Israel VS Palestine

[Mary]

Yeah skvor the Mearsheimer & Walt article caused quite an internal stir amongst academic political scientists. Actually I feel sorta guilty because I never read the article. It seems the general consensus among people I actually respect is that the article was something of an unfortunate missed opportunity - i.e. as a piece of scholarship it was pretty shoddy, even though its message might have been bold and important. My advisor was hugely disappointed in it, despite being sympathetic to its message.

David Horowtiz is becoming increasingly laughable in his hysterical rush to denounce anti-American traitors - in the academy, in Hollywood, amongst Congressional Democrats, everywhere. The man is starting to make McCarthy look timid and cautious. It does give me an ambitious goal for my academic career though, which is to end up one day on his updated list of the Most Dangerous Professor in America (sorry if I stole that joke from chrisfan? i seem to remember her making it too...)

[kmc]

Horowitz is just a shade less insane than Coultergheist is.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

I think Horowitz and Coulter both can go frig each other to the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover for all I care. Numbskulls defines them pretty aptly to me.

[phil]

Bush 'helped Israeli attack on Lebanon'

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian


The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday.

The veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials travelled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hizbullah.

Quoting a US government consultant, Hersh said: "Earlier this summer ... several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear'."

The Israeli action, current and former government officials told Hersh, chimed with the Bush administration's desire to reduce the threat of possible Hizbullah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran.

"A successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign ... could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations," sources told Hersh.

Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel's attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran."

An unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh: "It was our intention to have Hizbullah diminished and now we have someone else doing it."

Officials from the state department and the Pentagon denied the report. A spokesman for the National Security Council told Hersh that "The Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack."

Hersh has a track record in breaking major stories. He was the first to write about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and has written extensively about the build-up to the war in Iraq. He made his name when he uncovered the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war. Most recently he has written about US plans for Iran, alleging that US special forces had already been active inside the country.

[kmc]

Phil, haven't seen you in awhile. How've you been?

[phil]

I've been good ... making the usual rounds on the other boards ...

Just trying my best not to get involved in any argument around here ...

[skvorisdeadsorta]

This explains everything to me and is starting to make a good case that Israel was itching to do something to Lebanon whether those soldiers had been kidnapped or not.

Israel's army chief Dan Halutz reportedly offloaded his stock portfolio hours before the Jewish state unleashed a massive offensive in Lebanon and the stock market tumbled.

According to the Maariv daily, Halutz sold the shares at noon on July 12, three hours after two soldiers were seized by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid and as Israeli artillery began to pound the positions of the Shiite militia in Lebanon, the paper said.



Israel's main TA-25 index slumped by 8.3 percent over two days from July 12.

Halutz confirmed that he sold his shares for 120,000 shekels (26,000 dollars) and said he lost 5,400 dollars in the transaction.

"It's true that I sold these shares at noon on July 12, but you can't link the transaction to the war. At that moment I did not think that there would be a war," Maariv quoted Halutz as saying.

A UN-brokered ceasefire went into effect on Monday after one-month of war in Lebanon but Israel's political and military leaders are facing criticism over the conduct of the offensive and calls for an inquiry.

Israeli media have blasted Halutz for his handling of the war and the lack of preparation by the military for the offensive, with some reports saying that troops lacked basic equipment, like flak jackets, upon being sent in.

Following Tuesday's report, lawmakers called on Halutz to step down and for Prosecutor General Menahem Mazuz to open an investigation.

"This marks a serious problem of priorities during a time when state security was in the balance," Colette Aviattal, a Labor MP, said, calling for Halutz to step down.

"The country was under fire and all that was important to him was his stock portfolio," he said.

Zevulon Orlev, from the right-wing National Religious Party, echoed the sentiment.

"During critical hours for a nation, one expects the chief of staff to be totally involved in the running of the war and not in personal questions of winnings or losses on the stock market," he said.

[Dr. Drum]

Considering the report in the SF Chronicle, Seymour Hersh's piece in the New Yorker the other day and other reports, there's little doubt that the Israelis were planning to attack Hezbollah sooner or later. Also clear that Hezbollah was planning for and welcomed this eventuality, though they may or may not have realized that their attack on July 12 would provoke it, given the number of tit-for-tat skirmishes on that border since May 2000. In light of the outcome, however – the weakened Israeli military position and relative disarray within the Israeli government vs. the increased standing of Hezbollah in the Arab world generally and, more importantly, within Lebanon itself – it is tempting to see this war as an incredibly cynical but highly effective bit of strategizing by Hezbollah. Probably not, given the amount of foresight required but on the other hand...

[skvorisdeadsorta]

I think they are much more organized and determined than many would think and I think the Israelis really underestimated those "rural crazies".

[Thorngrub]

Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War
By Robert Parry
Consortium News
Sunday 13 August 2006

Amid the political and diplomatic fallout from Israel's faltering invasion of Lebanon, some Israeli officials are privately blaming President George W. Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure against the Hezbollah militia in south Lebanon.

Bush conveyed his strong personal support for the military offensive during a White House meeting with Olmert on May 23, according to sources familiar with the thinking of senior Israeli leaders.

Olmert, who like Bush lacks direct wartime experience, agreed that a dose of military force against Hezbollah might damage the guerrilla group's influence in Lebanon and intimidate its allies, Iran and Syria, countries that Bush has identified as the chief obstacles to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

As part of Bush's determination to create a "new Middle East" - one that is more amenable to U.S. policies and desires - Bush even urged Israel to attack Syria, but the Olmert government refused to go that far, according to Israeli sources.

One source said some Israeli officials thought Bush's attack-Syria idea was "nuts" since much of the world would have seen the bombing campaign as overt aggression.

In an article on July 30, the Jerusalem Post referred to Bush's interest in a wider war involving Syria. Israeli "defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the US that America would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria," the newspaper reported.

While balking at an expanded war into Syria, Olmert did agree on the need to show military muscle in Lebanon as a prelude to facing down Iran over its nuclear program, which Olmert has called an "existential" threat to Israel.

With U.S. forces bogged down in Iraq, Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw the inclusion of Israeli forces as crucial for advancing a strategy that would punish Syria for supporting Iraqi insurgents, advance the confrontation with Iran and isolate Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

But the month-long war has failed to achieve its goals of destroying Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon or intimidating Iran and Syria.

Instead, Hezbollah guerrillas fought Israeli troops to a virtual standstill in villages near the border and much of the world saw Israel's bombing raids across Lebanon - which killed hundreds of civilians - as "disproportionate."

Now, as the conflict winds down, some Israeli officials are ruing the Olmert-Bush pact on May 23 and fault Bush for pushing Olmert into the conflict.

Building Pressure

Soon after the May 23 meeting in Washington, Israel began to ratchet up pressure on the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories and on Hezbollah and other Islamic militants in Lebanon. As part of this process, Israel staged low-key attacks in both Lebanon and Gaza. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com "A 'Pretext' War in Lebanon."]

The tit-for-tat violence led to the Hamas seizure of an Israeli soldier on June 24 and then to Israeli retaliatory strikes in Gaza. That, in turn, set the stage for Hezbollah's attack on an Israeli outpost and the capture of two more Israeli soldiers on July 12.

Hezbollah's July 12 raid became the trigger that Bush and Olmert had been waiting for. With the earlier attacks unknown or forgotten, Israel and the U.S. skillfully rallied international condemnation of Hezbollah for what was called an unprovoked attack and a "kidnapping" of Israeli soldiers.

Behind the international criticism of Hezbollah, Bush and Olmert justified an intense air campaign against Lebanese targets, killing civilians and destroying much of Lebanon's commercial infrastructure. Israeli troops also crossed into southern Lebanon with the intent of delivering a devastating military blow against Hezbollah, which retaliated by firing Katyusha rockets into Israel..

However, the Israeli operation was eerily reminiscent of the disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Like the U.S. assault, Israel relied heavily on "shock and awe" air power and committed an inadequate number of soldiers to the battle.

Israeli newspapers have been filled with complaints from soldiers who say some reservists weren't issued body armor while other soldiers found their equipment either inferior or inappropriate to the battlefield conditions.

Israeli troops also encountered fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas, who took a page from the Iraqi insurgents by using explosive booby traps and ambushes to inflict heavier than expected casualties on the Israelis.

Channel 2 in Israel disclosed that several top military commanders wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, criticizing the war planning as chaotic and out of line with the combat training of the soldiers and officers. [Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2006]

One Israeli plan to use llamas to deliver supplies in the rugged terrain of south Lebanon turned into an embarrassment when the animals simply sat down.

Reporter Nahum Barnea, who traveled with an Israeli unit in south Lebanon, compared the battle to "the famous Tom and Jerry cartoons" with the powerful Israeli military playing the role of the cat Tom and the resourceful Hezbollah guerrillas playing the mouse Jerry. "In every conflict between them, Jerry wins," Barnea wrote.

Olmert Criticized

Back in Israel, some leading newspapers have begun calling for Olmert's resignation.

"If Olmert runs away now from the war he initiated, he will not be able to remain prime minister for even one more day," the newspaper Haaretz wrote in a front-page analysis. "You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power.

"You cannot bury 120 Israelis in cemeteries, keep a million Israelis in shelters for a month and then say, 'Oops, I made a mistake.'" [See Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2006]

For his part, Bush spent July and early August fending off international demands for an immediate cease-fire. Bush wanted to give Olmert as much time as possible to bomb targets across Lebanon and dislodge Hezbollah forces in the south.

But instead of turning the Lebanese population against Hezbollah - as Washington and Tel Aviv had hoped - the devastation rallied public support behind Hezbollah.

As the month-long conflict took on the look of a public-relations disaster for Israel, the Bush administration dropped its resistance to international cease-fire demands and joined with France in crafting a United Nations plan for stopping the fighting.

Quoting "a senior administration official" with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, the New York Times reported that "it increasingly seemed that Israel would not be able to achieve a military victory, a reality that led the Americans to get behind a cease-fire." [NYT, Aug. 12, 2006]

But the repercussions from Israel's failed Lebanon offensive are likely to continue. Olmert must now confront the political damage at home and the chief U.S. adversaries in the Middle East may be emboldened by the outcome, more than chastened.

As in the Iraq War, Bush has revealed again how reliance on tough talk and military might can sometimes undercut - not build up - U.S. influence in the strategically important Middle East.

[RocDoc]

Another take...

<sub>THE MIDEAST'S MUNICH

By ARTHUR HERMAN - New York Post Online Edition: Postopinion

HISTORIANS will look back at this weekend's cease-fire agreement in Lebanon as a pivotal moment in the war on terror. It is pivotal in the same sense that the Munich agreement between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain was pivotal in an earlier battle against the enemies of freedom. The accord in October 1938 revealed to the world that the solidarity of the Western allies was a sham, and that the balance of power had shifted to the fascist dictators.
Resolution 1701 shows that, for the time being at least, the balance has likewise shifted to the terrorists and their state sponsors. Like Munich, it marks the triumph of the principle of putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Like Munich, it will mean not peace in our time, but a bigger war in our future.

In that sense, the cease-fire may be even more momentous than Munich, and a greater blunder. In 1938 Chamberlain and other appeasers had the excuse that they were trying to prevent an armed conflict no one wanted. Today, of course, that conflict is already here. Historians will conclude that by supporting U.N. Resolution 1701 and getting Israel to agree, the Bush administration has in effect declared that its global war on terror is over. We have reverted to the pre-9/11 box of tools, if not necessarily the pre-9/11 mindset. From now on, the worst Iran, Syria, and North Korea will have to worry about are serial resolutions in the United Nations. Terrorists will be busy dodging Justice Department subpoenas, not Tomahawk missiles.

Our enemies know better. They know the war is only entering a new stage, and they know who the winners and losers were last weekend.

The clear losers were the United States and Israel. Israel has sacrificed lives and treasure, and had its honor dragged through the mud of international opinion, for no purpose. America squandered its political capital at the start of the crisis by getting moderate Arab regimes to condemn Hezbollah instead of Israel. They did so because they thought Hezbollah was about to be annihilated. However, they soon realized their mistake. They now know Tehran and Damascus will set the agenda in the Middle East, not Washington. The Arab League's support for this U.N.-brokered deal is just one more measure of our strategic failure.

The other loser is Lebanon. The price of peace in 1938 was de jure dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, as Germany annexed the Sudetenland. The price of Resolution 1701 is de facto dismemberment of Lebanon. A large, well-armed terrorist army acting at the behest of a foreign power now controls the southern half of Lebanon, and pulls the strings in the other half. The facade of Lebanese self-government has been preserved. As a territorial state, it may even last longer than Czechoslovakia did (Hitler gave the Czechs five months before he annexed the rest of their country).

But other states in the region will have learned their lesson. Faced by an internal terrorist organization, especially one with links with Tehran, they will have to make accommodations. No white knight in the guise of U.S. Marines will ride to their rescue; no Israeli tanks and F-16s will do their dirty work for them. Appeasement will be the order of the day.

That includes Iraq. The disarming of Sunni and Shia militias, the necessary first step to ending sectarian violence there, will be postponed - perhaps for good. On the contrary, this crisis has taught Iraq's Shia minority that extremism pays, particularly the Iranian kind.

For everyone in the Middle East knows Iran is the clear winner. Only the diplomats and politicians, including the Bush administration, will pretend otherwise. Iran has emerged as the clear champion of anti-Israeli feeling and radical Islam. The Iranians have their useful puppet in Syria; they have their proxy armies in place with Hezbollah and Hamas. They have been able to install missiles, even Revolutionary Guards, in Lebanon with impunity. Sunni regimes in the region will move to strike their own deals with Iran, just as Eastern European states did with Germany after Czechoslovakia. That includes Iraq; the lesson will not be lost on Russia and China, either. And all the while, the Iranians proceed with their nuclear plans - with the same impunity.

Finally, the other winners are the conventional diplomats at the State Department, especially Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns. In a narrow professional sense, appeasement is their business. They never saw the point to a "war on terror they are delighted to take back the initiative from the hawks at the Pentagon and the White House.

The war in Iraq has clearly sapped the moral strength of the Bush administration. The men of Munich acquiesced to Hitler because another world war like the first seemed unthinkable. The Bush administration clearly feels it cannot face another major confrontation even with a second-rate power like Iran. Yet by calling off the war on terror, it has only postponed that conflict.

"We have passed an awful milestone in our history," Winston Churchill said after the Munich agreement was signed. "Do not suppose this is the end . . . This is only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter cup that will be proffered to us year by year." Despite the failure of appeasement, Churchill still believed the Western democracies would make the "supreme recovery" and take up the banner for freedom again. The United States and the forces of democracy will recover from this debacle - even with a Democratic Congress in 2006 and a Democratic president in 2008. The reason will not be because Bush's opponents have a better strategy, or a clearer vision, or even a Winston Churchill waiting in the wings. It will be because our enemies will give us no choice.

Less than a year after Munich, Nazi panzers rolled into Poland. Instead of fighting a short, limited war over Czechoslovakia, the Western democracies ended up fighting a world war, the most destructive in history. The war with the mullahs of Iran is coming. It is only a question of whether it will be at a time or on a ground of our choosing, or theirs - and whether it is fought within the shadow of a mushroom cloud.

Arthur Herman is the author most recently of "To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World." He is completing a book on Churchill and Gandhi.


www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_mideasts_munich_opedcolumnists_arthur_herman.htm

aussiethule.blogspot.com/</sub>

[kmc]

The war with the mullahs of Iran is coming. It is only a question of whether it will be at a time or on a ground of our choosing, or theirs - and whether it is fought within the shadow of a mushroom cloud.

Alarmist nonsense.

[phil]

I wish they would stop making analogies with WW II
and realize that the World is NOT the same
as it was more than half a century ago ...

[Kensterberg]

Actually, I do think that the "balance of power" has shifted in the Mid-East, or at least the appearence of it has. The US and Israel are not going to simply "dictate terms" to the Arab states based upon military force. Hezbolla has learned the most important lesson of the Iraqi war -- all that is necessary to defeat the US is simply to not lose.

The reality is that this was always the case. The mullahs in Iran are much closer to the wishes of the "average Arab" than is any Western liberal (in the broadest sense) democratic model. The most important factor in these states is religion, with ethnic identity right behind (if not part and parcel of the same self-identification). People who fundementally believe that the state should be run as per the Koran (which describes at least a bare majority of the Arab population, if not a much larger figure, even in established states such as Egypt) simply are not going to adopt a materialistic version of democracy. They just won't. For decades we were able to bluff the Arab states into thinking that truly angering America would result in their being crushed with overwhelming force. The first Gulf War backed this threat up, apparently, but the US victory was not the unmitigated win it appeared.

The US "won" the first Gulf War b/c we fought it on terms that were very favorable for us, and completely avoided the aspects which would prove problematic. Bush, Powell, et al, knew that the US could crush the Iraqi military, but they also knew that it would be impossible to govern Iraq in the wake of Saddam's ouster. So instead, they did exactly what the other Arab states wanted us for, we restored the status quo, had minimal contact with the average Arab on the street, and got the hell out of there.

George W. Bush has proven his father's wisdom by refusing to heed it. Yes, we "defeated" the Iraqi military in days, if not hours, but to what avail? We are now stuck with an ungovernable mess, in which Iraq threatens to split into three separate states, at least one of which will be aligned with Iran. We have brought Al-Queda into Iraq and given it a strong base from which to recruit. And most importantly, we have demonstrated once and for all that the key to winning any "war" in the Middle-East is to have the support of the people in the streets, and simply not to engage in conventional battles.

Yes, we have passed a turning point in the Arab world, but it is not a recent one. With the invasion of Iraq, and the disasterous handling of the post-war "reconstruction" by the US, we have seen the end of Imperial American power in the region. The lessoning of Israeli military intimidation is simply a corrollary action.

And like Phil, I am tired of hearing comparisons between the "war on terror" and WWII. This reflects the US obsession with fighting the last war, and is used by right wing partisons in an effort to demonstrate the stakes at play here. I do not need to be convinced of the urgency of maintaining good relations with the source of some of the most productive known fossil fuel fields. However, this is not Europe in 1938, or even 1914. We hang on to these analogies at our peril. It is time to face the world as it is, not as we wish it were or as we think it should be.

[kmc]

On a completely different note, I highly recommend the article "Greetings from Idiot America."

www.aboyandhiscomputer.com/Greetings_from_Idiot_America.html