Israelis and their friends (me included) are wondering what went wrong. Robert Parry, in "Israeli Leaders Fault Bush on War" (Aug. 13) writes:
Amid the political and diplomatic fallout from Israel’s faltering invasion of Lebanon, some Israeli officials are privately blaming President George W. Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure against the Hezbollah militia in south Lebanon. Bush conveyed his strong personal support for the military offensive during a White House meeting with Olmert on May 23....
Olmert, who like Bush lacks direct wartime experience, agreed that a dose of military force against Hezbollah might damage the guerrilla group’s influence in Lebanon and intimidate its allies, Iran and Syria....
"Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things," in other words. So Bush stated in 2001 to a startled Colin Powell, by way of announcing that he had no interest in continuing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and what had been US Middle East policy since 1948. Startling, but Hassan Nasrallah and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would readily agree. Parry continues:
As part of Bush’s determination to create a “new Middle East”...Bush even urged Israel to attack Syria, but the Olmert government refused to go that far....[S]ome Israeli officials thought Bush’s attack-Syria idea was “nuts” since much of the world would have seen the bombing campaign as overt aggression....
While balking at an expanded war into Syria, Olmert did agree on the need to show military muscle in Lebanon as a prelude to facing down Iran over its nuclear program, which Olmert has called an “existential” threat to Israel.
Coincidentally, Bush's reading list for his grudgingly curtailed August holiday consisted of two biographies of Lincoln (great Republican war president) and Albert Camus's The Stranger (existential Arab threat). Parry continues:
But the month-long war has failed to achieve its goals of destroying Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon or intimidating Iran and Syria. Instead, Hezbollah guerrillas fought Israeli troops to a virtual standstill in villages near the border and much of the world saw Israel’s bombing raids across Lebanon –- which killed hundreds of civilians –- as “disproportionate.”
Now, as the conflict winds down, some Israeli officials are ruing the Olmert-Bush pact on May 23 and fault Bush for pushing Olmert into the conflict.
Parry also recounts how this round began:
Soon after the May 23 meeting in Washington, Israel began to ratchet up pressure on the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories and on Hezbollah and other Islamic militants in Lebanon. As part of this process, Israel staged low-key attacks in both Lebanon and Gaza.
The tit-for-tat violence led to the Hamas seizure of an Israeli soldier on June 24 and then to Israeli retaliatory strikes in Gaza. That, in turn, set the stage for Hezbollah’s attack on an Israeli outpost and the capture of two more Israeli soldiers on July 12...the trigger that Bush and Olmert had been waiting for. With the earlier attacks unknown or forgotten, Israel and the U.S. skillfully rallied international condemnation....
Bush and Olmert justified an intense air campaign against Lebanese targets, killing civilians and destroying much of Lebanon’s commercial infrastructure. Israeli troops also crossed into southern Lebanon with the intent of delivering a devastating military blow against Hezbollah, which retaliated by firing Katyusha rockets into Israel.
However, the Israeli operation was eerily reminiscent of the disastrous U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Like the U.S. assault, Israel relied heavily on “shock and awe” air power and committed an inadequate number of soldiers to the battle. Israeli newspapers have been filled with complaints from soldiers who say some reservists weren’t issued body armor while other soldiers found their equipment either inferior or inappropriate to the battlefield conditions...several top military commanders wrote a letter to Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, criticizing the war planning as chaotic and out of line with the combat training of the soldiers and officers.
Sounds suspiciously rummy. Meanwhile, preparations for the shocking and awing of Iran go forward. As Paul Rogers reports in "An Unfinished War," (Aug. 14): "The guns of August might yet become the bombs of October." Just in time to influence the midterm elections. Or would that be too conspicuously Rovian?
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