Keep up with our postings:
register for Consortiumnews.com email updates

Home

Links

Contact Us

Books


Google

Search WWW
Search consortiumnews.com

Order Now


Archives

Imperial Bush
A closer look at the Bush record -- from the war in Iraq to the war on the environment

2004 Campaign
Will Americans take the exit ramp off the Bush presidency in November?

Behind Colin Powell's Legend
Colin Powell's sterling reputation in Washington hides his life-long role as water-carrier for conservative ideologues.

The 2000 Campaign
Recounting the controversial presidential campaign

Media Crisis
Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals
The story behind President Clinton's impeachment

Nazi Echo
Pinochet & Other Characters

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics

Contra Crack
Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History
How the American historical record has been tainted by lies and cover-ups

The October Surprise "X-Files"
The 1980 October Surprise scandal exposed

International
From free trade to the Kosovo crisis

Other Investigative Stories

Editorials


   
Israel Wins Battles, Not War

By Ivan Eland
July 26, 2006

Editor's Note: There are two basic strategies for trying to win a conflict with a difficult opponent. One is to attack and try to destroy the enemy. The other is to do what you can to work out differences, build trust and eventually turn the enemy into someone who may not be a friend but at least is someone you can deal with.

The latter, more peaceful approach often is beset by frustrations, delays, reversals, even provocations. At best, it is slow-going and usually the end result is a less-than-satisfying compromise. The first more aggressive approach may bring some immediate emotional gratification, hitting someone who may deserve it, getting revenge, smiting one's enemy with a brutal "moral clarity."

In the long run, however, violence rarely solves problems, at least if it's applied too broadly. The hatred engendered can last for generations and can surge back to the surface even when a conquered population may appear to be relatively pacified. Almost always, the more frustrating approach of building bridges and making respectful compromises works best.

But Bush administration and the Israeli government (along with a number of Islamic extremist groups) appear determined to give war a chance again. In this guest essay, the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland looks at what may lay ahead in the Middle East:

Conservatives, especially neoconservatives, (and even some pro-Israeli moderates and liberals), admire Israel’s use of muscular tactics to safeguard its security.

Many conservatives also admire Robert E. Lee’s aggressive, offense-oriented tactical victories in the U.S. Civil War. But like Lee, who ultimately lost the war, the Israelis are exhibiting enormous strategic ineptitude.

Lee, using the Napoleonic tactics of the offense, won many brilliant victories by attacking the superior forces of the Union Army. But Lee lost sight of the most basic strategic factor. Although he inflicted many Union losses, such aggressive tactics also caused his own casualty rates to be very high.Lee simply ran out of men before the larger Union Army did.

When the Union eventually installed a general opposite Lee who was competent in both strategy and tactics—Ulysses S. Grant—the North took advantage of superior troop numbers to grind down Lee’s rebel forces. Grant often lost tactically on the battlefield, but relentlessly advanced toward Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, using attrition to destroy Lee’s army.

Like Lee, the Israelis are winning the battle tactically—destroying fighters and projectiles of Hezbollah and Hamas. In Lebanon, they may even succeed in backing Hezbollah away from the Israeli-Lebanese border and establishing a buffer zone patrolled by the weak Lebanese army and some sort of multinational force.

But the Israeli offensives in Lebanon and Gaza will destroy neither Hezbollah nor Hamas, nor the motivation for violence that underlies these groups.

Because the Israeli public still remembers the 18-year quagmire that resulted from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israel probably will not again launch the full ground invasion of Lebanon needed to finally crush Hezbollah. Israeli air strikes alone cannot kill all Hezbollah fighters and destroy all of their weapons and infrastructure.

Similarly, since the Israelis just withdrew their forces from Gaza, it is unlikely that they would permanently reoccupy it in order to fully eradicate Hamas. In fact, Israel’s grossly disproportionate collective punishment of Lebanon and Gaza for the killing and capturing of a few Israeli soldiers will only fuel the anti-Israel fire in both places and the larger Arab world. When hatred has been stoked, lost fighters and weapons can be replaced—and rather easily.

The aggressive Israeli policy of an offensive “defense” created the threat from these groups in the first place. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to get rid of the Palestinian group Fatah, its invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon ultimately led to the radicalization of parts of Lebanon’s Shi’ite community and the creation of Hezbollah.

In Palestine, Israel originally supported Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah. As Israel’s continued occupation began to radicalize the Palestinians and Fatah’s corruption became exposed, Hamas gained support. Today, it runs the Palestinian Authority.

Strategically, Israel’s disproportionate use of military force will not wipe out these groups or the support that they receive from their respective populations. Only a comprehensive negotiated, not unilateral, Middle East settlement—in which Israel gives back all of the occupied territories in exchange for peace and normal relations with its Arab neighbors—will choke off popular support for these radical groups.

Instead of futilely trying to drain the swamp of terrorists militarily, Israel should concentrate on draining their motivation for violence using political means.

Although the Americans have run into a quagmire in Iraq, they finally realize, at least theoretically, that they can’t defeat the Iraqi insurgency through military means. They are attempting to negotiate their way out, but it may be too late. (The Sunni insurgents deliberately attacked the Shi’a in order to start a sectarian civil war, which is now raging.)

Unfortunately, the Israelis are even further behind the slow Americans in coming to terms with reality. They still fail to realize that military solutions, as well as unilateral political actions, are not the answer to guerrilla war and terrorism.

A comprehensive negotiated “land for peace” settlement is the only way to make support for Hezbollah and Hamas evaporate. The more Israel pounds Lebanon and Gaza with its own acts of terrorism, the less likely a negotiated settlement—and an end to terrorism by Hezbollah and Hamas—becomes.


Ivan Eland is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Director of the Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty, and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

Back to Home Page


Consortiumnews.com is a product of The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that relies on donations from its readers to produce these stories and keep alive this Web publication. To contribute,
click here. To contact CIJ, click here.