Rice to Present U.S. Peace Plan
Rice plans a trip to the Mideast as soon as early next week, and will carry the U.S. strategy for ending the 10-day-old warfare and establishing stability in southern Lebanon, a senior Bush administration said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Rice has not yet made her plans public.
I’m so glad that we’re in a position to lecture other countries on how to keep the Middle East “stable.” The Bush Administration has such a great track record on Middle East stability.
But I guess they have to at least say something about this whole catastrophe…
I’ve also been reading a wonderful article over on The Age, called “A Farewell to Beirut” which damn near makes me want to cry. The article’s author, Robert Fisk, gives an interesting synopsis of the tragedies of ancient Berytus.
In The year AD 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus — headquarters of the Romans’ East Mediterranean fleet — was struck by a massive earthquake. In its aftermath, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors — ancestors of the present-day Lebanese — walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed to them.
That was when a giant tsunami returned to swamp the city and kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople to every family left alive.
And even some ancient foreign invader-based tragedy:
When the Crusaders arrived in Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city.
In World War I, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine — the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of stick-like children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.
And he goes on to lament the loss of the past 20 years rebuilding progress, spurned by the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri (who was assasinated last year, supposedly by - get this - Syrian interests).
Hariri loved [Etoile Restaurant in Beirut] and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. “Ah Robert, come over here,” he roared, turning to Chirac like a cat about to eat a canary. “I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn’t rebuild Beirut!”
And now it is being unbuilt. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked three times by the Israelis, its shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri’s transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. Only this small jewel of a restaurant in the centre of Beirut has been spared. So far.
I pity the poor Lebanese people who are suffering so much over issues that don’t even involve them. But the Lebanese are a hardy people; they’re no stranger to the region’s volatile foreign politics, unfortunately neither are they stranger to suffering because of them.
My heart is with all of the innocent people of Lebanon, who now suffer so needlessly.
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