Lebanese Political Journal makes for grim reading. It is all well and good to wish for the destruction of Hezbollah (as indeed I do) but that does not reduce the sadness I feel when I read personal accounts of the cost to ordinary Lebanese people.
If only there was some other way but I cannot see what that would be. My fear is that the aftermath of this will kill off the modern secular state Lebanon is struggling to become.
The anger of the Lebanese people under the bombs who do not support Hezbollah is understandable but that does not change the fact Hezbollah exists as a state-with-a-state and that it attacks Israel and is dedicated to its destruction. Until there is a Lebanese solution to the ‘problem’ of Hezbollah, Israeli interventions are inevitable. Unfortunately I am unsure Israel has exercised sufficient discrimination to keep this as a war between Israel and Hezbollah rather than Israel and everyone in Lebanon.
People in Lebanon have ample reason to distrust Israeli good will or promises but then Israel knows all too well what Hezbollah has in mind for it and until the Islamo-fascists and their sponsors are taken out of the equasion it is hard to see how anything will improve.
Lebanon has had 58 years to recognize Israel’s right to exist and establish diplomatic relations with Israel. They haven’t done so and are a frontline rejectionist state. Lebanon is complicit in the current war.
I simply wish to say is Israel is a terrorist state which defies all UN resolutions with full blessings of its lap dog US. Following all these atrocities against Lebanon and unjustified attacks on its infrastructure I could rightly say Israel is a threat to world peace and US is a state supporting these sorts of terrorism. If US wishes to remove terrorist elements they first need to deal with Israel and themselves before thinking about others.
If I could pick one word to describe those two posts I think it would be… divergent…
Israel’s big issue is that everything it does seems to be a reaction. It doesn’t seem to be bothered trying to kill off Hizbollah at the source (which would require patience) but rather taking a chainsaw to it every now and again causing damage to lots of other things in the process.
I’d offer my full backing to the Lebanese government and at least try to empower them enough to stabilise the country so that Hizbollah could be rooted out from within, with the odd bit of Judicious pruning where required.
However, I think they have too much invested in a heavy handed military solution to try anything more subtle — politically, militarily and economically.
So why don’t the Lebanese people fight for what’s theirs? Why won’t they stand up for their own freedoms and their own liberty, take down their own criminals in Hezbollah? Did justice not matter to them?
If they did not want Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, around as a defacto state power in their country they should have driven them out, instead of standing idly by and being complicit in whatever activities Hezbollah was plotting. As the saying goes, ‘the chickens have come home to roost’.
I have little sympathy for them. People deserve what they’re getting here. No more, and no less. When people take responsibility for their actions, or lack thereof, then we’ll start talking.
Easy to say, not so easy to do.
The country had only just got rid of the Syrians, was only just rebuilding a semblance of government and was attempting to neutralise Hizbollah by engaging them politically — probably the best they could do considering Hizbollah’s power base.
Nothing sort of a full scale civil war would have dislodged Hizbollah, and I doubt you would find much enthusiasm for that.
For better or worse most people are pragmatic rather than idealistic, and for the most part want little more than for tomorrow to be very much like today.
In order to achieve anything you have to work with that rather less impressive side of human nature, rather than expecting outrage and pitchforks at dawn idealism.
It just doesn’t happen.
The Dude (heh) is exactly right when he talks about Lebanon just climbing out from under Syria, and not having the will- or the firepower- to deal properly with Hizbollah.
I also agree that if Lebanon wants to be treated like a sovereign state, they need to take responsibility and *act* like a sovereign state, part of which means not allowing its territory to be used for attacks against an innocent neighbor. Yes, the chickens are only coming home to roost. This situation looks ugly.
But I think there is a possible bright side to this.
Maybe, just maybe, the Lebanese government is smarter and more pragmatic than any of us think. Maybe they *want* this, maybe they are essentially using Israel as their tool to destroy Hizbollah, because they want it done but don’t have the means or the will to do it themselves. Maybe. If a bit risky.
Also, for those worried that this will destroy the new Lebanese democracy, I would argue that removing a powerful, fanatic, downright bloody evil, foreign-funded and controlled terrorist army acting as a state within your state is much better for the long term health of a Lebanese democracy than allowing it to sit and fester. In fact I would argue that Lebanese desocracy could never truly prosper and grow until *after* Hezbollah were destroyed.
I have a lot of sympathy for the Lebanese but in the end the people of a country are responsible for what goes on in that country.
The various factions in Lebanon have always been more interested in fighting each other than in creating a stable country. This is the primary reason Lebanon gets kicked around so much.
One of two conditions exist in Lebanon: (1) The notionally sovereign government is to weak to actually control its own territory or (2) the government is complicit in the attacks against Israel. In neither case can Lebanon object if they get attacked in response to a military attack originating on their territory.
It’s something like having a pack of wild dogs on your property that attack the neighbors. If you don’t shoot the dogs yourself yourself you can’t complain if your neighbors do so.
Hello? Anyone home? Did you sleep through their civil war? What the hell do you think the Marionites and various secularists were trying to do? Damn. Some people are unbelievably IGNORANT.
Lebanon puts up a good front on the diplomatic stage, but they are happy to see Israel kick the snot out of the Hezbollah virus.
If Israel stops short of all-out war, this could be the best thing to happen to Lebanon with the Syrian army alreay out.
http://www.purplethink.com/epinion/Hezbollah.asp
There is no ‘Lebanon’, not really, and that is the problem. As many of the articles on the blog I linked to make clear, yes, many are furious with Hezbollah for bring this down on them and they are asking the right questions. However when the bridges and water pipes that service where you live go up in smoke, it is hard not to feel some hostility towards the people dropping the bombs.
Israel has to do what it has to do, I just hope they know when and where to stop.
I hate that the people who I want to support in this world seem to delight in making it hard for me to support them. I’m not sure that this is one of those instances for Israel, but there have been many others, and like you, I hope that this doesn’t become just one more to add to the list.
Well, the not-entirely-obvious ‘other way’, Perry, is for Israel to conduct proportionate, low-intensity operations, attacking only well-identified rocket launch sites and other clear guerilla bases, while accepting a low level war waged by unconventional forces will continue to have small but appreciable casualties among Israeli troops and civilians.
Random bombardment, raids with small arms and clandestine bombing, suicidal or otherwise, are almost impossible to stop completely. Nobody has done it anywhere, even using the most extreme measures, without civilising and integrating the rebels/terrorists/whatever into the local political culture, and cutting the gunman off form any political base. Creating desolation on your doorstep is a really good way of making things worse – if that is really the problem you are setting out to solve.
I suggest you take Israel and its friends, and its enemies, too, too much at their own evaluation – just as they do each other. I stick by my assessment in an earlier thread that the key driving force here is Israeli internal politics. The framing provided by the G8 hasn’t helped.
Destroying the Lebanese infrastructure and doing arbitrary amounts of damage to Lebanese life and property only makes sense as an act of state terrorism. Politicians don’t just behave like street gangs at home. They pick on the weak in order to show of their muscles to others at minimum cost.
The Israeli government has abdicated responsibility for what its military does to Lebanon and the Lebanese by blaming Syria and Iran – “It wasn’t my fault; he made me do it” – in which it was recklessly backed by Bush and Blair. But it doesn’t attack Syria, ‘cos Syria, relatively weak though it is would be a costly opponent. Nor does it fear Syrian attack because it knows that since 1973 the Arab states have been happy to posture (each for its brethren in their own swaggering street gang), without risking humiliation in actual battle. General war in the Middle East is not a likely outcome of this. (And the only way it is even a potentiality is as a result of silly aggressive demonstrations by the only power with the necessary combination of effective military capability and strategic maladroitness – the US.)
The trouble is that as Hezbollah go out of their way to make sure they do NOT provide ‘well defined’ and ‘clear’ targets, that is also not a solution.
Moreover the fact Hezbollah have proven capable of effective bombardment deep within Israel make a lengthy Israeli ‘chevauchée’ in Lebanon pretty much inevitable now.
The French were too generous to the Christians – they created a state (“Lebanon”) which was as large as it could possibly be whilst still having a Christian majority.
Of course over time with both immigration (such as that of the “Palestinians” – mostly Muslim Arabs) and natural increase (Muslims, especially Shia, tended to have more babies than the Christians). So the Civil War that started in the 1970’s was going to happen sooner or later (although it might have been delayed for a few more years).
To be the sort of state that Perry would like Lebanon would have to either kill or drive out a great many Muslims – or redraw the borders of the nation to make it less of a mulitethnic state (the Muslim areas could either join up with Syria or become a new country).
Not very libertarian perhaps – but there we go.
“But Muslims majority countries can be secular, look at Turkey”.
Turkey is changing with each passing day.
Besides which Turkey does not have a large Christian minority (Ataturk dealt with that – as he dealt with radical Muslims).
Actually, it would require a war with Syrian and Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsors.
Well, the not-entirely-obvious ‘other way’, Perry, is for Israel to conduct proportionate, low-intensity operations, attacking only well-identified rocket launch sites and other clear guerilla bases,
What guy proposes here is a logical impossibility. On the one hand, the use of air attacks and artillery against Hezbollah assets is apparently not “proportionate” and “low-intensity.” The alternative, however, is Israeli boots on Lebanese ground, an invasion/occupation, which strikes me as being an escalation, not a diminution, in the Israeli response.
while accepting a low level war waged by unconventional forces will continue to have small but appreciable casualties among Israeli troops and civilians.
Why should Israel have to accept a low-level war, with the indiscriminate killings of its civilians, as a permanent feature of the landscape?
That presupposes that there are not a substantial number of ‘Muslims’ who are willing to support a pluralistic secular Lebanon and unless Michael Totten is completely wrong, that does not seem to be the case.
In fact Lebanon seems to be the best chance for a home-grown rational society in the Arab world, which is why my heart sinks with every bomb that lands on a target not directly linked to Hezbollah.
Everything in Lebanon is “directly linked to Hezbollah”. They’re a part of the Lebanese government.
Not really. Clearly the factions still control their patch and Hezbollah is not described as a nation-within-a-nation for nothing. There are many parts of Lebanon which are in effect ‘no go areas’ for Hezbollah. Hell, the Lebanese government does not even control all of Beirut
Why should Israel have to accept a low-level war, with the indiscriminate killings of its civilians, as a permanent feature of the landscape?
For the same reason as we accept the existence of income tax as a (possibly) permanent feature of the landscape. Because there is no reasonable prospect of stopping it by any short- or medium-term action, no matter how extreme.
But also because Israel ought to accept, as a notionally civilised society, that the lives and livelihoods of non-citizens should be respected. That they are people too. The life of an Israeli is not worth hundreds or thousands of Arab lives, despite the tacit agreement of both the IDF and the Arab kidnappers in the most recent incidents that it is.
Britain did not bomb Sligo and mine Cork and Dun Laoghaire to stem the flow of imported arms to the IRA. It would never have been accepted by our allies if we had, quite rightly. Despite a constutional commitment to an united Ireland in the Republic, and considerable institutional and popular sympathy for republicanism there, Britain worked with the Irish authorities and freedom of movement was maintained. Mutual suspicion has slowly declined. Though murderous militants have not gone away, terrorism is confined.
Pace Robert Speirs, that’s like saying everybody in Britain is directly linked to New Labour, because it is in power. In real life not even all Labour Party members would consider themselves beholden to New Labour, and most political movements are similar.
To continue that point, Hezbollah in elected office is bound to be a subtly different beast from its military wing, and it would probably make sense to encourage it to continue to move in that direction, rather than reinforcing the imperative of violence.
The delusion and whisfull thinking in Samizdata have been reaching amazing levels in last days.
And the worst have been the argumentation levels.
“To continue that point, Hezbollah in elected office is bound to be a subtly different beast from its military wing, and it would probably make sense to encourage it to continue to move in that direction”
Yeah. I remember same talking point about Arafat…
“Britain did not bomb Sligo and mine Cork and Dun Laoghaire to stem the flow of imported arms to the IRA.”
Lame you cant spot the diference.
From what i know IRA didnt profess to destroy England dint launched rockets almost every week for years. Yeah dispite BBC that didnt put them in the news they did fall.
Hezbollah was elected by a majority of people in southern Lebanon and those people must accept some of the consequences of that.
As Lebanon clearly is not a unitary nation-state, perhaps it is in the interests of people who do not support Hezbollah to end the fiction and just partition the country officially so that if the majority in the south want to vote for people who want war with Israel, the rest of the country, who have efective say in what Hezbollah does in regardless of how they vote, do not have to suffer.
Well, the not-entirely-obvious ‘other way’, Perry, is for Israel to conduct proportionate, low-intensity operations, attacking only well-identified rocket launch sites and other clear guerilla bases,
Whilst that may be true for general infractions, one must not lose sight that what is at issue here is kidnapped soldiers. It’s one thing to have death and destruction of soldiers and civilians and property, that is just the cost of doing business. Kidnapping of your armed forces needs to be followed up with extreme measures. You can’t just leave your fighting men out to dry in a circumstance like this or you’ll risk very real morale issues. Henlein covered this stuff quite well in some of his stories (most notably Starship Troopers).
I’m not condoning (or condemning) Israel’s actions in general but from that perspective, the removal of potential egress routes for the kindnappers (and kidnappees) and other measures makes more sense.
Rich
>>Why should Israel have to accept a low-level war, with the indiscriminate killings of its civilians, as a permanent feature of the landscape?
>For the same reason as we accept the existence of income tax as a (possibly) permanent feature of the landscape.
You must have lain awake all night, thinking that one up.
Hezbollah in elected office is bound to be a subtly different beast from its military wing, and it would probably make sense to encourage it to continue to move in that direction,…
Hezbollah in elected office is merely one half of a deadly good cop/bad cop routine. It’s a mistake to expect them to “grow in office”. As a former Hezbollah chieftain famously said, “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”
Article link
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide.
“We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom. (…)
Eighteen months ago, we were all cheering for the brave (and hot!) makers of The Cedar Revolution. So it hurts to see things come down to this.
But, if you’ll forgive a bit of blog self-pimpage(Link), families taking their children south to throw stones at IDF checkpoints, Hezbollah kidnapping and murdering IDF soldiers, and putting billboards of the bodies opposite the border, were all part of some would have us blandly consider a “low level conflict.” There are any number of two-word retorts that could be made to people who ask Israel to put up with that. The most tactful is probably “Spare us.”
guy herbert,
… is for Israel to conduct proportionate, low-intensity operations, ..
The whole “disproportionate” response is a cop out. The only proportionate response to a military attack is the level of response needed to prevent it from happening again.
…attacking only well-identified rocket launch sites and other clear guerilla bases,…
That is so oblivious I don’t even know what to say. Have you payed any attention at all to how the Hez fights?
Israel’s air campaign is almost certainly aimed at cutting up the Hez’s transportation and communication assets. Once that is done then they will be easy pickings for a ground assault. Trying to destroy the actual weapons from the air would be to destructive.
Middle Eastern terrorist organisations are past masters at
Engineering civilian casualties
But also because Israel ought to accept, as a notionally civilised society, that the lives and livelihoods of non-citizens should be respected.
Why is it not appropriate for Israel to show any other group the same level of regard as the Israelis recieve from that group?
Tit-for-tat is not elegant or particularly moral, but it is effective.
“Proportionality” is fighting with one hand tied behind your back. As the Iron Duke put it, “In war there is no substitute for victory”. Victory is obtained by overwhelming power.
Perhaps Israel should rile the mullahs, muftis and all the rest to such an extent that they have to actually field an army for an apocalyptic JDAM fest. Maybe, just maybe, this could be the final battle and the world could put decades of this murderous, destructive, boring shite behind it and move on. But then I live on Fantasy Island and it isn’t going to happen.
But also because Israel ought to accept, as a notionally civilised society, that the lives and livelihoods of non-citizens should be respected.
Only insofar as said lives and livelihoods are not respected at the cost of Israeli lives and livelihoods, for which the Israeli government and military have primary responsibility.
The Israeli air campaign is almost certainly directed at legitimate military objectives – the disruption of communication and transportation networks used by Hezbollah for committing daily war crimes against Israel (for the indiscriminate rocket artillery attacks have no military purpose and are therefor war crimes). It is a shame that these are “dual-use” networks also used by Lebanese civilians, but the fact that they are being used to attack Israel means they are legitimate targets.
If the Lebanese don’t want their infrastructure destroyed, they need to stop letting it be used to attack Israel. Israel cannot be expected to simply hunker down and absorb hundreds of rockets on a routine basis because Lebanon cannot control its own territory.
There seems to be a desire for Muslims not to be Muslims.
With people telling old tales about how they went to Lebanon in the old days and Muslims (usually Sunni) were charming people drinking red wine.
Even back then if the cultured visitor went out from the high class hotels (and so on) into (say) the suburbs of southern Beirut he would have seen a very different picture.
Of course one can find tolerant (or “corrupt”) Muslims anywhere, but the Muslim mainstream in countries like Lebanon (or even in non Arab countries like Indonesia or Turkey) is going to want the enforcement of Islam.
Muslims can appear totally decadent for a time (such as the bare breasted Muslim women of the Sudan before the comming of the Mahdi in the late 19th century), but there is always going to be an upsurge in the faith at some point (as what we call “tolerance” they consider decadence).
As the numbers of Muslims (especially, in this case, of Shia) increased in Lebanon the old nation was doomed – although things might have been kept going for a few more years than they were.
Nor is this just a “kill the Jews” thing (although the tolerance of Islam for Jews must not be exagerated – “the Prophet” himself had no such tolerance and Caliphs as early as Abbaside Caliph Mahdi [775-785] had already set up an inquisition and demanded identifying bages centuries before such things were thought of Europe).
Have people forgotten already what the Hiz did to the French and Americans in Beirut in 1983?
Since then the power of the Muslims has grown and that of the Christians has shrunk (the Christians of the south of Lebanon have been virtually wiped out since the mid 1970’s).
A small nation including East Beirut and Mount Lebanon itself might be saved.
But to demand the whole of the French drawn state of Lebanon as a tolerant secular state – that is greedy.
Contrary to what a handful of nice people write (people I suspect are very similar to the nice, and totally powerless, people Dale relies upon in the case of Iran), to create a secular nation within the borders of the modern state of Lebanon would require the killing or the driving out of vast numbers of Muslims.
I do not regard that as acceptable from a moral point of view.
I would accept that I am wrong if “moderate Muslims” rose up and killed thousands of Hiz supporters.
In politics (as you know) the peaceful are not relevant.
lucklucky posted:
“From what i know IRA didnt profess to destroy England dint launched rockets almost every week for years. Yeah dispite BBC that didnt put them in the news they did fall.”
That has to get the dumb comment of the year award.
Where would you like me to start? The Birmingham or Guildford pub bombings? And where you you like me to end? Perhaps the Docklands bombing?
And in the middle there are countless incidents on English soil against civilians and political figures. The IRA even took their “battle” to German soil. Anyone here remember Airey Nieve?
Each and every one is in principle no different than the attacks by Islamic militants against Israel. Terror is terror it seems, unless it is done by the the guys you support.
I find such moral relativism, and those who practice it, rather repugnant.
“in the end the people of a country are responsible for what goes on in that country.”
“I have little sympathy for them. People deserve what they’re getting here. No more, and no less.”
How depressing to hear in this place comments almost identical to those trotted out by Al-Qa’eda apologists and their Trotskyite fellow-travellers to defend the World Trade Centre attacks.
I agree, it is appalling, particularly as it is clear a substantial number of people in Lebanon have been working to end Syrian influence and create a modern secular country. Do they deserve ‘what they are getting’ too?
One can make that argument for the people ijn the areas who keep voting for Hezbollah, but what about the people in the areas who despise Hezbollah?
If Muslim Lebanese “despise” the party of God they should have killed them. There were many Unionists in what is now the Republic of Ireland (both Protestant and Catholic) they no longer exist and harldy anyone even remembers them – because they were not fighters. If people will not fight (or will fight only in government approved wars) they are not politically relevant.
In fact the Hiz were invited into the cabinet. They have three posts I am told.
As for the I.R.A. (various factions) and the I.N.L.A. (yes I remember A.N. at his death in the car park of the Palace of Westminister).
Yes these groups were and are utterly vile.
They should have been killed – not appeased by (for example) getting rid of Grammar Schools in Ulster (just because the excommander of the I.R.A. in Londonderry was too think to get into one).
Such moves will not satisfy them, they will always come back with more demands.
The objective of these groups is not only to wipe out resistance in Ulster (and people who snear at the “Scots” of Ulster should remember that the Scots were orignially an Irish tribe – not that Jerry ADAMS [whose forefather was John Adams of Lincolnshire] has any right to complain about nonIrishmen being in Ireland anyway).
They also wish to wipe out resistance in the Republic and set up an All Ireland socialist state.
It should also be remembered that the only time a “united Ireland” has ever existed is under the British Crown.
The various Kingdoms of Ireland before 1170 were not united.
On the question of religion, the Church of Saint Patrick did not practice such things as clerical celibacy, nor did it take commands from the Bishop of Rome.
However, the I.R.A. (and so on) are not really Roman Catholics anyway. They worship “social justice” – not God.
Your articles and comments are usually pretty good but this is asinine. Did you forget about the civil war in Lebanon? The people who hate Hezbollah discovered they were not strong enough to destroy their enemies militarily. Not that they were unwilling to fight, they COULD NOT defeat them. So they made the best of a bad situation and made peace after a VERY long series of wars.
They then they started trying to work politically to attack the power base of their enemies (i.e. Syria) and were starting to make real headway, so your notion that these people were doing nothing about their despised enemies is simply not true and moreover suggests a remarkable lack on understanding of the region.
I did not say that they were not relevant in moral terms – I said “politically”.
And so they are. Inviting the Hiz into the cabinet is not an “attack”.
The His is a well financed (thanks to Iranian and other oil money) and motivated army and political movement.
Even the “babes” demonstration that Dale holds in such high regard came at about the same time that the Hiz organized its own (bigger) demonstration.
Not that it would matter if the Hiz could not get lots of support. As long as it is better at killing that its rivals it is the main power.
I know that some Lebanese have tried to take on the Hiz in the past – they LOST, that is why Israel is doing what it doing.
Wars are not won by development projects to undermine the enemies political “power base” – otherwise Vietnam would have won a thousand times over.
Wars are won by killing the enemy – including the enemy leadership. No “magic line” stuff – “Oh we can not kill them they are in such and such a place”.
Nor should enemy supply lines be held sacred. President Eisenhower understood that the only way the Republic of Vietnam could be protected (if it was decided that the United States wanted to do that) was to cut the supply lines of the enemy as they went through Laos – and to cut them ON THE GROUND with large forces (such things can not really be done from the air – and they can not be done with special forces alone).
Air power and special forces are vital – but they do not win wars on their own. They help ordinary soldiers win wars.
Perhaps things will turn out badly – and I think that the gradual build up the Israel’s have doing is crazy (it should have been all out on day one – in order to have the element of surprise).
All the efforts to avoid civilian casualities have not got Israel any favour either – they do not understand that all long as the media can wave around a few burned babies (and there always going to be some) the name of the people who burnt the babies is going to be Mud.
So one might as well go all out on day one. Which actually means less burnt babies in the end.
Indeed perhaps the best plan would be for the Jews (and the Christians – for the “Palestinian” Arabs have been being driving out Chrisitan Arabs for some time, only keeping a few about to say “we are Christian Palestinians – we to hate Israel”) to go to the United States.
But whilst the Jews are there they have to fight people like the Hiz.
“But that means that non Hiz Lebanese get killed to” – yes it does.
“But the Hiz could have been defeated by nonviolent means” – oh no they could not.
Parliamentary votes (and other such) only matter because Parliament (or whoever) can count on having a bigger stick than anyone else and is prepared to use it.
If the “democratically elected government” does not have the biggest stick in a country (or is not prepared to use it) it is not worth spit.
No shit, Sherlock. But they are in the process of trying to create the political setting to make their enemy less strong (and getting Syria out of the country is not unrelated to the military equation, but you seem to lack the willingness to see that).
Are you talking to me? Who said anything about development projects? Perhaps you did not notice but the Syrian army is gone. Looks to me like things were actually moving in the right direction, which might well have been why Hezbollah provoked this before their ability to do things suffered any more reductions from domestic Lebanese political pressure.