Crisis In Lebanon: While I Watch The Bombs Fall

Lebanon, bombing, Beirut, "Today's Joke"

"Today's Joke": 20 bombs/in less than one minute/on the southern suburbs/while I am writing/that the war is over by Mazen Kerbaj.

Facing south from our balcony on the American University of Beirut campus, the incessant explosions reminded me of a Fourth of July fireworks finale on steroids.

By Citizen Correspondent Patrick McGreevy

Date Posted: 08/14/06

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Sixteen years after the end of its lengthy civil war, Lebanon was plunged into another regional conflict, this time between Israel and militant Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah. Analysts debate on how quickly Lebanon can pick up the pieces now that the attacks are over and whether Hezbollah will survive the arrival of an expanded U.N. force or not. While some fear Lebanon's fragile coalition government will not survive and political tensions will once more rise to the surface, American University of Beirut (AUB) Professor, Patrick McGreevy, tells Orato what it was like to be in the center of the attacks.

It is 3 a.m. in Beirut. The war is scheduled to keel over and give up the ghost in five hours. Those of us attending the deathbed scene are full of questions and doubts. Might we finally grasp the purpose of this war in its concluding moments the way we find, in 19th-century novels, the meaning of a character's life in the death-bed scene? Or might we learn that the war is as meaningless as it seems?

A few hours ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced that Israel will negotiate for the release of the two prisoners captured on July 12, something Hezbollah was ready to do 33 days ago. Was the capture of these soldiers the equivalent of George Bush's weapons of mass destruction, a mere pretext for an operation to create a "new Middle East"?

Both initiatives produced disasters for civilians, but did they achieve some hidden strategic objective too subtle for average people to grasp? Or are both of these wars of choice the purposeless catastrophes they appear to be? At least the battle of Lebanon has the possibility of passing away. The death watch continues.

At 2:45 pm on Sunday, Beirut endured twenty bombing attacks in the space of two minutes. Facing south from our balcony on the American University of Beirut campus, the incessant explosions reminded me of a Fourth of July fireworks finale on steroids. I almost expected to see a glittering star-spangled banner on the southern horizon. Of course, this was an experience brought to us by US-made ordnance. As the bombs strike the residential neighborhoods of southern Beirut again and again, it is strange that no UN resolution demands that the supplier of these weapons cease to deliver them to Israel.