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Juan Cole on ‘Democracy Now’

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Posted on Aug 6, 2006
Democracy Now

On Friday’s “Democracy Now,” the radio program’s host, Amy Goodman, spoke with Mideast expert and Truthdig contributor Juan Cole, whom she asked about the recent protests in Iraq over Israel’s incursion into Lebanon.  Cole replied by saying, “Well, Iraq turns out to be a majority Shiite country, and most of the Shiite Iraqis have repeatedly voted for fairly hard-line fundamentalist religious parties. Since Hezbollah is cut from very much the same cloth, it’s not surprising that very large numbers of Iraqi Shiites support their co-religionists in Lebanon.”


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AMY GOODMAN:

Can you talk about, right now, the latest hours in Beirut, the packets that have been dropped, the leaflets that have been dropped on Beirut, calling on residents to leave?

JUAN COLE:

Well, the Israeli bombing campaign is only tangentially aimed at hurting Hezbollah. That’s a guerrilla organization. They’ve gone underground. It’s very unlikely that the Israelis can do further harm to them at this point by merely bombing unknown sites. The Israelis are systemically destroying the Lebanese infrastructure. They are hitting bridges. They are continuing to hit roads. They are degrading the ability of the Lebanese to connect with one another. And they are, frankly, putting pressure on the rest of the Lebanese to turn on Hezbollah and to try to control it on behalf of the Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN:

And what is the effect of this? How are people in Lebanon responding to Hezbollah?

JUAN COLE:

Well, from opinion polling that’s been published, it appears to be the case that there’s been, on the whole and by and large, a large spike of approval for Hezbollah and support for it, even among the Christian minority, which has gone to 55% support of Hezbollah. So it seems to be the case that the political aim of the Israeli bombing campaign is failing, and so far it doesn’t seem to have disabled Hezbollah militarily either.

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By TomChicago, August 9, 2006 at 2:52 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The new Middle East will resemble the old Middle East except that Islamist fundamentalism will emerge strengthened and have more focused targets, namely the US and Israel and those allied with them.

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By LTJ, August 8, 2006 at 1:04 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Dropping evac leaflets on Beruit!  Where the hell are they supposed to go from there?  Isn’t Beruit the main refuge?  I thought that thousands from south Lebanon had already been told to flee north to Beruit - so, where to next?  Turkey?  Or, maybe Israel is willing to take in a few (say 200,000) of the newly homeless refugees they’re so very proficient at creating?

Then again, road travel in Lebanon has never looked so good, most bridges and highways are freshly destroyed to make way for off-road 4WD fun, gasoline is cheap and plentiful (compared to what it will be in the near future), water is scarce but wet, and the IDF seems to guarantee safe passage to all fleeing civilians (except for Lebanese civilians).

So, combine this with Gaza and Iraq, and suddenly this new Middle East is looking very good indeed!

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