The US has a foreign policy in the Middle East: Israel can do no wrong. For almost 60 years the US has backed this country, first as a fledgling democracy that was born on the wings of the UN’s attempt to give a people with a 2000 year history of prejudice, hatred and victimhood a land of their own. Since then, we have supported them with money, political cover in the international community, and most important of all, weapons to withstand the threat of their hostile neighbors.
After the 1967 war Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel and has respected her right to live. After the 1973 war Egypt agreed to cease efforts to destroy Israel. To their credit, both nations have kept their word to allow a neighbor to live in peace.
After Israel abandoned her 18 year occupation of southern Lebanon, Syria also gave public support to Israel’s right to live in peace. There is some evidence that after these state actors agreed to cease their overt military antipathy Syria began covert support of Hamas and Hezbollah, non-state resistance movements in the Gaza and West Bank, and in southern Lebanon. There is also some evidence that Iran has joined in this covert support of Hezbollah. Yet both Hamas and Hezbollah came into existence as a reaction to Israel’s aggressive defense of its right to live. Israel was just too effective at protecting itself, and its surrounding enemies were no military match.
Israel is losing its war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But the reason for its failure to gain a victory isn’t so much Hezbollah’s toughness as it is the failure to apply the correct solution to the problem. Israel has failed to draw the correct lesson from America’s failures in Viet Nam and Iraq. Massive technological warfare can not defeat an insurgency; it can only kill indiscriminately, and by killing innocent civilians, that overwhelming application of power creates the next generation of bitter resistance.
Driven by the bitter and insane paranoid hatred of the neocon movement, the US, with the biggest hammer in the world, sees only nails. We are still trying to grasp the essential fact of the Viet Nam war: political problems are rarely solved by military solutions. It seems our proxy in the Middle East hasn’t either.
Comments
Lurch, you nailed it. Well said. Diff subject: what's your take on how the Bushies will screw things up with Cuba? I suspect they'll have an opportunity to do that in the fairly near future.
Gee, Mike, I really don't know for sure. Like you, I know they'll screw it up because they have a perfect track record. Let's face it, these folks would mismanage a two-car traffic accident.
But there are so many different ways to drop the ball on Cuba. The exile community in Miami and Union City, NJ have two things we can depend on: they won't go "home" after the "inevitable fall of evil Communism" when the "monster Castro" shuffles off this mortal coil. They also are a very dependable ATM and voting bloc for the Repiblicans.
They're not going to be able to reclaim the property they lost when they emigrated to the US. Cuban law is specific - they lost their lands.
The Cubans here now have second generation Americans, and these grandchildren are Americans, just like you and me. Many of them do not even consider themselves hyphenated Americans. They have less than zero interest in going back to a crippled agricultural economy.
I'm sure the Bu$h malAdministration will have to huff and puff and make some sort of military threat. It's inevitable; it's ingrained in their DNA.
But what can Bu$hCo do? Threaten to invade? With what? The US Army and Blackwater are busy right now.
UPDATE: I do know that whatever they do it will be poorly planned, aimed solely at domestic political considerations. ALL Bu$h malAdministration policies are crafted solely for this market. And I also know that whatever policy they decide on, it will be poorly executed.
Two-car accident, shit. That's graduate work. These clowns could fuck up a junkyard with a rubber hammer.
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