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Us Isolated As Rift Grows With Uk Even

Juan Cole 07/22/2006

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US Isolated as Rift Grows with UK

Even the British Foreign Office has now broken with the Washington consensus on the Israeli assault on Lebanon, which is basically that the Israelis should be able to destroy the whole country if they want to, over their two kidnapped soldiers. AFP reports:

‘ Britain’s junior foreign minister Kim Howells, visiting Beirut, Saturday questioned Israel’s military tactics and slammed its killing of “so many children and so many people”.

“These are not surgical strikes,” he said of the air and artillery bombardments since July 12 that have killed more than 300 civilians in Lebanon.


Photo courtesy as-Safir

“If they are chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don’t go for the entire Lebanese nation,” he told a media conference after meeting Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Howells’s boss, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, echoed those concerns in an interview with the Financial Times and said a ground invasion that Israel appeared to be preparing would create “a very dangerous situation”. ‘

Howell gets “the Understatement of the Year” award. Not surgical strikes, indeed.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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