Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Foreign Military Presence is Not Good: The Arab people pay attention to Arab summit meetings to the same degree that they pay attention to meetings of Potato Affairs Committee meetings in the region. I was reading the final summit statement. It referred to "foreign military presence" in Iraq. Don't you love that phrase? Orwell or Chomsky would have fun analyzing it. Every one of words of the phrase requires special attention. "Foreign" is intended to dilute the US occupation force in order to pay tribute to the 12 Moldovian soldiers still active in Iraq. "Presence" is my favorite word here. Presence. As in "Hitler suddenly found himself "present" in Poland." Syria is now "present" in Eastern Lebanon. Israel has been "present" in Palestine for more than 50 years. Oh, US is also "present" in Afghanistan. Let us hope that Israel does not extend its "presence" beyond Shib`a farms, Kfar Shuba hills, and the seven villages in South Lebanon.