A tale of two disasters

Reading 's Ken Silverstein's 2007 in-depth examination of Islamist parties in Egypt and Lebanon (h/t Conor Friedersdorf), I came across this capsule account of Hezbollah's response to the 2006 Israeli attack (well financed by Iran) and couldn't help thinking of poor Haiti:

When I visited Lebanon last November, three months after the end of the war, bombs from Israeli warplanes had left the Dahiyeh pockmarked with ten-foot-deep craters; whole buildings had been reduced to tangles of concrete and cables. Damage was heaviest in the Haret Hreik, Hezbollah’s political zone, where entire blocks lay in ruins. The six-story building that housed the party’s TV station, Al-Manar, or The Beacon, had been completely obliterated. But the postwar cleanup began almost immediately: Hezbollah dispatched teams of engineers to evaluate damage and estimate the cost of repairs or rebuilding. Within days residents received cash payments of up to $12,000 for homes that had been destroyed or damaged. At the peak of the cleanup, hundreds of trucks a day were carrying rubble to dump sites along a seaside road leading out of the city. I drove by the area and saw three vast mountains of building ruins, a melancholy mix of concrete, furniture, appliances, and clothing. 

 Compare any one of many accounts of stasis in Haiti one year after the earthquake:

Reconstruction work has barely begun, profiteering by Haiti's tiny and notoriously corrupt elite has reached epic proportions, and a national cholera epidemic has added to the misery of the quake-crippled country.

Depends what your definition of "disproportionate" is

A tale of two invasions....

1. Russian Foreign Ministry statement in response to breakout of war between Hezbollah and Israel, July 13, 2006 (Interfax):

The spiral of violence in the region is being wound tighter and tighter. Israel's retaliatory steps, including sending of troops to invade Lebanese territory, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the blockade of Lebanese territory from the sea and from air have led to major casualties and sufferings among the civilian population. Hezbollah has started missile attacks of Israeli cities, including Haifa, from which innocent people are also suffering....

All this is happening parallel with the Israeli army's operation in the Palestinian territories, where civilians get killed every day...

The Russian Foreign Ministry resolutely condemns the servicemen's abduction and the firing upon Israeli territory. At the same time, we view the military actions launched by Israel as the disproportionate and inadequate use of force endangering Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity and threatening peace and security in the entire region.

2. U.S. response to Russian invasion of separatist Georgian regions:

Reuters, Aug. 9 - Russia has used "disproportionate" force in the South Ossetia conflict with Georgia and must immediately agree to a cease-fire with Tbilisi, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

Russia and Georgia came into direct conflict over South Ossetia this week after Tbilisi launched an offensive to regain control over the breakaway separatist region.

"The response has been far disproportionate from whatever threat Russia was citing," the senior American official told reporters in a conference call. "We are calling for an immediate cease-fire and a stand down of all troops."

Washington Post, Aug. 9 -- Russian strategic bombers and jet fighter planes pounded targets in many parts of Georgia on Saturday, hitting apartment buildings and economic installations, as well as military targets in an escalating war that is killing more and more civilians and confounding international efforts to secure a cease-fire....

Saakashvili said Russian planes struck the Black Sea port of Poti, attempted to hit but missed a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to Turkey, and bombed railway stations, among other nonmilitary targets. Doctors working in Gori said that Russian planes had struck two military field hospitals....

"There is panic in Tbilisi," said a senior U.S. official, briefing reporters in Washington. He said Russia is using TU-22 supersonic strategic bombers that can carry as much as 54,000 pounds of bombs and cruise missiles. He also said that Russia has launched ballistic missiles against targets in Georgia.

So...Russia openly regrets its loss of empire, and will work methodically over coming decades to reconstitute as much of it as possible. That's universally recognized: surely no one in the world outside of Russia accords a shred of moral authority to Russia when it condemns other countries' actions. But as this crisis will doubtless highlight, the Bush Administration has spent down U.S. moral capital worldwide practically to the level of Russia's (see, e.g., green light to Israel, July '06).