On Tap

So, Israel is now at war. No two ways about it. When you’ve got tanks and infantry in the field, planes dropping bombs, and naval vessels off shore to contribute the occassional shelling, you’re at war. Laying aside whether Israel’s actions of late are appropriate (at the moment, it seems to me that they are), the whole situation is pretty depressing for another reason.

Just this spring, Lebanon had become a real source of hope in the region. After decades of civil war, brutal government and internal strife, democracy seemed to have taken hold. Jim had the story here and here. The country was rebuilding. Beirut was on the road back to being a shining, seaside city instead of a house of death.

Now, in just a few days, all of the hopeful progress seems to have been undone.

There’s no doubt that Israel will prevail in whatever its military objectives might be. But the damage done to Lebanon will be lasting, as the militias and influence of Syria’s secret police likely return to the country. All of that will make peace in the wider region very much harder to achieve.

Jim: Amen to much of Marshall’s comments. I think this might be one more trigger in that “Tipping Point” idea I was discussing earlier this year - although since Lebanon has a bit more of a Christian population than your average Middle Eastern nation, recent events will persuade Americans to give up on the Middle East in general, rather than Muslims specifically. I mean…

Every time I’ve looked at this issue, I’ve kind of wondered why certain life lessons never seemed to permeate Arab cultures. Among them, “Do not throw rocks at a man with a gun, unless you want to get shot.” There is also the related lesson, “Do not stand next to a person throwing rocks at a man with a gun, because the man with the gun may miss.”

The Palestinians, the south Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas — so many groups opposing Israel seem to have this death wish. (Okay, Bill Kristol noted that this time around it’s not nations that are fighting Israel - they’re using proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. Sure, Syria and Iran are knee-deep in stirring up trouble, but it’s not like we’re seeing Syrian and Iranian troops moving towards Israeli borders. This is because every nation that starts a war with Israel tends to finish with less territory than they started with.) You, me - we all could have predicted that abducting Israeli soldiers and holding them hostage was not going to bring releases of Palestinian prisoners; it was clear that those actions only invited a massive military counterstrike.

So, to a certain extent, I’m succumbing to the attitude of, “Go to it, Israel.”  Too many folks in South Lebanon (and the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, and in Damascus and Tehran) have wanted this fight and invited it. Want to use live ammo next time you buzz Assad’s house? Go for it. Want to start some strikes on Iranian soil? Go for it. They already hate you, and pledge to kill you every day. The U.N. and Europe already denounce you for daring to fight back. All they’ll do is find new ways to denounce you.

And can those of us outside the region please retire the tired cliche, “continuing and escalating the cycle of violence”?

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at July 15, 2006 - 12:35 pm and is filed under International Relations, Military, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.