Charles Krauthammer has an enlightening editorial up at the Washington Post. He explains the Middle East through the eyes of a neo-conservative. It’s not too different from my take on what is unfolding from yesterday.
It goes like this: Hizbollah is a Shi’ite militia in a diverse country of Christians, Druze, and Sunni Muslims. They are resented by a plurality (or near plurality) of their countrymen. They are hated by the neighboring Arab regimes (except the Alawite ruled Syria). The UN has already asked Hizbollah to disarm. The G8 blamed them for starting this latest round of violence. The Arab League has condemned Hizbollah. Bottom line? Pretty much everyone hates Hizbollah and want them to get their ass kicked (except Syria and Iran). But who can do the ass-kicking? And under what pretext?
Krauthammer explains:
Fine. Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don’t invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the United States has a Lebanon allergy. And Israel could not act out of the blue because it would immediately have been branded the aggressor and forced to retreat.
Hence the golden, unprecedented opportunity. Hezbollah makes a fatal mistake. It crosses the U.N.-delineated international frontier to attack Israel, kill soldiers and take hostages. This aggression is so naked that even Russia joins in the Group of Eight summit communique blaming Hezbollah for the violence and calling for the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.
But only one country has the capacity to do the job. That is Israel, now recognized by the world as forced into this fight by Hezbollah’s aggression.
So, from a neoconservative’s point-of-view, Israel was just waiting for a sufficient provocation to justify an invasion of Lebanon. It’s a job everyone wants done, but no one wants to take credit for.
I think there is a lot of truth in what Krauthammer is saying. I think he has correctly described the kind of cynical, inhumane, and strategically inept thinking of the major players. Take the Saudis. This is a win-win for them. Israel takes care of a problem and takes all the blame for it. How do Sunni Muslims justify standing by quietly while fellow Muslims are killed in droves? Well? They are Shi’a Muslims. They take their orders from hated Iran.
You can see the problem with this thinking by examining Krauthammer’s war plan.
The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.
It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Persian Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran’s choosing.
Just as in Kuwait in 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded — implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.
Only two questions remain: Israel’s will and America’s wisdom. Does Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have the courage to do what is so obviously necessary? And will Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s upcoming peace trip to the Middle East force a premature cease-fire that spares her the humiliation of coming home empty-handed but prevents precisely the kind of decisive military outcome that would secure the interests of Israel, Lebanon, the moderate Arabs and the West?
But it simply isn’t possible to expel Hizbollah. How would we expel the Democrats from New Jersey or the Greens from Vermont? And that job would be a lot easier because we have registration rolls to work with. Hizbollah is a political party and a militia. Their power base is in southern Lebanon. You can’t expel them, you have to kill them. And they are not wearing uniforms or advertising their membership.
This plan is a massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Anything less will be a failure. In reality, it is a prescription for a new Israeli occupation. Short of an occupation, the people will just come back and start firing rockets again. So, Israeli will bomb indiscriminately, forcing the population to flee. Then they will occupy southern Lebanon. Then they will try to get the Lebanese military to take over the job.
There is no reason to believe that the Lebanese army has either the stomach or the capability to engage in an ethnic cleansing campaign on their own soil, using an army that has a large Shi’a component. Krauthammer senses this, so he suggests that the UN might be willing to send a force to help. I really doubt that Israel will ask the UN for help. I’ve seen no indication that they want the UN on their border. But they might see such a step as their only way out of Lebanon. Who knows?
So, this is the hairbrained plan that is unfolding before our eyes. Israel is bombing blindly, driving people from their homes, and thinks it can eradicate a political party from their border by destroying the infrastructure of an entire nation. No one really cares that they are doing this, even if they think it is pointless, because everyone hates Hizbollah. The Lebanese cry out for help so that their nation will not lose everything it has gained since the end of the civil war. No one is listening.
Holy shit…That is just insane. If anything, this whole campaign would seem to be strengthening Hezbollah because they are seen as standing up to Israel and striking back at them. They have put the government of Lebanon in an impossible situation because now if they crack down on Hezbollah, they will be seen as doing the bidding of Israel.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise the goals of Hezbollah, but massive bombing raids that kill Lebanese children are not the way to go about stopping them. Plus, everyone knows that one phone call from Bush to Olmert could stop this offensive. I hope that anti-Israeli and anti-American anger doesn’t spill over onto the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
.
When a Lebanese political figure was assassinated by parties unknown: perhaps the Israeli Mossad or agents of Syrian President Assad, the U.N. and world community were torn apart with sorrow.
Today Israel has massacred nearly three hundred innocent civilians in Lebanon, the silence in the world community is deafening. The roots cause for future devastating suicide bombings has been laid down this July 2006. As mentioned in my diary, powerful leaders don’t need to resort to war in search for peace.
Ehud Olmert, son of a founder of the militant Zionist group Irgun, the big divider as mayor of Jerusalem, have you found the two IDF soldiers yet?
● Christian Science Monitor — Hizbullah winning over Arab street
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Again I preface this as not a Jew or fundamentalist Christian – I am a registered Dem, I vote, I have a family, I pay my taxes, I don’t own a gun, etc.
What is Israel really supposed to do Booman?
Turn it’s back after it’s boundaries were INVADED, soldiers killed and 2 kidnapped?
Also you continue to forget that Hezbollah has killed many Israeli citizens as well.
Israel stipulated publicly that if someone did that, they would react. Hezbollah knew that and assumed that entire Muslim brotherhood would somehow turn their backs in secret appeasement. What has happened is that many Arab countries are publicly denouncing Hezbollah. This is something none would have antipated and the Arab countries that did so should be applauded.
You correlate Hezbollah to Democrats in your response to Krautheimer’s article? Give me a break. There is NO comparison except that each is a recognized political party in their respective country. That’s it. One is also a recognized terrorist group that not only wants Israel wiped off face of earth, but also has attacked Americans and despises the US. While I do not agree with what my government here does on all fronts, I do agree that it’s between the UN, Israel, Lebanon and the backoffice regime of Syria to get this settled
Um… I don’t think Boo was trying to draw any parallels between Dems and Hezbs, except to attest to the difficulty of expelling a significant constituency of a region, regardless of any other factor. The fact that they are a demographic group is all that the analogy relies on.
what is Israel supposed to do?
I could give you a big picture answer, but I’ll keep it tightly focused.
Their first priority should be to secure the freedom of the soldiers. That is never easy because your options are terrible. If you pay a ransom or exchange prisoners then you only incentivize Hezbollah to do more raids and more kidnappings.
As always in these situations, you have to weigh your shitty options and choose the one most likely to work.
As for deterrence, there are ways to make Hezbollah pay, and not the Lebanese country as a whole. And there are degrees. A few carefully chosen assassinations carried out by people employed for those unseemly practices, would send a powerful message. Or, if you want to try to pressure the Lebanese government to control their border area, you can threaten a naval blockade. There are other possibilities, including sending in a few cross-border incursions of their own. But what you do not do, is bomb bridges and runways and lighthouses and housing complexes, etc.
What’s the point? What are they accomplishing? They are not evicting Hezbollah, they are evicting everyone, and killing and maiming hundreds of innocent people. Do have a theory on when that it okay to do when is serves no obvious purpose?
I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken on this.
If Israel had practical alternatives other than (1) doing nothing or (2) doing what it’s doing, that would make nonsense of the arguments of the many opinion leaders who take this dichotomy for granted. They surely must have good reason for this — it strains credulity to believe that they all could have gained their positions of public trust as advisors on world affairs, and yet today all overlook alternatives that you think are so obvious.
Clearly, the bridges, runways, lighthouses, and housing complexes must go. We can only wait until tomorrow to learn what other actions are necessary to carry through this sole alternative to having done nothing from the beginning.
.
Did a sovereign and democratic elected Lebanese government ask for an intervention, bombing raids and destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure, it’s economy and killing of hundreds of innocent civilians?? Now it is to liberate Lebanon from the Lebanese like Iraq from the Iraqis?
Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.
“It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Persian Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran’s choosing.
Just as in Kuwait in 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah …
Only two questions remain: Israel’s will and America’s wisdom. Does Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have the courage to do what is so obviously necessary?”
“A supporter of the Project for the New American Century’s campaign pushing for war with Iraq, Krauthammer’s op-eds regularly berate liberals and Democrats, champion intervention in the Middle East, and defend the neoconservative agenda.
In an August 2003 Washington Post column, for example, Krauthammer defended the presidential nomination of neocon Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute for Peace, which was heavily criticized by members of Congress and many observers because of Pipe’s hardline stance on the Middle East and controversial take on Islam.”
● 1996 Strategy to Force a Total Palestinian Surrender ◊ comment by Patriot Daily
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
I’m not clear on the “everybody hates Hizbollah” assertions here.
Of course it’s clear that if this insanity goes forward that Israel will have to make the huge strategic blunder of re-occupying Lebanon,thereby making things even worse for everyone including the population of Israel, but aside from that, there doesn’t seem to be such broad-based hatred of Hizbollah in the region as this diary suggests.
Daniel Pipes’ view of the situation, that if the US and Israel will just continue their current operations, people in the region will cease opposing their policies and submit to their will.
It may be more comforting for Americans to tie that in to the important point stressed by both CNN and Mr. K. Everybody just hates Hezbollah, especially in Lebanon and anybody who says they don’t is just afraid Hezbollah will find out and hurt them, and if Hezbollah is the only entity who is willing to stand up for Israel, and that is why they are so unpopular. And this just shows that Hezbollah are the only ones who really do oppose US or Israel, even the Saudi Princes have denounced Hezbollah!
This is because all Hezbollah does is attack Israel, because Iran tells them to, and sometimes Syria does, even though Iran and Syria also hate them, because like everybody else in the Middle East, Iran realizes that the US and Israel are the best ones to run things, and decide when they need to be bombed.
The Lebanese really really hate Hezbollah because they shoot back when Israel bombs them, and almost all Lebanese people know that is a very wrong thing to do.
And anybody who thinks different is a sympathizer of Hezbollah, which is the same as being a sympathizer of Al Qaeda, and will be rounded up and brought to justice.
Americans are evil.
Not only that, but if anything the Lebanese should be grateful to the Israeli government for bombing their nation’s infrastructure, and show a proper understanding of the importance sacrifice their deceased and maimed fellow civilians have made in Israel’s effort to liberate the Lebanese from the tyranny of Hezbollah. After all, the white man’s burden is as a Great Leader might say, “hard work.”
If Krauthammer gets paid more than four cents a year, he’s overpaid. That’s one more time than any rational human being would ever ask for his “two cents’ worth.”
intensely dislike Hezbollah, but the problem they run is their own people. The whole middle east problem is situated around Palestine/Israel, and the arab people are behind Palestine and against Israel. They rarely see their own governments do anything to help Palestinians or against Israelis. They see Palestinians killed and oppressed on a daily basis. Then Hezbollah strikes Israel inckluding wrecking a ship, killing quite a few soldiers, destroying tanks and APCs and rocketing Israel main. This is th eonly group they see fighting back against Israel and they are inflicting both damage and making Israel look less omnipotent. It may surprise the neo-con headcases but there are going to be at least a few muted cheers going up from sunni households across the region every time Hezbollah strikes Israel, and every time they do these people will feel a little more disppointed in their own governments inaction. What is the end result? Potentially at least a radicalization of more of the population in these Sunni client regimes of the US. At worst for the US a number of these sunni staes US client regimes will be replaced by regimes more representative of their own people.
Now why would the Lebanese support a ‘terrorist’ organization against their Israeli ‘liberators’?
It’s not like the Israelis might be bombing the hell out of their country, or acting covertly and assassinating people, or embedding spies to assist bombers, or anything like that. I’m sure the North American media would let us know if that were the case.
Hell, the “Get back 3 ‘kidnapped’ soldiers no matter how many more troops & civilians have to die in the process” plan makes perfect sense to me.
YMMV