<http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/09/facts_and_myths_about_t he_isra_1.html> http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/09/facts_and_myths_about_th e_isra_1.html
Facts and Myths About the Israel-Hezbollah War I received lots of hate mail yesterday in response to my <http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/09/shock_and_awe_in_lebano n.html> "Shock and Awe" piece, some accusing me of working for the Israelis, the CIA or -- even worse -- the State Department. Others called me a tool, a puppet, an errand boy, or a plain fool. My guess is that there is little I could say to "prove" my views on the Israel-Hezbollah war. The camps are pretty well established; their positions hardened. Yet I want to write a "myths and facts" column to try to establish some baselines, regardless of their popularity. My observations on the ground in both countries and my discussions with experts and government officials paint such a different picture to the dominant we-have-the-answer-to-what-this-all-means position, officially as well as among the public. I don't mean to promote a morally relative take on what happened, or suggest Hezbollah and Israel are equivalent because both went to war. To me, the issue isn't that one man's massacre is just another's military success. The problem is the massacre itself. We have grown exaggerated in describing war. The words "massacre," "genocide" and "war crimes" flow too freely. I didn't see any massacres, period. I didn't see any wholesale killing of civilians. There was no genocide. Before my laptop blows up with screaming comments about what I didn't see, didn't want to see, couldn't see, about the number of children killed, about Qana, about that Canadian family, or Red Cross convoys and hospitals attacked, environmental devastation worse than Exxon Valdez, depleted uranium, hundreds of this or that destroyed. Please. What happened is bad enough. The truth suffices. Fact: Hezbollah operated from southern Lebanese villages and towns, virtually owning their controlled areas. They managed to fire almost 4,000 rockets into Israel and another 1,000 anti-tank missiles against Israeli forces on the border and in southern Lebanon. This means hundreds if not thousands of combatants, scores if not hundreds of launch and supply points. To say Hezbollah was nowhere near villages where the Israelis killed civilians or that Israeli attacks were unconnected to Hezbollah is false. Israel unleashed a pre-planned military campaign to destroy Hezbollah. I believe it used archaic justification to define legitimate action against Hezbollah, and Israel's reasoning in attacking Hezbollah "infrastructure" -- particularly in Beirut -- was sloppy. But Israel didn't bomb the Lebanese electrical power grid, Lebanese water or sewage infrastructure, Lebanon's "refinery," hospitals or schools. Yes some were damaged in in the fighting, but the fact is, there was some attempt to discriminate, Lebanon wasn't systematically destroyed. Were there roads and bridges, factories, financial institutions, fuel storage, airports and apartment buildings in Beirut that Israel bombed in their pursuit of contorted military missions: threats to Lebanon, signaling, escalation, coercion and leadership and crony-attack? There were. Israel was "indiscriminate" in these endeavors only in the sense that it did not make a holistic analysis of the military benefit relative to the human (and political) impact. Someone should have said, "Enough already," for what is being achieved militarily. Someone should have said the accumulation of buildings or bridges begins to tell a different story, and that story, if it is not the intent, is one to be avoided. Such argument, however, would necessitate adhering to the facts and distinguishing between what happened and what was imagined. I'm interested in a far more fundamental critique of the use of military force, one that relates to the weakness of internal military justification, one that pushes in the future for militaries to reconsider dominant strategies in order to minimize harm to civilians and preserve the fundamental distinction between military and civilian. This is an almost impossible task given public views I've observed, both in Lebanon and Israel, and in the blogosphere. Two dominant narratives emerge in the comments on this site: One is anti-Israel and holds to the view that Israel planned and prepared aggressive war against Lebanon well before the July kidnappings. Hezbollah, in this narrative, was small and ineffective, and the true Israel target was the Muslim world, which was devastated intentionally: for harboring Hezbollah, for fronting Iran, and because Lebanon represented modernity and accommodation and needed to be set back. In this conspiratorial narrative, factories in Lebanon were bombed because they had the potential to compete with Israeli companies or because the United States asked they be bombed because they had the potential to compete with American ones. As the Israel-haters get lost in their denunciations and conspiracies, they further conclude that no reason is possible in dealing with the Israelis. Their view is that they have always been shown to be aggressive and indifferent to human life; they need to be eliminated. On the other end of the spectrum is the Israeli smoting section. Israel may have erred by failing to fight more aggressively, go in on the ground sooner, train its reservists to super-status, get hot meals to the front, react earlier. When it comes to the anti-terror narrative about the enemy, there is no consideration for what could have been different or how the enemy could be better or more compassionately understood. There is one story: Hezbollah abused the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon to build up offensive arms and create a state within a state, all done under the watchful eye of Lebanon, and with the support of Syria and Iran, for the purpose not of filling a political vacuum, nor for defense against Israel, nor for recovery of territory or of Lebanese prisoners. Hezbollah, in this narrative only exists to destroy Israel. What it wants is Jerusalem and elimination of the Jewish state. These are terrorists with whom one cannot reason; they prey upon civilians; they only understand military force and must be eliminated. Israeli military types and political leaders hail their success in eliminating Hezbollah's long-range missile threat, killing more than 500 Hezbollah fighters, setting back Hezbollah's military capabilities and infrastructure "two years," dislodging Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, demonstrating that the country is no longer hesitant to respond to individual provocations, creating a high "price tag" for anyone who attacks Israel. Meanwhile, Israel did not achieve some of top objectives: the return of the captive soldiers, "annihilation" or elimination of Hezbollah; or destruction of Hezbollah's rockets. U.S. intelligence now believes that Hezbollah possesses about 9,000 rockets, even after the fight. Hezbollah did not defeat Israel on the battlefield, but they won the hearts and minds of many. Hezbollah's own narrative as it moves forward will be that it survived the best that Israel could throw at it, that only a few of its fighters were killed, that only civilians were hit, that only it stood up to Israel and was victorious. Oh, there are facts, and they poke holes in both the Israeli and Hezbollah lines, and demolish most of the unwashed presumptions about the war. It just doesn't seem that many engaged in the debate are too interested in facts getting in the way. By William M. Arkin | [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
