Pretty astute article, NYT I think:
Behind the Crisis, A Push Toward War
By David Ignatius
Friday, July 14, 2006; Page A21
After Hezbollah guerrillas captured Israeli soldiers Wednesday, a
furious Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned that the Israeli army would “turn
back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.” Unfortunately, that statement
was truer than he may have intended.
By pounding the Beirut airport and other civilian targets yesterday,
the Israelis have taken a step back in time – to tactics that have
been tried repeatedly in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories
without much success. Many Lebanese will be angry at Hezbollah leader
Hasan Nasrallah for provoking the crisis, but that won’t translate
into new control on the militia’s actions. Instead, the outcome is
likely to be similar to what has happened in Gaza over the past
several weeks: Israeli attacks to free a captured soldier further
weakened the Palestinian Authority without much damaging the
terrorists.
Watching the events of the past few days, you can’t help but feel that
this is the rerun of an old movie – one in which the guerrillas and
kidnappers end up as the winners. Israel’s fledgling prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, wants to emulate the toughness of his predecessor, Ariel
Sharon. But that shouldn’t include a replay of Sharon’s 1982 Lebanon
invasion, a strategic mistake that spawned Hezbollah in the first
place.
Hezbollah’s action in seizing the Israeli soldiers was utterly
reckless. That’s the new part of this crisis – that Iranian-backed
radicals deliberately opened another front in a war that, in their
minds, stretches from Gaza to Iraq. Watching Nasrallah’s cocky
performance at a news conference Wednesday, I thought that he seemed
almost to be inviting an Israeli counterattack – knowing that it
would destabilize the Lebanese government of Fuad Siniora, which is
one of the few solid achievements of U.S. policy in the region.
Israeli and American doctrine is premised on the idea that military
force will deter adversaries. But as more force has been used in
recent years, the deterrent value has inevitably gone down. That’s the
inner spring of this crisis: The Iranians (and their clients in
Hezbollah and Hamas) watch the American military mired in Iraq and see
weakness. They are emboldened rather than intimidated. The same is
true for the Israelis in Gaza. Rather than reinforcing the image of
strength, the use of force (short of outright, pulverizing invasion
and occupation) has encouraged contempt.
The danger of Iranian-backed adventurism is immense right now, but
that’s all the more reason for America and Israel to avoid past
mistakes in countering it. Reliable strategic lessons are hard to come
by in that part of the world, but here are a few:
The first is that in countering aggression, international solidarity
and legitimacy matter. In responding to the Lebanon crisis, the United
States should work closely with its allies at the Group of Eight
summit and the United Nations. Iran and its proxies would like nothing
more than to isolate America and Israel. They would like nothing less
than a strong, international coalition of opposition.
A second point – obvious from Gaza to Beirut to Baghdad – is that
the power of non-state actors is magnified when there is no strong
central government. That may sound like a truism, but responding
wisely can require some creative diplomacy. The way to blunt Hamas is
to build a strong Palestinian Authority that delivers benefits for the
Palestinian people. The way to curb Hezbollah is to build up the
Lebanese government and army. One way to boost the Lebanese government
(and deflate Hezbollah) would be to negotiate the return of the
Israeli-occupied territory known as Shebaa Farms. That chance is lost
for now, but the Bush administration should find other ways to enhance
Siniora’s authority.
A final obvious lesson is that in an open, interconnected world,
public opinion matters. This is a tricky battlefield for an unpopular
America and Israel, but not an impossible one. To fight the Long War,
America and Israel have to get out of the devil suit in global public
opinion. For a generation, America maintained a role as honest broker
between Israel and the Arabs. The Bush administration should work hard
to refurbish that role.
In the Lebanon crisis we have a terrifying glimpse of the future: Iran
and its radical allies are pushing toward war. That’s the chilling
reality behind this week’s events. On Tuesday the Iranians spurned an
American offer of talks on their nuclear program; on Wednesday their
Hezbollah proxy committed what Israel rightly called “an act of war.”
The radicals want to lure America and Israel deeper into the killing
ground, confident that they have the staying power to prevail. We
should not play their game.
