Perception and Reality: the importance of images in war

Harper's magazine had a provocative cartoon last Thursday of Rice's surprise visit to Lebanon. It made the same point, which Mourhaf Jouejati, director of Middle Eastern Studies at George Washington University makes in Roger Cohen's column in the New York Times and that is that, "The United States has been more a party to this conflict than an arbiter. [...] Lebanese democracy, a supposedly cherished American aim, has been sacrificed for the Israeli ally." I don't quite agree with this point, but unfortunately, what I think doesn't matter. What is important is how the world perceives the United States and its role in this crisis. As William Arkin points out in the Washington Post, perception is reality and facts matter less than the image created by the way people interprets them.

Comments

Unfortunately it's true, over the years the US had stood by Israel at the UN and always vetoed any sanctions against Israel. It is not only a political support, US has sent to its ally Israel billions of dollars which by far exceeded any help to any other country.

[Kiki]

I don't think that it is the support of the United States to Israel that is the problem, but rather the fact that the Bush adminstration has in fact checked of the Israel-Palestine conflict in a childish refusal to do what President Clinton did. I am not on the side of the people who say that the US shouldn't support Israel because I think that would be a mistake and because I believe that too many people who say are in fact trying to delegitimate Israel when it is a country, which has the right to have friends especially one as powerful as the United States. I agree with the people who argue that the United States should a fully involved partner in that region and should actively try to resolve the Israel Palestinian question. It is too easy to blame the US support for Israel for everything when what is to blame is the fact that the Bush administration chose for too long not to have a policy on the Israel Palestinian issue and mistakenly put all of its chips that is all of its energy and resources on Iraq.