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July 25, 2006
The Israeli attack on Hezbollah
I haven't written anything about the current Israeli war against Hezbollah for two reasons, one, I've been too busy, and two, it all seems so obvious. To me, Israel must be allowed to destroy Hezbollah. If Hezbollah is allowed to survive, all that will happen is that it will reconstitute itself and resume attacks on Israel. In other words, we'll return to the situation that prompted the war in the first place.
The problem is that Lebanon does not have a government that controls the entire country. The reason for this is that it has been fractured by years of civil war and Syrian intervention. The Cedar Revolution eliminated the latter in an overt form, but of course Syrian influence remains. Syria supports Hezbollah, and doesn't want the government of Lebanon to tolerate it. Hezbollah gained so much strength that it has cabinet ministers in the Lebanese government, so it's influence is not easy to eliminate. Indeed, it spent much of the past several years killing anyone in Lebabon who spoke out too strongly against it.
So the first step towards peace and stability in Lebanon is to eliminate Hezbollah. We've all heard that UN Security Council Resolution 1559 called for the disarming of Hezbollah, but of course that hasn't happened, and won't as long as the UN is in charge of making it happen.
Therefore, the worst thing that could happen now is for other nations to impost a premature cease-fire that allows Hezbollah to survive. This would be repeating 1982, when we allowed that terrorist Arafat and his PLO to survive and escape to Tunisia just when the IDF had them cornered in Beirut.
Alan Dershowitz lays out the case why we should not allow the UN to mediate or have anything to do with the situation. He describes how the UN legitimizes terrorism:
If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent civilians and the self-defense efforts by Israel, which tries desperately, though not always successfully, to avoid causing civilian casualties. In his statement, Annan never condemns, or even mentions, terrorism, which is a root cause and precipitator of the conflict.Even Annan was forced to acknowledge that "Hezbollah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis"; that Hezbollah is "deliberate[ly] targeting ... Israeli population centers with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons"; and that Israel has the "right to defend itself under Article 51 of the UN charter." But he doesn't stop there. He goes out of his way to insist on equating Hezbollah's terrorists with Israeli military response, which he labels "disproportionate" and "collective punishment." He condemns both Hezbollah and Israel. He also criticizes Israel for its efforts at preventing Qassam rocket attacks against its civilian populations, noting that the Hamas rockets have produced no "casualties in the past month." (This, of course, is not for lack of trying.) He ignores Hamas' long history of terrorism against innocent civilians.
Annan then calls for an "immediate cessation of indiscriminate and disproportionate violence" on both sides, again suggesting a moral equivalence. Among the most immoral positions anyone can take is to suggest a moral equivalence between morally different actions.
Dershowitz nails the entire problem with the UN; moral equivalence. It simply cannot distinguish between agressor and defender, between right and wrong, between terrorist and victim. To Annan, Israel and Hezbollah are simply two warring parties which must be brought to heal.
Unfortunately, this attitude has infected many around the world and in the US. Hezbollah hides among civilians, knowing that no matter how precise the Israeli attack, some will be killed. Despite that the civilian death toll is far less than in the 1982 operation, many insist on a cease fire "for the children". So the terrorists get to have it both ways; when they fire their rockets into Israel or send forth their suicide bombers, a few tut-tut but then quickly insist that Israel must make this or that concession "for peace". But when Israel tries to destroy the terrorists, it's "they're using disproportionate force" and "it perpetuates the cycle of violence".
Lastly Derschowitz reminds us that there have been UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon for years, but they haven't exactly done any good
The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video--which could have helped in the rescue--on the grounds that it might compromise their "neutrality."
Yes the current situation is frought with danger. A wider war, and a spread of chaos would not been good for the situation in Iraq. It is worth the risk, however, if we can destroy or at least significantly harm Hezbollah. Let Israel do what it has to do.
Posted by Tom at July 25, 2006 9:54 PM
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Comments
Tom: The situation is obvious to you and me. This sad story has been played out again and again and again.
Now, once more as if it will be any different, the call is for Israel to "cease fire."
I've seen this movie and the ending is always the same: MORE bloodshed!
Either Hezbollah, who is openly hiding behind a civilian population and the UN "peacekeepers" is evil and must be defeated, or Israel should, in the words of the Iranian President "be wiped off the map."
My sympathy lies with Israel. It's clear that the current nightmare would NOT be happening were it not for the continued violation of Hezbollah of every ceasefire and UN resolution requiring them to disarm.
Posted by: Mike 
at July 26, 2006 4:04 PM
In some respects, the Hizbollah/Israel situation seems similar to the situtation facing US and Iraqi forces in Iraq.
There's plenty of military superiority available to defeat the enemy in traditional military versus military combat. But that doesn't give either Israel or the United States or the Iraqi people what they want, which is a permanent peace in the area.
The only way a permanent peace can occur, it seems, is for there to be a cultural/political transformation of the area. This explains why many conservatives and some liberals like Joe Lieberman support the idea of "imposing" democracy in the region.
Andy McCarthy briefly debated with Rich Lowry at NRO's corner today about where spreading democracy fits in to the war on terror. And I admit that the last three years of low level war in Iraq has caused me to reconsider the viability of democracy in Iraq. Still, it's hard to see what realistic alternatives for democracy were available after Saddam was booted out of power.
The more I think about it the more I think Winston Churchill's quote applies more perfectly to Iraq than Europe or North America: Democracy is the most ill-suited form of government for Iraqis, except for every known alternative.
If we could find a benign dictator who would trasition Iraq to democracy over the next ten years while ruthlessly and compentently (and perhaps even fairly) maintaining the nation's security, that would be great. But I doubt there is such a person anywhere on planet Earth.
Posted by: Mark at July 26, 2006 7:56 PM
I've been following that McCarthy/Lowry debate too. They went at it last week, also, as I'm sure you also read. And I too underestimated the difficulties of establishing democracy in Iraq. I think we underestimated sectarian hatreds as well as Iranian influence.
But like you say, the alternatives are worse. Sure we could go back to the "friendly strongman" model, but that's just putting a lid on a pressure cooker. The problems remain. And that sort of "solution" is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at July 26, 2006 9:34 PM
The White House finally understands Iraq is now mostly about the sectarian violence/civil war. The spin is now over:
NSA Stephen Hadley in an official White House press release:
“You've now seen the emergence of death squads and armed groups on right and left, and they're doing great damage to the civilian population. That's really what is new. It's something that we've seen occur since February, and it is a new challenge. This isn't about insurgency, this isn't about terror, this is about sectarian violence.”
To publicly admit that Iraq is not about terror or ‘dead end’ insurgents (as we were told by Cheney and Bush during the era of “Mission Accomplished” spin), but instead to come to terms with the fact that Iraq is about sectarian violence is finally the end of the BS. On one hand you have the Sunnis, who really hate us, and on the other you have the Iranian backed Shia, who’s handlers and backers also hate us. Whoever wins the struggle in Iraq probably won’t look like the version of democracy we wanted, instead, they may end up more like the democratically elected Hamas or SCIRI goons who now run Iraq, definitely not a real good outcome considering how much money we have spent on this "model of mideast democracy" that was supposed to be the "springboard" into the rest of the region. Time for a new way of thinknign about Iraq, and I'm glad to see realistic dicussions, like the one at NRO, instead of parroting the tired old crap about democracy and stability in the middle east we have heard to date from the civilian leadership.
Posted by: jason at July 27, 2006 7:52 PM
Back to HTML school for me. The White house link (there is the missing Mother Jones link Tom) should have been White House
Posted by: jason at July 28, 2006 2:35 PM
no problem on the HTML mistake, jason.
But the post was about Israel and Hezbollah, not Iraq. Please relate your comment to the post in some way.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at July 28, 2006 4:14 PM
