The Final Stages

My degree is in its final stages. I just talked with a professor who will work with me on my big final degree ending (and hopefully passsing) paper. The topic, broadly, is about Russia's energy hegemony in Eurasia/Central Asia and how it will affect regional and international security. I'm just in the beginning stages of looking up books, conferences and other materials before I take the plunge into outlining and writing a 50 to 70 page paper. That's far more than I've ever written for any one paper, but I take heart from the fact that last semester that's about how much I wrote throughout. Since this fall semester is solely focused on my substantial research paper (or SRP, as they call it at AU), it's definitely possible. It will be a challenge and I will succeed.

If only it was that easy

Thankfully the U.S. and France have been able to get a draft resolution together for the U.N. Why this has not happened sooner is probably something I don't want to know. Unfortunately, Lebanon does not think the resolution is sufficient/satisfactory. They, in turn, propose their seven point plan, which is as follows (from Reuters):

"Lebanon wants any U.N. resolution to stick to the terms of a seven-point peace plan endorsed by its cabinet, which includes one Hizbollah minister.

The Lebanese plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, the return home of displaced Lebanese, the deployment of U.N. and Lebanese forces in the south and the disarmament of Hizbollah."

In a perfect world, that would have been what the U.S. and France could've agreed to. And the proposal almost seems enforceable.

TAGS: Lebanon, Middle East

Problems with the "them" label

I've been reading The Economist and Imperial Hubris lately and it seems that the West really needs to re-examine how it is classifying, treating and fighting terrorism. Michael Scheuer's whole argument is essentially that al Qaeda has very clearly articulated goals and threats that do not include killing Americans because of who they are. To be sure, al Qaeda is a mortal enemy to the liberal democratic West and it must be eliminated, but, like Israel's fight with Hizbollah and Hamas, the threat is being generalized and conflated.

Some of this threat conflation comes from defensive paranoia and a natural reaction to very traumatic violence. Yet more of it comes from "us and them" rationalizing after the attack and probably the most of it comes from misinformation to lend credibility to those in power fighting terrorist groups. If terrorist groups are classified like "those godless commies" during the Cold War (only concerned with killing good, Christian, red-blooded Americans), then those fighting terrorism can hide behind a McCarthy-esque screen of fear and paranoia. I'm not so naive to suggest that we can talk with all of these terrorist groups and keep them from killing people, but I do think more normalized relations with the cultures in which the terrorists exist will go a long way toward breaking down the "us and them" mentality on both sides.

In Israel and Lebanon, if the average Lebanese and Israeli had greater contact with each other (whether face-to-face or through wonderous other media), I think Lebanese would be less likely to support Hizbollah acting on their behalf and Israelis would hold their armed forces to greater account on civilian and U.N. monitor deaths. This wouldn't have necessarily averted the current conflict, but it might have made it more careful and less difficult to break away from.

Who am I kidding? Careful war?! Well, I know the results won't look careful, but maybe we can be more careful in the how and why of waging the war in the first place.

TAGS: Lebanon, Middle East, terrorism