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August 15, 2006
WB: Your 2006 Hizbullah Cheerleading Squad
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You have to love it.
The September 11th attacks aren’t the issue. Invading Iraq under false pretenses isn’t the issue. The Tax Cut and Spend into massive deficits economy isn’t the issue. The inept response to Hurricane Katrina isn’t the issue.
No, it’s because we’ve LOST the war we started in Iraq, and the Israelis lost the war in Lebanon.
“Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight – wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and never will lose a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
George C. Scott, from the movie “Patton”
Life imitates art
Posted by: mmack | Aug 15 2006 4:22 utc | 1
Let’s not strain our arms patting ourselves on the back.
When Ceasar was assassinated, Rome did not become Free.
Quite the contrary. The Neo Likudnik’s are rabid dogs.
Caesar’s assassination set in motion a protracted civil
war, the demise of a five-hundred-year Roman Republic,
and the emergence of an absolutist rule that prevailed
over Western Europe for CENTURIES to come.
Prenez garde de l’Ides de Septembre….
Posted by: tante aime | Aug 15 2006 4:32 utc | 3
tante aime:
No — we may not be free — freedom (I almost hate the term now, so misused) — is the earned flower from suffering — it can only last while attended to painstakenly — not when taken for granted — and not as an empty slogan.
The fall of Rome ushered in the “Dark Ages” for sure. But that doesn’t ALWAYS happen. Again — we have to work for it, work at it and then we have to hope like hell…
But also remember it wasn’t just politics…it was the plague, killing thousands and setting fear loose in the others and the lack of the easily printed word — allowing the priests to dictate what learning and information was and wasn’t. The printing press helped usher in the new period of enlightenment. If anything we have increasing communication, not less and that may be both fomenting and excacerbating the rate of all outcomes. On the whole it makes me more optimistic — not that we won’t suffer — but maybe that it won’t lead to centuries of darkness..
We’ll see – eh?
Posted by: Elie | Aug 15 2006 4:45 utc | 4
Ukraine, strategic failure; Kyrgizistan, mess; Afghanistan, mess; Iraq, strategic failure; Korea, mess; Peru, barely a success; Lebanon, (highly probably) strategic failure; and now Mexico: upcoming mess. This is becoming a pretty long list.
In the success column: buying-in Gadhafi in Libya (canned laughter). Buying-in Alan Garcia in Peru (faint canned laughter).
No matter where you stand ideologically, that’s a singularly fucked-up foreign policy record for the last few years.
You have to go back to the Cold War dominos from the late forties to early sixties, when first Eastern Europe,then China, then North Vietnam and finally Cuba were “lost”, to find anything comparable.
Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 15 2006 5:05 utc | 5
I am just stunned. According to Fisk the entire grandiose final offensive apparently never happened.
“You have to be down here with the Hizbollah amid this terrifying destruction – way south of the Litani river, in the territory from which Israel once vowed to expel them – to realise the nature of the past month of war and of its enormous political significance to the Middle East. Israel’s mighty army has already retreated from the neighbouring village of Ghandoutiya after losing 40 men in just over 36 hours of fighting. It has not even managed to penetrate the smashed town of Khiam where the Hizbollah were celebrating yesterday afternoon.(…) Indeed, last night, scarcely any Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon – just one solitary tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had retreated even from the “safe” Christian town of Marjayoun. It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire went into effect.”
Compared to this, Iraq sounds kind of successful actually.
Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 15 2006 5:53 utc | 6
according to the Boston Globe, Hizbollah was not objectively anti-American:
In April , the [inteligence] community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, which, according to people who have read it , says that Hezbollah is the only major terrorist group with global reach currently not trying to kill Americans. The document also raised the intelligence community’s concern that, if the United States were to attack Iran over its nuclear program, Iran might use Hezbollah to strike US targets once again.
So, you mean to tell me, that all that was just some lovely strategy to eliminate the last main reason that had some sub-group of our foreign policy elite still loath to attack Iran.
Don’t worry, Bob, now they already are trying to attack us. So get with the program.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 15 2006 6:18 utc | 7
What happens when the cultists lose confidence in the cult leader?
(annie is right, the poof is the proof)
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 15 2006 8:17 utc | 8
Fisk’s report linked to by Guthman Bey above is making my head spin. They’re really pulling back behind the blue line ?? Not halfway, not sort of. Not keeping some a bit of territory here and there. It really is a cease fire ?? They’re not going to keep bombing selected targets from the air at their discretion ??
WTF ?????
Posted by: still working it out | Aug 15 2006 8:48 utc | 9
@stillworkingitout
The Hezbullah had the south of Lebanon wired. The Israelis can’t move in on the territory without incurring great losses. Once the extent of the fracas becomes known, the table will forever have been changed in the region …
Look at the front page of today’s The Independent
Posted by: SteinL | Aug 15 2006 9:22 utc | 10
This will be remembered as a major turning point and we can only hope that it leads to vigorous efforts to peacefully resolve the problems of the Middle-East.
One of the biggest problems with gettinng a comprehensive solution on Palestine is that due to the relative lopsided advantage of Israels millitary, the Palestinians have never felt that they could negotiate on a basis that accomodates their concerns & issues fairly. How much this changes remainns to be seen.
The “moderate” Arab states (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi …) will also have to bend to the new realities. Their leaders can no longer assume that the masses will continue to accept a status-quo of powerlessnness in the face of adverse external interests. To suggest today that Sheik Nasrallah is to the Arab world what Chavez represents for the downtrodden native populations of South America is close but under-stated.
Posted by: jony_b_cool | Aug 15 2006 12:03 utc | 12
So many intelligent comments here.
Yes, the immensity of this failure, the vast sea change of the tide of history which silently and unexpectedly crawled up to us on the little cat paws of tiny, largely pro-western, Lebanon, is beyond immeadiate comprehension.
Immense.
The entire pundit class are watching the chess board — which, just several moves ago, they controlled over half of, and had commanding position with their pieces all developed and threatening, ready for the final attack — aghast, at the completely unforseen checkmate they had so blithely marched into.
No, it can’t be, they say.
The magnitutude of Israel’s loss was stunning, especially the past four days, when a desperate attempt to salvage face resulted in a toll of death and destruction which, proportionately, exceeded any that the US endured in its entire thirty year engagement with Vietnam. One hundred men lost every day, in a nation 1/60th the size of the US — you do the math. That’s two 9-11’s every day suffered by its best fighting men. They couldn’t continue.
Holbrooke and Kristol on Rose last night. Kristol was having a hard time making any sense at all.
A week is needed for the implications of this to settle in among the punditry. Then the long knives will emerge, en masse.
Remember in 2000, when Bush was chosen to run for President, and critics claimed that he didn’t have the experience necessary to hold office. We were sold a load of Cheney, whowas to be the wise cicerone to expertly man the lines of state. The entire media class sold us on Bush’s humble foreign policy, and Cheney’s steady hand upon the rudder. The entire elite class is complicit in this debacle.
Of course, it is not a debacle for the world, but only the US elite. So we are at a moment of great change. There is great opportunity for a more multi-polar world to arise from this; but also great, great danger for the wounded lion of the US to lash out. It either does not know, or does not believe that it has been mortally wounded.
But, what can it do now? If the US bombs Iran to smithereens, nukes them into the dark ages, we can see that it will only make things worse. The entire middle east could fall. Oil will cease to flow. A life of terrorism and anarchy will spread across the globe. Fascism and totalitarianism will be the reaction. A global recession of unprecedented magnitude.
And if the US does not reassert itself and bomb Iran? Iraq will slip beyond its grasp. The Turks will attack the Kurds. The Iraqi resistance has got to of been watching the past month’s events and learning some lessons. In any event, they have moved beyond that stage now. The Iraqi government is poised to fall, plunging the country into anarchy. Despite our obvious defensive stances, we are losing more men every day in Iraq and Afghanistan together. The Turks will soon attack the Kurds.
Only if Russia and China are brought in can catastrophe possibly be averted.
And we have created an immoral fundamentalist nuclear monster in India.
And what about Mexico? Cuba? Venezuela? Mercosur?
debs is dead is correct to draw the connections between what has been happening militarily and NAFTA, CAFTA, the immensity of DOHA, Gates and Buffet. More thoughts on this later.
Sorry, I haven’t the had time for more and deeper analyses these days.
Let’s listen to the words of a master, who says it much better than I:
Commentary No. 191, Aug. 15, 2006
“Five Reasons Why Great Military Powers Lose Wars”
The United States is today the greatest military power in the world. Israel is today the greatest military power located in the Middle East. One of the most obvious temptations of military superiority is to use military force when one wants to accomplish something which is resisted politically. The United States decided to use force against Iraq in 2003. Israel decided to use force against Lebanon in 2006. In both cases, the governments made these decisions, calculating that they could surely win the military conflict, and win it quickly.
Normally, the greatest military power in the world or in a given region can indeed win such military engagements, and win them quickly. That is what we mean when we say they are the greatest military power. But winning depends on a situation in which the military gap between the two states is truly overwhelming. If it is less than overwhelming, the decision to resort to military force can backfire, and backfire badly. This is so for five reasons.
1) If the weaker power turns out to have enough power to slow down the process, and even more to bog it down, then the primary result of the military engagement is to show up the limits of the presumed superior military strength of the greatest military power. Indeed the lesson that the world draws from such a situation is that the greatest military power is militarily weaker than most people had presumed. Other countries draw political conclusions from such a show of less than overwhelming military power.
2) A prolonged war is always, and inevitably, a nasty war. The greatest military power engages in actions that begin to seem offensive morally. If the war is truly short, such offenses are quickly forgotten. But if the war drags on, they become more and more a part of the generalized perception not only in the two countries engaged in the war, but in the rest of the world. The greatest military power begins to lose whatever moral edge it claimed and with which it was credited previously in world public opinion. Slowly but surely, countries that had been more or less on the side of the greatest military power begin to take their distance, and sometimes even express political and moral anger.
3) At the outset, a very large majority of public opinion in the greatest military power usually backs its government’s decision to go to war. This backing takes the form of patriotic fervor and great moral approval of their government. But such internal public approval is supported by the belief that the war is not merely just in their eyes but that the war will also be won swiftly, and therefore relatively painlessly.
When the war begins to bog down, there are two groups in the population of the greatest military power who begin to withdraw support from their government. There are those who think that the government hasn’t tried hard enough and is basically incompetent. They call for escalating still further the military assault. If this turns out to be for any reason impossible, this group often draws the conclusion that they should pull back entirely from the war. There is a second group who begin to have moral doubts about the war, and begin to urge pulling back not because the government is ineffective but because it is morally wrong. Even though these two groups of internal critics are saying opposite things, and are at considerable odds with each other, the two discontents add up to considerable internal pressure on the government to change its policy.
By the time the warfare is really bogged down, the government of the strongest military power is in a lose-lose situation. If it pulls back, it loses. And if it doesn’t pull back, it loses. The result at first is paralysis (called “staying the course”) and then humiliation. If the sense of humiliation is sufficiently great, it can lead to extreme internal tensions within the country that had been thought of as the strongest military power.
4) The longer such a situation goes on, the more expensive it becomes — expensive in human lives (of the greatest military power), and expensive economically. The more expensive it becomes, the more the government begins to lose internal support. The country against whom the war is being fought is no doubt damaged physically, often to an extreme degree. But the damage to the strongest military power turns out to be very great as well, even if it is less likely to take the form of the destruction of infrastructure.
5) As all of this occurs — the demonstration of less military strength than was believed previously, the loss of moral edge, the increasing withdrawal of internal support, the increasing cost to the greatest military power — the outcome is that the overall political position in the world-system of the greatest military power declines, sometimes precipitously.
The political conclusion one has to draw from these five reasons is that the greatest military power better be really sure that its military edge is really overwhelming before it brings down such negative results on itself.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 15 2006 14:46 utc | 13
In April , the [inteligence] community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, which, according to people who have read it , says that Hezbollah is the only major terrorist group with global reach currently not trying to kill Americans.
Well, we fixed that problem.
Posted by: billmon | Aug 15 2006 14:57 utc | 14
This chills me:
Let me say this loud and clear, drawing on Pat Lang. Any US attack on Iran could well lead to the US and British troops in Iraq being cut off from fuel and massacred by enraged Shiites. Shiite irregulars could easily engage in pipeline and fuel convoy sabotage of the sort deployed by the Sunni guerrillas in the north. Without fuel, US troops would be sitting ducks for rocket and mortar attacks that US air power could not hope completely to stop (as the experience of Israel with Hizbullah in Lebanon demonstrates). A pan-Islamic alliance of furious Shiites and Sunni guerrillas might well be the result, spelling the decisive end of Americastan in Iraq. Shiite Iraqis are already at the boiling point over Israel’s assault on their coreligionists in Lebanon. An attack on Iran could well push them over the edge. People like Cheney and Bush don’t understand people’s movements or how they can win. They don’t understand the Islamic revolution in Iran of 1978-79. They don’t understand that they are playing George III in the eyes of most Middle Eastern Muslims, and that lots of people want to play George Washington.
(original bold)
-Juan Cole
Posted by: beq | Aug 15 2006 15:18 utc | 15
Holbrooke and Kristol on Rose last night. Kristol was having a hard time making any sense at all.
kristol is accustomed to pontificating on fox news, he was in way over his head. charlie didn’t worship his bs. holbrook ripped him a new one, politely. they both called him general kristol!
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 15:29 utc | 17
Kristol wasn’t in over his head. He represents the elite of American punditry. He was raised to be an intellectual talking head. He publishes the single most important right-wing rag in the nation.
Simply put, no one could argue such a ludicrous indefensible position anymore. But that is what he is paid to do, so he lamely soldiers on.
And lets not forget that Holbrooke is a fascist extraordinare, too — his aims are exactly the same — but these days the realists look almost sane by comparison. At least in the short term.
In the long term, we are free in this country to chose our poison.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 15 2006 15:37 utc | 18
Jensen:
The advantage right-wing folks have is that they are comfortable with intellectual simplemindedness in a complex world, which makes for rhetoric that can soar but policies which tend to sink. It’s not clear that an equivalent simplemindedness by progressives will pose a successful challenge. The goal for progressives should be honest accounts of the complexity that can be communicated clearly, not equally vapid platitudes that will never have the same power to propagandize.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 15 2006 15:39 utc | 19
i thought he was in over his head, his postion was completely untenable and they cornered him. one example, his solution of adding more troops (30-40k) holbrook shot to shit @ the end. holbook is no saint, with that we can agree i would think.
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 15:51 utc | 20
“these days the realists look almost sane by comparison.”
I consider myself a realist, which is why all I’m looking for is a better class of imperialists — ones who are a lot better at their jobs and don’t feel quite so compelled to start wars to prove their Churchillian “resolve.”
Holbrooke ain’t much, but he’s a damned sight better than the other leading brand.
Posted by: billmon | Aug 15 2006 16:33 utc | 21
Stirling Newberry’s take on the implications of the Israel/Hizbullah war:
…the first conclusion that we can draw is that we are watching the fall of the Israeli Empire. An empire is a state which rules over non-citizen populations integrated into its power structure. Israel, while a small empire, is still an empire, with subject territories which dominate its resources, command and control decisions, and military profile.
—
One of the characteristics of this empire, is that it has been able, over the last 40 years, to militarily dominate or deter larger states around it. It was a matter of survival for Israel to have a “near abroad”, and to carve out buffer zones to hold key military points. But this relied on the perception that conflict with Israel was political suicide – that to fight with Israel is to lose to Israel.
However, the last invasion run by Israel is now almost 25 years ago. Since then, the imperial capacity has dominated their doctrine, and hardware, and their decisions reflect this. Go to any article on the Merkava tank, and you will read that it was designed for crew survivability. Empire’s have a basic reality, a small core of privileged people having to dominate a poorer rapidly growing population. They must either coöpt, or crush, those under their control.
Israel’s policies have focused on dealing with the politically unstable Palestinian presence in “their” imperial zone. The Palestinians have repeatedly chosen to align themselves with external elements, and take money to act as the front line against Israel itself. The Israeli governments however, had to continually undercut the Palestinian economic development, in order to promote their own immigration. The combination of a PLO unwillingness to seek autonomy, and Israeli intransigence on providing an economically viable state – that is, the insistence on remaining an empire – have created a perpetual stalemate situation.
This also led to the Israeli military degrading with respect to its core mission of strategic deterrence….
—
In short the job of fighting “rabble” in Israel’s core imperial area, has destroyed its capabilities in dealing with its imperial peripheries. One of the most import of these, since it is a failed state, is the northern border with Lebanon, where states which do not have the will to directly confront Israel supply proxies. Hezbollah is a proxy army for Syria and Iran. The difference is that it is a capable army, and it is facing an Israeli military that has clearly been living on its reputation.
—
Israel no longer has the will to be an empire.
This leads to the second essential point: the action against Hezbollah has implications for the United States and the West. The United States, in particularly, has chosen to deal with the problem of militant Islamic terrorism as a military proposition. To some extent this was driven by domestic considerations: politics and the access to the power that being at war creates. However, it was also because of the perception that military means were the area where the West had the most lopsided advantages over the enemy. Perceptions are reality, until reality puts an RPG28 between the chassis/turret gap on your tank.
The very approach of militarization of the problem is called into question. Not only has it generally failed, but the failure as been progressive:
Afghanistan was invaded, a civilian government brought on line rapidly, and the situation stabilized, even if the general trend was slowly towards a de facto partition of the state.
Iraq was invaded, but a stable civilian government has proven elusive, and the territory of the state remains out of control in key areas.
In Lebanon, Israel has not only failed to invade, but it did what did not happen in Iraq or Afghanistan – namely, it created the opposition of other states to its actions. Israel the state is at war with Lebanon, the state.
This progression of failure has led to the speculation that Hezbollah is the template for a defensive light infantry force which is designed to make large mechanized militaries bleed…
—
Since major states have relied on the ability to threaten invasion and overthrow, or the ability to inflict punishing losses on minor states, the ability for light infantry again to offer a resistance to invasion alters the balance considerably…
This apparent defeat of Israel also has implications for the US in Iraq and Iran. If Newberry is right, the tactical template for successful Shia resistance in Iraq, if and when it comes, exists with the weaponry to back it up provided by Iran, China and Russia. Even Rumsfeld is warning Bush and Rice what could happen in Iraq if the US attacks Iran. The “on to Tehran” crowd has suffered at least a temporary setback with Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Aug 15 2006 16:48 utc | 22
Holbrooke ain’t much, but he’s a damned sight better than the other leading brand.
damn sight indeed. the enemy of my enemy….
as a drowning woman i’m not in a position to complain about the rope that offers rescue.
ach! that rope was made w/chemicals, i’m too pure touch it!
Posted by: annie | Aug 15 2006 16:49 utc | 23
Attacking 70 million people all following the mullahs in Iran is absolute pure insanity. A handful of Hezbollah defeated the IDF. They not only are not “realists” they are completely out of touch with reality.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 15 2006 16:57 utc | 24
The US and Israel haven’t lost much if they have managed to suck the rest of the world into standing in the middle of all this.(ie: UN)
Posted by: pb | Aug 15 2006 17:11 utc | 25