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White House To Meddle In Lebanese Policies – Provoking More Bombings
David Ignatius, the CIA's and administration's spokesperson at the Washington Post, is peddling one of these day's most stupid ideas:
The U.S. has an opportunity to help rebuild Lebanese sovereignty – (archived)
Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah has created a security vacuum.
The Biden administration’s diplomacy has failed to restrain Israel and de-escalate the Middle East conflict over the past year. But the administration has a new opportunity for constructive engagement: helping the Lebanese Armed Forces fill the void left by a collapsing Hezbollah and reestablish the Lebanese government’s sovereignty.
To start a column with a lies shows the way it will go. The Biden administration has not 'failed to restrain' Israel but has urged it to peruse its attacks on Hizbullah:
Presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad strategy to shift Israel’s military focus to the north against Hezbollah in order to convince the group to engage in diplomatic talks to end the conflict, the officials told POLITICO.
The Lebanese Armed Forces, which Ignatius wants to promote, have a nominal strength of some 80,000 men. But, thanks to U.S. influence over it, they is only lightly armed, little trained and of no use against any serious enemy. The LAF's fighting value in quantity and quality is well below that of Hizbullah's cadres.
Ignatius is dreaming:
Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah — culminating in the killing of Hasan Nasrallah last week — has created a security vacuum in Lebanon. The shellshocked lower ranks of Hezbollah undoubtedly hope to fill the void. But for the first time in a generation, there’s a real chance that the LAF takes control of the nation’s security and its borders, with proper assistance.
'A collapsing Hizbullah' is a wet dream of imperialist and Zionist but has nothing to do with reality. Just ask the Israeli forces which, in recent days, tried to infiltrate into southern Lebanon. The alleged 'security vacuum' hit them with all its might:
Israeli forces were struck with rockets on the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Odaisseh on Thursday afternoon, one of the towns where troops fell into a bloody ambush just a day earlier.
A Hezbollah guided-missile attack also hit a Merkava tank in the Natoa settlement not long before.
“When an Israeli enemy infantry force attempted to infiltrate towards the cemetery of the town of Yaroun, the Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance detonated a Sejil explosive device at the advancing force at 12:00 noon on Thursday 10-3-2024, killing and wounding them,” Hezbollah said earlier, marking its 21st statement on 3 October.
Hezbollah announced shortly before that its fighters “detonated an explosive device at 12:00 noon on Thursday 10-3-2024 with a force from the Golani Brigade in the Tartira area in the town of Maroun al-Ras, which was trying to bypass the western side of the town.”
The members of the Golani Brigade force were killed or wounded, the Hezbollah statement added.
Over the last days the 'security vacuum' also managed to fire hundreds of missiles onto the Zionist colony:
Sirens sounded in Israel's Haifa, Carmel foot hills and the Hadera region, including – for the first time since the war began, in Caesarea, An affluent seaside community where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu owns a private residence.
…
Hezbollah attacked northern Israel including the cities of Haifa and Acre repeatedly since the early morning hours. Rockets also landed in the Upper Galilee causing damage but no injuries.
The White House thinking, it seems, is not impeded by any reality:
The Biden administration sees a “massive opportunity” in Lebanon, a senior official told me this week. But to help Lebanon regain sovereignty, the Biden administration will have to move quickly and decisively while Hezbollah is still in disarray.
The Pentagon has been rehearsing for this role for several decades through its support program for the LAF. Less than four months ago, the Pentagon hosted the LAF’s commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, in Washington and at Centcom headquarters in Florida.
“Biden administration officials want the LAF to prepare a force that could potentially deploy near the border to monitor a future buffer zone negotiated between Israel and Hezbollah,” Al-Monitor news organization reported at the time of Aoun’s visit in mid-June.
The LAF forces are already deployed near the border. They are not very friendly with Israeli forces which routinely kills them:
Two Lebanese army soldiers were killed in separate Israeli strikes on south Lebanon on Thursday, the military said as Hezbollah said it repelled Israeli troops trying to cross the border.
The army said in a statement that a soldier was killed in an Israeli strike on a military post in the Bint Jbeil area, adding that soldiers fired back at the source of the fire.
A military official told AFP that this was the first response to Israeli fire since last October because the post had been “directly” hit.
It was the second Lebanese soldier to be killed by Israeli strikes on Thursday.
The army had announced earlier in the day that a soldier “was killed and another was wounded as a result of an aggression by the Israeli enemy during an evacuation and rescue operation with the Lebanese Red Cross in Taybeh village.”
To support his dream Ignatius cites a long discredited Lebanese neo-conservative:
Michael Young, a veteran Lebanese journalist, explained the dynamics after Nasrallah’s death in a post Sunday for the Carnegie Endowment’s Diwan website. He juxtaposed Hezbollah’s “logic of resistance” with “the logic of the state” and said the latter “imposes itself on a country that has been carried into a catastrophe by an armed group that has disregarded the Lebanese state.”
Young wrote that in the view of many Lebanese, “the single national institution that retains credibility and widespread popular endorsement is the Lebanese army.”
Unlike Ignatius, Young himself sees no plausible way to put the Lebanese army on top of the state. The most influential politician in Lebanon is the current speaker of the parliament, Nabih Berri. His Amal party is allied with Hizbullah and depends on its votes. Without Berri's support, Young writes, any change in the distribution of power in Lebanon is inconceivable.
But Ignatius insists that the impossible is doable or at least worth a try:
[R]ebuilding the Lebanese state behind a strong army — supported by a population that is sick of Hezbollah’s violent fantasy of resistance — is an achievable goal. It will require disciplined American effort and political will. But it’s a worthy task for Joe Biden’s final months in office and for his successor.
So let's send the Marines to prop up the LAF and let's manipulated the country's policies through bribes from the U.S. embassy.
Some thirty years ago the U.S. attempted to do such stupid things. In consequence its embassy got blown up as were the Marine's barracks.
Why someone believes that it is smart to now follow a similar strategy, and to thereby likely provoke a similar outcome, is well beyond me.
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Added: Ignatius' column is, apparently, not a fluke. Axios just posted this:
Scoop: U.S. wants to use Hezbollah's weakness to elect new Lebanese president
The stupidity – it hurts.
What has Israel achieved in the last year?
Let’s take a stone cold sober recap, I’ve compiled a list of the top 25 accomplishments of Israel in 2024:
1. Israel has essentially lost territory in the North of Occupied Palestine. Hezbollah’s rocket barrages over the last eleven months has driven the settler population out of the North. This is likely permanent. Israel’s settler population in the Gaza envelope has also been thinned out since the 7 October attacks.
Moreover, current ongoing attacks from Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon is depopulating Israel .
2. The Houthi have put an unbreakable chokehold on the Red Sea and all red sea shipping. There is no way to break this chokehold. The USN and all other Western navies have tried for almost 12 months and failed utterly.
Attempts to conduct strikes on the Houthi, including massive strikes on core infrastructure in Hodeida have yielded ZERO results over a period of almost a year.
The Israelis are to thank for this achievement.
3. The cementing of Hezbollah as the primary military force in Lebanon: Hezbollah’s Radwan forces have proven capable of protecting Lebanon’s Southern borders with Palestine. All attempts by the IDF and their supporting American Special Forces to take control of this area and drive the Radwan forces back have failed.
4. The ensured survival of Hamas: Hamas in the Gaza strip persists after almost a year. For months they’ve demonstrated ability to strike IDF forces daily, destroying IDF ground equipment and troops. This is true, even if incremental in nature. Hamas is still able to launch rockets on the Gaza envelope.
This means their rocket manufacturing facilities are still functional. Hamas has demonstrated staying power and resilience. Compared to Fatah in the West Bank, Hamas has demonstrated an ability and willingness to actualise the Palestinian desire for self determination.
Due to Israel’s excessive response to 7 October, Fatah has been permanently sidelined. Hamas will forever be known as the true face of Palestinian resistance.
5. The validation of Hezbollahs resilience: Despite eliminating one (1) component of the Hezbollah leadership, Hezbollah has reconstituted its leadership structure. It’s most senior leadership council, the Shura is still intact.
Despite a technically brilliant infiltration of the communications infrastructure supply chain by Israel and after a massive air strike involving rarely used bunker buster missiles, Israel has failed to dent the combat capability or even morale of Hezbollah.
6. Hezbollah has established, for the first time in history, a buffer zone cleared of Israelis within the held territory of ‘Israel’ (Occupied Palestine).
7. Recent and previous strikes carried out by the IRGC on Tel Aviv showed the failure of the Iron Dome and the failure of ALL Israel’s air defence systems. David’s Sling. Arrow. Patriot. Moreover, the air defence systems of Israel’s satraps (Jordan) were also proven to fail. Further, the interception systems of the USN were proven to be inadequate.
This has massive implications for war-gaming a conflict between the US and Iran. It means that the US will have to consider the fact that regardless of what it may inflict on Iran, it will not be able to shield anyone and itself against a concurrent Iranian retaliation.
Moreover, the US must now acknowledge that Iran has the ability to destroy it’s carrier groups.
Marine power projection is therefore no longer of any use in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman … It must now recalculate all it’s previous attack plans.
8. The hardening of Hezbollah positions in the South of Lebanon: Despite the spectacular and tragic strikes Israel has carried out on Beirut the essential damage is limited to civilian blocks and civilian villages in the south. It appears that very little of Israel’s considerable air firepower has harmed Hezbollah.
The net effect of these strikes has been to galvanise Hezbollah’s fighters, drive Hezbollah recruitment, set world opinion firmly against Israel. The global environment for Israelis, Zionists and sadly, even non-Zionist Jews has been polluted on account of Netanyahu’s actions in Beirut.
On the other side of the equation, the IDF has wasted substantial amounts of materiel on killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure. Infrastructure which has nothing to do with the threat posed by Hezbollah.
While the US has put its entire arsenal at Israel’s disposal these materials are far from infinite and will run out soon – or become so expensive that it begins place further pressures on the U.S economy and logistics chains.
9. The US’ ongoing Iraq Occupation is coming apart at the seams: Despite the US presence in Iraq, it is demonstrably unable to exert any influence on the Iraqi resistance movements there, who launch increasingly sophisticated missile and drone attacks from Iraqi territory under the noses of US garrisons.
In addition, the behaviour of Israel has stimulated anti-US activity in Iraq and will shortly result in a violent ejection of U.S forces from that country regardless of the current puppet government’s attempts to retain the U.S presence.
It may take years to complete but the ejection of American forces from Iraq is all but assured now that the Hashds have demonstrated the ability to use substantial lethal force.
10. The Syrian occupation is coming apart at the seams: Strikes against U.S bases in Syria have become a weekly occurrence now. The resistance movements in Syria have shown that they have the capabiloity to put American bases under constant pressure. The U.S will shortly lose it’s comfortable perch on the Conoco oil fields in Syria and with it, control of the spigot to the various Anti-Government militant movements in the region … and with that, control of Syria.
In short, Israel’s needless bloodlust has imperilled the US’ ongoing occupation of the entire Middle East.
11. Israel has destabilised Jordan. Iran has pushed Jordan (and others) into showing their cards at the middle eastern poker table. The government of Jordan has been exposed as a completely controlled satrap of Israel. Its national interests are completely subordinate to Israel and the USA above and beyond the interests of Jordanian people.
This begins the countdown to the end of the regime of King Abdullah of Jordan and his administration.
12. Israel has sown the seeds of destabilisation in Egypt. Iran has pushed Jordan and Egypt into showing their cards at the middle eastern poker table. Egypt has been exposed as a complete satrap of the US and Israel, completely subordinate to the needs of the Zionist entity. Every Egyptian, with warm memories of Gamal Abdel Nasser would probably be weeping at this point.
The only thing that keeps the Egyptian population from toppling their government at this time is the Egyptian military. It will unfortunately remain so until the right catalyst arrives to light the spark of revolution …
However, the net result of all these increasing strains within Egypt is to increase sympathies for the Palestinian people, opening up smuggling lines into Gaza.
13. The perception of Western Moral and Civilisational Superiority has been utterly destroyed.The fact that Western Colonialism is alive and well and that Western Civilization is morally bankrupt has been been exposed to the Global South.
This moral bankcruptcy has been manifested firstly at the level of it’s governments and secondly at the level of it’s apathetic populations who support the actions of their governments.
The result of this is that the Global South is now able to weaponise diplomacy in every forum with Western powers.
In the past, every diplomatic discourse between Western powers and non-Western countries used to begin with brow-beating and embarrassment of those countries around their human rights records.
Today, every diplomatic discourse between the West and a global south nation begins with a refutation of Western moral high ground.
14. The neutralisation of weaponised Western sanctions: Israel’s actions, triggering Iran’s, Yemen’s and Hezbollah’s actions have revealed that western sanctions against The Middle Eastern Resistance have been useless in stopping the technological and military advance of these powers.
Moreover, these sanctions have served to push the middle east into the BRICS trade sphere and away from the G7 trading sphere. It is a self-strangulation of the Western economies carried out by the USA on behalf of it’s garrison in Occupied Palestine.
Ultimately, these sanctions backfired spectacularly, resulting effectively in the global sanction and blockade of Western shipping through the Red Sea and “tit-for tat” oil tanker confiscations in the Persian Gulf.
15. The compromise of the integrity of Western Supply Chains. The compromise of Western mobile device supply chains, which could only have happened through the collaboration of multiple Western states, including the collusion of parties in Taiwan (outside of the control of Beijing) and Hong Kong (controlled loosely by Beijing) has resulted in complete loss of trust in Western telecommunications equipment and alerted Beijing and Moscow to potential compromise in their own supply chains.
While the implications of this are still unfolding the future success of western exports and Israel’s inclusion in the supply chains are now in question.
China is now, even more than before, not only the “supplier of volume” but also the “supplier of trust”.
16. Due to the actions of Israel, the US has been exposed to its people, the UN community (UNSC, UNGA) as completely under control of the Zionist Lobby. It is no longer a government of the people by the people (if ever it was!). In the past, it was suspected that Israel had some influence over American foreign and home policy, but now it is certain that Israel controls American foreign policy in totality. The question of which part of the dog is the tail and which the dog has become meaningless – it’s all “dog”. Moreover, this compromise of the State, the subversion of Western governments to the purposes of the Zionist lobby, has been repeated on other Western governments like Germany, France, Britain.
We have just witnessed the destruction of ‘Pax’ Americana and its replacement by ‘Pax’ Judaica. Thus, the prediction of Sheikh Imran Hossein has been fulfilled.
17. Well done on the genocide front! Israel has progressed quite far in it’s genocide of the Gazan Palestinian population within the last 12 months. The depopulation of the Gaza strip is well on it’s way by means of sickness, starvation more than missiles and bombs.
For this there will be a price to pay in the eyes of history, for the Zionists if Israel have provided the excuse (not justification) for some enterprising tyrant to commit future persecutions and genocides against the Jews – and others.
18. Israeli economy is destroyed along multiple vectors for the foreseeable future. MNCs with offices in Israel have been negatively impacted. Affected business range from individual companies that cannot operate in Israel anymore due to instability and loss of workforce, to larger corporations whose ethical compliance measures require them to decouple from Israel. The impact extends to companies that cannot tolerate the disruption to energy infrastructure and logistics lines.
19. New, persistent threats that cannot be remedied by the West have been created.The Houthi and the Iraqi Hashds being one case in point.
There’s just no end in sight here. These actors are going to be around for years, threatening the viability of Israel as a “peaceful place for the Jews” and turning it into merely another American garrison in the Levant.
20. Degraded Israeli gas and Oil infrastructure in the Mediterranean. Recent strikes have not only destroyed some of Israel’s gas platforms in the Med but demonstrated that Iran has the ability to wipe out Israel’s energy infrastructure. Israel will now have to recalculate the security of its energy supply. Any customers of Israel’s gas and oil production will have to recalculate their energy security equations.
21. Ensured continuity of the Resistance. The further radicalisation of Hezbollah by removal of the conservative elder leadership has resulted in the younger, more aggressive, less restrained commanders to take the lead. Moreover, the remaining elder leadership in the Shura council have been painfully reminded that there is no negotiating with the Israelis and the Americans and that the only way out is to fight.
The murder of national heroes like Hassan Nasrallah has very likely galvanised the youth of Lebanon.
In a similar vein, the next generation of Hamas and Al Qassam fighters, now still children, have been created in the camps of Gaza, the West Bank, Ein Al Hilwe and other Lebanese Palestinian camps and the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Syria.
This is the primary reason for the American and Israeli murder campaign against Palestinian children and babies.
22. A distraction for the USA and the Western Imperium: Ultimately the debacle in Occupied Palestine, engineered and sustained by Benjamin Netanyahu has posed a major drain on American resources.
It is a distraction from confronting bigger, more threating adversaries like China and Russia.
The more cognitive energy, financial resources and political capital the USA has tied up in the Middle east conflict, the less it has left to confront serious developments on the Russia and China fronts.
The BRI, for example continues apace. Chinese and Russian space and marine developments proceed by leaps and bounds. Chinese chip manufacture has reached the 7 nm scale and 4nm is in testing. Hypersonic missile development in Russia and China has outpaced American developments by leaps and bounds. China has achieved a 6g Transmission network implementation. China operates the biggest space station human kind has ever deployed.
23. The UN has been exposed as an impotent and in fact detrimental organisation: Israel, through it’s own behaviour at the UN has exposed the entire organisation, from the ICC, ICJ, UNSC, UNGA and even organisations like UNRWA as completely impotent for all tasks that do not support the interests of the Western Powers. While this has been obvious since the comprise of the OPCW some years ago, the rot has been exposed at all levels of the UN and repeatedly hammered home by the Israeli representatives at the UN.
Nobody can ignore it anymore, nobody other than those benefitting from the grift.
24. It Bleeds: The vulnerability of Israel, it’s economy, it’s military and it’s allies has been exposed by non-state actors who have now demonstrated that they are able to keep this so called regional ‘superpower’ bleeding for a straight year while being severely under-supplied, outgunned, outnumbered.
Should other Arab countries decide at any point that Israel no longer serves their purposes in the middle east, they’ve seen the evidence that Israel is not invincible and on the contrary, remarkably vulnerable.
25. Weakening of the Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni State is a Strengthening of Hezbollah and the Houthi Movement: Israel, in taking the wrecking ball to Lebanese and Yemeni civilian government and sovereignty has created an environment in which the state will never be able to hold a monopoly on violence.
The entire extent of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen will therefore remain free and open for Hezbollah and Ansarallah to operate without government restraint. Even if this “freedom” is the freedom of chaos.
How will all these “sensitive initial conditions” – these “achievements” – combine over the next 6 – 12 months to form greater unintended effects?
It’s anyone’s guess but the picture doesn’t look good for Israel regardless of how it looks for the rest of the Levant.
Winning!
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Oct 4 2024 22:06 utc | 192
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