Saturday, July 22, 2006

Whose war is this?

Today the New York Times reported that the U.S. is rushing shipments of missiles to Israel to support the aerial attack on Lebanon. (Evidently the Israelis are running short) As I read this article it occurred to me that one way to understand this conflict is as a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S arms and finances the Jews and Iran arms and finances the Muslims. That way only the Israelis and Lebanese get to die and have their infrastructure destroyed while the Americans and Iranians can sit peacefully at home and watch. One wonders why the Israelis and Lebanese don’t say “Wait a minute, if you guys want to have a war, fight it yourselves”. Perhaps they love war so much that they would do it anyway without any help from the U.S. and Iran, but after a while they would be reduced fighting with swords. It could be different looking eye to eye with your enemy rather than dropping bombs or shooting missiles at people that you can not see. They could still kill each other, but they would be a lot less efficient at it. It’s possible that the Israelis may tire of fighting this war. My impression is that the Israelis are a lot like Americans when it comes to war. They are pretty tolerant of casualties on the other side, but a lot less tolerant of their own casualties. There was a large anti war rally in Tel Aviv today led by Israeli Arabs and left wing Jews. The unique thing about this rally was that it was not only anti-war, but also anti-American. The anti-American and anti-Bush slogans were reminiscent of the rallies in Arab capitals. “We will not die, we will not kill in the service of the United States.” (For more on this click here) Maybe the Israelis are beginning to realize that the U.S may not always have their best interests at heart. Is the U.S. saying “Go fight Hezbollah; we’re right behind you all the way”? If the Israelis back out before the “job is done”, maybe the U.S. needs a plan B. The U.S. could arm and finance the Lebanese Christians and Druze to fight Hezbollah. The U.S. has a history of proxy wars in recent years and the results have not been all that good. In the 90’s in Bosnia the U.S. armed the Christians and the Iranians armed and supported the Muslims. The result was that a lot of people died to reach today’s marginal state. In the 80’s the U.S. fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In that case it was our Afghanis versus your Afghanis and the result was a failed state where only the Taliban, the war lords and Usama Bin Laden were happy. With Iraq at the top of the list of potential failed states in the region, the continued destruction in Lebanon and the possibility of a civil war will make what remains of Lebanon a prime candidate for the list. The only person who will be happy with that state of affairs will be Usama Bin Laden who will take advantage of the chaos to advance his war against the west and modernity.



Tuesday, July 18, 2006

One man’s opinion

I had hoped that I would be able to get by the Middle East and go on to other subjects. We had planned a trip to North Korea which would have provided a treasure trove of topics to explore, but courtesy of DPRK’s changing visa restrictions the trip was canceled. So, back to the Middle East. Several people have asked about my thoughts on the current escalating conflict in the region. With the caveats that it has been three months since I have been on the ground in Israel and the West Bank and so my first hand information is getting stale and nothing that you think about the situation in this region survives the next news cycle, here are some thoughts. When we were in Bethlehem the Italian Franciscan monk who managed the Casa Nova Pilgrimage Center on Manger Square where we stayed, told us that he expected a third intifada (uprising) to begin. He said that we did not need to worry as it would not happen right away, but that the ongoing targeted killings, military incursions and arrests/kidnappings by the Israeli forces were leading even moderate Palestinians to say “enough is enough”. He felt that the objective of the Israelis was to provoke the intifada in order to justify their position that they had no negotiating partner and that they would probably succeed. My own conversations with Palestinians led me to agree with him. The phrase “enough is enough” was pretty common. It was clear that once the intifada began, which it did with increased Qassam rocket attacks and the kidnapping of an Israel soldier, that the Israelis were prepared to strike Gaza with overwhelming force. At the same time they massed their forces on the Lebanese border in the north. It was easy to predict that this would provoke Hezbollah to take action to protect themselves from a preemptive Israeli attack and to accomplish their long stated objective of taking Israeli prisoners to trade for Lebanese prisoners and an accounting of the “disappeared”. Since at that time there were meetings between Hamas and Hezbollah in Damascus, there probably was a component of taking the pressure off of Hamas in Gaza and forcing the Israelis into a two front war. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend) The Israelis were always a little leery of the Lebanese situation given the disastrous consequences of their last invasion. Hezbollah in Lebanon is a different animal from Hamas in Gaza. With 30,000 trained fighters and 15000 rockets, some capable of reaching Tel Aviv, it is a formidable enemy capable of inflicting considerable damage. But war fever has infected Israel, (as one columnist said “We should be grateful to Hezbollah for giving us this window of opportunity to launch an offensive…”) and they struck devastating blows on Lebanese infrastructure and population centers. For awhile it appeared that Israel was also intent on bringing Syria into the conflict. They over flew Syrian territory (What would happen if the Syrians shot down an Israeli plane?) and attacked the Lebanese/Syrian border crossing. (They claimed that they only hit the Lebanese side, but it wasn’t clear that the Syrians would see the distinction.) For a few days I was convinced that we were not far from bringing in the Syrians and thereby their allies the Iranians (They’re not natural allies, but once again the enemy of my enemy is my friend) and that may still happen. If the Bush administration was right in their claims that Saddam Hussein’s WMD were not found because they were transferred to Syria, casualties would rapidly escalate from hundreds to thousands. The comparison that occurred to me was the beginning of WW I. The assassination of one man in an obscure part of Europe (Who knew where Serbia was?) led to the destruction of an entire generation of European men because no leaders had the political courage or will to make the difficult decisions necessary to prevent the conflagration. Everybody thought that it would be a quick easy little war. (As if such a thing exists) Here the kidnapping of one Israeli soldier could end up involving the whole region and the U.S. in a major conflict for the same reasons. This morning, however, it appears that some sanity may be returning. The Israelis, after initially rejecting the proposal by Britain and Russia for an international force in Lebanon because it would restrict their military options, appear to be softening their position. Martin Indyck’s comments appear to indicate that AIPAC will give the U.S. permission to support the force. The kicker will be that Hezbollah will have to be part of the solution and nobody wants to talk with them. The Syrians and Iranians will have to play and they have their own agendas. Can the U.S./Israel get by this problem? If the international force works and succeeds it may have long term positive results. (Optimist) It might spread to the West Bank and Gaza and give Palestinian fighters the space to disarm and then Israel would no longer have an excuse not to negotiate. (Israel’s worst nightmare) Nevertheless, hope springs eternal, until the next news cycle.




Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Rethinking the war on terror

During our recent trip to New York City with our grandchildren, we visited some of the usual tourist attractions. Our eight year old granddaughter had advised us that it was her dream to visit the Statue of Liberty, so the Circle Line ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands was on the schedule. It also seemed to be on everybody else’s schedule as well as the lines snaked all the way through Battery Park. One of the reasons for the long lines was the extraordinarily tight security that was in place. The very sensitive metal detectors and searches that took place were even more stringent than those at most airports and required an enormous number of security personnel to accomplish. (Perhaps this was all necessary as some terrorist might want to fly the ferry into a building) If Usama Bin Laden and his people can see the enormous changes that they have brought about in the U.S. and realize the enormous unproductive use of resources that their actions have engendered, they must be very happy. Currently we are spending $720b a year or 25% of the federal budget in defense, security and intelligence. Compare this to the $14.5b we spend on diplomacy and the $64b we spend on education at the federal level. I wonder who is winning the “war on terror” and what is the “war on terror”? Shortly after the events of 9/11, President Bush declared a “global war on terror”. (I thought only Congress could declare war, but I won’t go there.) I thought at the time that this was probably not a useful way of framing the issue. He probably should have declared war on Al Quaida as terror is not an enemy, but a tactic used by politically motivated groups to achieve their objectives. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King – violence is the voice of the voiceless. When we lump ETA (the Basque separatist group), the IRA, Hamas, and Al Quaida together as terrorists, we miss their differing agendas and try to impose a one size fits all solution. Why do we do it? Well, the military-industrial complex likes it because it is a war you can never lose, but also a war you can never win. As long as we are engaged in a never ending “war on terror” we can justify huge defense expenditures and massive weapons procurement programs. Comparisons are often made between the situation in Iraq and the Vietnam War. I am not sure that comparison works, but it may work with the “war on terror”. It is a war for which we have no defined strategic objective; we don’t even know who the enemy is. We are reduced to defining progress in terms of body counts and terror cells broken up. Usama Bin Laden, on the other hand, does have a strategic objective. He wants to return to the Islamic Caliphate that existed prior to WW I. He will use whatever tactics he thinks will be effective in achieving that strategic objective, including terror. For that reason he may well win. The guy with the biggest gun doesn’t always win in an asymmetrical war. (For more than you wanted to know on this subject from people who are much smarter than I am click here)

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The absurd and the tragic

So much of what is happening in the Middle East is so absurd that if it were not so tragic it would be funny. One thing that amazed me as we traveled through the West Bank was the dark sense of humor that our Palestinian friends have maintained through all of their tragedy. Maybe humor is the way out of this impasse. Do we need to laugh at what is going on? Some seem to be able to do that. When the Israeli Defense Forces bulldozed two toilets that had been built for homeless Palestinians by American relief agencies, I couldn’t understand the military importance of this venture. However, a Palestinian blogger opined that perhaps the reason for the destruction was that the noises coming from the toilets sounded like bombs going off. Recently the Israeli Air Force bombed an electrical power plant in Gaza. The military significance of this adventure was also not clear to me as all it did was make life miserable for 1.4 mm Palestinians in the sweltering Middle East summer. In this land of the absurd it has come to light that the plant was owned by a U.S. company and was insured by an agency of the U.S. government. (If you think that this is too absurd to be true, click here) So it appears that Americans will pay to build the plant, pay to blow it up, and then pay to rebuild it. At the risk of repeating myself, isn’t there a better way to waste taxpayer money? I am really trying to see the humor in all this. As one of my friends pointed out that rather than get angry, a better way to change our government’s policies is just to laugh at them and make them the butt of our jokes. Ha ha ha.