I’ve long speculated that one of the biggest miscalculations of the war in Iraq was exploding the American mystique of military and intelligence superiority. It’s like that old saying “It is better to remain quiet and thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” It’s better to hold your fire and be thought weak than attack for no good reason and remove all doubt.
But at least America had decades of post war success to draw upon and diplomatic and economic clout to employ even as it degraded its reputation in all those areas. Israel, on the other hand, is entirely dependent upon its military superiority and this ill-fated overreation in Lebanon is exploding that image:
The bottom line: Hizbullah is winning. That’s the hideous truth about the direction this war is taking, not in spite of the way the Israelis have waged their counterattack, but precisely because of it. As my source Mr. Frankly put it, “Hizbullah is eating their lunch.”
We’re talking about a militia—a small guerrilla army of a few thousand fighters, in fact—that plays all the dirty games that guerrillas always play. It blends in with the local population. It draws fire against innocents. But it’s also fighting like hell against an Israeli military machine that is supposed to be world class. And despite the onslaught of the much-vaunted Tsahal, Hizbullah continues to pepper Israel itself with hundreds of rockets a day.
The United States, following Israel’s lead, does not want an immediate ceasefire precisely because that would hand Hizbullah a classic guerrilla-style victory: it started this fight against a much greater military force—and it’s still standing. In the context of a region where vast Arab armies have been defeated in days, for a militia to hold out one week, two weeks and more, is seen as heroic. Hizbullah is the aggressor, the underdog and the noble survivor, all at once. “It’s that deadly combination of the expectation game, which Hizbullah have won, and the victim game, which they’ve also won,” as my straight-talking friend put it.
[…]
When I heard Condi talking in pitiless academic pieties today about “strong and robust” mandates and “dedicated and urgent action,” I actually felt sorry for her, for our government, and for Israel. As in Iraq three years ago, the administration has been blinded to the political realities by shock-and-awe military firepower. Clinging to its faith in precision-guided munitions and cluster bombs, it has decided to let Lebanon bleed, as if that’s the way to build the future for peace and democracy.
I’m not sure I really get why the US and Israel haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that this fourth generation war cannot be won with classic military action. I suspect it is the neocon influence which, throughout many decades, never gave a passing thought to terrorism or assymetrical warfare. They have been stuck in a cold war mindset (a mindset that was wrong about the cold war too) and have consistently seen the world through the prism of rogue totalitarian states. This is why, in spite of the fact that everything is going to hell in a handbasket in a hundred different ways, they persist in focusing on Iran (formerly Iraq) and ignoring all the moving parts that make their aggressive plans to “confront” these regimes simpleminded and doomed to failure.
For Israel and the US it couldn’t be worse. They have systematically chipped away at any moral authority they had while demonstrating that their military, diplomatic and economic power are paper tigers. What an excellent strategy for all concerned. Oh, and too bad about all the dead bodies that have been produced to create that sad outcome.
“But if you want to help somebody, people can go to McDonald’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken and give them a meal.” … The city, Mr. Reese added, had just spent $1.7 million in landscaping … Las Vegas, whose homeless population has doubled in the past decade to about 12,000 people … adopted … ordinances … to discourage homeless people from … ruining efforts to beautify … “
In case you missed this little tid-bit earlier, Tom Tomorrow deftly took down Andrew Sullivan’s lame attempt to proclaim that Joe Lieberman is actually quite popular in Connecticut. Among other things, he pointed out this little factoid I hadn’t seen before:
One last thing: you hear a lot from lazy media types about how very popular Joe is here in Connecticut. Well, here’s a small reality check: in the 2004 Super Tuesday presidential primary in Connecticut, John Kerry got 58% of the vote. John Edwards came in second with a respectable 24%.
Joe Lieberman, meanwhile, came in third with five percent of the vote, here in the state in which he is so very popular.
Was there anyone who did that badly in his home state? It’s true that he wasn’t running any longer, but Dean actually won his primary that day and he’d already suspended his campaign. Kucinich got 9% in Ohio. Usually a favorite son will at least get a respectable loyalty vote from members of his local machine.
Joementum’s problems became manifest in that campaign and it’s why he’s in trouble now. His Republican talking points, particularly on the war, were the last straw for a lot of grassroots Democrats — many of them, apparently, in his own state.
In a preview at Arthur’s of an upcoming post about Alan Dershowitz’s suggestion that we civilized westerners develop a new way of defining collective punishment so as to be able to kill civilians with impunity, I noted this quote from an Israeli official:
Mr Ramon – a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – said “everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror”.
“World terror” huh? How convenient for all of us then that the Israelis are fightin’ ’em over there so we don’t have to fight ’em over here. No wonder we rushed in those delayed missiles. We can’t let “world terror” win fergawdsake!
It’s in such nonsensical talk that we see the logic of the GWOT brought home in all its magnificent horror. People are fighting “world terror” everywhere — except where they aren’t.
Michael Hirsh has written an article in Newsweek about this topic and examines why this conflation of the threat of al Qaeda with a Global War on Terror first created the insurgency in Iraq and now threatens to set the entire mid-east on fire:
What’s sad is that the “war on terror” began as a fairly straightforward affair. Al Qaeda hit us. Then we went after Al Qaeda. The enemy was clear, and the evidence against Al Qaeda was solid: there was a decade’s worth of fatwas, of declarations of war, monitored conversations and bin Laden’s own monstrous bragging, on videotape, about how the World Trade Center collapse had far exceeded his expectations. We had a lot of support around the world in pursuit of our mission to hunt these men down, kill them or capture them and do with them as we pleased.
But inexorably, month by month, the Bush administration broadened the war on terror to include ever more peoples and countries, especially Saddam’s Iraq, relying on thinner and thinner evidence to do so. And what began as a hunt for a relatively contained group of self-declared murderers like bin Laden became a feckless dragnet of tens of thousands of hapless Arab victims like the sons of the hostel owner in Samarra, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or terror, just as Saddam had little to do with Al Qaeda, just as the Iraqi insurgency had little to do with Al Qaeda (at least at the start), just as Hizbullah has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And as the war broadened beyond reason, and the world questioned the legitimacy of the enterprise, our friends dropped away. Worse, we have found ourselves making enemies in the Islamic world faster than we could round them up or kill them.
Yes, the war against Al Qaeda called for a stretching and changing of the rules. We had to be ruthless with the maniacs who struck us on 9/11. But for that very reason, it required that we be very precise in identifying the enemy. Just the opposite occurred. “You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,” President Bush declared on Sept. 25, 2002, as he made the case for the Iraq invasion. This was the kind of thing Bush often repeated as he sought to wheel the nation 90 degrees, in the middle of the fight against Al Qaeda, toward Iraq. The truth was quite the contrary: not only could you distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam, it was imperative that you do so, that you wage this fight with precision analysis as much as precision weaponry. We could not afford to let our soldiers see all military-age men as potential enemies.
Today, more from the muddled strategic thinking of the Bush administration than the actual threat from Al Qaeda, the “war on terror” has become an Orwellian nightmare: an ill-defined war without prospect of end. We are now nearly five years into a war against a group that was said to contain no more then 500 to 1,000 terrorists at the start (in case anyone’s counting, 1,776 days have now passed since 9/11; that is more than a full year longer than the time between Pearl Harbor and the surrender of Japan, which was 1,347 days). The war just grows and grows. And now Lebanon, too, is part of it.
This is the Bush Doctrine at work. He said it explicitly:
We’ve sent a message that is understood throughout the world: if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorists.
It didn’t take much to extrapolate from that that anyone who lived near a “terrorist” or worked along side a “terrorist” or who even looked like a “terrorist” was just as guilty as a terrorist. Alan Dershowitz has recently expanded on that notion by saying that those who do not fight against the terrorists in their midst, or flee their homes if terrorists are among them, must also share the blame for these terrorists’ actions.
The only thing that was left out of all this was a definition of terrorism.**
Hirsh points out in his article how this played out during the first years of the occupation of Iraq, a country we were ostensibly liberating from — you guessed it — terror:
Reading “Fiasco,” Thomas Ricks’s devastating new book about the Iraq war, brought back memories for me. Memories of going on night raids in Samarra in January 2004, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, with the Fourth Infantry Division units that Ricks describes. During these raids, confused young Americans would burst into Iraqi homes, overturn beds, dump out drawers, and summarily arrest all military-age men—actions that made them unwitting recruits for the insurgency.
For American soldiers battling the resistance throughout Iraq, the unspoken rule was that all Iraqis were guilty until proven innocent. Arrests, beatings and sometimes killings were arbitrary, often based on the flimsiest intelligence, and Iraqis had no recourse whatever to justice. Imagine the sense of helpless rage that emerges from this sort of treatment. Apply three years of it and you have one furious, traumatized population. And a country out of control.
“Over here, everybody is the army,” one soldier said. “Everybody is Hezbollah. There’s no kids, women, nothing.”
Another soldier put it plainly: “We’re going to shoot anything we see.”
And so another front in the GWOT is opened.
Hirsh continues:
In strategic terms, the U.S. endorsement of Israel’s retaliation against Hizbullah had some merit at the start, within limits: a Lebanon with an armed Hizbullah in its midst was never going to graduate to real democracy. The Israeli action is also, in a way, a proxy war against Iran and its nuclear program. Reducing Iran’s influence in the region by degrading the power of its principal means of terror (and therefore of retaliation) is in America’s interest, as well. This is the unspoken logic both of the fierce Israeli assault and Bush’s fierce defense of it: “In the back of everyone’s head is Iran looming as a threat over the region,” says one Israeli official.”In the back of everyone’s head is Iran looming as a threat over the region,” says one Israeli official.
But with each errant bomb that kills more Lebanese children, the U.S. position becomes less defensible. By walking in lockstep with the Israelis, we Americans make it impossible for Muslims not to see us as an enemy. And every Muslim official knows, even if Bush does not, that Hizbullah is not identical with Iran but is a client of it, in a relationship not unlike that of the United States and Israel. By making Israel’s war our own we ensure that the Lebanese group and the Tehran mullahs will be even closer allies in the future. We place the Muslims whom we desperately need as allies, like Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in an impossible position. Maliki, a Shiite, can no longer stand with Bush, as he showed during his tense visit to Washington this week.
I suspect one reason Newt Gingrich and his fellow nutballs are working overtime to get this WWIII business playing in people’s heads is because to Americans the GWOT remains vague and ill-defined. They have yet to sign on to this existential struggle against well — everybody, or at least a bunch of people they don’t even know, forever. Are the French terrorists? They must be because we are supposed to hate them. How about the Mexicans who are invading our borders? Newt keeps bringing up Venezuela as part of our epic struggle against terrorism. And North Korea is a charter member of the Axis ‘o Evil, so we know they are terrorists.
Who are we fighting again?
I suspect that many Americans are now so confused they simply think “they’re all a bunch of terrorists” and wish a pox on all their houses. And with the logic of the GWOT they are all a bunch of terrorists. But then with the logic of the GWOT, we are the biggest terrorists of all.
*** I should add that the idea of creating a legal definiton of “terrorism” was advanced from early days after 9/11 by Wes Clark and others who noted that this elastic definition was a recipe for trouble. It even became an agenda item at the UN Millenium Summit — which was tabled immediately upon John Bolton’s appointment. In keeping with the overall philosophy of the Bush administration, they obviously recognized that the less they are required to conform to recognized legal norms the more they can wage war against “World Terror.”
One comment. Billmon writes about the disgusting “exterminate all the brutes” mindset, and behavior, of the Israeli army:
This all might be considered normal military behavior for, oh say, a Bosnian Serb militia captain, circa 1991, but when the political and military leaders of an allegedly civilized state start talking this way, something big is going on, and going wrong.
Yes, indeed, something big is going on. It’s the opening skirmishes of a Middle East – wide war, brought to you by the losers who gave the world Iraq 2006.
And brother, is it ever going wrong.
Can an enormous, dreadful, and pointless war be averted? Yes, but it will require an American opposition to Bush willing to speak truth loudly, not a party so terrified of upsetting Americans’ beautiful minds it doesn’t have the courage to put the Iraq war and Bush’s mad behavior front and center.
For those who think that things are much better in the mainstream media since the disgraceful selling of the New Product in fall 2002 through March ’03, Media Matters today will set y’all straight. Two reports about television stood out.
Kinda makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it? Now I know there’s a fine line between entertainment and news, but first of all it ain’t *that* fine. Second of all, none of this is entertaining.
Meanwhile, am I the only one who’s noticed the all the shameless puff pieces disguised as reporting on John Bolton, despite the fact that he is universally loathed and has accomplished next to nothing except the impossible, namely to make the US even more of a laughingstock internationally than it already was?
For those of you who are having trouble keeping track of all the allegiances among the various countries, groups, militias and terrorists in the mid-east, Slate put together a handy dandy interactive Middle East Buddy List
Wandering through the nation’s op-ed pages is like ambling through a dojo. Each writer has his own particular style, technique, finishing move. There’s Tom Friedman, who rushes in with the Implausible Conversational Anecdote, links it to an Off-Topic Invocation Of World Travels, and finishes you with a Confusing Metaphor From Above. Or there’s Maureen Dowd, who deploys Unfounded Personal Speculation mixed with Confusing Allegories till she’s set up her killing blow: Insinuation of Character Defect. It’s impressive stuff.
The deadliest op-ed columnist, however, is unquestionably David Brooks. He’s the drunken boxer of the opinion page, luring you into a false sense of security with Banal Observations that comfort through Faux Bipartisanship until you’re ready for the Illogical Conservative Conclusion. Today’s column is an archetypal example of the master at work: a series of cogent critiques of Hillary Clinton’s college aid proposals that effortlessly glide through research demonstrating their uselessness, a couple lavish compliments to Clinton and her team, and finally a conclusion that explains the only way to increase college attendance is to encourage two-parent homes, fundamentally reform schools, and increase church-sponsored mentoring programs. Funny thing — this is exactly the rightwing’s agenda! And yet it comes wrapped in such warm bipartisanship and elevated chin stroking that you’d never notice Newt Gingrich silently mouthing along in the background.
And then there’s Krugman who wanders in from the alley and while the other columnists are practicing their qigong he just plants a facer on the opposition.
Destroy The Village In Order To Save It: Part Deux
by digby
“Our mission and our goal is to have a lasting peace — not a temporary peace, but something that lasts,” said Bush. “We want a sustainable ceasefire. We don’t want something that’s, you know, short term in duration.”
This is the middle east he’s talking about. Apparently somebody has told him that getting a lasting peace there is just a matter of resolve. If only people hadn’t accepted all these temporary ceasefires in the past, everything would have been straightened out by now. (He’s not saying they wouldn’t have gotten their hair mussed…)
I know he’s just an idiot who doesn’t even have the barest grasp of simple logic. But when children are being killed and maimed, you’d think they could at least have the foresight to come up with a talking point that doesn’t make “collateral damage” sound like a moral concept by comparison. This idea that in order to achieve longterm peace you can’t have a temporary ceasefire is gibberish, yes, — but it is immoral too. Apparently, he really doesn’t grasp the fact that during a “short-term” ceasefire actual human beings are not being killed — real people with jobs and homes and lives and everything.
I think that one of the sad consequences of Democrats being so hapless these last few years is that these silly Republicans have gotten it into their heads that the whole world works like the American political system. If you humiliate your enemy enough, they will become like “neutered barnyard animals” who will happily go along with their second class status. But that only works when the other side is comfortable and fat and enjoying the perks of the status quo as much as the victors. In the real world this is a very provocative and dangerous way to try to manage human events. It tends to create hatreds that can’t be mitigated by a nice slice of political pork down the road.
I’ve always been quite fond of this statement by Bush back in 2001, which I think perfectly reflects his temperament:
The American people must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it. And we’re going to be there for a while. I don’t know the exact moment when we leave, David, but it’s not until the mission is complete. The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do. The world will learn that when the United States is harmed, we will follow through. The world will see that when we put a coalition together that says “Join us,” I mean it. And when I ask others to participate, I mean it.
That’s been working out really well for us, don’t you think?
That was at the zenith of Bush’s post bullhorn power and I don’t think he’s progressed one moment past that point. When you combine it with the neocon obsession with war as the answer for every problem, you get an administration that sees sustained violence as the only way to achieve lasting peace and that the problem in the middle east is that there just hasn’t been enough of it over the years.
It’s as if “1984” were true, except that Big Brother is a hulking, braindead thug.
Number of Iraqis who had access to potable water before invasion: 13 million
Number of Iraqis who have access to potable water, according to the April 2006 SIGIR report: 8 million
Number of Iraqi physicians registered prior to the invasion: 34,000
Number of Iraqi physicians who have been murdered or fled the country since the invasion: 14,000
Infant mortality rate in Iraq: (Middle East average is 37, sub-Saharan Africa average is 105): 102
Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2004: 45 Average number of daily attacks by insurgents in June 2006: 90
Rank of Iraq on the “failed states” index: 4
Rank of Afghanistan on the “failed states” index: 10
Rank of Iraq among all nations as a training ground for terrorists:1
The last we heard from Joe Lieberman, (who isn’t talking about foreign policy on the campaign trail, apparently) was that there was tremendous progress being made in Iraq, especially on the political front. Here’s the index on the political situation:
Amount requested by the President in his Fiscal Year 2007 budget for democracy promotion in Iraq: 0
Percent of Iraqis who say they are optimistic about their future: 30 percent
According to a recent World Public Opinion poll, percent of Iraqis who approve of a timeline for U.S. withdrawal: 70 percent
Degree of corruption in Iraq on the Transparency International 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing “highly corrupt” and 10 representing “highly clean”): 2.2
Number of corruption cases that have been filed since the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity was established in 2004: 1,400
Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of February 2006 (prior to February 22 bombing of Shiite shrine in Samarra): 3,000
Approximate number of Iraqi families internally displaced as of June 2006, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration: 21,731 or 130,386 people
Number of Iraqi civilians killed in May, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 2,669
Number of Iraqi civilians killed in June, according to data from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue: 3,149
Civilian death toll in Iraq in June 2006: 100 per day
Rank of Iraq in Minority Rights Group International’s list of peoples most under threat from persecution, discrimination, and mass killing: 1
The number of passports issued in the past ten months, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees:2 million
Percent of Iraq’s professional class that has left the country since late 2003:40 percent
You have to wonder what it would have looked like if it were going badly.
Update: The Poorman has a post up about one of those displaced Iraqis — a catblogger named Raghda, whose family finally gave up and left the country.