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Some of the comments are rather good, too.
These insanely abrasive negative comments actually do an excellent job of highlighting Josh's general point on the front page and here. The point being that the conservative elements of American Jewish community will simply not tolerate 1 iota of dissent on the topic of Israel.
This is irrelevent to the discussion, but for the record, I am a Jew, I have lived in Israel, and members of my extended family were killed in the holocaust. I will not be bullied into silence over Israel, and no one has the right or the moral authority to tell me to be quiet.
The offensive in Lebanon is stupid, wasteful, ineffective, and quite frankly cowardly. The poster has every right to point this out. The Israelis are in a literal sense trading civilian lives to minimize their own military casualties, because they are unwilling to take the casualties it would require to dislodge Hezbollah.
For all the flack Israel took for Jenin, most honest observers including many Arabs had to concede that Israel struck a military target, engaged the enemy on the ground, fought hard, took casualties, and won. That is how you fight a war and win respect. You demonstrate that your goals are important enough to warrant your casualties. If there are military threats that are unacceptable, you commit your men to the task, you attack the threat direcdtly and you eliminate it.
Call the substitution of collective punishment for the dirty, messy, dangerous but dignified job warfare what it is; cowardice.
Sharon would understand that Israel is demonstrating its weakness to Hezbollah, not its strength. Hezbollah will lbe emboldened and delighted to realize that the IDF is afraid to engage them on the battlefield. Isn't that what Hezbollah has been saying about the IDF for years?
Israel has a well trained and effective army, Hezbollah is a real threat and the goal to eliminate them is worthy. I’d advise Israel to stop killing civilians get to work fighting their enemy.
Another:
Part of Israel's overreaction might be to make people forget about the IDF's spectacular screwups of the last few days:
o The capture of Gilad Shalit
o The capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah plus the deaths of 3 others in the same operation. (Something Hezbollah had warned it would do for months.)
o Falling into a trap that led to the destruction of a tank and the deaths of all 4 of its occupants.
o "Forgetting" to turn on the detection/deflection system on one of its most advanced warships.
Is "heck of a job" Brownie running the IDF?
And one more:
Good post, Larry
How about another one recommending a sane Israeli strategy?
I think there is actually some strategic thinking going on here, but it is not necessarily deep and grounded
Hezbollah is problematic to Israeli planners; they would like to see it removed from the border area and delegitimized as a political force in Lebanon; being to tight with Syria and Iran and too hostile.
Since the anti-Hezbollah political factions in Lebanon are weak and weary, Israel seeks to coerce them and also bolster them, into taking transformative action.
For example, a settlement could include a taking over of the border area by Lebanese govt forces, which means withdrawal of Hezbollah, and guarantees (carrot & stick) by Israel dissuading potential attackers of those govt forces.
Along the way to this sort of solution, if Syria and/or Iran get an enhanced bad-guy public image, then that also would please Israeli planners.
This parallels roughly the strategy in Gaza and West-Bank
Which is to promote an outcome where Hamas has been delegitimized politically, and the nexus of military/police force for Palestinians has moved back towards Fatah, PLO, etc.
What these strategies miss are 2 things.
For one, such transformations of power structures require a massive, long-term investment and are not accomplished by week-long mini-wars, unless all the tides of history are with you at that moment (which they are not).
Second, they are vying against a different model of power which is more nationalistic and national-community-based than factional.
Most Palestinians are not hard-core militants and activists of any faction; neither are most Lebanese.
They follow the leadership of factions in order to secure better outcomes for themselves; like strength, prosperity, security, services, connectivity, a future.
When you attempt to destroy the faction in these marginally developed areas, you are attacking the infrastructure of peoples' lives, with nothing left to replace the loss.
The UN can be called upon to ship in supplies, but that is different than the web of life provided by these social (and militant) movements.
It can take years to build an alternative.
So, again this type of transformation is not really viable unless history has brought some alternative movement and network close to the surface. One which embraces the ethnic and religious groups in question, that is a 'safe' choice for people.
Because of the history of Fatah/PLO leadership, people in Palestine wanted a change, they are weary of the past.
So, although they technically exist as an option, they would need to be reborn as something new.
Sadly, the agreement to join with Hamas in supporting documents pertaining to peace was perhaps the early point of such a birth.
Similarly in Lebanon; a replacement for Hezbollah must grow organically, and including them in the political process more and more tightly is probably the best way to grow that.
Strangely, and counter-intuitively, these types of attacks may bring greater unity of a sort in Palestine and Lebanon, which though being problematic in being anti-Israel, may be useful in eliciting more coherent national visions for those areas, and thus ultimately help produce neighbors which are more predictable and easier to relate with.
Still, it would be better to walk forward, open-eyed into the future, rather than being dragged forwards in a crazy fashion.
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