0 Votes
The Complexities of the Israeli/Hezbollah War
The impact of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict currently raging in southern Lebanon appears to go farther than some might have initially imagined. In addition to the complexities of the war itself, Islamic reaction to the conflagration has been in some ways united, and in other ways certainly divided. Of course, the world is now familiar with al Qaeda’s recent call for a worldwide ‘jihad’ against Israel in what would seem to be tacit support for Hezbollah, a Shi’a organization. Commentators have noted, however, that this unusual state of affairs (i.e. a Sunni organization supporting a Shi’a) is perhaps an example of al Qaeda not wanting to be ‘upstaged’ as the world’s premier terrorist organization. Hezbollah now enjoys the admiration of the Islamic world, which has put many Arab/Sunni leaders in a peculiar position, including al Qaeda. Initially the conventional Arab-Sunni world had condemned the Hezbollah attacks. But now even Sunni governments/nations are feeling compelled to support the group lest they lose credibility in the eyes of their people. Some see events in the Levant spiraling into a larger regional conflict, and it’s not only the West that’s worried. Many Sunni-Arab leaders can see themselves being pulled into this struggle only to watch their Shi’a adversaries in Iran reap all the benefits.
Similarly tagged OmniNerd content:
- Iran and Russia Up the Ante, by VnutZ over 5 years ago
- Discover the Networks, by PowerPointSamurai over 5 years ago
- Iran Declares CIA, U.S. Army 'Terrorist Groups', by mikeforbes over 5 years ago
- The Return of Russia as a Superpower, by VnutZ over 5 years ago
Print Friendly
Write an Article
The liberal view by starm_
Here’s a liberal analysis of these wars with terrorists.
excerpt:
bq. Like most liberals, I am not a pacifist. I believe military power has its uses, and it does some things very well. If, for example, our goal in Iraq had just been to capture Saddam – well, we did that, didn’t we? A similar operation might have captured Bin Laden. Bosnia is far from paradise these days, but at least people aren’t dying by the tens of thousands. With similar care the genocide in Rwanda might have been stopped, and the one in Darfur still could be. And if anyone knew a way to go into North Korea and come out a few days later with Kim Jong-il and all the North Korean nuclear weapons, I’d be for it.
RE: The liberal view by mikeforbes
This is absurd. The link is broken, but from what I can surmise from the excerpt, this guy is claiming not to be a pacifist by saying that if the nature of using military force wasn’t so much like itself, he’d be all for using it.
In other words, he would be in favor of using the military to remove Saddam Hussein, capture Osama bin Laden, stop the genocide in Rwanda and the Sudan, kidnap Kim Jong-Il, and snatch N. Korea’s nukes … if it wasn’t for that pesky "war" thing. It’s just so bloody and messy and dirty … and it takes so darn long. Can’t we just send in the Marines and bring them back out "a few days later," having accomplished their mission without all of that nasty fighting and dying and stuff?
Sorry, no. War is an awful, terrible, bloody, expensive, complex and (usually) long-lasting affair. It always has been and presumably will remain so for all time to come. Fantasies of short, clean, quick, simple, and cheap wars are just that: fantasy. This excerpt does not appear to be a real "liberal analysis" of anything at all, but rather the idle musings of someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
RE: The liberal view by Anonymous
Maybe that’s the point. Military action is hardly ever the right answer. People like to point out WWII as an example of necessary military force, but I could go and point out every other war as an example of when not to use force. War is almost never the answer!
RE: The liberal view by romanizzo
War is almost never the answer!
Naive. Enlightened, but naive. If the whole world was like you, then there would truly be no need for war. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of humans left on this earth that haven’t progressed to your modern world view. The Islamic clerics that have grabbed power in Somalia haven’t even the slightest concern for "war not being the answer". Their world view is something along the lines of "I want that. I’m going to take that unless someone is tough enough to stop me from taking it."
And if you look around, Kim Jong Il is of the same mind, the Sunni insurgent is of the same mind, the warring tribes in the Congo are of the same mind. Matter of fact, the UN is going get a slap in the face when the losing parties in Africa’s latest democratic elections reject the outcome and just start fighting again. Its not about what the most people want, its about what the strongest people want. Sure, we don’t see the world that way in the US, Japan or Europe, but its taken centuries to get to where we are. The rest of the world just lags behind, and you can’t stop the aggressive human tendency with diplomacy or negotiation. There are countless measures in place so that the people that think "war isn’t the answer" can safely continue to believe that, but that isolation from global reality has the negative side effect of leading the naive to actually believe their own nonsense.
RE: The liberal view by mikeforbes
War is almost never the answer!
And that would be a perfectly valid opinion (misguided, but valid), had the author of the DKos article referenced above not prefaced it with the tough-sounding "I’m not a pacifist," and "military force has its uses."
It’s the logical disconnect in that statement that bothers me: "I am in favor of using military force (read: ‘war’) as a tool to accomplish national policy objectives." Followed by: "Only if it’s fast, clean, painless, and doesn’t have any long-term consequences." I don’t have a problem with the anti-war opinion, per se, as long as they just come right out and say it so we can have an open and honest debate. Shrouding that opinion in misleading terminology does neither side any favors.
RE: The liberal view by Anonymous
I don’t think you’re giving this author enough credit. He’s saying that force has certain useful functions, but that there very limited. I think that’s reasonable. Certain problems allow for the quick use of military force, but most do not. He’s saying that a country should only consider using force when it looks like a clean solution, otherwise people should look for other options.
RE: The liberal view by mikeforbes
He’s saying that a country should only consider using force when it looks like a clean solution
Which brings us right back around to my original point: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When has the use of military force (war) ever resulted in a "clean solution?" Such a phenomenon simply doesn’t exist.
And after reading the whole article, I now see that it’s essentially a quick summary of "Counterinsurgency 101." And his point seems to be either 1)the militaries of the U.S. and Israel, while fighting their respective insurgencies/asymmetric wars, should avoid alienating the civilian population in the course of rooting out their enemies; or 2)they shouldn’t be fighting those wars in the first place.
If his point is indeed #1, I wholeheartedly agree. And from what I can tell, both nations (U.S. and Israel) are indeed trying to do exactly that. The problem is that conventional military forces are, by nature, not very good at limiting their destructive power exclusively to the designated "enemy" – tragically, civilians routinely get caught in the middle, especially in a counterinsurgency war where said enemy uses the civilian population for cover during the battle, and for propaganda afterwards. If the author’s point is #2, I have to disagree. "Messy" solution though it may be, war is often the only option left, leaving the final question: what are you willing to fight for?
RE: The liberal view by starm_
Sorry for the bad link. Here it is.
RE: The liberal view by PowerPointSamurai
Interesting read, and as I have pointed out in the past, liberalism does not equate to pacifism any more than conservatism equates to adverturist (or hawkish) policy. I don’t know how this model got into everyone’s heads these days, except perhaps that modern "conservatives" like to portray "liberals" as weak on foreign policy or wanting to dismantle the military and use the money for social programs. As one who suffered through the Clinton administration’s neglect, or perhaps, misuse through thinly vieled contempt, I can see a glimmer of where some of that idea comes from. However, traditionally, liberals were the ones with the adventurist foreign policy to spread the ideals of democracy and capitalism, whereas conservatives were the isolationists who just wanted to do business with everyone else and let them sort out their own problems. Remember, it was JFK and LBJ who sent troops to Vietnam, and Nixon who brought them home (and did the "cut and run"—and look what happened).
I just sincerely wish people would take a step back and stop treating politics like their favorite sports team and set aside their preconceived notions of "war not being the answer" or whatever little trite slogan they want to trot back out from the 1960s closet. Peace can only be sustained when both sides have satisfactory resolution on their reasons for fighting in the first place. All else is nothing but smoldering the coals and deferring the fighting until later. Peace enforcement and peacekeeping can only keep the lid on while the underlying causes of the conflict are addressed, and that requires cultural understanding and a lot of hard work. In Bosnia, for example, we can take away their guns and stop the fighting, but they will immediately start fighting again when we leave unless you resolve why they were fighting in the first place.
Peace without justice is oppression.
In the case of Bosnia, there are numerous issues of land ownership, killings, and so forth that string back for centuries. How do we sort out and achieve justice for all the killings and counter-killings, all the changing land ownership, etc to resolve their conflict? Good luck with that, but I sincerely hope it works. My main hope is hinged on that the groups involved will look at the rest of Europe and take this lull in the fighting to see how they live and decide they want that for themselves and their children and decide to put aside their anger. Perhaps the only solution there, and in many other places is to pin them down long enough to figure out how good they could have it and let them sort out their differences without fighting, and that they could be far more prosperous in partaking in other activities and cooperating with their neighbors.
The same goes for the Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq fights. Finding Bin Laden is harder than it sounds, but taking down his organization and making him irrelevant is definitely acheivable and for all the noise and smoke you see on the news, the Taliban are hardly resurgent. The drug trade there is also overblown.
Behind all dictators, there is an organization that stand with him. In Hitler’s case, it was the Nazi’s, in Saddam’s case, he had a large bureaucracy and a segment of society who had it good under his rule who did not want to see that change. Just going in and snatching either bin Laden or Saddam wouldn’t have changed a lot, because the #2 baddie would’ve stepped up to the plate. #2 may not have had the charisma or leadership or either of those two, but they would still have the staff, expertise, money, and organization to conduct their operations. You can’t just take out bin Laden and expect all of al Qaeda to collapse, and you can’t liberate Iraq by, say, assasinating Saddam. You have to address the organization and that requires a broader use of force than just the one man. Call military force a blunt instrument, but part of that bluntness is by design and for good reason. Kim Jong-Il doesn’t have the charisma, physical strength or martial prowess to oppress that whole country by himself, so how is he starving them all and diverting the money to himself and all his cronies? Doesn’t that imply we need a broader approach than just snatching Kim and his nukes?
You and the author are dead right about Rwanda and Darfur, but who is doing anything about it? Who should? The US is already pretty heavilly committed, as are the British, and, yeah, actually the Canadians are too. Germany has (or at least had) one of the largest contingents in Afghanistan…do they have troops to spare? Who else? Who has the troops and the capability to get them there and sustain them? How would we achieve lasting results other than just salving our conscience by camping out in Africa for a couple of weeks so the bad guys can regroup and start again two days after we leave? That would certainly save some lives, at least in the short term, and that in itself would be good, but how do we resolve the issue with lasting results? Why does NO ONE (oops, except the US, Canada, and a few others in Somalia back in the early 90s, and the French recently in the West) do anything in Africa?