famous draft dodger

President George W. Bush states that he is hoping for more killing so Hezbollah can be gotten rid of. Which is why he refuses to pick up the phone to tell the Israelis to stop. And they would stop if he told them to, as they rely on the U.S. for their money - more than $8 billion a year - as well as their weapons that are being used in violation of U.S. law in this cowardly and cruel offensive.Ronald Reagan finally called Menachem Begin in 1982 and stopped the killing in Lebanon, shortly after the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, so we know it works.And the U.S. Congress is despicable in its silence. They are all bought off by the Israel lobby and are afraid to criticize. If this were happening in any other country by any other country, there would be speeches on the floor of Congress, legislation introduced to stop aid and other help to whomever would be committing this cruelty. But since their campaign money comes from the Israeli lobby, we hear only silence.It is hard to imagine, but try to imagine how you would feel if some country continued bombing Sioux Falls or Madison or Watertown or Brookings, and left you no route of escape, or if you did try to escape, that they bombed the car you were trying to escape in.Try to imagine small children you know being burned by phosphorous bombs, or a small child in your neighborhood picking up one of the small clusters that are contained in a cluster bomb, and having his or her arms blown off by the explosion. Cluster bombs, at least the ones that explode right away, are like highly powerful weed cutters that are timed to explode at chest level, designed to kill anyone in the vicinity where they are dropped. We saw that in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel that led to the slaughter of more than 30,000 innocent Lebanese.
As of today, there are an estimated 750,000 Lebanese made homeless by the Israeli bombing campaign. And it’s essentially just starting.
The Lebanese who are American citizens are lucky as they can be evacuated to Cyprus, but for those who are not Americans, there is no escape. Syria has taken in as many of these refugees as can get across the border and they’ve announced they will continue to take whomever can get there, but from the south of Lebanon, it’s very difficult to get there.
George Bush, perhaps our most famous draft dodger, was a great supporter of the Vietnam War while at the same time he was busy using his father’s influence to escape the draft. He is now in favor of continuing the killing in Lebanon and refuses to call for a cease fire, because, he says, he wants Hezbollah destroyed.
The problem is that Israel cannot destroy Hezbollah either militarily or politically. They are Lebanese who live there, and who are defending their home territory. They have more support now than they ever had because of Israel’s cowardly bombing campaign.
Even those Lebanese who did not support Hezbollah are applauding that group’s standing up to Israel’s military power. Even in Egypt, where the dictator Mubarak has sold his soul to the U.S. and to Israel, the people are out on the streets protesting. And in Jordan the same is happening. Despite the Jordanian government’s tacit support of Israel, the public is out in the streets. Unfortunately, even though the Saudi public is in support of Hezbollah, the government won’t allow street protests, but the Saudi government is now denouncing Israel’s actions.
Both Israel and the U.S. are lucky that the dictators and monarchies are in power. A democracy of the kind that Bush is calling for would result in the Arab public marching on Israel en masse. What is holding them back are the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. Only Syria is standing firm, and Syria is a militarily weak country, but apparently with enough backbone to resist selling out.

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