[I]n the first days of McNamara's tenure as Secretary of Defense, he invited the Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to explain the US strategic war plan (known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan or SIOP). After the review, McNamara said in horror "General, that's not a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm."
I have been wondering since Tuesday or so, when I started collecting citations for this essay, whether the same might be fairly observed about Israel's response to Hezbollah's provocations.
I say that having already written why, from Israel's point of view, Hezbollah's July 12 cross-border raid indicated a new level of violence by Hezbollah that Israel could not accept nor even risk. The question it faced was not whether to respond, the question was how.
Despite the barrages of essays across media and blog sites about Israel's "disproportionate" response, Israel could not retaliate against Hezbollah with merely a tit-for-tat raid. That would have signaled to Hezbollah that Israel accepted the new terms of the long-going conflict that Hezbollah set with its cross-border raid.
In poker terms, Hezbollah raised Israel $100 and probably expected Israel to call. Instead, Israel raised Hezbollah $1,000. Hezbollah doesn't have it, not in military capital. But Israel may have miscalculated whether Hezbollah can call or even raise in political capital. Its stack of chips may be higher than anticipated.
Not that Hezbollah has been Albert Einstein Israel's Homer Simpson. For example, see Alon Ben-Meir's analysis that there were "Disastrous
Miscalculations" all around.
... it is hard not to conclude that every player involved directly or indirectly has badly miscalculated.
This conflict will not end by a restoration of the status quo ante. Israel will refuse to allow a replay of the last two weeks. This means that there must be a dramatic change in both Lebanon and the Palestinian territories that satisfies Israel’s security concerns and sends the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table in a permanently calm atmosphere. ...
Hezbollah has fared even worse than the Palestinians by badly miscalculating the Israeli reaction and counting on both the tacit and open support of Iran and Syria as well as the support of the Arab masses and governments to save the day.
... Seduced by his own rhetoric about how powerful and mighty Hezbollah is and eager to show solidarity with Hamas, Nasrallah overplayed his hand and now he is likely to pay a crippling price for his grandiosity. ...
But Syria and Iran underestimated the Israeli response. Somehow they were blinded to the fact that Hezbollah had crossed the line drawn in the sand by attacking urban areas inside Israel. To the Israelis this was totally and categorically unacceptable.
As far as the Arab governments' view of the war, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, chief editor of the Arab Times, says that they have swallowed a bitter pill:
Unfortunately we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of “these irregular phenomena” is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community.
It's highly doubtful that Hezbollah thought it would not get even rhetorical support from Arab governments. The Washington Post:
"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."
Hezbollah's cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others has provided a "unique moment" with a "convergence of interests" among Israel, some Arab regimes and even those in Lebanon who want to rein in the country's last private army, the senior Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing conflict.
Israel and the United States would like to hold out until Hezbollah is crippled.
"It seems like we will go to the end now," said Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon. "We will not go part way and be held hostage again. We'll have to go for the kill -- Hezbollah neutralization."
But another point of view is found in Ralph Peters op-ed piece, "War in Middle East A Tragedy of Errors."
Hezbollah got this one wrong. Whoever green- lighted the raid on Israel didn't anticipate the ferocity or scale of the Israeli reaction. Then the Israelis began to miscalculate - reacting impulsively and emotionally themselves. Attacking Hezbollah was fully justified and necessary, but Israel's frustration with the Lebanese government's toleration of terrorists boiled over into folly. Israeli aircraft attacked Beirut's international airport and other targets around the city, doing both Israel and Lebanon's fragile democracy far more harm than good.
Israel hopes to pressure the Lebanese government into taking action against Hezbollah. But Lebanon's leaders can't do that. If they ordered their work-in-progress military to attack and disarm Hezbollah, some Lebanese Armed Forces units would mutiny, others would disintegrate - and any outfits that attempted to take on Hezbollah would be badly and swiftly defeated. And the action would reignite the country's dormant civil war.
After the Israeli strikes in Beirut, Hezbollah then raised the stakes again by raining rockets down on Israeli cities - making it impossible for Israel to limit its offensive.
Counterterrorism Blog analyzes thus about Syria and Hezbollah and the future of Lebanon:
Syria. Reports from military sources suggest that Bashar Assad would like to see Israel enter South Lebanon. For a long time, one of the key drivers of Syria's economy was its domination of Lebanon; after Syria was pushed out last year, its economy took a major hit. Reports suggest that the Lebanese government has essentially ceased being functional. If Israel enters South Lebanon, engages in major combat operations and then withdraws, it will likely leave a power vacuum that the Lebanese government cannot fill. That will pave the way for Syria's return.
Hizballah. Hizballah has already shown that it's capable of taking on the Israeli military. This fact alone will help increase its prestige. Moreover, Lebanon's infrastructure has already been so damaged that Hizballah's social services network is bound to expand -- thus bolstering the terrorist group's standing.
A third consideration is what is likely to happen next. There appears to be little chance of a long-term Israeli engagement in Lebanon. If Israel were interested in a long-term occupation, it would have had to call up far more reserves than it did.
The Lebanese government includes Hezbollah representatives; it's unlikely that any Lebanese will consder the kind of incursion being staged by Israel as I write this to be something other than invasion, no matter how Israel describes it. They risk fighting not only Hezbollah but large numbers of Lebanese soldiers who will desert to join Hezbollah's ranks - except that the Lebanese government might release them to do so in the first place.
Jonathan Steele, writing for The Guardian in Beirut, wonders, "How could both sides have blundered so badly?"
The key questions for Lebanon are whether Hizbullah will emerge from the crisis stronger or weaker, and whether the sectarian divisions that sparked its last civil war will re-emerge deeply enough to launch a new one. ... [A]s Israel continues to destroy the country's infrastructure, killing more than 300 civilians and putting half a million people to flight, anger has forged Lebanon-wide unity. ...
Strongly anti-Hizbullah Lebanese commentators such as the Daily Star's Michael Young fear that Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, will emerge victorious.
"He doesn't need a military victory in order to secure his political resurrection. He needs only to survive with his militia intact and Israel sufficiently bloodied," he argued yesterday.
I personally think that Israel will be bloodied - Hezbollah has already shown it can fight skillfully and with determination. The question is whether Israel will pay the butcher's bill in its soldiers' blood to ensure Hezbollah's militia survives much less than intact.
I fear that Israel's leaders may have failed to remember what Richard Heddleson emailed me three years ago: "starting a war is like entering a dark room blindfolded." Even if Hezbollah's present ranks get badly depleted by Israel's arms, there will probably be no shortage of volunteers from Lebanon's population to reconstitute it. The enormous violence being done to the country and people of Lebanon, including Lebanese Hezbollahans, may propel Hezbollah, after open hostilities wind down, into a stronger domestic position than ever. It may wind up ruling the whole country.
I wrote near the beginning of Israel's operation that Israel was being forced to react to events rather than proactively shape them.
Despite being on the receiving end of Israel’s sword, it’s far from certain that either Hamas or Hezbollah think they are at disadvantage. In their minds, they may have Israel right where they want it, and they may be right in the long term. ...
All of which means that Israel was forced to react to circumstances rather than create them. Yet the real initiative is political, not military, and Hamas and Hezbollah (unjustly) hold the high ground there. I doubt that Israel’s military actions will reverse that.
For now the West, led by the United States, is giving Israel free rein; the Europeans are mouthing their usual "stop!" platitudes, but not very loudly nor earnestly. Even so, the day will come, and probably sooner than we think, when the West will insist on ceasefire, impelled not by military analysis but from the suffering of the Lebanese people. The calls have already started - actually they began almost the moment Israel sent its first F-16s into Lebanon.
Israel's grave risk is that Hezbollah will not be sufficiently degraded by the time the ceasefire negotiations are held. And, to paraphrase Will Rogers, Israel never lost a war or won a conference.
Now, I admit I could be underestimating the will of Europe, whose leaders may be awakened to the threat Iran poses via Hezbollah by proxy and who may actually understand the disastrous long-term consequences of letting Hezbollah survive. Certainly the "avert my eyes" reaction of the Arab countries is out of pattern for them, and that may make some backbone grow in the West.
As in so many things with such high stakes and countless variables, we shall see.
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