War Room

by Mark Follman

Blunt vows a freeze on global warming fight

As much of the country continued to fry under triple-digit temperatures Wednesday, including citizens of the Midwest, one prominent Missourian dropped some icy attitude on the issue of global warming. Citing the publication Energy and Environment Daily, Judd Legum of Think Progress shares the bright news that House Majority Whip Roy Blunt has vowed to put a stop to any action on global warming for the entire 110th Congress if Republicans remain in control after the November elections. “I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful,” Blunt said. Legum reminds him that "thousands of scientists have agreed that global warming is real, humans are responsible for much of it and, unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be extremely serious consequences."

Other fallout from the Israel-Hezbollah war

The destruction on the ground in Lebanon and northern Israel continues to command the headlines, but the conflict is starting to leave its mark in other ways and extend its reach far and wide.

As Der Spiegel reports, Lebanon is now facing an environmental disaster: "The Lebanese government is calling it the biggest ecological catastrophe in the country's history. Between July 13 and 15, Israeli jets bombed the Jiyyeh power station, located 30 kilometers south of Beirut, and caused up to 35,000 tons of fuel oil to gush into the sea. The oil slick has now spread along 80 kilometers of Lebanon's 225 kilometer coastline and has already reached Syria. A clean up operation is badly needed, but continuing hostilities between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have made this virtually impossible. Now, the catastrophe is threatening to damage the environment across many parts of the Mediterranean."

Citing reports from another security Web site, Andrew Cochran of the Counterterrorism blog notes that the conflict has set off a wave of cyberterrorism: "Zone-H reported yesterday and last week, when US government sites and a Microsoft site was attacked. Yesterday's report really sounded the alarm: 'Hundreds of web sites have been attacked in last days as a protest against bombing attacks by Israel against Lebanon. The largest part of web intrusions were defacements -- web intrusion at any level by which a web page is replaced by the attacker's message -- against Israeli and U.S. web sites.' Zone-H noted that the attacks are coming not just from Muslim areas, but from politically motivated non-Muslims expressing their protest by hacking and defacing websites."

Meanwhile, in a Seattle hospital, 23-year-old Layla Bush is fighting for her life. She is the victim of accused gunman Naveed Haq, who, apparently enraged by the war, went on a shooting spree at the Seattle offices of a Jewish charity organization last Friday, wounding five women, and killing one. That woman, 58-year-old Pam Waechter, was mourned by hundreds at a funeral on Monday.

The disturbing attack in Seattle -- in one respect surprising, in that something like it didn't happen sooner or on an even worse scale -- was a reminder of the potency of the images now streaming out of a second war zone in the Middle East. The devastation there, and a surge in Hezbollah's status in the Muslim world, could lead to far worse, according to New York University's Bernard Haykel. In a recent Op-Ed in the New York Times, the professor of Islamic studies suggested that Hezbollah, in its fierce standoff with Israel, is eating al-Qaida's lunch in the propaganda wars. And that marks "a dangerous turn for the West," he said. "Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to take a loss of status lying down. Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaida will soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world -- whatever it needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam."

The war between Bush and Bush

When it comes to matters of global conflict, tales of ideological and strategic fault lines between father and son have been woven into a kind of mythology in the years since the junior George Bush took office. The latest installment arrives in today's New York Times, where Sheryl Gay Stolberg, like many others, leans on an anonymous source to deliver the inside dope. "When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father," Stolberg reports. "The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 -- six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond -- the new president signaled a strong predisposition to support Israel. 'He told Sharon in that first meeting that I'll use force to protect Israel, which was kind of a shock to everybody,' said one person present, given anonymity to speak about a private conversation. 'It was like, Whoa, where did that come from?'"

Stolberg goes on to say that the president's embrace of Israel "represents a generational and philosophical divide between the Bushes," evident in comments from the elder Bush's coterie of advisors and loyalists. Richard N. Haass, who counseled the elder Bush on the Middle East and later served as a senior State Department official during George W. Bush's first term, said of the White House's handling of Israel and Hezbollah, "The current approach simply is not leading toward a solution to the crisis, or even a winding down of the crisis."

In a speech Monday in Miami, Bush reiterated the reasoning behind sitting back while Israel continues to escalate its assault on Hezbollah inside Lebanon, a campaign that now includes a large-scale ground invasion. "The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East," Bush said, returning to the never-distant theme he has used to define not only his foreign policy but his presidency: "For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive. And as we saw on September the 11th, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change."

Notwithstanding the mirage of weapons of mass destruction, that may have been a more candid acknowledgment of why he chose to invade Iraq, rather than hew to his father's policy of containment of Saddam Hussein. Of course, Bush's top lieutenants have played a key part, too -- which is perhaps why the elder Bush allegedly mounted a secret campaign earlier this year to oust Donald Rumsfeld from the helm of the Pentagon. As Salon columnist Sidney Blumenthal reported in June (citing an unnamed source himself), Bush's father "went so far as to recruit Rumsfeld's potential replacement, personally asking a retired four-star general if he would accept the position." But his attempt was "apparently rebuffed by the current president."

However accurate the various depictions of ideological infighting among the Bushes -- Dad was no stranger to military adventurism -- the carnage darkening the geopolitical landscape in the time of George junior is undeniable. Any responsible father would be seriously worried. And concerned citizens, Republican and Democrat alike, may well find themselves longing for the other side of that