Adrian Hamilton: Pure politics is driving this war

The year 2008 is finishing as it began, as indeed the millennium has begun, with the abject failure of politics to do anything about man-made violence. You can list the roll call of calamity – Zimbabwe, Darfur, Somalia, Burma, North Korea, the Congo, the Middle East. In each case the leaders of the world have huffed and they’ve puffed and they’ve done not a thing to change the course of events. And yet none of these situations are unavoidable. All are the man-made products of power and politics. Nowhere is this more true than in Gaza. Ignore all the accusation and counter-accusation of fault. Forget too the unconscionable calculation of relative death and destruction, the apportionment of…

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