Shut Up, Condi
It’s not just the voice inside her head, telling her she’s once again gone a bridge too far in her role as enabler of Bush’s dreams of glory instead of serving as the hard-eyed strategist, vigorous critic, and protector of America’s interests, international standing, and security she’s supposed to be.
It’s the desperate, squeaking voice of the Israeli government, realizing it bit off more than it can chew, and desperately attempting to draw attention from its egregious attack on the government and society of Lebanon.
If you look at Haaretz, the standard-issue narrative of the current war is pretty clear: plucky IDF David battles Hezbollah/Syria/Iran Goliath in order to ensure the security of northern Israel.
That happens to be a narrative that most people, including a lot of people who don’t necessarily endorse the Israeli view of security policy, don’t really have a problem with.
The problem is with the parallel narrative that Israel and the United States have been pushing: that Lebanon must be bullied into participating in Hezbollah’s destruction by a punitive country-wide air campaign.
The one that the Bush administration, with its Apocalpyse Pow strategy of forcing end of days choices on the Middle East through escalating military action, has put at the center of its policy and image in the region.
The policy of destabilization that the USA and Israel, as far as I can tell, pushed on Lebanon, our allies, and the region without consultation or even ultimatum.
And what’s been done in the name of this strategy!
It’s no surprise that people feel queasy at the whole collective punishment angle: bombing the Beirut airport, bombing the dairy farm, bombing the Christian-owned TV towers, bombing the Red Cross ambulances, bombing the bridges and roads and trucks…
…you get the picture. Lots of bombing against non-Hezbollah targets.
The “pinpoint strikes by humanitarian militarists” theme took a big hit when, for some inexplicable reason, the IDF engaged in serial attacks on a UN observation post despite repeated pleas to desist, and then killed the four UN guys not by anything like a stray shell, but by a precision munition that targeted and destroyed the bunker the desperate victims were hiding in.
And 700,000 citizens of Lebanon are refugees — about 20% of the country — is on the road, terrorized by bombings, hot, thirsty, afraid, and pissed-off. They’re not necessarily Hezbollah fans or Sh’ia.
They’re voters.
Even if the Saniora administration was utterly callous in its feelings toward the refugees — which I don’t think it is — Lebanon as a democracy would have to take into account the suffering and anger of those people, and demand an immediate cease fire on humanitarian grounds instead of holding its citizens hostage to whatever draconian anti-Hezbollah bargain that Washington and Israel try to impose.
The fact that Washington disregarded this factor says something about the shallowness of our commitment to democracy promotion in the Middle East.
Now time is running out, and with it the benefit of the doubt that Washington and Tel Aviv expected would accrue to them internationally as success, overwhelming force, and the understandable desire to be on the winning side overcame objections to a reckless and immoral policy.
Instead, failure feeds a growing sense of anger and disgust at the United States and Israel.
The Sunni and democratic forces that the Bush administration so confidently added to the Israeli side of the ledger in opposition to Hezbollah have failed to materialize, Hezbollah itself has not folded like a house of cards, the refugee and political crisis inside Lebanon grows, and the IDF, instead of driving events, seems to be plowing into a quagmire.
Now, Tel Aviv and Washington have to start dealing with the consequences of a policy that has failed in its primary objective and only succeeded in inflaming millions of people against the United States.
The correct recipe in this case is face-saving climb-down, a transparently false but conciliatory assertion that Israel was only interested in clearing a measly 1 km strip of the border of Hezbollah fighters and rockets.
And let’s forget that whole idea that Israeli bombing and American diplomatic pressure would bring the weight of the world on Hezbollah’s back and crush it.
So listen to that inner voice, Condi.
Shut up.
Israel seems to be more forthright and clear-eyed in post mortems of its national security escapades than the United States.
So I hope the Knesset will come up with a report detailing how this cockamamie campaign to somehow purge Hezbollah from Lebanese society and politics gained any traction.
I don’t think Israel would have taken this absurd and unrealistic gamble without outright U.S. incitement, let alone support.
I have a feeling the trail will lead back to certain group of guys and gals in Washington who never gave up on the idea of forced transformation of the Middle East through aggressive military action, and who assured Israel that the Bush administration would stick with the program even in the face of the world’s outrage until final victory over Hezbollah/Syria/Iran was achieved.
And while they’re at it, I think an investigation of the initial incident that Israel used as pretext for the invasion is due.
On Antiwar.com I read that after the IDF soldiers were abducted — in Israeli territory, as we’ve been told a zillion times — their empty tank somehow drove itself so deep into Lebanese territory that the Israelis still haven’t been able to recover it.
What’s with the tank, guys?
