| Friday, July 21, 2006 |
| Why Israel cannot win its war |
While Israel continues to mass troops along the Lebanese border, in apparent preparation for an all-out invasion of Lebanon, and as casualties continue to mount, mostly on the Lebanese side, and refugees teem into Syria, the Israeli people may soon be waking up asking many of the questions American are asking today: what have we accomplished? And what have we lost?
The Israelis seemed to have learned nothing from the American experience in Iraq, just as our neocons learned nothing from Israelis 40 plus years of attempts to occupy, bomb, assassinate, pulverize and strafe the various Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian Arabs around them into submission. The bottom line now is the same as it has always been: you cannot kill enough of your enemies to make the people of the Muslim world accept, respect or permit themselves to be dominated by you. Eventually, the occupied will get even. Eventually, the people you consider terrorists will fight you hard enough, and long enough, that the people they say they are fighting for believe them, far more than they believe you. And then the people you're bombing in the name of fighting terrorism, will hate you so much, they'll take up arms with your "terrorists" -- or look the other way as they move in next door -- in order to see harm done to you.
The American people are figuring that out in Iraq. The Israelis, if they decide to invade and occupy Lebanon, in addition to bombing it into the stone age and killing hundreds of civilians in the process (while turning most of the civilized world against them -- with the exception of the American political leadership on both sides of the aisle -- though I suspect the majority of Americans would take exception to our leaders' unbending Likudism ... and with the exception of the queasy, yet docile, British) ... will eventually figure it out, too. Let's just hope that by the time they do, Lebanon hasn't yet become a failed state, with no infrastructure left, and a people burning for revenge.
Terrorism isn't a simle black and white equation -- we are good and free, they are captive and terroristic. It's a symptom of a much larger and more inplacable disease, which is transmitted by colonialism, resource greed, racism, (and Zionism), and the insrutable Europen characteristic of seeing every dark complected person as a rube, easily disadvantaged and responsive only to brute force. But the Muslim world has a few tricks up its sleeve that the "West" -- Israel included -- never bargained for. Unlike most Christians, they really aren't afraid to die. And they are determined to take a few Westies with them, not in the name of cartoon jihad -- but for the cause of expelling what they see as colonizers and land and resource thieves, from their lands.
Israel has no business sending its troops onto the soil of sovereign Lebanon. If they want Hezbollah eradicated, they should take it up with the Lebanese government and the U.N. Otherwise, how can you characterize the bombing of Lebanon's bridges, roads, airports and Army bases as anything other than an aggressive act of war? And even if Hezbolah is to blame for starting the aggression (if you discount the Israeli seizure of 60 members ofthe Palestinian Parliament...) exacting "collective punishment" on the entire population of Lebanon will accomplish nothing -- Hezbollah will survive, both as a political party and as a movement... and the people of Lebanon will hate Israel with a white hot passion after the bombing is through. How does that help Israel or improve its security?
The short answer is, it doesn't.
Worse, because it is the U.S. that is providing both the materiel and the cover for Israel's actions, the results for American interests -- which, at the end ofthe day, are more important to Americans -- theoretically -- than the interests of Israel -- will be disastrous. And given our equally messy involvement in Iraq, the U.S. can't afford to have its interests further harmed.
So it may feel good for American Likudniks to watch Israel do what the American president cannot and will not -- wage war on the enemies of Zion -- neither the Arab world nor the larger Muslim world will ever submit to what they see as Israeli-American attempts to dominate their region. Even if Israel and the U.S. could install puppet governments from Cairo to Tehran, put private companies in charge of the natural resources of every country from Black Africa to East Asia, and expel every Arab from Palestine, the Muslim world will continue to fight them. The Muslim body politic will continue to rebel, compelled by their religion and by a millennial -- and very human -- visceral "tissue rejection" of the idea of submission. And in the end, Israel will lose. And America will too.
Meanwhile, Israeli military leaders ponder the limits of air power... and a future lined with nuke-tipped bunker busters...
... the Jewish jihadis quit the U.S. to suit up in Tel Aviv...
...Pat Buchanan says "no, Mssrs Kudlow and Kristol, we are not all Israelis ..."
---TIME's Mike Allen reports that Bush (or somebody) is sending Condi Rice to the Mideast to build an "Arab umbrella" (of Sunni and Wahabi Muslims) against (Shiite) Hezbollah (and by extension, Shiite, non-Arab Iran...) He doesn't explain why Arab countries would take Israel's side against the pleading of a fellow Arab League member (Lebanon), whose Army may well wind up fighting Israel at Hezbollah's side, or how this new umbrella would unfold over Shiite dominated Iraq...
Ah, "diplomacy..."
Tags: Israel, Lebanon, neocons, Pat Buchanan, Bill Kristol |
posted by JReid @ 4:13 PM   |
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