Deeper and Deeper [Updated]
Update: U.S. military analyst Tony Cordesman lays down a rhetorical barrage, calling Israeli policy in Lebanon and U.S. policy in Iraq "stupid, incompetent, and obsolete." (Via Eric Umansky). Finally, some real straight talk. Also...
I found this Los Angeles Times' lead, unsigned editorial to be refreshingly frank in its bracing language about Israel. "Israel Can't Keep on Like This" reads the headline condeming the gruesome massacre at Qana.
An op-ed on the facing page by my Nation colleague Adam Shatz also takes up the same tack.
The Israeli government apparently disagrees. It not only can continue the war as is, but is fully intending to do so -- even expanding it. Condi Rice now sounds faintly ridiculous as she promises to really, really try to bring a cease-fire within "days not weeks" even as Israel sends thousands of new troops into Lebanon. And as the Israeli Prime Minister vows the fighting can still go on for some time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure looks Rice and the Bush administration have been doing little else but running interference for the IDF, knowing full well, from the onset, that the Israeli military campaign was more open-ended than not.
It also seems rather irrefutable that the Israelis misjudged the situation in Lebanon every bit as much as the White House didn't comprehend what it was getting into in Iraq. The first phase of the Israeli campaign, the air war to eliminate Hezbollah, failed rather dramatically. The second phase, trying to break the Hezbollah hold with incursions by small, elite units, was equally ineffective.
Now, Israel has moved to Phase Three: The sledgehammer.
The biggest casualty to date in the conflict is, of course, the moral authority of the Middle East's only democracy -- Israel. Michael Oren, an analyst at the Shalem think tank in Israel told the New York Times: "Israel started this crisis with the most favourable diplomatic position it has ever had in its history, and over the course of three weeks the Olmert Government has managed to squander that advantage."
Sound a bit familiar to you? Isn't this exactly what the Bush administration did in the wake of 9/11? Great minds must think alike.
Pity the poor Israelis (as well as those on the receiving end of their policies). Imagine having the victorious Conquerors of Baghdad as your most valued and trusted strategic partner. What terrific advice Rummy and the Boys must be able to offer to their Israeli allies.
P.S. I have taken some relish in trashing the screwball conspiracy theories of some self-proclaimed lefties who argue the Twin Towers were taken down on 9/11 by "controlled demolitions" set off by the Bush administration. So now seems a good time to heap mountains of scorn and derision on the Right-wing fringe-types who, with equal nuttiness, are suggesting that the Israeli bombing massacre at Qana was somehow staged or exaggerated by Hezbollah. If your stomach can take it, check out this frothy rant from Confederate Yankee who-- from the cushy comfort of his armchair-- "deconstructs" the photos of the dead children dug out from the collapsed building. From his vantage point 5,000 miles away he concludes the young corpses just don't have enough dust on them to convince him, in his towering forensic expertise, that they died in a building collapse. Devious little bastards those dead kids.
Nauseating, really. Words fail me. Even the perpetrators of the Qana attack, the Israeli military, has not questioned the basic facts. But excessive ideology is a vicious disease. It takes otherwise healthy minds and turns them into stinking sewers.
August 1st, 2006 at 10:47 pm
The Shatz piece is excellent, a calm and methodical statement of the moral issues. And current Israeli operations near the Syrian border are particularly provocative, I wonder what the US expects to come out of that.
Also, thanks for linking to Confederate Yankee before Woody did.
August 1st, 2006 at 11:24 pm
The LA Times editorial, on the other hand, raises troubling issues for me when it says the following:
“It is still the case that a cease-fire at any cost, one that does not address the need to disarm Hezbollah and bolster the Lebanese state, would be a costly mistake. Within the next week, the Security Council needs to authorize the deployment of a force that can back up the Lebanese army, ensure Israel’s security and disarm Hezbollah.”
I don’t think that Hezbollah is going to disarm, at least not in the short term, and making this a condition for a ceasefire or making it a short term goal will doom the peace efforts to failure. Disarmament will require that Israel make peace with the Palestinians, withdraw to mutually agreed borders, and a Palestinian state–ie, peace in the region requires a solution to this core festering problem. No one in the Arab world is going to accept less, and the violence will continue in one form or other until this happens. I spent two weeks in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in 1999, when there were no terrorist bombings and no violence because everyone on both sides assumed there would be a Palestinian state very soon. We need to return to that hopeful time. We can debate who was most responsible for spoiling it, but we need to get back there.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:20 am
I agree with you Michael, and I wish it would happen – that we would return to the table, but all of my instincts and having studied the beast of empire tell me it unfortunately not in the cards. No one will listen to the Palestinians, their plight will only increase. They are nothing to the interests in this region, and Israel will not be stopped having been made a super power proxy in the region.
There will be further bombing in Lebanon, they will reduce the entire southern region to rubble. Than bombing will commence on Beirut, because you know – they have to go after that Hizbollah element, and if it mean genociding 40% of the population it is a small price to pay for the security of Israel.
In the mean time the price of oil will continue to soar, and the military-industrial complex will grow fat. If you noticed the one thing in common all these places that are warring have – there is not oil, but that does not matter because the Western world see them as one lump sum – and that means higher prices for oil.
Unfortunately Olmert’s popularity which was at 35%, somewhat similar to Bush is now almost 80% – this US administration cheers him on and will not stop. For that matter Iran has not stopped Hizbollah, and the house of Saud has not stopped Hamas – unfortunately it is very profitable to have chaos in the region. The oil rich leaders are just getting richer – why stop anything? Exxon will make the higest profits of any corporation in history next quarter – almost 10 billion dollars.
These oil rich countries do not make money from finding oil, they make money from trouble. They do not want peace and quiet, they want riots in the streets and this means profits soar. They need every excuse they can get to disrupt, or seemingly disrupt oil. Crude jumped to $75.00 a barrel with this unrest – It might even reach $85.00 plus before the summer is over. I mean $10.00 a barrel brings in billions of dollar per week in these countries. In fact it is up 27% from last year. Follow the money.
On top of this (above), you have an administration that wants escalation, why? Because they do not care about the problems in either Iraq or Afganistan – I don’t think most even know the rabid nature of this beast. It wants control everywhere, and it does not care if the job is incomplete or botched in other areas – or how many people die, or if it has to use “limited nuclear tactical weapons” eventually. I am not joking, this troop is tanked by it’s exceptionalism, and it blends perfectly with it’s Israeli counterpart. Just thought some people would like to know. Hey, if you disagree that is fine – let’s see how far all this goes, and if we have the ability we will dialogue later.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:35 am
Not true, Mark. Not true at all. Precisely because of the questions raised by myself and others, the IDF is now investigating the situation at Qana.
Sorry if that messes with your world view.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:12 am
Seeking the deployment of a UN force is like a flowing, drowining man clutching at straws. The UN is a corrupt bureaucracy run by a cartel of tyrants. A history of its “peacekeeping” would have to include child sexual abuse in the Congo, stepping aside to allow massacres in Bosnia, withdrawing in the midst of a crisis in Sinai, and numerous other acts of malfeasance and nonfeasance. If Israel can’t disarm Hizbullah, why should anyone expect France and Fiji to do so?
Contrary to the bumper sticker cliché, violence does sometimes solve things, like American independence and the abolition of slavery. A succession of cease-fires that simply allows the parties to prepare for the next flare-up, may result in more deaths and destruction than a war fought to a definitive conclusion.
On another point, although words may fail you when you read the skeptics, there is much that is strange about the events in Qana. The work of the skeptics might be motivated by ideology, but it also merits some consideration. At a minimum, Hizbullah, immersed in a tradition that glorifies martyrdom and suffering, is exploiting the deaths, as parties to armed conflict do. To turn your argument around, why is the great forensic anthropologist Marc Cooper able to grok the truth and dismiss all questions with one snap of his educated fingers? Do you remember Jenin, during the second intifada, which was supposed to be a great massacre, and turned out to be nothing of the kind?
That said, the first and deepest response to the deaths of children has to be the deepest sorrow, and there’s plenty of blame to throw around later. Man has always been the wolf of man, and there’s little to show we’ve changed.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:23 am
Yankee, you give new meaning to the words Ideological Imbecile. This is the reason why men get away with the atrocities they do – incredible.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:24 am
Con Yankee is a forensic expert who relies only on photos.
Interesting.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:58 am
This is a simple chain of custody question, Con Yankee. If you do not know under what circumstances the body was found (perhaps it was under a supporting beam that shielded it from a good bit of the collapse and the resulting dust, perhaps a face was washed in order to clear dust off) and if you have not examined the body (a piece of shrapnel could have entered the body and left a small hole on the exterior while causing fatal damage in the body; the femoral artery, if severed can cause exsanguination in about five minutes).
So Marc’s comments are dead on. Without examining the site and without examining the bodies orwhere the bodies were found, you’re just bloviating – and I’m trying to be tactful, here.
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:03 am
I left a sentence unfinished. It should read as follows:
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:39 am
Its clear that Israel is only defending itself aginst super villains unknown in the histiry of man.
“Israel’s high court Tuesday upheld a request by far-right Jewish activists to enter Islam’s third holiest shrine, the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, in a move likely to spark riots in Israel and the Occupied Territories”
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:58 am
“The biggest casualty to date in the conflict is, of course, the moral authority of the Middle East’s only democracy — Israel.”
Oh please Marc, must you push that tired canard? Israel is a democracy for Jews only. Non-Jews are 2nd class citizens and Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories are slaves.
Lets not forget Democracy Boy’s elections in Palestine and Iraq. Not to mention the elections in Lebanon, which has been holding elections since before the Israeli terrorists formed their state.
As a neo-nazi fascist slave state, Israel has no moral authority. Zionism has become a near-perfect replication of Nazism; the main difference is that instead of gas chambers the Israelis use F-16s, Apaches, and other US-supplied weapons.
Israel might one day become a democracy when they eliminate the racist Apartheid laws, establish equal rights for all, and address the crimes of 1948. Until then, they’re Nazi pariahs.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:18 am
“Con Yankee is a forensic expert who relies only on photos.”
I don’t know, Randy, that photo of people covered from dust from the collapse of the World Trade center was pretty convincing, don’t you think? Scientific studies show that the amount of dust per square inch of skin is the same no matter how big or tall the building that collapsed. I have the reference for this right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust
If it’s good enough for Woody, it’s good enough for me.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:21 am
Perhaps the Yankee should join the famous Dr. Frist, who could divine by photo’s the condition of Terri Shaivo – they could be an unbeatable tag team of diagnostic debacles. It is indeed getting sick out there.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
The amount of dust is dependent upon the nature of the construction materials. The World Trade Center buildings probably used frangible fire insulating materials, prehaps asbestos to protect the steel structure and sheet rock for walls. I would expect this material to break up into fine dust particulates during an explosion or the collapse of a building. Middle Eastern structures use neither, as they are mostly of concrete, a material that resists dusting due to its cohesive properties.
It is telling that the structures shown in the news experience total collapse when hit by Israeli explosives. This is probably caused by a lack of steel reinforcing mesh and rods, even in multi-story buildings. Look closely the next time you see the results of an Israeli attack in the news. Such buildings are extremely vulnerable to catastrophic failure when hit by earthquakes, small explosive missile warheads or bombs.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:58 am
I was kidding in my dusty post (forgot to put a
) but thanks to George Williams for putting this in perspective.
August 2nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
Grumpy Old Man. can u imagine that? Hezbollah is exploiting the Qana deaths for propaganda purposes. What a shocking and orginal idea. Like when Israel suffered many fewer deaths three weeks ago of armed uniformed troops it exploied them to launch a devastating war — primarily against Lebanese civilians. Copycats.
As to COnfederate Yankee:
Listen, pal, the tag line on your blog tells us everything we need to know about you. If you argue that liberalism is a disease — rather than a set of ideas you oppose– you have dealt yourself out of any serious discussion. Find a dictionary and look up the tertiary meaning for the word “crank.”
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:17 am
“Contrary to the bumper sticker cliché, violence does sometimes solve things, like American independence and the abolition of slavery”
So that’s what Israel is engaged in? A heroic struggle, waged on the corpses of Lebonese civilains, akin to the Civil War. What dehumanising trash. How long do we have to tolerate this this culture of fear that surrounds the topic of Israel? When will people like Grumpy Old Man, Annon and Mark York finally decide to grow up? Israel is not a god or a religion. It is a nation-state. Therefore, it is made up of fallible human beings who make stupid and awful decisions with specific, horrible and real consequences. I insist on my right to say this out loud, as rigorously as I decry the sickening human rights abuses committed by the regimes of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The case of Israel is not “special.†Its oppression of Palestinians and theft of their land are not “complicated.†Rhetorical fights about land and resources and who gets to live on them ought to happen on level ground in this country, in the open air. As the bodies pile up my anger at those who continually apologise for what Israels is doing in plain sight has turned into pity. I feel sorry for these men and women, enjoying privileged access to public opinion in one of the most fortunate nations on earth, who debase their own moral sovereignty — suppressing their own ability to speak plainly about what is right and wrong — in order to be seen and approved among those who “stand with Israel.â€
No woman ever submitted to the smothering burka of a tyrannical theocracy as meekly and willingly as these free and democratic folks censor themselves. It must be awful to be so oppressed.
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:27 am
Marc, of course both sides wave the bloody shirt. Pro-Israel types, after all, wave the Holocaust shirt, which is both effective and misleading.
I nevertheless think you err in dismissing without analysis the question of whether Qana was provoked or staged (in whole or part), or merely exploited by Hizbullah. I’ve seen a report that the International Red Cross is investigating, so perhaps someone with a smaller ax to grind will throw some light on these terrible events one of these days.
As for Matter, the Israelis are not saints; the occupation is nasty and steeped in hypocrisy.
Can anyone doubt, however, that if the Israelis really wanted to ethically cleanse, expel, or liquidate the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, they could do so? They haven’t; in fact they banned Kahane’s party, which advocated expelling the Palestinians. The occupation is oppressive, but the “Nazi” label is at the very least overheated rhetoric.
Ask the Israeli Arabs in Umm al Fahm whether they want to join a Palestinian state in the West Bank, which the city abuts, or remain second-class citizens of Israel. You’ll get a firm “no thank you.”
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:40 am
Stupid, incompetent and obsolete. Those are the most visible layers of those who persist with the agenda of wiping out Hizbollah or any other terrorist organization with the methods we see today. Insanity is at the core. By definition they continue to make the same mistakes over and over and expect different results each time. If I dared a disfunctionally insane person to fill a firestone tire with air from his own lungs, he may actually believe in his ability to do so.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Marc -
To set the record straight on Michael Oren, whom you cite in attacking Olmert — he’s argued not for a a more measured Israeli response but for a much harsher and broader one. He’s lobbied for an Israeli invasion of Syria and for a full scale ground war in Lebanon. He’s attacking Olmert from the right which is the norm at the Shalem Institue. I’m not saying I agree with Oren, just that he’s he’s nowhere near agreeing with you.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Marc today Jimmy Carter issued a letter which I found fairly sane on the subject of the Middle East violence. Of course he is a born-again Christain who seems to have actually read the New Testament parts where Jesus praises the peacmakers and says you serve him by serving the least among us so no wonder the right finds him a crank.
But today it went a step further. All the usual suspects on the looney right (Hannity, O’Reilly, Hororwitz) rose up as one and denounced him as a moral leper, neo-nazi and, of course, anti-semetic. These same folks were more than willing to cut Mel some slack but not the last American Nobel Peace Prize winner. It says it all. You can prance around in an SS uniform as long as you are useful in creating the climate for all out agressive war. Friends of Israel?
Matter may have been intemperate but he is on to something. As I mentioned a few days ago Thomas Freidman of the flat earth society has written that it is only a matter of time before the “Two-State” solution is replaced by a “One State Solution” where the Paelstinian people in the occupied territories insist that everyone between the Jordan and the Med be given a vote in the state of Israel/Palestine just as everyone in S. Africa has a vote. Then, Freidman argues, the mantra of Israel being the only democracy in the region won’t look so hot.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Adventures in Wingnuttery…
Okay, I do have one post. As Marc Cooper notes here, a blogger by the name of Confederate Yankee (you can click the links at Marc’s site), tries to make the case that the photos of dead children at Qana…
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:19 pm
“The biggest casualty to date in the conflict is, of course, the moral authority of the Middle East’s only democracy — Israel.”
Isn’t Lebonan also a democracy? In fact, it’s amazing how insensitive the Bushies to Israel’s destruction of Lebanon – the one country in the Middle East where they actually had accomplishments.
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:37 pm
I guess the Cedar revolution is now null and void. That is what happens when you don’t elect the right type of people. I guess Bush is just following the example of Woodrow Wilson (see Mexico).
BTW we are told that Israel is just responding to the rockets. Well for thirty some years the UK endured bombing from IRA terrorists and I don’t recall them bombing Dublin – after all Sinn Fein was in the Dial – or invading the Republic. But I suppose the neocons would just say thats why it took so long. Actually Northern Ireland offers a useful lession. The Governments of Eire, the UK, and the parties of N. Ireland have not allowed the agenda to be hijacked by the extremists. There have been setbacks but we don’t see pictures of dead babies now do we?
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
“When will people like Grumpy Old Man, Annon and Mark York”
When will people who are not here quit being dragged through the mud? Israel is Israel. Everyone is special unto themselves under the sun. This is a given. They are a nation state and that’s more than the others can say. One nation under hoodlums. Pick one.
August 3rd, 2006 at 5:13 am
Stupid, incompetent and obsolete?
“The officer or official who responds by accusing such enemies of being cowards or endangering their own people is simply stupid, incompetent, and obsolete….
“It is equally stupid, incompetent, and obsolete to simply call such enemies “terrorists†and talk about “democracy. .
It depends on what your goal is. The rhetoric about an evil enemy using civilians as shields may be intended primarily for domestic consumption. And the goals of the war for Israel may not include anything like winning hearts and minds among the enemy. It may be that Israel’s overall political goals depend on *increasing* the polarization, not reducing it.
Consider, for a moment, the possibility that the Israeli leadership knows, in its privy counsels and in its heart of hearts, that Hezbollah is going to emerge with something it can call victory, no matter what–a moral victory for their side.
The question is: how can Israel make use of this? I think it can. I read interview quote after interview quote from “the Arab street”, essentially applauding Hezbollah. What Hezbollah is doing now is emboldening militants everywhere in the Arab world. Those militants are a threat to Arab regimes more than to Israel, and the rulers of those regimes know it. And who, more than anyone, controls the heat intensity dial? Israel, primarily. Hezbollah secondarily. What could Israel hope would happen? A major crackdown on militants by those Arab regimes.
It’s possible that Israel would like to take this up to one breaking point–militant uprisings in the streets of Cairo and Damascus and Amman that are brutally put down–and Hezbollah would like to see the breaking point even higher up: militants making a successful bid for power. The realists in Hezbollah probably know that any such bids are unlikely to be successful. The value of failure for them is moral victory, that of feeding future generations of militancy with thrilling stories of martyrdom.
Cordesman is smart, but he’s doing Player X vs. Player Y again, the favorite game of military thinkers. The game we’re in here has a lot more letters of the alphabet, and each letter has several subscripts.
August 3rd, 2006 at 6:38 am
Grumpy Old Man Says:
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:12 am
Seeking the deployment of a UN force is like a flowing, drowining man clutching at straws. The UN is a corrupt bureaucracy run by a cartel of tyrants. A history of its “peacekeeping†would have to include child sexual abuse in the Congo, stepping aside to allow massacres in Bosnia, withdrawing in the midst of a crisis in Sinai, and numerous other acts of malfeasance and nonfeasance.
——————————————-
Sounds like the U.S. in Iraq.
August 3rd, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Violence solved things when there were only muskets, single shot pistols and a generals worst nightmare was dynamite or a cannon ball. Or when your arm wrestle your little brother for the remote.
Live by the sword – die by the sword I think would be more appropriate.
Lest our pals in N. Korea get rilled up now with our new policy of the offensive defense.
And don’t bring up that corrupt UN madness when Hadditha just got verified by our military to have occured or the the five guys who value women and children so much that they helped two of them to rape a 14 year old girl and massacred her family just so they wouldn’t get caught. Not to mention GW and Condi begging for the UN’s help.
August 5th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Marc: How can you have moral authority of you no longer exist?
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