Israel Planned Lebanon Strike w/Bush-Cheney for More than a Year

leveymg

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Sun Jul-23-06 10:41 AM
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Israel Planned Lebanon Strike w/Bush-Cheney for More than a Year

Edited on Sun Jul-23-06 11:12 AM by leveymg

Some interesting reports that Israel has been planning and talking with the Bush Administration for more than a year about its military incursion into Lebanon. According to an article in The San Francisco Chronicle, nothing about the seemingly sudden spread of hostilities in the Middle East comes as a surprise to the White House.

Of course, this coincides with the run up to American elections which predictably threaten a disaster for the GOP rivaling its military debacle in Iraq. Only a wider regional crisis, one which entails the possibility of a real war with massive American casualties, can hope to deflect that outcome.

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This was reported in The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/21/MIDEAST.TMP

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range (rockets), bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

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This is mirrored in a column by Juan Cole yesterday, "War on Lebanon Planned for at least a year":
http://www.juancole.com/2006/07/war-on-lebanon-planned-for-at-least.html

That this war was pre-planned was obvious to me from the moment it began. The Israeli military proceeded methodically and systematically to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure, and clearly had been casing targets for some time. The vast majority of these targets were unrelated to Hizbullah. But since the northern Sunni port of Tripoli could theoretically be used by Syria or Iran to offload replacement rockets that could be transported by truck down south to Hizbullah, the Israelis hit it. And then they hit some trucks to let truck drivers know to stay home for a while.

That is why I was so shaken by George W. Bush's overheard conversation with Tony Blair about the war. He clearly thought that it broke out because Syria used Hizbullah to create a provocation. The President of the United States did not know that this war was a long-planned Israeli war of choice.

Why is that scary? Because the Israeli planning had to have been done in conjunction with Donald Rumsfeld at the US Department of Defense. The US Department of Defense is committed to rapidly re-arming Israel and providing it precision laser-guided weaponry, and to giving it time to substantially degrade Hizbullah's missile capabilities. The two are partners in the war effort.

For the Bush administration, Iran and Hizbullah are not existential threats. They are proximate threats. Iran is hostile to US corporate investment in the oil-rich Gulf,, and so is a big obstacle to American profit-making in the region. Rumsfeld is worried about Iran's admission as an observer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is to say, that he is worried about a budding Chinese-Islamic axis that might lock up petroleum reserves and block US investments. If Chinese economic and military growth make it the most significant potential challenger to the Sole Superpower in the coming century, a Chinese alliance with the oil-rich Muslim regions, including Iran, would be even more formidable. The Shanghai group has already pulled off one coup against Rumsfeld, successfully convincing Uzbekistan to end US basing rights in that country.

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Of course these plans have been in place for more than a year. The concept of a preemptive attack on Iran was vetoed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2004. Reports broadcast about Cheney's ordering nuclear first-strikes against Iran sounded more like sabre rattling rather than realistic military planning. This is the real alternative -- more conventional -- plan of attack. Rev up sympathy for Israel, let the Israeli military loose on Hamas and Hezbollah as a provocation to their allies, and then if that doesn't draw Syria and Iran into hostilities, one more step will be required. A phony showdown over Iran's WMDs.

The hope is that Iran/Syria do something stupid in response to this display of Israeli muscle-flexing in Lebanon and Palestine that would justify a more active, direct American role in the conflict.

The connection with Iranian "missiles" and Shi'a "terrorists" has already been established in the heads of most Americans, so a progression to an actual strike against Iranian and Syrian missile sites would now be much more politically palatable.

However, a successful war with Iran -- one which the U.S. achieves political-military objectives with foreseeable outcomes at an acceptable cost -- is still unrealistic from a military perspective. The uniformed military has been resisting any plan that would involve direct fighting, a shutdown of the Straits, and the likely escalation into a real exchange of WMDs between Iran and Israel. So, I still don't believe that this crisis is actually going to lead to a direct U.S.-Iran war.

Finally, this incursion into Lebanon doesn't seem to be doing much for the Israelis, either, other than killing a bunch of Hezb'allah, "setting Lebanon back twenty years", and expending munitions on both sides. So, I have growing doubts that this is actually going to lead to any real strategic change in the balance of power in the region. It's doing wonders for oil and defense industry profits, which may be the real point of all this carnage in the Middle East.