ROBERT FISK: John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has consistently opposed any kind of ceasefire, because he believes, as Mr. Bush does and as our own dear prime minister, Lord Blair, as I call him, does, that the Israelis can accomplish these hopeless political military aims. Well, the Israelis believe that they can actually destroy one of the most disciplined and most ruthless guerrilla armies in the world. They can't, anymore than the Americans could destroy the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese or British could destroy the IRA. And, believe me, the Hezbollah are not as weak and cowardly as the IRA was. But they can't. These are hopeless political aims. All the United Nations is doing by postponing a ceasefire is condemning more Lebanese to death. I wrote in Saturdayâs paper, before Qana, that the actions of Blair and Bush, and Bolton by extension, and Condoleezza Rice, were going to condemn more innocents to death.
You know, I went into a hospital in Marjayoun last week, and I saw this very beautiful young woman lying in bed, and her skin had been pitted with very familiar wounds, the little tiny round crimson holes of cluster bomblets. We used cluster bombs in Iraq in 2003. I know exactly what the wounds look like. I identified them at once. Indeed, she described the cluster bombs falling like grapes, as she put it, out of the sky, oddly enough an expression used by an Iraqi woman in 2003 to me. This young woman had been wounded 48 hours before I saw her. Had Bush and Blair insisted on a ceasefire at the beginning, this woman, her skin would not be destroyed in the way it has been.
On the ground, when you're here, when you see the wounded, see the dead, you realize the immorality, the obscenity, the atrocity of statesmen, as they think they are, claiming that, you know, it isn't yet time for a ceasefire. A hasty ceasefire would not be a good thing, as Condoleezza Rice said. 24 hours before, I saw a picture of her on a beach in Malaysia. And people remember this. People remember this. In the hospital it was a young man who said -- turned to me, he said, âWhy have you done this to us? Why have you done this to us?â And the woman I was talking to said the same: âWhy does the West want to do this to us?â
You know, this has been going on for more than two weeks now. Iâm traveling around the south, increasingly outraged at what I see, as a human being. And Iâm not a Muslim. Iâm not a Muslim. And I keep saying to myself, âIf I was a Muslim, how much more outraged might I be?â I turned to an American friend of mine tonight back in Beirut before I came home, and I said, âYou know, Iâve been watching this now for more than two weeks, and there's going to be another 9/11.â Thereâs going to be another 9/11, and then weâre going to hear all the usual claptrap about how itâs good versus evil, and they hate us because weâre good and democratic, and they hate our values, and all the other material that comes out of the rear end of a bull that your president and my prime minister talk.
Whatâs going on in southern Lebanon is an outrage. Itâs an atrocity. The idea that more than 600 civilians must die because three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured on the border by the Hezbollah on July 12, my 60th birthday -- Iâve spent 30 years of my life watching this, this filth now, you know -- is outrageous. Itâs against all morality to suggest that 600 innocent civilians must die for this. There is no other country in the world that could get away with this.
You know, when -- I wrote in my paper last week, there were times when the IRA would cross from the Irish Republic into northern Ireland to kill British soldiers. And they did murder and kill British soldiers. But we, the British, didnât hold the Irish government responsible. We didn't send the Royal Air Force to bomb Dublin power stations and Galway and Cork. We didn't send our tanks across the border to shell the hill villages of Cavan or Monaghan or Louth or Donegal. Blair wouldn't dream of doing that, because he believes he's a moral man, heâs a civilized man. He wouldn't treat another nation like that.
But when the Israelis treat Lebanon like that, it's okay, and Blair doesn't want a ceasefire. You canât have a real ceasefire. In other words, we've got to have the Lebanese on their knees to sign the dotted line, before we give them a ceasefire. And that dotted line means the disarmament of Hezbollah, which will be impossible for the Lebanese to do without restarting the civil war, because to disarm Hezbollah, you must use the army, and most of the Hezbollah are, of course, Shiite Muslims, and most of the army are Shiite Muslims. So youâre going to have brothers assaulting brothers to take their weapons away. It will not happen. However much you may wish it and however much I may wish it, it won't happen. And, again, this double morality: Blair wouldn't dream of attacking the Irish Republic because the IRA crossed the border from Ireland, but itâs quite in order for Israel to attack the Lebanese Republic because the Hezbollah crossed the border from Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, speaking to us from Beirut, Lebanon. He had just returned from Tyre, where victims of the Qana bombing had been taken. We'll play part two of this interview tomorrow on Democracy Now!
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