From Baghdad to Beirut

Hundreds of Thousands Rally in Iraq Against the War in Lebanon

Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream

Israel's aerial attack on the suburbs of Beirut is intensifying. On Thursday Israel dropped leaflets on the suburbs of Lebanon's capital warning residents to flee their homes ahead of a massive bombardment. Earlier today Israeli warplanes bombed three bridges linking Beirut to northern Lebanon.

On Thursday Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah threatened to strike the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv if Israel continued to bomb Beirut. A high-ranking Israeli official responded by saying that if Tel Aviv is hit, Israel will destroy all of Lebanon's infrastructure.

Meanwhile the situation in Iraq also continues to worsen. On Thursday, the top US commander in the Middle East, General John Abizaid, admitted that Iraq could move toward a civil war.

And today hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims are streaming into the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City to take part in what's been called a million man march. The protest was called by Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to show support for Hezbollah.

Juan Cole is a leading expert on the Middle East. He runs a popular blog at juancole.com and is also a professor at the University of Michigan -- he joins us now from Michigan. Welcome to Democracy Now. "Informed Comment"

• Juan Cole. Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. On his website

AMY GOODMAN: Juan Cole is a leading expert on the Middle East. He runs a popular blog at [juancole.com] and is also a professor at the University of Michigan. He joins us now from Ann Arbor. Welcome to Democracy Now!

JUAN COLE: Thank you very much, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, actually, why don't we start with the protests in Iraq in Sadr City that are protesting Israel's bombing of Lebanon?

JUAN COLE: Well, Iraq turns out to be a majority Shiite country, and most of the Shiite Iraqis have repeatedly voted for fairly hard-line fundamentalist religious parties. Since Hezbollah is cut from very much the same cloth, it's not surprising that very large numbers of Iraqi Shiites support their co-religionists in Lebanon.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about, right now, the latest hours in Beirut, the packets that have been dropped, the leaflets that have been dropped on Beirut, calling on residents to leave?

JUAN COLE: Well, the Israeli bombing campaign is only tangentially aimed at hurting Hezbollah. That’s a guerrilla organization. They've gone underground. It's very unlikely that the Israelis can do further harm to them at this point by merely bombing unknown sites. The Israelis are systemically destroying the Lebanese infrastructure. They are hitting bridges. They are continuing to hit roads. They are degrading the ability of the Lebanese to connect with one another. And they are, frankly, putting pressure on the rest of the Lebanese to turn on Hezbollah and to try to control it on behalf of the Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the effect of this? How are people in Lebanon responding to Hezbollah?

JUAN COLE: Well, from opinion polling that's been published, it appears to be the case that there's been, on the whole and by and large, a large spike of approval for Hezbollah and support for it, even among the Christian minority, which has gone to 55% support of Hezbollah. So it seems to be the case that the political aim of the Israeli bombing campaign is failing, and so far it doesn't seem to have disabled Hezbollah militarily either.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan Cole, I wanted to ask you about Rumsfeld's testimony yesterday in the Senate. This is what the Defense Secretary had to say. We'll go to that after break. We’re talking to Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is “Informed Comment,” where he provides daily roundup of news and events in the Middle East. We’ll come back to him in a minute.