03
Aug
2006
The Middle East: where superpowers go when they go to hell
I haven’t written much about Israel’s assault on Lebanon, or for that matter anything else since the war began, because I find the subject grossly and omnipresently depressing. As a Jew, even the wholly circumstantial one that I am, I find myself suffering from a tribal identification that has made both Israeli atrocities and Israeli wounds over the years intensely and unwantedly painful. I would rather not care — about what Israel does to Palestinians or what Palestinians do to Israel or about what America’s golem-like support for Israel does to our foreign policy, or even about whether or not the new Labor Party chairman represented an honest chance for an honest settlement, or even an honest chance for an honest attempt at an honest settlement of what has, in a triumph of fatal irony, become known as The Palestinian Question.
That new chairman, Amir Peretz, didn’t pan out so well, at least from my perspective: after losing the general election to Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon’s accidental heir, he signed on as the new government’s defense minister, where his job has been to coordinate the collective punishment of first Palestinians in Gaza and now, the Lebanese. But hope springs eternal, which is good because, with the various principals inhabiting that spectrum of personality types marked on the extreme end by Charles Whitman and on the moderate one by Walter Mitty after a five year crank, booze and steroids binge, that seems to be the time frame we’re working with.
At any rate, I haven’t even been following the news very closely; just skimming some blogs and checking headlines, mostly for numbers: this many Katyusha rockets indiscriminately rained down on Israel by Hizbullah, that many civilians killed by Israeli rockets, this many Israelis in air raid shelters, that many displaced Lebanese navigating this many cratered roads and skirting that many bombed-out bridges. For a while I thought there might be a rough correspondence between the number of Hizbullah rockets fired and the number of Lebanese civilians killed by Israel, but then I decided if there was one I didn’t want to know about it, so I stopped counting.
I got briefly interested in a discussion about whether the grumblings aimed at Condoleezza Rice by the Kurtzian element of our society were based on any actual policy differences between her and the latter or were just an allergic reaction to that brief flicker of humanity she showed after learning of the Qana bombing, or were just because, but mostly I simply didn’t want to think about this war because it is, like Iraq, an epically bad seed, with the worst to come once the bombs stop falling.
What finally prompted me to take pen to paper again, virtually speaking, were two items sandwiched around the awful slaughter in Qana. The first was a speech by Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel at the Brookings Institution last week — remarks which he reprised and expanded upon in a Senate floor speech earlier this week — and the second a column guest-posted by Army light colonel Bob Bateman at Eric Alterman’s MSNBC blog.
Steve Clemons at The Washington Note had touted Hagel’s speech ahead of time, and called it “important” and “brave” afterward. My original impression was that it achieved those qualities primarily because Hagel, a Republican, neither drooled nor foamed at the mouth while delivering a major foreign policy speech. When I re-read it, and then read his followup on the Senate floor, I changed my mind: Hagel actually offered a comprehensible if enormously understated assessment of the Israeli campaign against Lebanon and followed it up with substantive suggestions, including the enormously valuable one of finding some method of communicating with the outside world that doesn’t involve blowing shit up or encouraging our remaining regional ally to blow shit up. In the followup, he went further:
How do we realistically believe that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon, is going to enhance America’s image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East? The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate cease fire. This madness must stop.
Well, yes, but of course that didn’t happen, and none of the policy initiatives Hagel suggested are anywhere near as workable now as they were three weeks ago when no one, including Hagel, bothered making them because there’s no one in Washington or Tel Aviv with the desire or capacity to actually do anything constructive. Still, the two speeches taken together put Hagel miles ahead of any other national politician I’ve read on the subject, particularly Republicans, and on that account I’m almost tempted to forgo asking where the hell he’s been during the past six years. (The answer is that there wasn’t an open slot for a statesman-like GOP presidential candidate. Look for more of Statesman Chuck during the next two years.)
So that’s Hagel. I read the Brookings speech and thought I ought to write something about it, and then the Israelis capped off Genghis Khan Week with Qana, and I thought, oh, to hell with it. And then, surprise, he persisted and my impulse to say something about it lingered. Bravo, Chuck. Where the hell have you been?
Then there’s Lt. Col. Bateman, Alterman’s guest and possibly his alternate universe amanuensis as well; the two men are both well educated and well read, with a shared partiality for Clausewitz. The general thrust of Bateman’s column yesterday was that Americans should read more history, military history in particular, and gain a sharper appreciation for and recognition of the fine art of propaganda. Along the way, he tossed in some comments on the legal significance of proportionality in war, in connection with an excursion into the land of questionable war reporting, and an odd little nod toward a Lebanese lampoon of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah (which was pretty funny as is, and no doubt lost something in the translation, but wasn’t in the same league as Stephen Colbert’s treatment of our own Dread Pirate).
I’m assuming Colonel Bob, as he invites readers to know him, arrived at Alterman’s site with an agenda, and I assume that in this instance it consisted of introducing a generally liberal readership to the possibility that Hizbullah’s shepherds are pulling the wool over our eyes, with the help of variously witting media accomplices. Here’s what he had to say about proportionality.
[After thoroughly embarrassing herself during a discussion of artillery rockets, the CNN reporter] conflates the legal issue of “proportionality.” I enjoin you to examine Just War theory for this one. My recommended work is Michael Walzer’s, Just and Unjust Wars, which includes a section on this topic. In short, really short, the number of casualties is not supposed to be measured, the means and ends are. Thus, if you deliberately target civilians, to no purpose, that is wrong according to the UN and Geneva. If you strive to avoid civilians, but they are killed anyway during a pursuit of a legitimate military target, this is not considered a part of the equation. Oh cripes, there is so much more, but you need to read it for yourself. That is hard, but that is what the UN and Geneva say. You’re not entitled to your own facts. No matter what Wikipedia says. And no matter how far the truthiness meter is pegged, the same applies to journalists who are reporting on war. You do not get to make up truths. (Now, if somebody believes that the Israelis deliberately target the people in that building because they are civilians, that would be different.)
It’s not entirely clear, but I think Colonel Bob’s point was that the reporter was trying to contrast the casualties inflicted by Hizbollah’s rockets with the casualties inflicted by Israeli strikes, and that proportionality is a matter of intent and not numbers.
The problem with this formulation is that in its most noble incarnation, it rewards what the (very) charitable might call benign incompetence. Carried to an extreme, which a disinterested observer might be inclined to think Israel is in the process of doing in Lebanon, the Colonel’s interpretation of proportionality would excuse the eradication of a nation if it was an honest mistake. At some point — and I think that point is at least reached when one side in a conflict accidentally kills more civilians in a few minutes at a single go than the other side has killed soldiers and civilians combined during the entire course of the conflict — the doctrine becomes meaningless, and most likely quite deliberately so in this instance.
By way of counting, Israeli officials estimated over the weekend that they’ve killed some 200 Hizbollah fighters. Lebanese government sources and various NGOs put the civilian death toll in Lebanon at somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000, with some ambiguity arising from the difficulty in retrieving bodies caused by, among other logistical challenges, Israeli attacks on clearly marked emergency vehicles. Does proportionality flex to accomodate the killing of five civilians for each combatant? According to Colonel Bob, the answer is an unequivocal yes, at least where Israel is concerned.
That’s if you believe Israel is fighting a Just War rather than just fighting a war, and if you’re willing to flirt with or just fling yourself into the arms of insanity, which certainly isn’t the social faux pas it once was.
We need George Marshall and we get George Bush. Go figure.
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“Where superpowers go when they go to hell” is a title good enough to get me interested. But after reading it, I think it was written ONLY to elicit responses. What a waste of obvious talent.
August 3rd, 2006 at 11:51 pmI generally want readers to comment on what I write, but in this case I was just trying to clear my head a bit and cheer myself up. Thanks for the kind words about my obvious talent, though.
August 4th, 2006 at 12:10 amI have struggled to figure out exactly what “disproportionate” and “intent” means, and how it should affect our judgment.
Disproportionate is the easier of the two for me to understand. I take it to mean that your response must be in proportion to the potential threat you are facing, not to the actual violence occurring.
Intent is usually applied in the following manner: If you didnt mean to kill those 50 civilians when you levelled that apartment building, then your hands are clean. The trouble I have with this one is I dont understand how anyone, in this day, with as much historical evidence as anyone should have, could claim that civilian deaths resulting from dropping bombs on city streets, destroying electrical grids and water supplies were unintended.
Which brings me to the problem with both of these issues: who determines intent and proportionality? Why, we do. Many have claimed Hezbollah poses an existential threat to Israel, so Israel is justified in wiping Lebanon off the map. Unsurprisingly, these are the same people that support Israel’s aggression.
These two principles boil down to a simple claim; what we do is just and what they do is unjust QED. Following their logic, if Al Qaeda had notified everyone in NYC of their incoming attack on 9/11 by dropping leeflets throughout Manhatten and claimed that they were only trying to stunt our military capabilities, their assault would have been justified. Or more applicably in Lebanon, if Hezbollah would only notify Israelis that they are going to fire rockets at them and they should clear out, then they satisfy the intent argument.
I have probably gone on enough, but those are some of the thoughts that go through my mind when reading about proportion and intent…
August 4th, 2006 at 6:55 amJustin, yeah: your point about notifying civilians that they’re about to get creamed unless they leave is highlighted by Alan Dershowitz’s recent argument that the definition of “civilian” is infinitely malleable, and by an Israeli official who said that anyone left in south Lebanon now is by definition linked to Hizbullah, which makes it impossible for Israeli forces to kill civilians because they’ve been redefined out of existence. Kill ‘em all …
August 4th, 2006 at 8:46 amWanna be a great writer rather than just another highly-talented-but-self-absorbed genius sleeping under a bridge?
Then:
Clarify, clarify, clarify.
Purge self, purge self, purge self.
Be reader’s host, servant, slave.
Put reader’s interest above your own.
Always, always, always.
And good luck to you.
August 4th, 2006 at 10:55 amAn interesting article,and some interesting links. I am a little disconcerted by Col Bob’s rather one sided (and one dimensional analysis) argument, together with the request that:
“If anyone has examples (links) of similar propaganda from Israeli television, or British or French or German, please send it along ”
Having admonished his readers for their lack of historical reading, he might consult the canonical Israeli history that has been so deconstructed by the ‘New Historians’ in Israel as well as by people like Norman Finkelstein (such as his Image and Reality of the Palestine-Israel conflict), for such examples.
It is also interesting that he commends Michael Walzer’s, ‘Just and Unjust Wars’. Walzer was motivated to write this book following the US’s actions in Vietnam as well as his growing concern with Israel’s growing use of force. In fact, in his subsequent book ‘Arguing about War’ he addresses Israel’s over-reaction to the first Intifada, and the difference between acts of terrorism (which Yitzhak Rabin similarly recognised) and a popular movement for self determination. One might extend this to an uprising or resitance against an invading force, which is certainly what Lebanon has now become if opinion polls can be trusted. In which case- are all Lebananese now terrorists, as this suits a more and more careless (perhaps even criminal) indescrimate force by Israel ? Walzer’s argument seems to suggest otherwise, and Col Bob’s first example of propoganda might just be he willingness of some in the Western media (himself included so it seems) to suggest otherwise- afterall, it all comes down to “the number of casualties is not supposed to be measured, the means and ends are” doesn’t it.
Still, he seems more concerned with the fact that a reporter is ignorant of the fact the Katushka rockets cannot be ‘shot down’ and so leave Israeli towns vunerable, and it the ‘ends’ justify the indescriminate bombing of civilian targets, then so be it. No worry that there is little reporting (in context) of the Israeli incursions across the ‘blue line’ the extra judicial killings of suspected Hizbullah leaders, no mention of the fact Israel refuse to give details of the landmines they laid during their occupation (one that took them onver 20 years to comply with a UN resolution to withdraw).In short, no context. Col Bob- propoganda can be as much by ommission as by commission- and to exclude Israeli press releases, official statements etc from the catagory of propoganda, is absurd in the extreme. Having just asked us to believe that Israel never intentionally targets civilians, he now commends us to ignore anything they say in support of this claim as an example of propoganda.
He also seems somewhat confused over the application of the Geneva convention as opposed to its drafting. No one is entitled to their own facts, and thankfully, neither is Col Bob, which is why such issues as war crimes are tied by a court, to consider whether such actions were unintentional, or were a deliberate policy. Like all matters legal, what may be written in black and white on a page, is still subject to legal interpretation.
Israel’s problem is its disproportionate use of lethal force. Granted, as he points out, war is an awful business and we should not be spared from seeing its consequences (which to be fair, he does not shy from), but there comes a point when the ordinary person just says ‘this is enough !’ and any further use of force turns someone from being sympathetic about self defence, to suspecting something more sinister. Such perceptions are not helped by Israeli military officials talking about ‘setting back Lebanon by 20 years’, of ‘cleansing’ and- as of today, claiming that an attack on Tel Aviv will result in the destruction in ALL Lebanese infrastructure. But of course, such official pronouncememnts aren’t ‘propoganda’, so don’t qualify. I would rather hope that this might be propoganda and not a threat, but given Israel’s recent actions, one can only conclude that the latter is the more likely. It seems Col Bob’s readership are not the only ones that might benefit from reading a little more widely, perhaps even of the very authors the writer commends to his audience.
August 4th, 2006 at 1:21 pmI appreciate sane voices of whatever political party, but when some Republican firmly and consistently goes against his/her own party, I will respect them. The voice above the fray is nice and all, but what does it give us concretely?
Perhaps, if he changed his party label to “I,” since being a Republican that needs to in some fashion consistently support the President means you are part of the problem/atrocity, it would actually mean something.
I’m sympathetic to the “not care” hopes. Thus, the idea that “well they are mostly killing non-Americans, so that’s something” sentiment of some people. Childhood teaching respecting humanity and so forth ruined me, I guess.
August 4th, 2006 at 1:49 pmReich, it’s good advice and I’ll endeavor to follow it, most of the time. For the record I’ve never slept under a bridge, although it’s mostly a matter of geographic privilege.
Joe, I guess we’ll see whether Hagel has any staying power or influence. It’s sort of funny, in a sad way, that he’s staked out a position that was available to Democrats for years: touting a responsible foreign policy without the downside of being held responsible for enacting it.
August 4th, 2006 at 5:26 pm