Thursday, August 03, 2006
Hitchens: "Why is everything such a surprise?"
Christopher Hitchens has a very tough piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal, unfortunately behind the subscription firewall. Perhaps the WSJ will spring it from prison later in the day, as it often does.
Hitchens -- long on indictment and short on prescription -- absolutely hammers the Bush administration for its failure to think or act strategically, this time with regard to Lebanon. Here's a bit:
A thinking person, having to consider the horrible recent events on the Israeli-Lebanon border, has to bear a number of considerations in mind simultaneously. The most salient of these include:
(1) The right of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab and Druze, to be free of random attacks from Katyusha missiles fired across an internationally recognized border that is further supposedly guaranteed by U.N. forces; (2) the right of Lebanese civilians, Maronite, Druze, Armenian, Sunni and Shiite, to be protected under the customary laws of war from any retaliation directed at these missiles and those who fire them; (3) the continuing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the demarcation of Israel's borders and the right of Palestinians to self-determination; (4) the emerging alliance between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and certain Shiite forces engaged in sectarian warfare in Iraq; (5) the interest of Tehran in providing a "sideshow" to distract attention from its acquisition of WMD; (6) the state of domestic opinion in Iran; (7) the state of domestic opinion in Syria; and (8) the encouragement of pluralism in a now quasi-independent Lebanon.
It is only when one has reviewed these interlocking elements that one fully appreciates the extreme unwisdom of the Bush administration in having allowed if not encouraged the Olmert government to pursue a policy of wide retaliation across Lebanon....
The outcome is so astoundingly awful that it has taken weeks to sink in. Iran hands out missiles to a theocratic gang that was until recently mounting pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, all the while spitting in the face of the U.N., the U.S. and the EU on the nuclear issue -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria openly parades the leader of Hamas in a Damascus hotel, while accepting Iranian largesse (and incidentally proving once again that "secular" Baathists can indeed collude full-time with religious fundamentalists), sends its death-squads to murder Lebanese politicians and journalists -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria and Iran send sophisticated explosives for the use of Shiite sectarians in Iraq, who employ them to murder American soldiers and Sunni civilians -- and are subjected to precisely no consequences. While all the time, because of its arming and encouraging of Israel, the otherwise passive United States is regarded with as much hatred and fury as if it had in fact tried to remove Assad and Ahmadinejad from power!
To suffer all the consequences of being imperialistic, while acting with all the resolution and consistency and authority of, say, Belgium, is to have failed rather badly.
I will have more to say on this and related subjects later in the day. Suffice it to say, if you spot the Journal's "A" section by the toilet at the office today, extend your break sufficiently to read the whole thing. Pending that, consider whether damage to Hezbollah's military arm is "consequences" for Iran and Syria. Perhaps it is, or perhaps there is no damage to Hezbollah within Israel's capabilities that genuinely hurts Iran and Syria. I think the former. If at the end of the ground campaign Hezbollah is unable to retaliate and Iran and Syria are seen as having done nothing, how easy will it be for them to recruit proxies in the future? The money question, of course, is whether Israel can ultimately inflict that kind of damage on Hez, and, if it does, whether it comes at such a high price to the people of Lebanon that it amounts to a strategic defeat (by condemning Lebanon the state to failure, which will invite the return of extremists, foreign powers, or both). This last risk to the credibility of Lebanon the state will derive heavily from propaganda and perception -- the civilian casualties are really pretty minor given Hezbollah's propensity to use them as camouflage -- and that is a battle that Israel and the United States rarely win these days.
7 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Thu Aug 03, 10:42:00 AM:
To be honest, I can't make heads or tails of Hitchen's critique. What would he have the US do? He is properly critical of Syria and Iran - but is he proposing that the US should attack one or both of them? He is critical of Israel's escalation of conflict in Lebanon -- but is he suggesting Israel should instead attack Syria?
He points to the US suffering the consequences of the accusation of imperialism - whatever that is -- while being insufficiently imperialistic. Is that what he is saying?
If so, he should just say it. It's just elliptical.
Also thoroughly unfair I think is to argue that the Administration should be putting all its cards on the table, disclosing its intentions and policies clearly.
This is a broad, multifront war at this point and we must engage in subterfuge and keep the enemy guessing. Will we attack Iran or Syria? They should fear it, but not know it conclusively. Syria will certainly refrain from overt military support of Hez -- it won't attack Israel -- fearing the consequences and natural escalation.
While everybody decries the power of Hez as Syran's proxy, please tell me you think Israel isn't a supremely more effective and powerful US proxy. From an American perspective, simply letting "boys be boys" and allowing Israel to hammer away at Hez is absolutely in our interest. It highlights Syran's abject fear and weakness. They talk a big game about destroying Israel and wiping her off the map, but where are they? Huh? Where are they indeed. They talk about the weakness ofthe reat Satan and the strength of their cause, so why aren't they rushing into Iraq to take on our troops there? Aren't we undermanned and stretched and weak?
The Persians and Arabs talk a big game and absolutely have no capacity to play it. Israel should HAMMER away at Hez for as long as it takes. The Syranians talk loudly and carry a 1 inch stick.
By 
, at
Thu Aug 03, 11:09:00 AM:
CP: So Israel destroys Hezbollah, and decimates southern Lebanon in the process. What is to stop Iran and Syria from just financing another successor in Lebanon from the ashes? Esp given that a) the government of Lebanon may well fall as a result of this assault, and b) the remaining population of southern Lebanon will probably welcome any successor to Hezbollah, given that no one else will be providing them with any needed social services in the near future?
There is no deterrent for Iran and Syria to just re-establish another Hez in Lebanon with abundant oil money, nor will Israel or the US, after the slaughter is over, make any move to rebuild the areas of Lebanon that were destroyed, in order to make it more difficult to plant another Hez there. So basically, nothing is accomplished in the long term except buying Iran time to finish up building nukes.
Pretty effing disastrous policy if you ask me.
By geoffgo, at
Thu Aug 03, 11:38:00 AM:
CP,
Agreed, Hitch and many others are for stoking the fire. Get it on! Let's roll! Etc. Me too.
I believe the non-participation of U.S. forces, to directly aid Israel (not just support) is a sin.
Surely, it sends the wrong message to our religiously fanatic enemies. It's not like they don't know we're allies.
The Israelis could use AC-130s and Warthogs and B52s and more and bigger bunker-busters. Let's give them some, and make a big deal out of it. Cancel some huge pork-barrle project and commit the funds to "weapons for our allies." Why not fly missions with them, or at their direction.
The world is witnessing/allowing/ facilitating/encouraging/mis-reporting the life and death struggle between a small number of Israelis (with a reported 200 nukes) against over 1B Muslims. Huge and irrational gamble. Israel must play "all in" every hand.
What I believe most folks are missing is that while Israel is in fact the "canary in the mine," it also will have a last gasp of great consequence. It will be the most PO'd canary the world has ever imagined.
Thus, tacitly permitting the Muslims to continue this worldwide persecution of the Jews and all other non-Muslims, whatever their reasons, applies increasing pressure on a button that can stop the world, in Israel's case.
The last Jew standing will have the moral authority and every right to totally destroy the Muslim world. And, probably punish Paris and Moscow and North Korea and some other nations for their perfidity, cowardice and anti-semitism.
We seem to be letting this happen.
By , at
Thu Aug 03, 11:56:00 AM:
Hitch is just on a rant. He might be a smartie, but I don't see that he's a foreign policy smartie, especially in today's rant in the WSJ.
The Islamofacists have changed the rules of war, so to speak. They've demonstrated all over the Middle East that attacking innocents for political gain is perfectly acceptable. Qana and Jenin are just two examples of that. Hizballah is credited with providing needed infrastructure in the areas in which they operate, but what they're really doing is setting up civilans, civilians sympathetic to their cause, by build munitions storage areas and then building schools, clinics, housing, and whatnot over them. Go ahead, they say, attack this ammo dump. I can recall American gun camera film from WWII which shows fighters attacking Wehrmacht panzers parked next to buildings clearly marked with red crosses. Hitch is too comfortable to be focused on what's really important in this current showdown with evil.
Hitch doesn't know any more about Bush Administration foreign policy than I do. He can only observe and draw conclusions. In war it is common to make it appear that one thing is happening when something entirely different is really going on.
Following the hackneyed UN peacekeeper formula has failed repeatedly in the past, and in multiple venues. The UN has shown itself to be corrupt and ineffective. The UN gives legitimacy to illegitimate purposes. It's no surprise that the Bush Administration isn't so keen to rerun the UN peacekeeper formula and, this time, expect a different result.
By , at
Thu Aug 03, 06:59:00 PM:
There comes a time when you have to say that either US intelligence knows a lot more about waht is going on and doesn't want to act for fear of exposing sources or, we have a very serious problem that is not being addressed.
I mean, how can you hide 13,000 missiles in Lebanon over six years. How can you hide turning civilian structures into miltary facilities. Lebanon is not North Korea or Iran.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Aug 03, 08:50:00 PM:
Expecting US intelligence to know everything about everyone who might be a problem to someone everywhere is unrealistic.
"What do you mean we don't have any sources in Chavez's government?"
"What? We haven't penetrated Hezballah! That's just incompetence!"
"The government obviously *must* know precisely where all of Iran's hidden nuclear centers are. Why haven't we destroyed them yet?"
We have limited personnel, limited resources, limited opportunity, foreign intelligence services working against us, and we can't predict the future. (it's a source of never ending frustration that when we don't predict something, it's somehow 'bad intelligence.' That's not the same thing, and I'd like to know where all the armchair spymasters were with their prophecies before the event)
By Cassandra, at
Fri Aug 04, 09:48:00 AM:
What Dawnfire said.
Hitchens' mouth sometimes outruns his brain - it's the occupational hazard of the pundit, whose opinions always seem to be voiced at a volume and vehemency in inverse proportion to the amount of experience and responsibility they will bear for the outcome of the policies they advocate.
Imagine that.
