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This morning, Josh Marshall links to Yakoov Katz,"IDF Prepared for Attack by Syria," Jerusalem Post, 30 July. Both Josh's post and the article bear close and full reading, but the article's conclusion is extraordinarily disturbing.
[Israel Defense Forces] officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.
That would be astonishingly irresponsible. This administration's war in Afghanistan is not yet successful. Its war in Iraq is not yet successful. It apparently gave Israel the green light to launch its attack on Hizbullah. Lebanon's prime minister now sees it as an attack on the whole of Lebanon. Katz points out that both Israel and Syria have refrained from expanding that war with attacks on each other. If the IDF reports are accurate, American officials are continuing to play a despicably reckless and foolish role in the Middle East.
You write as though the Israelis were so naive as never to have contemplated the idea of attacking Syria of their own volition. News flash: they aren't that naive. Attacking Syria is a live option in Israeli strategic thinking--and has been since 1967. (Recall the absence of a peace treaty between Israel and Syria...)
So it's not as though the Israelis are somehow being prodded, helplessly, by the Americans into doing something that--gasp--they'd never thought of. It's more likely that the Americans are giving the Israelis a green light in advance to do something that the Israelis may well be contemplating.
Anyway, the Israelis are not automatons. If they don't want to attack Syria, the Americans can't force them. And I haven't heard Ehud Olmert complaining about the prodding, have you? So where, I repeat, is the problem?
Your claim about "expanding" the war misses the point. If Syria is Hezbullah's supply line, the war has already "expanded" from Syria. Indeed, it didn't "expand" from or to Syria--that's one of the places it began. The question is whether it ought in consequence to expand to Syria in a way that makes the Syrians feel some pain for their actions. I am not recommending that the Israelis do something they don't want to do. I am saying: it makes sense to do it, should they so decide. (I actually put it that way in my original post, but leave it to you to ignore what adversely affects your rhetorical indulgences.)
The idea is that if they (the Syrians) do feel that pain, they will stop supplying Hezbullah, causing the war to shrink to the point where it should have been had Lebanon disarmed Hezbullah in the first place. I personally would find that gratifying to my "vital interests."
I realize that you regard yourself as the moral paragon here, exclusive in your lofty concern for casualties and suffering, but remarkably, other people have these concerns, too. And some of these other people believe that there is ultimately only one way to stop the mounting casualties, and that is for Hezbullah to be defeated. Strategy 101: you can't defeat an enemy that keeps getting resupplied from somewhere exogenous to your declared field of battle. That means cutting their lines--and going after them even if they cross a political border.
Back to you, General Luker. Where is the "malevolent incompetence," again? Hint: try to be on topic, try leaving Dick Cheney out of it, and don't try to speculate about my biography.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
Comment removed by HNN editor. 8-4-06
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
My biography doesn't interest you, and yet you insist on bringing it up. My arguments don't seem to interest you, either--which is why you consistently leave them unrebutted.
I may not interest you, but rest assured that you interest me: what is pathology, after all, but the subject-matter of the clinician?
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
What's so "absurd" about it?
Luker's claim is: if the report is true, US policy is despicable. Well, what if Syria constitutes the supply line to Hezbullah--as the IDF also alleges? (We are, after all, taking IDF pronouncements as the basis for our surmises here, aren't we?) Then if Israel wants to defeat Hezbullah, it has to take the fight to Syria. It's Strategy 101 that when you face an enemy, you cut their supply line. If you don't, you're wasting blood and treasure: you hit the enemy; they get resupplied, you hit them again, they get resupplied again, etc. THAT is absurd.
The question is whether Israel is justified in fighting Hezbullah. I think so--and I say this as an avowed anti-Zionist. (I reject Zionist ideology, but not Israel's right to defend itself: you could call me the sole member of "Anti-Zionist Clausewitzians for Israel").
If Israel is justified, and it wants to win, then it ought to keep its options open, and hitting Syria is one of them. The Israelis have to ask themselves whether they're willing to take the kind of casualties involved. Maybe they're not; that can't be judged from the outside. But if they're willing, and if the Syrians really are supplying Hezbollah (and the Iraqi insurgents for that matter), what is the problem supposed to be?
Ralph E. Luker -
8/2/2006
What you said didn't even meet the argument that I made. You are simply being obnoxious -- having harassed me via e-mail and making personal attacks instead of arguments. Weeks ago, when you were on the verge of being banned from HNN, you said that you were leaving voluntarily. Why return to the scene of prior humiliation? Unless you have your own pathology that you have to act out publicly? Doing this kind of thing adds nothing positive to your public reputation.
Oscar Chamberlain -
8/2/2006
"'mid-level' people in the administration leak information that often has little connection to the actual policy"
That's true, but of course there are also "official leaks" and all sort of other leaks. Given your experience, are thre any clues that someone on the outside reading about these leaks can look for to figure out who's doing it and why?
Ralph E. Luker -
8/1/2006
My point remains: American officials have no business prodding Israel to attack Syria. I have no illusions about Israeli officials being naive and no interest in your biography. You don't interest me.
Col Steve J -
8/1/2006
The "United States" does not make policy, US leaders do. Given the article and other link in the post cite only one "close Republican big donor," I'm not sure how much weight one should really give the conclusion.
My experience through two administrations at the NSC/OSD level is "friends" of and "mid-level" people in the administration leak information that often has little connection to the actual policy.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/31/2006
The problem is with a major power, such as the United States, prodding a lesser power, such as Israel, into expanding a war, which both Israel and Syria have thus far avoided and in which the United States takes no casualties. You and Dick Cheney might take a different position if your own vital interests were at stake.
Barry DeCicco -
7/31/2006
Is that Jerusalem Post article a clue that an Israeli attack on Jerusalem is about to happen? I can't see it happening the other way around.
S J -
7/30/2006
Agreed, thanks again.
Robert KC Johnson -
7/30/2006
We can only hope this report is untrue. The Syrian regime is despotic and malevolent. But the idea that anyone's interest (except Iran's) would be served by attacking it at this stage is absurd.
I thought Tom Friedman's appearance on MTP this morning got it right--that the administration's diplomacy has made the US hated internationally to a dangerous degree, beyond anything he could remember.
