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If you were the leader of a major nation contemplating a war and your chief of staff said he wanted to invade a country to dispel the “sense of us not having a military answer” to the enemy’s strategy would you:
a. go to war immediately
b. knock him down to buck private so fast it makes his head spin
c. ask him what the fuck he’s talking about
Personally, I’d choose b and c.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz told reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday that any military incursion into Lebanon will be limited in scope.
Just like Ariel Sharon promised the Israeli nation before he invaded Lebanon in 1982. 18 years later Israel finally withdrew in defeat.
“We will fight terror wherever it is because if we do not fight it, it will fight us. If we don’t reach it, it will reach us,” Halutz said in a nationally televised news conference.
Doesn’t that remind you of Bush and Cheney telling us that if we didn’t fight Saddam in Iraq that we’d only end up fighting Al Qaeda here in the U.S.?
…”The restraint which we showed over the course of years is interpreted by those among the terrorists as weakness,” the army chief said. “On this count, they made a horrible mistake by assuming that we would persist in holding back and restraining ourselves. Our duty as an army was – and we did as such – to recommend a halt to this development, which stems from a sense of us not having an answer.”
Halutz said that close to 100 Hezbollah gunmen have been killed over the course of the IDF offensive.
“At this time, I can say that many rocket launchers have been destroyed, terror infrastructures have been destroyed and also nearly 100 Hezbollah terrorists have been killed, from all levels and all ranks,” Halutz said. “We will not publish names we know of.”
100? And how does he know this? He says he won’t publish the names. Could it be that he’s afraid that if he does that some of the 100 will somehow spring back to life and give the lie to his “statistics?” You’ll recall that Israel boasted it rained 23 tons of TNT on Nasrallah’s supposed hideout only to find that either he wasn’t there or wasn’t hurt. Israel looks mighty foolish claiming, or appearing to claim Hezbollah leaders are dead, when they turn up quite alive. Or possibly he’s concerned that the 100 names might include civilians mistakenly identified as Hezbollah fighters? If he has proof of his claim let him provide it. Otherwise, it doesn’t deserve credibility.
Halutz’s comment that the IDF went into Lebanon to dispel the notion that it “did not have an answer” to Hezbollah perfectly illustrates the fatal flaw in Israeli strategy. If you invade a country to teach it “a lesson” or because you’re afraid your fellow citizens and the enemy have the notion that you “do not have an answer,” then you’re compiling a recipe for disaster. War should be prosecuted to achieve tightly scripted national interests. Not to make a statement.
“Fighting against Hezbollah is taking a heavy toll on [the group],” the army chief said. “The fact is that they avoid publishing the number of their losses, the names of their men that were killed, and the fact that they feed the press dishonest information [shows] they are disconnected from reality.”
I’ve got news for the general. Hezbollah may be disconnected from reality. But it’s not the only player in the region similarly disconnected. The IDF is doing quite well in that area itself.
One of Halutz’s senior commanders also manages to insult the memory of those Israeli civilians killed due to the IDF’s murderous campaign against Hezbollah and Lebanon’s civilian population:
GOC Northern Command Major General Udi Adam said Friday that Israel is at war and that human life is important, but now is not the time to count the dead.
The Northern Command believes that the fighting in the north will continue for several more weeks, with additional casualties and fatalities.
“We must change our way of thinking. Human life is important, but we are at war, and it costs human lives. We won’t count the dead at present, only at the end. We’ll cry for the dead and will encourage the fighters. There are more places like Meron A-Ras, and unfortunately we’ll have to reach them.”
I know there are many Israelis, perhaps many of the victims’ families among them, who agree with this sentiment. But if I were a family member of someone who died by Katyusha, I’d be royally pissed. What does it mean “we won’t count the dead?” I’ll bet the dead count to their survivors. This sentiment really reflects the IDF’s defensiveness regarding charges that its overwhelming response to the Hezbollah attack fueled the Katyusha attacks that followed. They want Israelis to buck up and stop thinking of the human cost of their military folly in Lebanon.
I don’t know how long Israelis will go along with the charade. But I do know that they will not go along for the 18 years it took to get out of Lebanon the first time. The sooner they wise up the better (bimheyra b’yameinu–”soon and in our day”).
3 year-old Natan Mor calling out for his father, who sustained serious injuries during the Katyusha rocket assault on northern Israel (photo: Rina Castelnuovo/NYT)
Israel’s version of collective punishment: Beirut airport on fire (photo: Adnan Hajj/Reuters)
