Another Failed War Effort

The New Yorker magazine reports that the US was heavily involved in helping Israel plan its attacks on Hezbollah before the war started last month. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the US got frantically busy organizing the Mid-East ceasefire on the Israel-Lebanon border after it became clear that Israel was failing to remove Hezbollah from the border area. Therefore, it appears that the US plan to eliminate Hezbollah by airpower alone did not work, and even using significant numbers of Israeli ground troops did not work.

If Seymour Hersh is right and this border war was a preparatory war for a US invasion of Iran, it's good we found it did not work. In some ways the Spanish Civil War was a preparatory war for World War II. The question is, did the neo-cons who want to invade Iran -- Cheney and company -- learn from the Israel-Lebanon war, or not?

Cowardly Response to Terror

NBC reports that the US and Britain disagreed over the timing to arrest the plotters to blow up aircraft flying from the UK to the US. Britain wanted to wait for the plotters to take some overt action; the US wanted to act immediately. Britain wanted to catch the plotters in the act. The US was afraid to wait. The British judicial system requires real evidence; terrorist prosecutions in the US (or in Guantanamo) are star chamber persecutions, because the government is afraid to allow the guarantees to a fair trial provided in the Constitution. And the Bush administration is made up of cowards, who were afraid to confront the plotters. They are bullies who panicked when informed of the plot. Bush and Cheney were draft dodgers during Vietnam. The younger members of the administration are no better. It's a sad day for America!

How Should Israel Defend Itself?

Granted, Israel has a right to defend itself, a right that it has exercised many times since it was created after World War II. Israel has more or less won each of its battles for self preservation, the earlier ones more decisively than the later ones. Despite these victories, it still faces threats from without (Hezbollah) and within (Hamas). It might be in a much better position if it had been more magnanimous in victory as the US was after World War II, restoring both Germany and Japan to major power status. Israel seems doomed to repeat the West's mistakes in trying to keep Germany in subjection after World War I.

Israel might argue that it has recently tried to follow the WW II model by withdrawing from Gaza and Lebanon, and that this effort failed, as illustrated by the current war. I would argue that one or two years of positive effort may not be enough to offset fifty years of negative effort, and that the positive effort has not been enough. It has ignored the West Bank and Jerusalem, for example.

Some argue that Bush represents the Churchillian response to evil, exemplified in WW II by Nazi Germany. However, this view overlooks the possibility that Hitler would never have risen to power if the Allies had not imposed such strict terms on Germany after WW I. Arguably, since the Israelis have emulated the Versailles example, they are doomed to repeat their version of WW II. Maybe they have created their own mini-Hitlers in Muslim countries. If they have, unfortunately, these mini-Hitlers also target the US because of its unquestioning support of Israel. So, we will reap the whirlwind that Israel sowed, and that we fertilized in Iraq.

Pakistan Is Terrorist Hotbed

The recent arrests of some of the British skyjacking team in Pakistan points out the extent to which terrorists use Pakistan as a headquarters, not the least of whom is Osama bin Laden. If there is a connection to Al-Qaeda, as several reports suggest, then the US failure to capture bin Laden becomes a larger and larger failure. Bush needs to get on the stick and catch bin Laden before bin Laden strikes again. The Brits are doing a good job, but what is the US doing?