The US and Israel – The Lord of War

July 28, 2006

Secretary of State Rice is off again to the Middle East to broker a cease fire. Said Rice, “We hope to achieve an early end to this violence…That means that we have to help the parties establish conditions that will make it possible for an early ceasefire” After 17 days it is not at all clear what this administration considers “early.”

She has her work cut out for her and the pressure is on. Reuters quotes the Brookings Institution’s Shibley Telhami: "If she does not get a ceasefire she will have failed." And this failure is dire considering the US’s already besmirched reputation amongst the Arab nations, in which the strong feeling is that Israel operates with carte blanche from the US. Telhami states, “The feeling is that Israel is doing Washington's work in the Middle East." [1]

Of course, what complicates Rice’s job is that the US is the source of the munitions and military equipment that Israel has used to kill more that 300 Lebanese civilians to date.
In an article published yesterday, Columnist Greg Mitchell pointed to the little published fact that the US has supplied Israel with more that 10 billion in Foreign Military Financing and along with more than 6 billion in US arms deliveries since Bush took office in 2001.

Among those weapons in the last year Mitchell lists:

• 100 Guided Bomb Units (GBU-28) that include: BLU-113 A/B penetration warhead.”
• 5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) tail kits.
• and – just last week, emergency approval of $210 million in JP-8 jet fuel to go to the Israeli military.
  
  and, since 2001
• 102 F-16 aircraft
• 700 M-60 tanks,
• 89 F-15 combat aircraft
• and “missiles and bombs of all kinds and scores of attack helicopters.” [2]

And, of course, let’s not overlook the artillery fired cluster bombs that Israel has been using on civilian populations according to Human Rights Watch [3]

Of course the US duplicity in regards to Israel is long standing. Having supplied and supported Israel’s rogue (Israel is not an adherent to the Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty – like North Korea) nuclear program, the US has had no qualms about opposing Pakistan and India in their development of nuclear programs (although India’s program has since been sanctioned by Bush), and of course continues to oppose Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel is estimated to have 75 to 125 warheads [4] , and unlike India and Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons are stored in component form, Israel is locked and loaded; its weapons are stored assembled.

In the current conflict, the US continues to play both sides of the fence. The first shipment of “humanitarian aid” arrived in Lebanon on Tuesday. U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman said of the shipment, which is the first in $30 million worth of aid, "We hope it will address some of the most pressing needs of the conflict victims. The United States remained deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Lebanon." [5]

One wonders how committed the US is to the “humanitarian situation”, when it is fueling the bombers that are dropping the US made bombs that created the “situation” in the first place.

It would seem that the best thing that the US could do to address “some of the most pressing needs of the conflict victims" is to turn off the spigot of military aid to Israel.

[1] Reuters - July 28, 2006

[2] Greg Mitchell, in Editor and Publisher, July 27, 2006

[3] Human Rights Watch News - July 24, 2006

[4] Arms Control Association

[5] Examiner.com, July 25, 2006