And then there was war
News Editorial,
Friends of Lebanon
My daughter said one day while doing her homework, “Wikipedia is
just so great.” For the most part, I would agree: instant access to
concise, up-to-date information on practically everything you’d want
to research. But, then again, brevity can come at a cost. To strip
away detailed context can leave a narrative just a crude sketch in
black and white. The problem is that life is played out in shades of
grey.
In attempting to define the July 2006 War in Lebanon, Wikipedia
offers a simplistic description of back and forth battling set off
by the “casus belli” (justification for war) of the kidnapping of
the two Israeli soldiers. Albeit subtle, the fingerpointing-notion
of “well, it’s his fault, he started it!” runs throughout the
article. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War)
Not so subtle is the ostensibly objective fact-provider
“Infoplease.” But their tag-line “all the knowledge you need” should
serve as a caution that the information provided is inherently
subjective. In their timeline of Lebanon history, they offer this as
casus belli: Hezbollah, they state, “enters Israel and captures two
Israeli soldiers on July 12. In response, Israel launches a major
military attack, bombing the Lebanese airport and parts of southern
Lebanon. Hezbollah retaliates by launching hundreds of rockets and
missles [sic]—believed to have been supplied by Syria and Iran—into
Israel.” Did you remember to snarl and hiss as you read “Syria and
Iran”? It pops up so often in the timeline, you’d think it were a
bizarre panto. (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/lebanontime1.html)
Ironically, it is Israel’s own inquiry into the July 2006 War
that is filling back in those vital shades of grey. Haaretz, the key
Israeli daily newspaper, has reported that the start of the 2006
Lebanon War was far more complicated than a knee-jerk reaction to
the infamous military abduction.
(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834572.html) Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert has testified before the Israeli Winograd
Commission that his decision to launch a broad military operation
was made as early as March 2006, four months before the abduction.
Olmert stated that his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, had already been
making preliminary plans, including a list of targets in Lebanon.
Olmert further stated that he had held several meetings (in January,
March, April, May and July 2006) on potential military action
against Lebanon.
Olmert testified these meetings concluded that Israel's goal in a
military operation would be the implementation of Security Council
Resolution 1559, which calls for the deployment of the Lebanese army
along the Israeli border and the disarmament of Hezbollah. Olmert
stated that he was informed in May 2006 by then-National Security
Council head Giora Eiland and by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak
that the Lebanese government would agree to implement Resolution
1559 in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Sheba Farms. (On
Lebanese PM Siniora’s visits in April/May 2006 with US President
George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on this issue,
see
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20060418-2.html
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4984062.stm)
With the ongoing problems of Lebanese and Palestinians held as
prisoners in Israel, abductions and negotiations for mutual release
was standard fare in the region. Interestingly, following the high
profile abduction of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in June 2006 (by
Palestinian forces who wanted Palestinian women and children
prisoners released by Israel in exchange for the safe return of
Shalit), Haaretz reports Olmert testified that “he was certain there
would be a similar attempt to kidnap soldiers on the Lebanese
border. He ordered the IDF to prevent this.” So the IDF was on high
alert. Yet on 12 July—a mere 17 days later—the IDF failed to prevent
the abduction that has now been labeled the justification for the
war.
Justification or pretext? As early as 21 July 2006, Matthew
Kalman, of the San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service, asserted
that Israel had planned its war at least a year prior.
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/21/MIDEAST.TMP)
Kalman reported that “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.
. . . In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The
first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range
missiles, 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.”
This description fits quite well the actual course of events.
(see summary of events at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5218210.stm) Keep in mind the
article was published 21 July, just 9 days into the war. Kalman
quotes Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan
University: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one
for which Israel was most prepared," he said. "In a sense, the
preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli
withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not
going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking
Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three
weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the
last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the
board." (For a detailed description of border activity since 2000,
see UNIFIL reports at
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html)
In her article “Burning Lebanon: Israel's New Middle East,” 27
July 2006, (http://www.counterpunch.org/reinhart07272006.html)
professor and author Tanya Reinhart asserted that the “speed at
which everything happened (along with many other pieces of
information) indicates that Israel has been waiting for a long time
for 'the international conditions to ripen' for the massive war on
Lebanon it has been planning. In fact, one does not need to
speculate on this, since right from the start, Israeli and U.S.
official sources have been pretty open in this regard. As a Senior
Israeli official explained to the Washington Post on July 16,
"Hezbollah's cross-border raid has provided a 'unique moment' with a
'convergence of interests'." The paper goes on to explain what this
convergence of interests is: For the United States, the broader goal
is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which
the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the
strategic playing field in the Middle East.”
Olmert has now testified that his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, was
making military plans against Lebanon when Sharon became ill and
Olmert took office. This confirms Reinhart’s view that even as the
Israeli army left Southern Lebanon in 2000, they planned to return.
To fulfil Israel's military vision, however, it would be necessary
to “clean” the land of its residents, to destroy the country, and to
establish a "friendly regime" in Lebanon, one that would collaborate
in crushing any resistance. These were precisely Sharon's declared
aims in the first Lebanon war. 2006 saw many of these conditions
ripen within a costly second Lebanon war.
In his article “More Than Meets the Eye: The War in Lebanon,” 28
July 2006, (http://www.counterpunch.org/baroud07282006.html),
professor and author Ramzy Baroud states that for years, “Israel's
strategic objective has been to break up the Syria-Lebanon front to
isolate Syria and meddle as always in Lebanon's affairs. . . .
despite its insistence that it left Lebanon for good, Israel never
departed from its original military goal of destroying Hizbollah.”
It just needed a pretext.
Even as far back as November 17, 2002, months before the US
invasion of Iraq, top US officials were explaining on television how
Hezbollah and Hamas had to be annihilated. Nevermind you could fit
all of Palestine and Lebanon put together in one of America’s
smallest states, the US felt threatened. CNN interviewed Florida
Democratic Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Select Intelligence
Committee, and the Alabama Republican, Senator Richard Shelby,
Vice-chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee
(http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0211/17/le.00.html)
Senator Graham stated: “And against those international terrorists
such as Hezbollah and Hamas, we need to be launching attacks on
their headquarters and their training camps so that they will not be
in a position to provide support for their terrorists that are
embedded in the United States or be developing the next generation
of terrorists.”
When asked what specific action should be taken, Graham
responded, “I think what we ought to do is to go to the president of
Syria, who controls most of these organizations, and say, "We have
conclusive evidence that these training camps are in existence,
they're operating in territory under your control, they are in
violation of international law, they represent a threat to the
world. We expect you to take care of this problem, but if you don't,
we're going to take care of this problem.”
Of course he then said he’d already spoken to the Syrian
President about this, but that the President “was still in a state
of denial that there even were these terrorist training camps in his
country and in the Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon.”
When asked if the US must militarily start planning to take out
Hezbollah, Senator Shelby responded “Before they take us out.
Absolutely, we're going to have to do something. . . . What's the
sequence? We're not sure yet. But to sit back and wait till these
camps and these groups train thousands and thousands more terrorists
-- we're going to be in this war for 30 years or more.”
Asked about priorities, Senator Graham, Chairman of the Select
Intelligence Committee, stated, “Saddam Hussein, according to our
intelligence community, is going to be the most dangerous when he is
cornered, when he realizes he's about to lose power, then he strikes
out vengefully, and one of the ways will be through forming
partnerships with these international terrorist groups, such as
Hezbollah, using their agents inside the United States, maybe using
his weapons of mass destruction.”
So what did Saddam Hussein do when he felt threatened? He hid in
a hole.
And those Weapons of Mass Destruction? None.
So much for his intelligence community.
(For discussion on how US policy has remained the same on the
issue of taking out Hezbollah and Hamas, please see previous news
editorial “Foreign Aid.”)
Olmert’s recent testimony reinforces what academics, journalists,
and historians have been saying loud and clear: the July 2006
Lebanon War has its roots not in a simple military abduction, but in
a global political power struggle played out in the battlegrounds of
the Middle East. We may never know the entire story. What we should
know is that when analysing history, even if contemporary, we must
acknowledge its complex nature. Above all, we must be wary of the
post hoc fallacy of logic. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc; after this,
therefore because of this. Chronology does not equal cause and
effect. Because life is not black and white.
