Sunday Bird Blogging in Mourning

Bosco, solemnly pacing atop mourning black, says,
NOT IN MY NAME. I do too.

As the corpses of more women, children and old men are exhumed from their makeshift basement bomb shelter in Qana, Bosco the peach-faced lovebird mourns along with millions around the world who still have a conscience. Black is the color for this Sunday morning full of death, destruction, false pride and stubborn stupidity on the part of those who still believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that violence can beget peace or justice or progress or "victory."

This sickening delusion pervades many parts of the planet these days, driven by the aggressive madness of so-called "leaders" -- political, religious and military -- who choose to incite more violence, not quell it. They move people and planes and bombs and missles and rockets and tanks around on their Stratego boards as if this were all a game of revenge and counter-revenge, with no real blood or guts or rigor mortis muddying the abstract geopolitical landscape. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, don't they? Oh, they feel potent. Powerful. In the throes of adrenalin rushes. In control. Innocent humans suffer for their kicks. Innocent humans are turned to pulp. Those caught in the middle of the "military maneuvers" struggle without food, water, medicine or a way out.

To the freakishly immoral "leaders" and "military strategists" it IS all a game. Oh, who's winning? Who gains "power"? Who must eat crow? Every single time it is the ordinary people, the civilians, the infants, the women who bear the brunt of the murderous destruction. The "leaders" sit in air conditioned comfort, pondering how big and strong and powerful they can look to their peers -- others involved in the same pathological quests. All of them admiring their own cleverness.

Corpse of a child in Qana.

Stop the killing now. All of you. Enough. Enough. Enough. I say any who continue cheerleading or participating in this killing spree on any side should be criticized loudly for their blood lust. All of them should be shamed for their genocidal aggressions masquerading as "defense" and "bravery" and "courage" and "honor." It is nothing less than venomous murder on a grand scale and it will, as this brutality always does, bring nothing but more of the same. As an American, I cannot tell you how sick it makes me feel to see alleged representatives of the American people holding back the urgent international tides pushing for an immediate cease fire. It is American "leaders" who are allowing, even encouraging, the carnage in order to permit an outcome of "victory." Shame on all who support them in this.

Corpses of two women in Qana.

Innocent human beings are dying in Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, while the militarists slither for "advantage." The only ones who win in these wars are the arms dealers, the oil barons, the defense contractors and their cronies who purport to lead their nations. A pox on them all.

An article in the Belgravia Dispatch summarizes the expected horrific results of this, as a commentator calls it, temper tantrum:

This 'accidental' war (as The Economist recently put it) will end up having proved something of a disaster for all parties involved save, perhaps, Hezbollah. Israel will not have eradicated Hezbollah (a totally unrealistic war aim, regardless, Krauthammer and Co's reckless imbecility aside), the United States has complicated its regional position immensely, and, as Cohen points out, the Cedar Revolution lies in ashes. Was the IDF action worth hundreds dead, thousands wounded, massive flows of internally displaced and refugees numbering in the hundreds of thousands, an environmental disaster unprecedented in Lebanon's modern history, and the scuttling of Lebanon's tenuous movements towards emergence from an oppressive Syrian yoke? All for, at the end of the day, a deal on Shaba Farms, the return of the two soldiers (probably in the context of a prisoner exchange anyway), French and other troops on the Lebanese-Israeli and Lebanese-Syrian borders (gee, wonder how porous that latter one will be?), and some (likely mostly chimerical) 'disarming' of Hezbollah?

Well no, of course not, this was more by way of an ill-advised temper tantrum than a serious military operation, as Arik Sharon would himself admit, if only he were aware of the disaster underway. Sharon would have recalled previous Lebanese quagmires and would have well understood (aided by the wisdom of years and the lack of any need to prove himself) that resort to airpower, in the main, cannot succeed in this context, with the specter of hundreds and hundreds of civilian deaths earning Israel international opprobrium in every world capital (save Washington), and that there is no real, sustained post-'82 appetite in Israel for a massive land incursion regardless, not least given the ultimate futility of same. No, Sharon would likely have chastised Ehud Olmert for his impestuous over-reaction, one so helpfully fanned on by myopic strategic blunderers and amateurs in Washington, both in policy and journalistic circles.

So yes, we mourn today for all the dead. All the wounded. All the victims of the geopolitical Stratego games. And we urge everyone reading this to stand up and say STOP IT NOW in any way you can think of. All moral authority (such as it was), on all sides, is in shambles.