What Did the Olmert Government Think It Was Doing?

Michael Yglesias writes:

How Bad Was It? | TPMCafe: By Matthew Yglesias: Via Hilzoy, a very interesting resource from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, namely a list of Hezbollah attacks along Israel's northern border from May 2000 to June 2006. I tried to tally it all up, and I came up with 13 soldiers and seven civilians killed, along with 27 soldiers and 7 civilians wounded, plus three IDF soldiers and two Israeli Arabs captured....

[T]his is what happened after Israel stopped occupying Lebanese land, it's all very unjustified. Clearly, given the consistent nature of these provocations, Israel had a legal and moral right to seek changes.

At the same time, the list puts some perspective on the practical size of the Hezbollah problem. Twenty dead over six years. Thirty-four wounded. A bad business. But clearly a low-intensity problem all things considered. Hezbollah, whatever its notional commitment to the destruction of Israel, was not a practical threat to the nation's survival....

The tit-for-tat retaliations appear to have succeeded in containing the conflict. Not in stopping Hezbollah from attacking, but in dissuading it from escalating. The resulting situation wasn't ideal by any means, but it was pretty good, all things considered. The odds that the current military action -- which has already cost Israel, to say nothing of Lebanon, more lives than six years worth of low-intensity conflict -- will alter the situation dramatically for the better strike me as very low.

Comments

[md 20/400]

Michael? Is this the younger brother taking over the blog?

[Alan]

"a list of Hezbollah attacks along Israel's northern border." Note that the list includes attacks on Israelis in the occupied Golan Heights (including the Shebaa farms), not just in Israel proper.

[maracucho]

I sympathize with Israel, a country with many good features. Their leadership has gotten carried away with past military success. Like Rumsfeld, they don't realize that the days of tank warfare are over.

The US government claimed to be working for a ceasefire within a few days while simultaneously rushing bombs weapons to Israel. The IDF said that its killing of UN observers with laser guided bombs in spite of 10 phone calls was an accident. We know that the Israelis and most warmongers loathe the UN; perhaps they consider the killing of UN personnel to be trivial. Hizbollah manipulates the press just as skillfully as the other two, luxuriating in the scenes of death and destruction, while sending rockets randomly into Israel and issuing macho threats.

There can be no peace without honesty, compromise and sacrifice. Neither Bush, Rice, Olmert nor Nasrallah show any honesty, compassion or desire for compromise. They all claim to be deeply religious, and indeed they are. They serve Mars, the God of War and Thanatos, the God of Death (whether these are separate gods is debatable).

I don’t expect peace without direct talks between the US, Israel, Hizbollah, Syria, Iran and neighboring countries. I don’t think that Lebanon or Hizbollah will accept the “stop fighting and let the Israelis stay” plan that the US and France have concocted in their almighty pretensions. Israelis occupying Lebanon will surely be attacked. Once the dogs of war are loose, it’s very hard to stop them. It can’t be done without real sacrifice. When Israel realizes that its many nukes and its US sponsorship provide no long term security, they may be ready to talk. They and we will have to talk to all parties and talk about the Israeli-Arab war, which has many features of the Old West Indian wars, except that the Indians are a majority and are more willing to sacrifice than the settlers (Israelis).

Those calling for war might read The Stand by Stephen King or the War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa. Killing begets killing, things get out of control very quickly. Imagine that Llosa ran against Fujimori for President of Peru in 1990 and almost won. Fujimori became a criminal in the name of fighting terror. Llosa and Stephen King have something to teach us, as does Mark Twain, “America is a nation without a distinct criminal class...with the possible exception of Congress." He doesn’t mention particular parties and I don’t either. 80% of our Congress serve their financial interests first and Mars/Thanatos second. Until our leaders stop lying and ask for sacrifice, the killing in the Middle East will escalate, and global warming will accelerate. That warfare can cross the ocean.

[Anderson]

Sebastian Holsclaw will explain away Yglesias's argument, or may have done so already, but it won't be an attractive sight.

[bsci]

and those 10,000+ Hezbolah missiles that were obtained with the specific goal of attacking Israel should not at all be part of Israel's assessment of the threat? If anything, the failure is the UN's for letting Hezbolah get so strong while allowing their peacekeepers to be used as human shields.

[wkwillis]

bsci
Um, you do realise that Israel was also importing munitions during this period?

[bsci]

wkwillis,
Your point? So was France and Germany and pretty much every other country in the world. Hezbolah missiles were imported for the sole purpose of attacking Israel, specifically civillian targets.
Do you really not see the difference between Hezbollah and Israel having weapons? Or is Hezbollah a legitimate resistance movement against the evil Israelis?
Are you happy that the UN peackeepers did nothing to prevent Hezbollah from building such a stash of weapons. It seems like most of Lebanon would have been happier if Hezbolah had fewer missiles and less military power.

[Barry]

bsci: "It seems like most of Lebanon would have been happier if Hezbolah had fewer missiles and less military power."

Something I agree on - the spirit and the tense. Most of Lebanon would probably now like Hezbollah to kill some more Israelis.

Israel's plan was not, from the beginning, what any sane person would have used, if the goal was to weaken Hezbollah, while not weakening the government of Lebanon. And this was absolutely necessary, even from a stricly amoral viewpoint. Hezbollah was born in the destruction of Lebanon's central gov't, and grew in the absence of a strong central government.

Which leads to the conclusion that (a) the leaders of Israel's government are not sane, or (b) that they figure that a strategy of trashing all of their neighboring countries will benefit them. It leads to a constant state of low-level war, and they might like that.

[howard]

baci, what you're basically saying is that israel took advantage of hezbollah's tank attack to launch a pre-emptive war. do you honestly think it's working out for them?

[Diana]

I agree with Barry. I think the Israeli leadership i) is either not sane, which includes believing their own propaganda about having an invicible military, or 2) thinks there's some kind of benefit to them just to trash their neighbors.
I agree that it is a mystery about what the Israeli leadership actually thought would happen when they first decided to blow up the Lebanese infrastructure.

[bsci]

I don't think this was a pre-emptive war and I don't think Israel is crazy. I don't understand some decisions they have made in this war, and some decisions were probably wrong, but when an army with 10,000+ missiles tries to hold your soliders for ransom, the response will not be to give them flowers. Sharon made a horrible mistake a few years ago by negotiating with Hezbollah for the return of soldiers. It just bred more attempts of the same.

As back to the original topic of the post, is it reasonable for a country to go to war after losing only 20 people over 6 years? All I can say is name any other country that lets another nation shoot at its people in its own country that doesn't fight back? Add in the hundreds of missiles that have been fired at Israel over the past six years and the fact that Lebanon has always formally said it is at war with Israel.

[Israeli]

I think the government of Israel did the right thing opening the war. I think our neighbors should now we are capable of killing/destroying and able to fight for our right to live. Our right to live means that no one will go unpunished killing an Israeli just for being an Israeli.
When you have crazy neighbors you need to act crazy as well!
as to the Lebanese, they thought the can go on with their nice little life ignoring a militia camping on their south just preparing for the big was against Israel. Well, Israel says NO. If you ignore your militias you will be punished hard. Hezbollah was preparing for the big was against Israel. Israel has stopped the preparation.

[Diana]

Israel has stopped the preparation by starting the war ... and promptly losing it. They know they can't invade Lebanon again, Hezbollah's skill lies in guerilla warfare against their ground forces. Did they really think they'd be able to stop the rockets just with airpower? If so, why?

[entlord]

All of this is somewhat reminiscent of Pershing's pursuit of Pancho Villa (The Punitive Expedition). However, imagine that Woodrow Wilson had ordered Pershing to attack Mexico City, to remove or imprison all Villa sympathizers and to destroy all infrastructure in Mexico that Villa might or could use.
After all, if Olmert is justified on the basis of the body count in invading a sovereign country (and third party to the conflict)and cleansing whole areas of inhabitants and destroying infrastructure evidently at whim, then surely Wilson would have been justified in occupying portions of Mexico and exacerbating a low level conflict into a high level conflict.
Our concern should be at this point is what will we do if the Arabs decide on another oil boycott.

[Cal]

All considerations made on the margin.