Israel isn’t tying to “defeat” Hezbollah, although they’d be happy if they did. They’re trying to set them back a decade or so, and convice the Lebanese gov’t that it needs to keep Hezbollah in check in the future (or get the international community to do so if they can’t do it themselves).
It has the monetary value of a Ruble in Patagonia.
I wonder: is there any lesson to be learned from the British approach to the IRA here? In my very limited understanding, the Brits used an explicit carrot-and-stick approach with Irish Republicans. On the one hand, they said, “Look, we can kick your ass up and down the street. We’ve got you infiltrated out the yinyang. And that one of your leaders who decides to work with the government and renounce violence? We’ll negotiate prominently with you and help you achieve political power, and make sure that the ballot-box is wide open to your concerns.” Lo and behold, Gerry Adams, a strong opponent of a ceasefire, publicly renounced violence and took Sinn Fein toward political legitimacy.
So what would happen if Israel offered a similar deal to Hamas leaders? Is that remotely possible?
I really don’t know.
Daniel
Several Arab countries have made their peace with Israel. Granted they still don’t like Israel and probably wouldn’t say no to another war if they thought they could win, but its still better to have an armed peace then outright hostility. Also Israel not only gains hatred, but Hizzbollah gains support this way, even though many of its aims are at odds with most of the gov’ts in the region.
It certainly is a tough problem, and I symapthize with Israels desire to go and crack some skulls rather then take the cross-border raids on the chin. I think their best course of action would’ve been to attempt to work with their allies to stregthen the Lebanese gov’t, something that bombing Beirut certainly doesn’t help. Granted this is hardly a quick solution, but the Lebanese gov’t has made advances over the last few years, and in anycase the current Israeli action seems unlikely to bring about security in the short term either.
Why can’t they replenish the rockets? In anycase, far more rockets have been fired in response to the Israeli attacks then would’ve been the case otherwise.
I’m sure HB knows it can’t win a war of attrition, and I doubt it lauched its attacks thinking that the IDF was going to be crippled or anything. Their short-terms goals seem to be to keep Israel insecure and increase their own power in Lebanon. The current crisis has certainly advanced their first goal, time will have to tell if about the second.
Probably not. The IRA/SF did not have the explicit and unifying desire to annihilate the UK, only reclaim some degree of self-rule in N. Ireland. The IRA/SF were never really tools being used as part of a greater proxy war being fought against the UK by foreign powers (a few well-heeled Irish-American supporters don’t really count, IMO). The IRA/SF operated and attacked the UK from largely within the UK. Etc. I don’t really see many similarities to the nature of the conflict with England and the goals of the IRA/SF, and the ultimate goals of Hezbollah and their true leaders in Syria and Iran.
I’m not sure what you mean by “set them back a decade”. HB was powerful a decade ago, wasn’t it? Is blowing up thier bases really going to cripple them so greatly? I imagine they’ve had plenty of time to plan out how to distribute thier people and weapons to limit the damage of airstikes, and how much gear to you really need to launch a few cross-border motar attacks a year? Also I presume Iran and Syria have more then enough weapons to replenish HB supplies once the dust clears.
It was an arbitrary time, so I tried to be unspecific. Sorry if that was confusing. Let’s jsut say “X” number of years instead.
Not if they are prevented from doing so by the Lebanese gov’t. Israel is saying: let Hezbollah re-arm, and this is going to happen again sometime in the future. Keep those guys in check, or get someone in here who can.
Expect to start seeing some real pressure from the US and the UK in the next few days for Israel to pull back and stop the bombing.
One doesn’t win assymetric warfare with brute force, unless you move to a level of force involving genocide, etc. Or at least, that’s the lesson I take from history - look at Napoleon vs the Spanish guerillas, or the British in Ireland, or Somoza vs the Sandinistas, or the US in Vietnam, etc, etc. Popular insurgencies are not defeated by the use of superior force unless you go all Assyrian on their asses and kill everyone and raze their cities to the ground. To defeat a popular insurgency you need to remove their raison d’etre. I don’t mean you have to placate the actual insurgents, but rather you have to placate the insurgency’s base of support. You have to remove their ability to recruit by removing the overt causes of resentment. You have to remove their ability to melt into the general population by removing the willingness of the general population to shelter them. You won’t do this by killing and maiming civilians, even if you are trying to avoid that whilst attacking actual insurgents. You’ll do this by stop being stiff-necked stubborn jackasses with no regard for the “enemy”. You’ll do this by treating them as persons worthy of basic respect.
Naturally, when you try to do this the haters in your population will shout “Appeasers!” and the haters in their population will shout “Collaborators!” It won’t be easy. But it is possible. Northern Ireland is a reasonably good example.
But the raison d’etre is Israel’s total destruction, and the Arab street seems to view this goal as agreeably as they did in 1948, if not more so. When the only means of placating is packing up and leaving, what real option does that leave the Israelis? The reason they have detente with Jordan and Egypt is because they handed their asses to them, or because those countries had almost as many problems with Arabs from the region as Israel has had. Cynically, I’d say the most effective means of limiting support for Hezbollah would be to make conditions so intolerable for the leaders of at least Syria and Lebanon that they feel motivated to violently oppress militants internally, as the Jordanians did. Iran’s a tougher nut to crack. I don’t think negotiation with them is even remotely possible. Rather, cutting Hezbollah off at Syria would simply make it far more difficult for Iran to influence the region.
Hopefully, the increased number of rocket attacks shows that Hezbollah is rapidly using up its stockpile, knowing they have to use it or lose it. In combination with having the supply line cut, I’d hazard a guess that the number of rocket attacks will rapidly diminish over the next month or so.
This being the Middle East, though, I wouldn’t put money on it.
No. That’s the movement’s stated goal. It’s reason for existence is the hatred for Israel amongst the populace. That hatred didn’t spring into existence ex nihilo, but rather grew up for various historic reasons, and has been kept alive since then for other various historic reasons. It won’t diminish if Israel continues to manufacture new reasons to hate it. The relatively indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon is doing just that - it’s generating new reasons for hatred. Please don’t mistake this for a moral argument. I’m not making a moral argument. I’m making a what will work, given human nature and what we know of it from history argument.
I fully realize that Israel doesn’t have many good options open to it. It’s not in a good spot, and I’m certainly not saying they don’t have the right to defend themselves, even aggressively. For example, I suspect there was an effective narrow, tightrope path available to engage in a very focused bombing and even ground campaign, tightly constrained, avoiding targetting basic infrastructure, (which will inevitably be seen as “attacking us (Lebanese) in general” rather than as attacking Hizbollah specifically) that wouldn’t have drawn the ire of the Lebanese govt (though they would never have admitted as much, couldn’t expect them to), that would have alienated Hizbollah from their base. But the actual campaign being carried out will not alienate Hizbollah from their base, and I have a hard time imagining that they won’t emerge from this with increased support from Muslem Lebanese, the precisely worst outcome from an Israeli perspective. That’s what I see as the problem with the response (problem not in the moral sense, which I’m not talking about, but in the practical, effective sense). It’s not the disproportionate use of force. It’s the seeming indiscriminate targetting. Whether or not the targetting is indiscriminate is irrelevant. What matters is the seeming. What matters is fucking results, and the foreseeable results of the current campaign all look extremely bad to me.
In short, if Israel wants to exist in peace, its neighbours must become reconciled to Israel’s existence. There are two ways to acheive this - they can kill ALL of the neighbours, or they can stop pissing the neighbours off, sit tight, and wait two generations. The first is genocide, and the second is insanely difficult and very long term. What absolutely result in peace is spawning more hatred.
Seriously, look at the ridiculous numbers of troops and levels of force Napoleon used to try to pacify Spain. It didn’t work. It never had a chance of working. I know of no popular insurgency that has ever been defeated by brute force, excepting those defeated by genocidal levels of force (cf. Romans putting down Jewish Revolt, etc). If you have some counterexample to this, I’d be very interested in seeing this.
[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
What absolutely won’t result in peace is spawning more hatred. /QUOTE]
Oops, a typo that makes the sentence gibberish. Sorry bout that.
Are you saying that if Israel didn’t ‘manufacture new reasons to hate it’ that it WOULD diminish? If so, what do you base that on? This leaves aside why its always on Israel to turn the other cheek in the hopes that its neighbors will eventually stop hating them enough to not want to wipe them out of course…but I’m interested in why you think if Israel DOES turn the other cheek how this will make a difference in the region. After all, Israel HAS tried to do things based on good will in the past…and usually gotten a bus full of civilians blown up for their efforts.
-XT
Which none have done without brute force. What I’m saying is the govts. of Syria and Lebanon are not run by theocrats, but rather cynics with a sufficient desire for self-preservation that they’ll do what all ME govts do when the populace gets unruly: Beat them into submission. This is what Jordan does. This is what Egypt does. What Saudi Arabia does, etc. They use massive and brutal force, but I do not think they use genocidal force. For local examples of that , one must turn to Turkey, or Iraq, perhaps. Either way, it works.
So, leaving morals completely out of it, Israel can win against Hezbollah if she and her allies put the screws on the Syrian govt. in the most painful manner at their disposal without starting WWIII. I would expect the Syrians would see to it remarkably quickly that Hezbollah fades into obscurity. Arab states know how to manage their fanatics.
Look, I’m not making a moral argument. I don’t give a fucking rat’s ass about why it’s on Israel to turn the other cheek. It doesn’t fucking matter. I’m making an argument about how Israel can best achieve its own fucking goals. What I’m arguing is that what Israel is doing will actually frustrate its own goals. I’m arguing that they’re shooting themselves in the fucking foot. My argument is simple, and based on historical observations. Brute force never defeats popular insurgencies unless it rises to genocidal levels. Can you give me a counterexample? Can you give me any reason at all to think that this generality isn’t going to hold here?
If not, Israel has to adopt a different strategy if it really wants to exist in peace. It’s on Israel to adopt that different strategy because they’re the ones who want peace. Telling people that don’t want peace to stop fighting is completely and utterly futile. Go ahead and shout at them over and over again to stop fighting, but if you expect it to work, you’re a drooling idiot. The only way to get people who don’t want peace to stop fighting is to stop giving them reasons to fight. Maybe that’s not fair, maybe that places unreciprocated burdens on you, whatever. I don’t care. This isn’t a moral argument. It’s a practical argument. It’s a what’s going to actually work argument. It’s a stop shooting yourself in the goddam foot argument.
If you have any suggestion that you think will work better in the long run than sitting tight, turning the other cheek far more than you’d like, and waiting two generations for attitudes to mellow, well, then, I’m all ears. It’s frankly a really sucky strategy, but it’s the only one I’ve got to suggest. The blow everyone else up strategy has been not workign for nigh on 60 years now in the Middle East, and for several centuries since empires stopped razing rebellious provinces to the ground in general. If you want to argue with me, give me a reason for thinking that I’m wrong about history. Give me a reason to think that I’m wrong about force not working. Give me a reason to think that Israel bombing the fuck out of Lebanon will result in the Lebanese in general and the Moslem Lebanese constituency of Hizbollah in particular starting to playing nice. I don’t see one. I only see yet another generation of hatred being born, and any slim chance of peace being pushed back 20 years.
I’m not making a moral arguement here either…but a practical one, as you say (I’m not real big on the whole ‘moral’ thingy…just for the record). I asked you if you really thought that if Israel basically lays back and takes it (how about puts its hands in its pockets, instead of the cheek thing, which has I suppose religious conotations), if THIS will lead to its neighbors simmering down and not wanting to wipe them out anymore.
You say that what they are doing (and I suppose what they have done in the past) is ‘shooting themselves in the fucking foot’…so, what SHOULD they do then that would work…IYHO?
As to examples of putting down a popular insurgency without resorting to ‘genocidal levels’…define ‘genocidal levels’? Do you mean actual genocide (i.e. completely wiping out a race/culture), or do you just mean the killing of a hell of a lot of folks in a given region? I can think of a few examples where popular insurgencies WERE put down without wiping out the local race/culture…though it wasn’t pleasant for the folks there. One such example, ironically, was the Romans in Judea. Jews still exist after all…as does their culture. So, it wasn’t genocide, at least as I define it. There are other examples of insurgencies failing without resorting to genocide…depending again on how you are defining your terms.
First off…I rarely drool. Oh, sometimes at night I suppose, and occationally when sleeping on a plane…but during the day when I’m (in theory) awake? Naw, not often (I won’t say never though). So, I’ll thank you in the future to remember that. Idiot I may be…but not the drooling kind. 
Secondly, you make a good case. One thing though you haven’t appearently factored in is that the anti-Israel propaganda machine has been going full steam in the ME since the day the nation was founded. A LOT of these folks took in hatred of Israel with their mothers milk. Recall that initially Israel bent over backwards to try and have peace…and were repeatedly attacked for it, both on the battle field and in their very cities and towns. Using that as a base then (if you accept that), saying ‘only way to get people who don’t want peace to stop fighting is to stop giving them reasons to fight’ is all well and good…its a noble sentiment. Except if the ‘reason’ to stop fighting is the destruction of your nation of course. What do you do then? How do you appease these folks if all they want is for you to be dead, your nation a smoking ruin?
That said, I agree with you somewhat…SOMETHING needs to be done to break this cycle. But I think what needs to be done is a wake up call to nations like Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc that Israel is no longer their punch bunny, that taking pot shots at them by proxy is no longer acceptable, and that the constant anti-Israel rhetoric and propaganda to fire up the population to hate and fear Israel isn’t acceptable. YMMV and obviously does…but I think that the peace thing has been tried in the past and it ain’t going to cut it…what needs to be done is to get at the root cause. And, IMHO the root cause is the other nations in the region using Israel as a convinent outlet and scape goat to divert attention from their own internal political fuckups.
As I said about…deal with this problem at the root. As for the rest…I don’t KNOW what your perception of history is wrt this question. My own reading of history has been one of nearly unbroken hostility toward Israel, no matter WHAT they do. If they try peace they get attacked. If they use force they get attacked. Using force however HAS seen the LEVELS of attacks fall dramatically. Instead of desparate set piece battles and multi-sided (well, on the ENEMIES side) wars, to insurgent type attacks on their borders with periodic terror attacks within Israel. Depending on your perspective this IS somewhat of an improvement I suppose.
I don’t know if attacking HB in Lebanon will have any long term good effect on the situation. To my mind, the jury is still out on that. It will depend on HOW Israel continues (if its allowed to continue…The World™ may jump in at some point fairly soon and put a halt to things), and how it all ends. IF Israel is successful in somehow getting Lebanon and/or The World™ to push HB back from the southern borders (and keep them out…perminently), IF Israel is able to hurt HB enough to make them essentially combat ineffective, at least for a while, and IF Israel is able to do that without your ‘genicidal level’ of force…well, maybe it will work out for a time. Maybe not.
I don’t see the alternative as working either though. So…your turn. Give me a reason to believe that if Israel pulls back and allows HB basically free reign in southern Lebanon (and Hamas in Gaza I suppose), if they completely pull in their horns, how this is going to make HB or Hamas…or the people in the region who hate Israel…how its going to make them eventually stop that hate, stop the attacks on Israel, and give them peace.
-XT
Damn straight your argument is simple. Your fucking counterexample is fucking Egypt and fucking Jordan fucking backing off and yanking the fucking leash on their own fucking populations only after they got their fucking asses handed to them after various fucking wars, if I may put it bluntly. 
Now it’s Lebanon’s turn to either pull itself together or get clobbered, and hopefully Syria will learn the same lesson without having to have its fucking ass handed to it, too. The mistake Israel made was leaving a dysfunctional Lebanon in the first place, which only ensured continued chaos. I suppose a good policy might be to enlist the Druze as mercenaries, arming and training them and offering them big bonuses for every Hezbollah head they can deliver.
Israel has turned the Kosovo campaign and moulded it in its own image, what it’s trying to do is build up the threat of a ground campaign (because they don’t know what course of the war might take) and just bombing the Hezbollah and Lebanese infrastructure (which Hezbollah put in places of civilian concerntration) which has the equipment to bomb Israel with Iranian or Syrian supplied rockets.
But one thing I know for sure, after this war, Hezbollah is pretty much going to have it’s teeth removed once and for all, I mean, what Druze Christian or Sunni Muslim is going to put up with this kind of shit coming about every ten years or so? Hezbollah is going to be disarmed, I’ve already heard about Israel being willing to return the Sheeba farms area, something which Hezbollah needs for propaganda of ‘resistance’ well once that’s gone, they’re not really needed. Thus enters the multinational force, and the helping of the Lebanese army to control its southern border.
Israel might not achieve what it wants 100%, but one things for sure, Arab Lebanese and Israeli governments alike do not want this happening again, which means Hezbollahs armed wing goes into the dustbin of history. Hamas has already asked for a truce, so think about it.
Ryan Liam I agree with your post. I would add one other reason that I doubt Israel will agree to leave Hezbollah armed with Missiles. I would be stunned if they accepted a cease fire that re-established the July 10 status quo because of Iran. Israel sees them as their greatest threat. They have said, flat out, no kidding, unmistakably that it is “unacceptable” that Iran have nuclear weapons.
And yet here we are, Iran is any where (to avoid this part of the GD) from a year to a decade away from developing nukes. And even in the face of a full-faced diplomatic push Iran isn’t negotiating.
If Iran refuses to negotiate and continues to develop weapons, more likely than not there is going to be a military action of some kind – either by Israel or by the U.S. – & quite possibly before January 2009 when Bush leaves Office.
You don’t need to be Wellington or Rommel or Sun Tzu to know what Iran will do then. Maybe try to disrupt the straight of Hormuz. Maybe (depending on who attacked) hitting American bases throughout the middle east. Or send “militia volunteers” into Iraq. They might even try it on with American Allies in the Gulf.
But what every single scenario you care to spin says that Iran will do is use Hezbollah to attack – Israel and perhaps the U.S. I would be surprised if the Israeli plan we are seeing unfold now wasn’t part 1a or B of the grander plan** that was in a case marked ‘Break glass in case of attack on Iran’.
In any event, Hezbollah defanged will either remove an important Iranian stragetic asset or bring them to the table. For Israel to militarily “win” this particular War - really - all they need do is remove the Iranian proxy military threat.
***Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers and fired missiles into Israel - and like the rest of the World was probably shocked by the Israeli response – this is not meant to be read as some kind of Israeli-American conspiracy.
*
Bad idea. Just like us in Iraq, you’d have random people being turned in/killed for the profits.
I think he said that tongue in cheek Der Trihs (knowing Bryan Ekers a bit from reading him for years, much of his posting is full of such dry wit). I agree…it would be a bad idea.
-XT