Another Day in Paradise

BEDFORD ROAD: Yesterday I was all pumped up about putting finger to keyboard over the latest Middle East debacle, but things interupted me and I never got back to it. But now with a moment to type and reflect I feel to daunted to even try. Daunted, not only by the volume of reportage and opinion currently saturating the media sphere, but also apparent futility of it

When I was younger I sometimes yearned for an event as defining as the Vietnam War seemed to be for a previous generation of poets. Growing up at the end of history, all I could do was wander what an epoch defining war, or even event, would be like. I think it was the desire to make art that mattered, when it mattered.

Now I just want peace and quiet, news reports without civilian casualties, sectarian suicide bombers and demolished homes. Any kind of art, journalism, or indeed carefully weighted argument, seems pointless against the tsunami of empty ideology that is Freedom Inc. Just yesterday, Blair seemed to announce his foreign policy shift, then immediately followed it with repackaged Bushspeak.

The US seem hell bent on occupying Lebanon with a UN Force that I'm certain will be just as effective and successful as the forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.The IDF, for their part, are apparently confident that they can neutralise all of Hizbollah's members. Now I could be wrong here, but I can't think of a single major guerilla force who ever ran out of members. They are, almost by definition, hydras. And while we're on the subject of the IDF, their fearful reputation seems to have lost some of its lustre in the face of fierce and highly trained opposition.

And all the major talking heads seem oblivious to the fact that a viable, geographically united Palestinian state is fundamental to an eventual resolution of the war on terror. (I can't use that phrase without smirking.) We rebuilt Europe and Japan after World War Two, pulling economic golden rabbits out of hat in the process. Why wouldn't we do the same to Palestine? Surely it couldn't cost anymore than the billions we're pissing away on warfare and, ironically, aid. Wouldn't that really be showing the "evil doers" and "demagogues" up? Still I'm no foreign policy expert and Donald Rumself apparently is.