Israel should have drawn the right lessons from the Iraq war before it took on the Hezbollah
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The Israeli war against Hezbollah was reckoned a failure as soon as the fighting stopped, and so is the American war against Iraq, though the fighting continues. Even responsible parties understand this now8230; In each case the war has created conditions that threaten even more grievous catastrophe to follow. Hezbollah is intact, and the Lebanese people, having been so savagely bombed by Israeli warplanes, have reason to embrace it. Iran and Syria are emboldened. The international peace keeping force is anaemic. The elimination of the Jewish state is on the agenda. In Iraq, as brutal sectarian violence flares, the debate about whether and when to 8220;withdraw8221; the American forces is being superseded by an urgent worry about how US soldiers can be evacuated from the crossfire? Iraq as a national entity has already been destroyed. The question now is what comes of its ruin? A regional war over oil? A world centre of terrorism? A new tyrant to restore order?
Neither the United States nor Israel is in control of what comes next, but whether these disastrous scenarios are played out in the future depends on how American and Israeli failures of the recent past are understood. If the Pentagon focuses on tactical mistakes, like troop levels or intelligence errors, the larger question will be not be asked. Likewise with Israel. The decision to wage an air war against Lebanese infrastructure clearly backfired8230; But was that the first and most basic mistake?
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It remains true that the path of negotiations with rejectionist Hezbollah, and Hamas for that matter, was not open to Israel during the provocations of July. It is also the case that Israel was confronted with a sharp new level of irrational antagonism tied to the broader inflaming of the region by America8217;s war in Iraq. The very existence of the Jewish state had, startlingly, come to be at issue again. Thus, even the peace movement in Israel saw the point of firmness8230; But firmness can be combined with restraint, and force can be exercised judiciously8230; Israeli leaders, acting more out of anger than wisdom, demonstrated in their move to an overwhelming military assault against targets across Lebanon that they had learned nothing from the American misadventure in Iraq8230; The result is that Israel is more vulnerable than ever, especially now that the myth of its invincibility has been punctured. Both the United States and Israel have been at the mercy of the same illusion, that the hammer of military force is the tool to use against every threat8230;
Excerpted from an article by James Carroll, 8216;The Boston Globe8217;, August 28
