the citizen-viewer

The citizen-viewer was down at the hospital getting a yellow fever shot the other day* when he picked up a copy of a magazine called TIME. It looked to be a pretty well-established news magazine, and the cover promised to tell the c-v “why they fight.”

They being the folks in the Middle East who are doing so much to build up the widow and orphan population figures. Anyway, the explanation didn’t stick with the c-v, but he was struck by this one map. Go ahead, click it for a sec.

Aside from the portrayal of more Hizbollah strikes (13 red starbursts!) than Israeli ones (10 blue starbursts!), which seems a bit surprising considering Israel’s healthy supply lines, it appeared that Israel was hitting everywhere in Lebanon that wasn’t a Hizbollah stronghold.

So the c-v looked around for figures on who was actually getting hit.

Most newspapers were citing, that day, some 34 deaths in Israel from Hizbollah fire, versus 362 deaths in Lebanon from Israeli fire.

Of the 34, 19 were Israeli military, leaving 15 as collateral damage, which is what they call your mother when they scoop her remains off the walls into a plastic bag.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, of the 362 deaths attributed to Israeli bombs by the health ministry, a whopping six were thought to be Hizbollah fighters, leaving only 356 mothers, etc in the collateral damage category. That 356 included no less than eight Canadians.

Yes, for some reason it appeared the Israelis were killing Canadians over Hizbollah fighters at a ratio of 4:3. Since then, of course, they got a few UN observers into the mix, and by the time you read this, if you ever do, the numbers will have gone up quite a bit.

Maybe it isn’t surprising — the citizen-viewer heard one Israeli general or something on the radio saying, quite openly, that Israel’s agenda was to punish Lebanon for failing to stop Hizbollah from operating there. (No reference to the Geneva Convention was made.)

Now that Lebanon’s been smashed back to the Stone Age, or at least to 1985 or so, they should find it very easy to keep Hizbollah under control. Using their pointed sticks and such.

Meanwhile, Condi says it’s not time for a ceasefire. This sounds marginally sane only if you somehow got the idea that this a fair fight where the two sides trade rockets and bombs as evenly as if they were on the center court at Wimbledon. As opposed to a lopsided, US-style shock and awe campaign that is indiscriminately killing hundreds of civilians.

*This is the “Friedman opening,” seen to great effect here.