Cluster-F*ck

Excuse my 'French' with that title... but am I the only one confused and conflicted by the sudden outrage over Israel's use of cluster munitions during the war this past summer?

I don't understand why a few basic premises aren't crystal clear to everyone:

From the outset of hostilities, we were facing an enemy whose every weapon was deliberately aimed at civilian population centers, and whose rocket warheads were packed with ball-bearings designed to wreak maximum human casualties in Israel's cities, towns and villages.  Why is there no commission of inquiry looking into that?  Could it be that all Israelis are considered permissible targets?

Also untouched is the issue of Hizbollah rocket barrages leaving countless unexploded ordnance scattered across the north of Israel... a legacy that will surely continue to main and kill civilians for years to come.  Where will the UN be when an Israeli hiker or shepherd is blown up?

The existing agreements between the US and Israel (the terms of which are not fully public) seem to only allow Israel to to use cluster munitions against "an organized military force".  Forgive me for being cynical, but...

a) It isn't Israel's fault Hizbollah refuses to dress up in uniforms and wear recognized insignia and rank designations.  The fact that they have a name, a flag, an organized command and control structure, and an internationally recognized leadership / negotiating capability seems to satisfy the 'organized military' test as far as I'm concerned.

and

b) Israel has quite adequately explained that cluster munitions were used as a weapon of last resort in order to try to stop (or at least slow) the unabated rocket launches into Israeli civilian areas.  If Lebanese civilians were/are endangered by the aftermath of this use... perhaps they should have considered the potential consequences before allowing rocket launchers to be set up in their towns and villages.

If the US wants to stop selling cluster munitions to Israel, I have no problem with this.  Israel produces it's own brand of cluster munitions and I am genuinely interested to know why we didn't use those during the Lebanon war.  Clearly our air offensive had no tangible impact on the short /medium range rocket capabilities of Hizbollah, and the Israeli ground offensive was far too little and too late to stop more than a random launch.  Short of carpet bombing everything from the Litani River south, I don't think Israel had much choice in using ordnance that would quickly make large areas inhospitable to the opposing military force.  Again, that this military force (Hizbollah) decided to set up shop exclusively within civilian population centers should be on their conscience... not ours.

After the war I followed through with my promise to go back and read as many of the Lebanese bloggers as possible in order to see the war through their eyes.  I was quite moved by the wide range of opinions represented in the Lebanese blogosphere, and my hours spent reading their thoughts, dreams and hopes has certainly helped me to appreciate the human side of the equation that I willfully set aside during the conflict. 

However, nobody has been able to help me understand either the widespread popular support still enjoyed by Hizbollah, nor the prevailing apathy amongst opponents of Hizbollah for their military infrastructure being deliberately situated in their back yards.  All that blog reading I did has done nothing to help me square these well-spoken, intelligent human beings with the regrettable circumstances that forced Israel to drop weapons of desperation such as cluster munitions in their midst in order to try to stop the flight of Ketyushas. Conspicuously absent from the Lebanese civilian narrative during and after the war was unambiguous opposition (or even mild consternation) at the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians. 

Perhaps if I had noticed this sentiment amongst even a small percentage of the Lebanese bloggers I read recently, I might be experiencing more than small pangs of conscience at the continued toll that the cluster munitions are taking.