in south Lebanon is sufficient to kill many thousands of people, it will not achieve Israel's aims of destroying Hezbollah as a military and political force, and converting Lebanon into a Zionist protectorate.
Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, NBC's evening news programme reported that several thousand Israeli troops have begun crossing the border into southern Lebanon.
The United States is playing a decisive role in the war. It sanctioned the war in advance and is working in the closest collaboration with the Israeli military's US-made and American-financed war machine to carry it out.
On the diplomatic level, the Bush administration is openly co-ordinating its moves with the military objectives and political calculations of the Israeli government. Washington is co-ordinating US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's impending visit to the region with Tel Aviv to give the Israeli military all the time it wants to inflict maximum possible destruction in south Lebanon. As the New York Times reported, "American officials signalled that Ms Rice was waiting at least a few more days before wading into the conflict, in part to give Israel more time to weaken Hezbollah forces."
There is no precedent for the US government's open opposition to a cease-fire. The Wall Street Journal, in a fairly frank assessment of US policy recalled Washington's diplomatic role when the last major conflict erupted between Israel and Hezbollah:
"Ten years ago, when Hezbollah and Israeli forces engaged in a multiweek bloodbath, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the region for six days of intensive shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Jerusalem. In the end, he won a cease-fire deal that ended the fighting, at least temporarily.
"Today, the Bush administration has a starkly different approach."
The US is fully and openly legitimising war as an instrument of foreign policy. This is a continuation of its military aggression in Iraq, and an anticipation of future aggression against Syria, Iran, and other countries. It is bound up with the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive war," which has been embraced by the entire American political establishment and both parties of American imperialism-the Democrats as well as the Republicans.
Washington's determined effort to allow Israel to continue the slaughter in Lebanon underscores that the current war is part of US imperialism's drive, by any and all means, to establish American supremacy throughout the Middle East.
Whether this reckless and criminal military adventure will, in the short term, further this objective or lead Washington into an even deeper debacle in the region remains to be seen.(World Socialist Website).
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