Slice Four: European Semi-Fascists

This leads to the darkest and ugliest form of right-wing nationalism that both despises the liberal, cosmopolitan Jewish tradition, even as it supports Israel and Zionism – the European anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim parties, which reach degrees of nastiness that in the U.S. would not be tolerated in mainstream religion or politics, but are relegated to the margins.

I will admit to not following these European parties much, but they take a growingly nasty, semi-fascist tone. They belong to a longstanding and ugly European traditional of blood and soil nationalism, one that has a deep-seated tradition of anti-Semitism, distrusting the Jew as liberal cosmopolite without national loyalty. The current version is much the same, only it substitutes Muslims for Jews as the internal enemy and passionately supports Israel. The old hatred for the liberal cosmopolitan Jew remains, but with the assurance that they hate liberal, cosmopolitan Jews only because they are liberal and cosmopolitan, not because they are Jewish. The distinction between the good Jew and the bad Jew is made far more explicit than any mainstream politician or religious figure in the United States would dare.

To take the most exteme example, consider Anders Breivik. Jews and Zionism were not his primary concern when he opened filre on Norway's Labor Party youth, but the subject did appea in his manifesto. One commentator remarks:

Breivik's "Zionism" coexists with a virulent brand of selective anti-Semitism -- one that sees Jews as likely carriers of cosmopolitan, nontraditional values and targets liberal Jews for special loathing. In his discussion of Nazism, Breivik agrees that most German and European Jews in the 1930s were "disloyal" -- "similar to the liberal Jews today." Hitler's error, he believes, was to lump the "good" Jews with the "bad," instead of rewarding the former with a Jewish homeland in a Muslim-free Palestine.

As for the present, Breivik estimates that about three-quarters of European and American Jews, and about half of Israeli Jews, "support multiculturalism"; he urges fellow nationalists to "embrace the remaining loyal Jews as brothers rather than repeating the mistake of" the Nazis. What to do with today's "disloyal" Jews, he does not say.

Another quotes him as saying“[P]lease learn the difference between a nation-wrecking multiculturalist Jew and a conservative Jew…Never target a Jew because he is a Jew, but rather because he is a category A or B traitor.” Both observe that Breivik is by no means alone. The semi-fascist English Defense League harasses Muslims and is led by a Holocaust denier, but engages in pro-Zionist demonstations. >Meanwhile “a Belgian politician known for his contacts with SS veterans, an Austrian with neo-Nazi ties, and a Swede whose political party has deep roots in Swedish fascism,” met with members of the Israeli Knesset to express solidarity with their stuggle against Arabs.

What is going on? The most obvious answer is simply that Muslims have replaced Jews as the accepted scapegoat and since Israel is a Western outpost fighting the Muslim hoards, it must be an ally. Certainly, I think there is a great deal of truth to that, but I do not think it is the whole truth. The other part of it is that nationalists, even as they define themselves by their enemies, often each other, have a strong affinity for each other just beneath the surface.

At the risk of offending Godwin’s Law, Europe, say, 1870 to 1940 is a fine example. It was in the later 19th Century that right wing and nationalist became synonymous. * Indeed, the right wing's great claim to legitimacy was that they were more patriotic than their rivals. Right wing nationalists, if ever they seemed intellectually unfashionable, might comfort themselves with the thought that liberals with their belief in universal human rights, and socialists, with their international brotherhood of labor, might talk a good game, but can they be counted on when the chips are really down? When the test comes, we’ll see who really stands by their country in its hour of peril.**

Then Hitler invaded, and a funny thing happened. Liberals and socialists patriotically stood up for their countries, while right wing hyper-nationalists all turned out to be a pack of traitors! The remnants (and descendants) of French anti-Dreyfussards, -- who in the 19th Century fiercely protected France from one Jew falsely accused of spying for the Germans -- now collaborated en masse with German occupiers. To this day, French ultra-nationalist Jean Marie Le Pen defends the German occupation as not "particularly inhuman." The same pattern held across much of Europe -- the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Iron Guard in Romania, the Ustasha in Croatia, Quisling's Nasjonal Samling in Norway and an impressive host of other ultra-nationalists, who regularly impugned the patriotism of their opponents, showed that they came to powe by opening collaberating with Nazi invaders. Even the extreme Zionist Lehi approached the Nazis in 1940 to propose an alliance -- Nazis would sent European Jews to Israel and cooperate with them in expelling the British!

Why should this be so? It is easy enough to explain for the liberals – they saw Hitler as an obvious threat to universal human rights. Likewise the Socialists *** saw his hype-nationalism as anathema to an international brotherhood of – well, anything. But why were so many right wing hyper-nationalists the first to cut a deal with the Nazis?

The reasons are varied. In some cases, no doubt they acted out of sincerely patriotic motives, believing that resistance was hopeless than their best chance was to cut the best deal possible. But certainly they would have accepted no such excuses if the positions had been reversed, and the liberals or socialists had been the collaborators and the right wing the resistance. Others defined themselves in terms of some enemy other than Germany and were willing to accept German support on the theory that thine enemy’s enemy shall be thy friend. But it must have become apparent before long that Germany was a far worse enemy than – well, whoever else they opposed. I can only assume that in the end, right wing super-nationalists so often turned out to be traitors who collaborated with Hitler because at some level they saw him as a kindred spirit and liked what he stood for.

As I say, it's easy to call Godwin on these comments and to accuse me of comparing support for Israel with collaboration with Hitler. That is not what I mean. I mean, rather, that ultra-nationalist cooperation with the Nazis is only the most extreme example of all ultra-nationalists being much alike under the skin. And I am saying that European semi-fascists are fond of Israel’s most hard line Likudniks, not out of any inherent fondness for Israel or Jews, but simply because they respect and admire hard line nationalism in all its forms. They despise liberal, cosmopolitan Jews because they recognize libeal cosmopolitanism, not rival nationalism, is the true opponent of ultra-nationalism. And who knows, maybe if push comes to shove, they will discover that Islamic nationalism, too, is a kindred spirit.

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*It was not always so. More on this in my next post.
**Am I being anachronistic here, attributing to late 19th and early 20th Century right wingers the aggrieved resentment at being intellectually unfashionable that obviously so roils the American right today? Mayber, But I am inclined to think that this sort of siege mentality is an important part of right wing authoritarian thinking in any age.
***By socialists, I refer mostly to the Social Democrats, who retained enough of Marx to continue believing in an international brotherhood of labor (and to recognize that it could be preserved only by avoiding international wars), but not enough to take the whole revolution and class warfare too seriously. Communists, by contrast, were little more than Soviet agents. They opposed Hitler when they got the order, but no sooner.

Slice Three: Glenn Beck

Next, we move from Christian Zionists in general to a particular Mormon Zionist – Glenn Beck. Granted, Beck is not so religiously bigoted as a lot of Evangelical Christian leaders. He belongs to a religion they despise as heretical and makes at least the attempt to be inclusive in religious matters. But (as his detractors are fond of pointing out), he dabbles very heavy in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, without ever quite descending into anti-Semitism.

Most notoriously, his "expose" of George Soros as the puppet master was rife with anti-Semitic stereotypes. Some, like the Jew as banker and internationalist have at least the advantage of being based in fact and legitimately controversial. Others are longstannding anti-Semitic classics, like the view of Soros as conspirator and puppet master running a shadow government behind the scenes and controlling all world events. All in all, the portrayal was a sot of latter day Protocols of the Zion Elders. Nor does the Soros piece stand alone. He has promoted anti-Semitic sources from Eustace Mullins, who as blamed Jews for everything from running to Federal Reserve for their own benefit to 9-11 to concentration camps; to Elizabeth Dilling, author of amy anti-Semitic conspiracy screeds and supporter of Nazi Germany, and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who blamed Malaysia's economic collapse on a Jewish plot (led by Soros, or course) against a Muslim economy. Beck's defense, when confronted with with these associations, is to explain that he never actually read the books by Mullins and Dilling that he was promoting. And when he set forth the nine most dangerous people, in the present or recent past, eight were Jewish.

At the same time, Beck is a passionate supporter of Israel. He reaches out to Orthodox Jews. He held his “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem to express his solidarity with Israel (or at least with the most expansionist elements thereof). He generally lets it be known that he regards Israel as a heroic outpost fighting a lonely battle against Islamic extremism, and that the slightest hestitation in our support will incur the wrath of God.

In short, Beck, far more than any mainstream conservative politician or Christian Zionist, makes a clear Good Jew/Bad Jew distinction. In short, Beck sets himself up as arbiter of Jewish authenticity, with authority to decide who is an is not an Authentic Real Jew. Soros is not an Authentic Real Jew because he is an atheist and does not support Israel. Reform Jews are not Authentic Real Jews because of their association with liberal politics. And Israel's tent city protesters are not Authentic Real Israelis, but puppets of the radical left and militant Islam because, well, because Beck doesn't approve of their politics.

And it is this more than anything else, more than Beck's incredibly frivolous Nazi analogies, more than his constant dabbling in anti-Semitic stereotypes, that that has led to conflict between him and the Jewish community, including conservative Jews who would really like to see their fellow Jews move more in Beck's direction. But they are outraged that any goy would presume to have the authority to determine who is an is not a Authentic Real Jew -- especially when his definition is so narrow as to exclude the largest group of practicing Jews in the U.S. and as many as 87% of all Israelis. So he has been forced to walk back his claims that Reform Jews are not Real Jews and that ahe has the prerogative of determining what is legitimate in Israeli domestic politics.

Perhaps Glenn Beck and others like him should consider the possibility that Jewish authenticity may be more broadly defined than they like. The stereotype of the liberal, cosmopolitan Jew is as well established as the stereotype of the Jewish banker and, like so many stereotypes, it persists because there is at least some truth in it. Soros, besides a currency speculato, is a thoroughly international figure who favors international cooperation on many matters that transcend borders. It is not too presumptuous to guess that one reason he has no fondness for Israel is that Israel represents the sort of blood and soil nationalism that he despises and regards as the problem in today's world. This tradition of the Jew as internationalist, as liberal cosmopolite, as critic of nationalism is sufficiently well established that maybe it, too, is part of what it can be to be an Authentic Real Jew.

I want to address this issue later, but only after looking at the nastiest aspect right wing Jew-hating but Israel loving tendancy -- the European semi-fascist movement.

The Right Wing, Jews, and Zionists:Slice One

NOTE: This was my original post on the subject, but I accidentally deleted it and am trying to reconstruct it from memory.

Now, if the news will settledown and give me some peace, I would like to write a series on a topic long churning in my head -- the curiously ambivilent relationship between the right wing, Israel and Jews.

Jews have long been a traditionally liberal constituency, but the right wing sees a winning forumula for gaining Jewish support -- unflagging support for Israel as an ally against the Muslim forces of jihad. So far, rather to their surprise, the tactic has not been successful in gaining much Jewish support. My essential argument is that this is because right wing pro-Zionists, while not in themselves anti-Semitic, follow in a longstanding right wing tradition of anti-Semitism. Their support for Israel or Jews is conditioned on Jew abandoning their liberal tradition and adopting a sort of nationalism much like the right wing's own -- a sort of nationalism many Jews find deeply distasteful.

I'll begin with the most benign example of this tendancy in the person of Sarah Palin. Or rather, to be fair to Palin, on my unsupported speculation about what she thinks. Sarah Palin is a great supporter of Israel and even wears the Star of David in a gesture of solidarity, but none of this has done much to win her Jewish support. Why not? David Frum attempts to explain the hostility in response to a column by Jennifer Rubin gives his opinion. Interestingly enough, he does not believe the source of the hostility is primarily Palin's attitude equating ignorance with virtue.*

More than any politician in memory, Palin seems to divide her fellow-Americans into first and second class citizens, real Americans and not-so-real Americans. To do her justice, she has never said anything to indicate that Jews fall into the second, less-real class. But Jews do have an intuition that when this sort of line drawing is done, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong side.

Jonathan Chait puts it more directly -- he says that Rubin is playing into a longstanding anti-Semitic stereotype accusing Jews of being too intellectual and too cosmopolitan, lacking national loyalties. Indeed, this stereotype of the Jew as national alien lacking true patriotism dates back at least to the Nineteenth Century, when it replaced to older view of the Jew as religious alien. This tradition is why such talk raises Jewish hackles.

Without claiming to know what goes on in Sarah Palin's head, my guess would be that she doesn't know about this history. Indulging in further groundless speculation, I would guess that if someone raised it with her she would be outraged. How could anyone think such a thing? Of course she thinks Jews are Authentic Real Americans. At least Authentic Real Jews are. I would further guess that if anyone asked Palin the difference between an Authentic Real Jew and a liberal imitation Jew, she would express it in terms of Orthodox versus non-Orthodox or perhaps religious versus secular. My final guess would be that, if pressed on the subject, it would turn out that Palin does not know the first thing about Orthodox Judaism or the issues that matter to a religious Jew. The real distinction would turn out to be loyal Likudniks versus any Jew who has ever criticized Israel.

In that case, Frum can relax. Although he has moved far to the left on economic issues, he remains a neocon on foreign policy matters. That makes him an Authentic Real Jew, if not an Authentic Real American.**

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*He does, however, offerthe perfect conservative smackdown for the whole anti-intellectual outlook that equates ignorance with virtue. "Igorance is bad. But we all start ignorant. Jews . . . expect their leaders to start early and work hard to remedy their ignorance by learning things."
**Frum can't possibly be an Authentic Real American because he is a Canadian. Besides, he is so blinded by loyalty to the country of his birth that he fails to see that its single payer healthcare system has turned Canada into a nightmare of oppression, if not a Communist dictatorship.

Slice Two: Christian Zionists

Moving from Sarah Palin to people who have actually expressed views on Jews as well as Israel, we have the odd phenomenon of the Christian Zionists. Quite famously, Evangelical Christians combine unwavering support for Israel with a belief that Jews, like anyone who does not take Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior, will go to Hell.

Critics dismiss such supporters as the Armegeddon Lobby, supporting Israel only because it plays an essential role in their End Times Scenario, which ends with Israel and the Jews being wiped out by the Anti-Christ. But given the extraordinary ability of most people to simultaneously hold contradictory ideas, I am willing to give Christian Zionists the benefit of the doubt here. A lot of what is at work may simply be a general Manichean mindset -- meximum support for Israel because they are Good and on Our Team, standing against the Evil Arabs.*
But that still raises an awkward bit of cognitive dissonance. After all, to a strict Fundamentalist Christian, Jews are just as Hell-bound as Muslims? So how can the epic struggle between Good and Evil be played out between two sets of Hell-bound participants?

Returning again to the realm of speculation about other people’s motives, is it possible that the whole End Times scenario is largely an attempt rationalize such an outlook? Granted, millenarianism is a long-standing Christian tradition. Granted, all Christian millenarians used the same scriptures to explain the times they live in. But let’s face it. The prophecies are vague enough to mean just about anything. How they are shaped and formed depends a lot on the preconceptions of the person interpreting them. So if you want to give Israel your unqualified support because you see them as the last outpost of Western Civilization against Evil Arab, but run into trouble because, after all, you think Jews are Hell-bound, it can be really convenient to have a lot of prophecies around that give an important role in the End Times to Israel. That overcomes the obstacle of how it can be our sacred duty to support one Hell-bound faction against another.

But other obstacles remain. The next obstacle is a harder one. According to all traditional rules of Evangelical Christianity, a Christian’s first duty to the Hell-bound is to try to convert them. After all, you never know when someone may be hit by the hypothetical buls and go to Hell because you failed to bring them to Jesus. But trying to convert Jews to Christianity invariably causes friction with Israel and threatens to undo the alliance. How do you deal with this? One solution is the Jews for Jesus approach, defining Jewishness as tribal membership rather than adherence to a particular religion, and arguing that Laws of Moses still apply to Jews even after they convert (anything Peter and Paul may have said to the contrary!). The trouble with this approach is that most Jews (including the Israeli authorities) just don’t buy it. There can be secular Jews and even atheist Jews, but a Christian Jew is a contradiction in terms, and is basically regarded by most Jews as a traitor. So many Christian Zionists make it part of their prophecy that there will be a miraculous mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity in the near future. This relieves Christians of their duty to evangelize to Jews and removes a major source of conflict between Christian and Jewish Zionists. **

But even that does not remove all obstacles. One such obstacle is how to get along with Jews who are not Zionists. Reverent John Hagee attracted a lot of attention and outrage by his statement that Hitler was God’s instrument to force the Jews from Europe to Israel. Most reactions to this statement have been expressions of shock and outrage that he could call Hitler God’s instrument or brush off his crimes so lightly. But let me raises another point. If God was displeased with the Jews for living in Europe because he wants all Jews to go to Israel, then what does that say about American Jews today? Are we also defying God’s will by living in the United States when God really wants us to go to Israel? My guess is that Hagee would manage to fudge this issue, too, and figure out some reason why the United States has God’s special favor and it is therefore acceptable for Jews to live here, too. But at the same time, the Christian Right’s insistence on the U.S. as a Christian country strongly seems to imply that any American who is not an Evangelical Christian is a second class citizen. What does that make Jews? And are any Jews shirking their duty to live in Israel second class Jews as well?

Then there is the whole question of the idealization of Israel. It’s fair to ask, how much of this idealization is neither millenarian prophecy nor Manichean standing firm against Evil, but a sort of romantic idealization of Israel as a land of bearded men in black coats and broad-brimmed hats, pious and militant, untainted by the decadence and secularism of the United States and Europe? This, too, is speculation about other people’s motives, but I note that Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out that Israel is a lot more than bearded men in black coats -- it has many secular residents with the same decadent habits as the rest of the West (including an annual gay pride march).

But in the end, all of these can be overcome with sufficient mental gymnastics. What can’t be overcome is the unstated condition Christian Zionists place on their support for Israel – maximum belligerence and intransigence. Granted, with the current government in power, this hasn’t been much of an issue. But consider that when Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza and was shortly after paralyzed with a stroke, Pat Robertson took it as a sign of God’s displeasure. So what happens if the Israelis decide some time that maximum belligerence is not, in fact, in their interest, and that they want to make some sort of compromise? When Israelis, in other words, stop being Authentic Real Jews.

Christian Zionists’ relationship with Israel reminds me of nothing so much as this book review on "philo-Semitism" (the opposite of anti-Semitism). It cites a Jewish joke, “Q: Which is preferable—the antisemite or the philosemite? A: The antisemite—at least he isn’t lying.” The point behind the joke, the author explains, is that the philo-Semite loves Jews, not as they really are, but as he believes they should be for his own purposes. If Jews refuse to stick to the script, this sort of idealization quickly proves to be a two-edged sword. Let any secular or Jewish Zionist keep this in mind.
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*Something similar happened in the Cold War. Before militant Islam arrived on the scene many Arab countries, though not Communist, were Soviet allies and thus (to a Manichean mindset) proxies of the Evil Empire.
**Any Jew hit by the Hypothetical Bus between now and the anticipated mass conversion is presumably unfortunate collateral damage.

I Don't Get It

Seriously. When did even the slightest deviation from the Israeli line become a radical, unthinkable policy for a US President to pursue? It wasn't always like that.

Truman had grave misgivings whether to recognize Israel at all.

Eisenhower was furious when Israel, Britain and France invaded the Sinai, condemned their actions at the United Nations, and put strong pressure on them to withdraw.

Nixon send Kissinger to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Arab governments in the Yom Kippur War.

Carter mediated a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

Reagan opposed Israel's invasion of Lebanon, made an effort to restrain Israel, and negotiated the withdrawal of the PLO.

Clinton mediated an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The roles of mediator and marionette are incompatible. It is impossible to be perceived as an honest broker if you make it a policy to automatically rubber stamp everything one party wants or does.

I can only conclude from this that our relationship with Israel moved from ally to poodleduring the presidency of G.W. Bush. Up till then, the belief that our only proper association with Israel was one of unconditional obedience was one policy viewpoint, and not such an uncommon one. But it was not the only one to hold any sway in serious policy circles. But G.W. Bush adopted a clear policy -- we would be Israel's poodle, and everyone else was expected to be our poodle.

Now Obama is making some feeble, half-hearted steps from poodle back to ally and everyone who is anyone is throwing a collective fit at his radical, unheard-of actions.

Firepower and the Rules of War

As I commented in my last post, every time Israel (or, for that matter, the United States) causes serious collateral damage with its firepower, the defense is always the same. It is the other side's fault for hiding among civilians, which is a war crime.

George Bush's arguments about unlawful combatants are different, but related. He argues that our adversaries in Afghanistan and Iraq are "unlawful combatants" and therefore not entitled to any of the protections under the laws of war. He even identified the Taliban as unlawful when we first invaded Afghanistan, even though they were, for all intents and purposes, the Afghan national army. The reason: they weren't wearing uniforms.

Both arguments do rely on the accepted rules of war. Those rules call for a sharp distinction between military and civilian to limit the scope of fighting to armies and protect civilians. For instance, soldiers are required to wear uniforms so that their adversaries will know who is and is not legitimate to kill. Military installations must be kept apart from civilian areas and clearly marked as such. And, of course, a wide range of protections are in force for non-combatants.

These rules, when followed, do limit the scope and brutality of war. But they contain an unstated but loaded assumption -- that war is and should be a duel of firepower. The unstated but implied preference for this type of war can be found everywhere. Some collateral damage as a result of firepower is tolerated. Requirements that military installations be kept away from inhabited areas are attempts to limit such damage, but it is assumed to be inevitable. Soldiers are encouraged to fight out in the open, away from civilians. Heavy artillery, tanks, trenches and the like are considered legitimate forms of warfare. And so forth.

The effect of these rules is to limit collateral damage, but also to privilege armies with high firepower over ones without. Consider how they look to a party with low firepower. These rules require a low firepower combatant to put on uniforms and march openly against an army with firepower enough to cut them to shreds. They require a group like Hezbollah or Hamas to mark its military installations as easy targets despite not having an airforce or anti-aircraft guns to protect them. Quite simply, they make taking on an enemy of vastly superior firepower suicidal. Or, alternately, they brand such an attempt as illegitimate. It is pointless to be shocked or morally offended when a weaker power refuses to accept the options of submission or suicide.

The response of a weaker power to a stronger one is old and long-established -- guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare rejects the clear military-civilian dichotomy and instead does its best to blur the distinction. Guerrillas do not wear uniforms. They intermingle with civilians, attacking by surprise and ambush. They hide their weapons and outposts in the civilian population. They involve the entire population in the war. And when regular armies dismiss all this as a war crime and respond with firepower, the result is extremely brutal.

My own belief is that it is both pointless and immoral to simply dismiss such behavior as a war crime and insist that weaker adversaries make the choice between suicide and submission. It is better, instead, to recognize their tactical logic and try to reason from there to a moral logic. Guerrilla warfare operates by rejecting the military-civilian dichotomy. The best measure, therefore, of a guerrilla army's moral legitimacy is the lack of such a dichotomy. Or, as the best-known guerrilla theorist put it, "The people are like water and the army is like fish." A guerrilla army's moral legitimacy can but judged on how friendly the "water" is to the "fish."

For instance, an organization like the Fedayeen Saddam, that had no basis in the population but merely hid among them and intimidated them, do not have such legitimacy. They followed neither the conventional rules of separating from civilians to protect them from conflict nor the informal guerrilla "rules" of blending seamlessly into the population and relying on their support. The Fedayeen Saddam's quasi-guerrilla tactics may fairly be called a war crime. Many Iraqi insurgents were something different altogether. Indeed, in the early phases of the insurgency it was almost a cliche that a US patrol knew they were about the be ambushed because the streets would suddenly be empty. This meant that the insurgents had tipped off the locals and warned them to stay inside. That is the mark of a guerrilla force with a strong basis in the population, doing its best (in its own way) to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas and Hezbollah have both proven their legitimate base in the population by winning elections. They, too, have fish-in-water sort of legitimacy.

None of this is to deny that "legitimate" guerrilla forces can commit war crimes. Of course they can. The Mahdi Army, for instance, certainly had the support of the Shiite population in the areas where it was based, but it committed frightful atrocities against neighboring Sunnis. Mass murder, intentional killing of civilians, torture and the like are war crimes regardless of who commits them. Guerrilla armies are notorious for their cruelty and brutality toward people who oppose them. And nearly all guerrillas fighting civil wars (as opposed to resisting foreign invaders) commit serious war crimes. My point is not to glorify irregular forces but argue that guerrilla tactics should not in and of themselves be regarded as war crimes.

So, I have made the argument when "unlawful combatants" should be considered lawful. The next question is how to deal with them. That is a thorny matter, and one I do not pretent any competence to address. It is, however, the subject of all counterinsurgency doctrine.

Evil Intention versus Firepower, Redux

The sense of deja vu is incredible. In this war, as in the last, Israel is pounding its neighbor to smithereens while a hidden antagonist fires aimless rockets to terrorize Israelis. But even more similar are arguments in defense of Israel, which sound so similar then and now that one could simply replace Hezbollah with Hamas and Lebanon with Gaza and reprint the arguments without further change.

There is no moral equivalence between Israel and its adversary, goes the argument then and now. Israel's adversary is deliberately firing rockets with the intent to kill and terrorize innocent civilians. (The fact that those rockets are of such poor quality as to cause minimal damage goes unmentioned). Israel is retaliating against solely military targets. The fact that its far heavier fire power is causing collateral damage is the fault of its adversary for hiding its military infastructure among civilians.* The intent to kill civilians is what really matters. The fact that Israel has, in fact, killed a great many more civilians than its adversary is a trivial detail.

Well, I am no philosopher or theologian, but it is my understanding that this set of priorities is contrary to traditional Jewish ethics. In traditional Jewish ethics (as I understand it), when there is a discrepancy between an actor's subjective motives and the actual objective results of that actor's actions (meaning the immediate, highly predictable result and not some remote and highly contingent result happening in the distant future), the actual objective results are the more important. Hence, as I understand Jewish ethics, if an enemy intends you mortal harm but lacks the means to act on that intent, you have to take that lack of means into account. And if you are retaliating with heavy firepower, not intending to kill any civilians, but using your firepower in a way certain to do just that, you get less credit for not wanting to kill civilians than blame for the civilians that you actually (and most predicably) do kill.

And even if I am mistaken about the traditional rules of Jewish ethics, these seem like pretty good rules for public policy.

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*More on that in my next post.

Hamas: Hezbollah Redux?

So, now that Israel has begun a ground offensive into the Gaza in response to Hamas rockets fired at Israel, the obvious question is whether this will this be a repeat of the 2006 war against Hezbollah. I believe the overall war will be similar but, unlike the 2006, there is not a stable and basically acceptable status quo ante to return to. This may make for some variation.

So far the script has been remarkably familiar. Hamas/Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel that are alarming but do limited damage. Israel responds with a much heavier bombardment of Lebanon/Gaza, but fails to stop the rockets. Israel invades and meets with resistance. In both cases, Israel is trying to militarily root out an organization so deeply intertwined with the local population that can be removed only by all-out ethnic cleansing. In both cases, both Israel and its supporters appear to be willfully blind to this uncomfortable reality.

The difference is in military capacity. Although Hamas has presumably had time to build up its forces while it power, it is still not as formidable a fighting force as Hezbollah. Although all paramilitaries in the Middle East now aspire to be Hezbollah, it takes a lot of time, practice and training to build a force of that caliber. Hezbollah is a highly disciplined, secretive force with quality arms, an eleborate physical infrastructure of underground bunkers and communications networks, and a command structure as tight and centralized as a conventional army. Hamas is a shoddy, amateurish organization by comparison.

This is bad news -- for Hamas and for Israel (to say nothing of the long-suffering people of the Gaza). It is bad for Hamas and the people of the Gaza because it means that they cannot offer sufficient resistance to deter any future Israeli attacks. It is also bad for Israel because it means that they do not have a strong enough authority to make a deal with.

And, although hawkish types may not like to admit it, Israel can and has made successful deals with Hezbollah. During the prolonged guerilla warfare while Israel occupied southern Lebanon, the sides had a tacit agreement. Hezbollah would limit its fighting to north of the border and not fire any rockets into Israel, and Israel would not bring the full force of its firepower to bear on Lebanon. From Israel's withdrawal in 2000 until the 2006 war, both sides maintained a quiet truce. During the 2006 war, when a 48 hour aerial cease-fire was ordered, it was mutually observed. And since the end of the war, the two sides have kept their peace. And, significantly, during the current war on the Gaza, Hezbollah had staged rallies and made threatening noises, but it has not fired any actual rockets into Israel, no doubt because it learned the hard way the sort of retaliation Israel is capable of. These silent deals have held despite Hezbollah's stated dedication to the destruction of Israel because Hezbollah understands what its fate will be if it actually tries to destroy Israel and has a strong enough central command to ensure that there are no rogue elements who do not understand.

I believe Hamas, which now holds the responsibilities of government of Gaza, is generally rational enough to prefer foregoing its stated commitment to the destruction of Israel over facing the sort of destruction Israel is capable of unleashing. But it is by no means clear that Hamas has that type of control and can reign in its rogue elements. Thus the sort of modus vivendi Hezbollah has reached with Israel does not appear possible. Depending on how far Israel is willing to go, this leaves four options.

Option 1: Israel can repeat its experience in Lebanon -- launch a punitive expedition and withdraw. As with Hezbollah, Hamas is too deeply entrenched to be rooted out by a punitive expedition. As with Hezbollah, this will mean a return to the status quo ante. The difference is that the situation in southern Lebanon was generally acceptable to both sides. Hezbollah was control of southern particular with no interference and therefore had reason to want to attack Israel, and northern Israel could function perfectly well next door to Hezbollah. On the other hand, the status quo ante in Gaza was utterly unaceptable to either side. Gaza was under blockade by Israel and Egypt with conditions gradually deteriorating. Hamas regularly fired rockets at southern Israel and made normal life there impossible. Thus a return to that situation will not be stable. Israel appears to hope that if it inflict enough pain and/or seizes enough weapons, it can deter further attacks, as it was able to do with Hezbollah. But Hamas will have a constant incentive to attack Israel so long as the blockade remains in place. Nor is it clear that Hamas is strong enough to prevent the rocket attacks (see above).

Option 2: Israel can go for regime change. It can remove Hamas from power and install a more compliant government. The Israelis have denied such an intent, presumably because they recognize it cannot be stable. Any government installed by Israel will be seen as collaborationist and have very little popular support. Hamas, in the mean time, had entrenched itself well and will certainly resist. Without Israeli troop to support their puppet, Hamas will simply take back power, and things will return to where they were before.

Option 3: Israel can re-occupy Gaza and place it under military occupation. The trouble is, of course, that Israel originally withdrew from Gaza because this was not working very well. Israel will reoccupy Gaza with comparative ease and then find itself facing escalating guerrilla resistance, just like the US in Iraq, Ethiopia in Somalia, Israel during its first invasion of Lebanon, etc, etc. All evidence is that the Israeli government understands this, because it has disclaimed any intent to reoccupy the Gaza.

Option 4: Israel can go for all-out ethnic cleansing. In 2006, Israel did sometimes appear to be seeking to drive the entire population from southern Lebanon. It dropped leaflets warning people to flee and then indiscriminately bombed. Ethnic cleansing failed in southern Lebanon because in order to keep the Shiites from simply moving back, someone else would have to move in. It would be pointless for Israelis to move in because Hezbollah would have continued to attack any such Israeli settlements and the quarrel would not be ended, but merely moved 30 miles north. And no one else was going to volunteer to be a buffer.

So far there is no evidence Israel is attemting anything so drastic in Gaza. It has shown greater restraint so far, presumably knowing there is nowhere for the residents to go. It is true that if Israel forced the residents of Gaza into Egypt, many Israelis would be happy to move into the Gaza strip, and the government of Egypt could reasonably be expected to be strong enough to keep Hamas from attacking Israel. But, of course, Egypt is hostile to Hamas and would therefore not be willing to accept displaced Gazans. That rules out ethnic cleansing. And even if Israel did undertake such a drastic action, it would somehow have to finish the job by January 20, when Barack Obama becomes President and (presumably) would not let it go that far.

In short, the current conflict resembles the 2006 war in that Israel is cannot succeed militarily except by extremely drastic measures that the international community will not allow. It differs in that there is no basically acceptable status quo ante to return to. Which leaves only one final, desparate measure. Diplomacy.

This Time It's Rich Lowry

Just when I thought I was going to give Hezbollah a break, yet another column comes up that I cannot let go. Why, oh, why do I keep letting the warmongers get to me? This one is by Rich Lowry at the National Review Online.

Lowry is outraged that the French, after tricking us into agreeing on a ceasefire in Lebanon by promising a large force that would take on Hezbollah and is now only agreeing to send in a small force that will not take on Hezbollah. He regards the treacherous French as undermining our noble and idealistic attempt to "craft a long-term solution" to the problems in Lebanon. Omitted from this account is that our noble and idealistic attempt to craft a long-term solution in southern Lebanon included supporting the Israelis as they uprooted the inhabitants of southern Lebanon (as much as a quarter of Lebanon's total population) and demolished much of Lebanon's infastructure. The treacherous French "snookered" us into agreeing to an end to the war.

What Lowry appears to want is not an end to the war, but a continuation of it, only with a UN force (which would be led by the French) fighting instead of an Israeli force. The French said, no thanks. Treacherous frogs! A dose of reality for Lowry, Krauthammer and any other warmonger who considers Hezbollah's existence to be intolerable. Hezbollah is not going to disarm voluntarily. The Lebanese army is no match for Hezbollah. No one else is willing to undertake the prolonged, messy, bloody business and significant casualties that will be required to disarm Hezbollah by force. Ergo: Hezbollah is going to be around a while. Deal with it.

Significantly, even Israel was not willing to undertake the large-scale ground campaign that would be needed to crush Hezbollah. International pressure obviously had a great deal to do with this. The casualties involved were also a factor. But undoubtedly another reason is that Israel (unlike purportedly pro-Israeli hawks) understands that Hezbollah's offensive capacity is minimal. Hezbollah is not an existential threat to Israel, only an annoying border war. Over the past six years (since Israel withdrew from Lebanon) far more Israelis have been killed in suicide bombings related to the intafada than in border clashes with Hezbollah. And if the Israelis, who are by far the most menaced by Hezbollah, are unwilling to do what it takes, why should the French, who are not menaced at all?

Lowry then goes on to lament everyone else's weak will in contronting North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc. He calls the United States "the world's only responsible power." Apparently no one else is willing to be as responsible for starting wars as we are.

He concludes with a warning:

When Bush is gone, conservative foreign policy will change. But it won't be a change the foreign-policy establishment likes. . . . It will be something more selfish and hardheaded, something more French in its motivation -- Bush without the soft touches. Then, the world will miss the earnest do-gooding United States of old.

Well, of course, this depends on what Lowry means. If being more hardheaded means being more reality-based and requiring a good reason for the wars we start, I am all for it. But I suspect that he means U.S. policy in the Middle East will more and more resemble Israel's recent policy in Lebanon -- only on a larger scale.

Charles Krauthammer Gears Up For Round Two

It's amazing. The guns have scarcely fallen silent in Lebanon, the blood has scarcely had time to dry and Charles Krauthammer is already gearing up for Round Two. Israel, he complains, failed to disarm Hezbollah on the first attempt by trying to do it mostly by air power. Neither the Lebanese army nor the U.N. force that will supposedly arrive in southern Lebanon, has any prospects of doing so. We have merely restored the status quo ante that was so intolerable, setting the stage for the inevitable round two. The only way to avoid it is for the U.N. force to disarm Hezbollah and fast. Otherwise Israel will have no choice but to initiate Round Two and do it right.

Krauthammer is certainly right about a few things. Hezbollah is not going to voluntarily disarm, and no serious person ever expected them to. When a war ends more or less in a tie, expecting one party to mark the peace by disarming is completely unrealistic. What are the prospects of either the Lebanese army or the U.N. peacekeepers disarming Hezbollah by force? I would say zero.

That leaves Israel. Krauthammer says that once Israel began the ground offensive in earnest, they would eventually have destroyed Hezbollah, "albeit at great cost to itself, Lebanon, and Israel's patron, the United States." That is why Israel agreed to a cease-fire. For Round Two, Israel will show no "hesitency" and not try to win by air power, but will fight the messy, bloody ground war necessary to root out Hezbollah. Krauthammer skips over just how messy and bloody that will be. Hezbollah is formidable, at least on its own soil. It has an impressive network of underground bunkers, high-tech modern weaponry, and a dedicated and disciplined force with a lot of experience resisting Israeli invaders. Krauthammer says that Hezbollah has been weakened by the war, but it will rearm fast. What makes him think that the next war will be any easier than this one?

And then there are those pesky rockets. The usual estimate is that Hezbollah had some 13,000 of them and fired less than half at Israel. Particularly, they withheld the longest range of rockets. This means that even defeating Hezbollah south of the Litani, and perhaps even further, will not make Israel safe, so long as Hezbollah retains its rockets anywhere in Lebanon. Perhaps tolerating rocket attacks during the war may seem like an acceptable trade-off in exchange for complete safety afterward, given the minimal damage Hezbollah's rocket caused. This makes the analysis of CIA analyst Ray Close truly frightening -- that the limited damage caused by Hezbollah's rockets was not because of their limited fire power, but their lack of aim. Close believes that with better aim, the rockets could have killed thousands. He also anticipates that Hezbollah will now make improving its guidance system a top priority. In Round Two the air power may not be all on one side.

All of which leaves an important question unanswered. Why was the status quo ante so intolerable as to make all-out war worthwhile? It is pointless to say that Hezbollah's evil intentions were a mortal threat to Israel. Evil intentions are deadly only when backed by the force to carry them out. Hezbollah's prospects of actually invading Israel were nil. Hezbollah's rockets so far were singularly unimpressive. Nor was Hezbollah terrorizing Israel with suicide bombings, as were the Palestinians. What Hezbollah and Israel had was an ongoing, low-grade border war. This was not pleasant, but it was a manageable threat, considerably less than the threat of terrorism from the West Bank. Nor does Hezbollah seem as crazy as some people believe. After all, it has been pointed out, Hezbollah did not begin firing rockets on Israel until after the war began, and generally observed the 48 hour aeriel cease-fire in mid-war. In short, the status quo ante did not amount to much more than an annoying border war. Perhaps I am a rash optimist here, but the presence of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon just might serve as a restraining influence and and prevent even border clashes.

But to Krauthammer, the threat to Israel is only one reason to want to destroy Hezbollah's military structure. The other reason is the grand plan for freedom and democracy, which Syria, Iran and Hezbollah were trying to derail. Naturally to Krauthammer, democracy means the right to elect the candidate of our choice. He is greatly displeased that Hezbollah "insinuated" itself into Lebanon's democratic government. Hot news flash, any government that is truly democratic has to take into account the wishes of some 40% of its population. Trampling on Lebanon's Shiites is not "democratic." Either acknowledge that democratic elections will lead to some results we do not like, or stop pretending to support democracy altogether.

Of course, Krauthammer is right that Lebanon was always in trouble having a private army outside the control of its government that was more powerful and the official army and had the support of a large portion of the population. But he is dead wrong if he thinks that resolving the problem by brute force and war will do Lebanon's fragile democracy any good. So maybe he should come right out and admit the truth. We don't care about either Lebanon or democracy. What we really care about is our own power and influence.

Hezbollah and the Drawbacks of Seeing in Technicolor

Sometimes I understand all too well the attraction of seeing the world in black and white. To the hard Right, life is simple. We are the good guys, anyone who opposes us is evil; therefore anything that advances our interests is good and no mercy need be shown to anyone who would interfere. To the hard Left, things are only slightly more complex. We are Great Satan. Our interests are therefore inherently evil and anyone who opposes us is, if not actually admirable, at least not all bad and therefore definitely the side to root for. The more fuzzy liberals do not see things so much in black and white, but do have a fairly standard formula to apply to conficts. Empathize with victims, root for the underdog, and be highly self-critical not, as with the hard Left, because you regard America as inately evil, but in hopes that if we do right, we can save the world.

But to those of us who see the world in Technicolor, things are far more complex and fraught with moral ambiguity. Victims deserve our empathy, but it takes more to deserve our applause. We regard as good guys only those who are genuinely good. And genuine good guys are all too rare.

Hezbollah is an excellent example. Hezbollah simply does not classify easily for one who believes in moral ambiguity. Hezabollah hold odious Islamic theocratic views, though speaking for a religious minority in more or less democratic country they do not try to force their views on non-Shiites. Hezbollah was trained by Iranian intelligence and supported the Syrian occupation force, yet they also have the strong support of the local Shiite population. They did an excellent job of providing social services for Shiites that no one else was able to provide and (as I understand it) their medical facilities and the like are open to members of all religions. They also maintained their power through relentless propaganda and partisan mobilization, a crypto-totalitarian enclave in a democracy. Hezbollah is a rigidly centralized, authoritarian organization, yet in a very real way it allows impoverished and marginalized Shiites a place at the table of power and a degree of control over their lives that they never had before. They offer honest administration amidst the corruption that is rampant in Lebanon, and also have a private army that threatens the fragile democracy. And finally, while Hezbollah fought as a legitimate resistance force against a hated foreign occupation, they also practice terrorism and maintain a constant, forever inflamed hatred of Israel as a unifying principle. So what is such an organization, good guy or bad guy?

And Hezbollah is not the only one. Throughout the Middle East, Islamic fundamentalists with vile ideologies and long-run goals are often also the best at providing social services and honest, uncorrupt officials. Hamas, too, became popular by a combination of anti-Isaeli militancy, social services, and anti-corruption, despite advocating a theocracy that almost no one supports. Even Muqtada al-Sadr and his Madhi Army provided security, trash collection and services to Badgad's poorest neighborhood, even as they terrorized unveiled women. (On the other hand, the more the Madhi Army becomes a death squad killing Sunnis for their religion, the easier it is to write Sadr off as a simple villain). Nor did this begin with Islamic fundamentalism. The roles played by such organizations now were once played by the Communist Party. And the crypto-Communist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela emulates his hero, Castro, taking genuinely idealistic measures to provide services to poor and marginalized people while also creating domestic spy network modeled after the one in Cuba.

And so it goes. While there are certainly people who deserve to be unequivocally condemned as evil (Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and al-Zarqawi, for instance), in many other cases things are simply not so clear cut. Moral ambiguity abounds in the world of technocolor. And sometimes the technocolor can strain one's eyesight and make the world of black and white look appealing. How I long, sometimes, for a straightforward good guy I can unambiguously root for.

Evil Intentions versus Fire Power

I think I will scream if I read one more time that Israel has no choice but to keep pounding Lebanon to smithereens because Hezbollah intends to destroy Israel. If evil intentions alone could destroy Israel, Israel would have been destroyed many times over. Arab states have kept up a non-stop stream of evil intentions towards Israel since 1948, and look how far it has gotten them.

This is not a defense of Hezbollah's provocations toward Israel. Hezbollah should be absolutely condemned for killing several Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two more at the outset of the war. But a border clash of that kind stops well short of a mortal threat to Israel’s existence. The rockets Hezbollah is firing on northern Israel more serious. Indeed, even people who are no fans of Israel have pointed out that, since Hezbollah's rocket have such poor aim as to serve no valid military purpose, they are being used solely to terrorize a civilian population, which is a war crime. Even so, Hezbollah's rockets are causing only a fraction of the casualties and damage to Israel that Israel is causing to Lebanon. This is certainly not due to any lack of evil intentions on Hezbollah’s part; it is because Hezbollah lacks the firepower to do any more.

Even more grotesque are people who say that Lebanon's suffering is all Hezbollah's fault for caring nothing for the casualties they bring upon Lebanese civilians and continuing to provoke Israel by firing rockets on Haifa. Hezbollah is, indeed, showing a spectacular indifference to the suffering it is bringing on countless innocent Lebanese, and I suspect that once the shooting dies down Hezbollah will pay the price. (This also gives Hezbollah an incentive to prolong the war and inflict ever increasing suffering on Lebanon, which, once again, should absolutely be condemned). But this is a pathetically poor excuse for Israel's conduct. Once it becomes clear to the Israelis that Hezbollah will not stop its rocket attacks despite the brutality of Israeli retaliation and the suffering inflicted on innocent Lebanese, Israel's conduct becomes inexcusable. What possible justification can there be for reducing Lebanon to rubble when it is admitted that doing so will not make Hezbollah stop its attacks on Israel?

Early on during this war, I commented that to make war on Hezbollah is to make war on the Shiite plurality of Lebanon, and that Israel appears to be acting accordingly. That continues to be the case. Israel's defenders are effectively in the position of arguing that because of their support of Hezbollah, all Lebanese Shiites are fair game. But the fact is that once a faction gains a certain critical mass of popular support, that in itself tends to legitmize that faction. Whoever justified treating all Lebanese Shiites as fair game can end up justifying actions too appalling to consider.

In short,Israel's defenders are right about Hezbollah's evil intentions. But evil intentions form a mortal threat only when backed by sufficient firepower to realize them, and Hezbollah does not have anything approaching the firepower to creat an existential threat to Israel. Israel, on the other hand, has enough firepower to reduce Lebanon to a smoldering heap of rubble. When two enemies have such unequal fire power, it poses a certain moral obligation of restraint on the stronger party.

Why Bush Really Needs to Negotiate with Evil

The war in Lebanon continues to cause great damage to Lebanon and do not a thing to stop the Katyusha attacks on Israel. The reason for this is obvious to all but the willfully dense. Hezbollah is deeply entrenched in southern Lebanon, interspersed and supported by the local population. Its Katyushas are small, mobile, and easily hidden. Massive airstrikes are not going to stop the attacks. Attacking Lebanon to force the Lebanese army to crack down on Hezbollah will not work because the Lebanese army lacks the might to do so. Expelling the entire population from the border will be somewhat more effective. If most Hezbollah rockets have a range of only a few miles, then driving the entire population back for a few miles will prevent most attacks. If the only options were military, this might be the best not-very-satisfactory compromise available. Israel uproots a relatively small number of people, and rocket attacks diminish but do not altogether cease.

But if the goal is to stop rocket attacks altogether, then things get very nasty fast. If, as has been reported, Hezbollah has rockets with ranges up to 72 kilometers, then pushing all the Shiites of Lebanon that far away will be a much larger, longer, more brutal operation. And this begs the question of who will move in to ensure that Hezbollah does not come back. And it certainly seems a safe bet that such upheaval and displacement will necessarily reignite Lebanon's civil war, with who knows what effect.

So, what are our other options. George Bush proposed an obvious one; Syria needs to get Hezbollah to stop that shit. We do not actually know whether Syria or Iran ordered Hezbollah to start the attacks, but given the extent to which Hezbollah relies on Iranian guns and money, via Syria, either country could certainly rein in its obstreperous ally and make them stop that shit. Of course, similar logic appies to us. Given Israel's dependence on U.S. money and arms, we could easily rein in our obstreperous ally and make them stop their shit. So it would seem logical for us to sit down with Syria and Iran and cut some sort of deal -- you rein in our ally and we'll rein in ours.

Of course, the Bush administration refused to do that. "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." This administration lives in mortal terror of "appeasement," defined as anything less than getting 100% of what we want. Diplomacy, negotiations, compromises, treaties, all are nothing but appeasement. Indeed, tolerating the existence of any goverment we dislike is appeasement. By this standard, the Cold War was one long exercise in appeasement -- not only did we make no attempt to overthrow the Soviet government, we actually had diplomatic relations, engaged in face-to-face negotiations, established treaties and attended summits. If neoconservative fears of appeasement were accurate, the Soviets would long since have conquered the world, being faced with such wimps.

By refusing to enter into any negotiations with the governments of Syria or Iran and by making clear that he considers them illegitimate and will settle for nothing less than their overthrow, Bush removes all incentive either government could have to behave better. When one party's policy is, "If you don't drop dead, we'll kill you," is it any surprise that the other party is not interested? Conservative hawks often criticize liberals as naive for wanting to conduct foreign policy with the carrot only; don't they realize carrots are only effective if backed by sticks? But the reverse also applies. Sticks are far more effective if supplemented with carrots. If a government gains nothing by behaving well, why bother? More than that, if the Bush administration refused to react positively to any positive behavior by a rival, he creates a positive incentive for that rival to act badly. We try to force concessions by being tough; is it any wonder that other countries do the same. Bush wants Iran to give up nuclear weapons, but refuses to offer any security guaranties. Is it any wonder that the Iranians conclude that nuclear weapons are the best security guarantee?

I suppose that the Bushies might argue that every stick implies a carrot. Our stick is the threat of military force; our carrot is refraining from using military force. But right now our stick is not very credible. Given the mess we have gotten into in Iraq, invading Iran would be such madness that (so far as I can tell) even neoconservatives are not advocating it. Airstrikes are at least doable, but if the U.S. attackes Iran by air, the Iranian government is likely to tell its Shiite allies in Iraq to take off the gloves in dealing with the American forces. So if Bush refuses to use the carrot and has no credible stick, where does that leave him? Mouthing empty platitudes.

There is one other reason why Bush needs to swallow his pride and start talking to Syria and Iran so we can all pressure our allies to stop that shit. Contrary to what Bush and some of his followers believe, good and evil are not immutable labels that stick to us no matter what. Or to put it differently, evil is not what we are, but what we do. When Al Qaeda terrorists flew jetliners into the World Trade Center, that was evil. When Sunni extremists in Iraq set of bombs in public places to blow up as many civilians as possible that is evil. When Shiite death squads murder men for having Sunni names, that is evil. When Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers and shoots aimless rockets and Israeli cities that, too, is evil. But when Israel expels the people of southern Lebanon en masse and destroys whole villages, the bare fact that it is Israel acting does not make those actions good. Just how much carnage does Israel have to inflict on Lebanon before Bush recognizes that we, too, are capable of evil?

Krauthammer's Latest Outrage

This blog will probably criticize Charles Krauthammer on many occasions for no better reason than that my local newspaper carries his column. Although Krauthammer writes interesting columns on medical ethics and is capable of being reasonable on other matters, on questions of foreign policy in general and Israel in particular, Krauthammer is either insane or a shameless liar. His most recent column is a particlarly egregious example.

Writing in defense of Israel's recent all-out war on Lebanon in general and Hezbollah in particular, Krauthammer says, "The majority of Lebanese -- Christian, Druze, Sunni Muslim and secular -- bitterly resent their country being hijacked by Hezbollah and turned into a war zone."

This is true so far as it goes. Christian, Sunni, Druze and secular Lebanese do oppose Hezbollah and these groups, combined, are a majority of Lebanese. But Krauthammer neglects to mention that Hezbollah does have the support of one group of Lebanese, the Shiites. And the Shiites, though a minority, are a plurality, i.e., the largest single religious group, making up about 40% of the population. Hezbollah remains popular with the Shiites of Lebanon, because it drove Israel out of southern Lebanon, because of it gives once-excluded Shiites a place in Lebanese politics, because of the social services it provides, because of its honesty and lack of corruption, and because it keeps the people in the territory it controls in the constant grip of its propaganda. Any country in which 40% of the population support an independent militia outside of government control and 60% oppose it has obvious problems beyond its ability to resolve.

Krauthammer ignores the popularity of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and offers the following recommendation. "Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese. It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. . . . Just as in Kuwait 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier."

Surely he does not believe his own words! Since Hezbollah has the overwhelming support of the people of southern Lebanon, to "liberate" the area from its Hezbollah effectively means "liberating" southern Lebanon from its inhabitants. Expelling the "occupier" is nothing like expelling the invading Iraqi army from Kuwait. Neither will it be like Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in which it easily expelled the PLO, which was also an alien presence. The Shiites of southern Lebanon so hated the PLO presence that they greeted the Israeli army as liberators and showered them with rose petals and rice. Today, Hezbollah is indistiguishable from the general population, which gives it their support. Expelling the "invader" means expelling the whole population.

And there is ample evidence that the Israelis understand this; hence their practice of dropping leaflets warning the inhabitants to flee, following by bombing campaigns that destroy entire villages. (Touted as examples of the Israelis' respect for life; they warn people to flee before laying waste to the area). Indeed, the evidence is growing that Israel intends to expell everyone south of the Litani River (some 300,000 people) to creat an uninhabited 30 mile buffer zone. But this will still not be good enough. At least, it is my understanding that Hezbollah has rockets with a range greater than 30 miles and will still be able to hit Israel even after being driven back past the Litani River. So what is Israel to do after that? "Liberate" Lebanon from its Shiite population all the way from the border to Beirut? And, if so, who is to move into southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah from re-infiltrating? I am not suggesting that Israel is contemplating anything so drastic as all that, only that no military action any less drastic will remove the threat of rockets altogether.

Krauthammer says that Israel is the "only country" that can defeat Hezbollah because the Lebanese army is too weak, Europe is too insular, and the United States has had a "Lebanon allergy" ever since Hezbollah blew up a Marine compound last time we intervened. He neglects to mention that Israel's last attempt to defeat Hezbollah was an 18 year occupation and guerrilla war in which Israel eventually withdrew, defeated. Since defeating Hezbollah today will essentially mean crushing and subjugating the 40% of all Lebanese who are Shiite that, too, will be a long, dirty, messy unconventional war of the kind that Israel, too, is "allergic" to.

So that leaves just one other radical suggestion. Try diplomacy. Reasonable commentators differ on whether Syria and Iran are behind Hezbollah's initial provocation. But given the amount of armanents these two countries supply Hezbollah, surely they could rein in their unruly ally. Of course, this would mean actually talking to the governments of Syria and Iran and dropping the stance of "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." Bush (and for that matter, Krauthammer) should give some thought as to why talking to these hostile regimes is so much worse than allowning Israel's destruction of Lebanon to continue. How many Lebanese can Israel drive from their homes before that, too, becomes "evil"?

Oh, yes, and as to the original question as to whether Krauthammer's column is lying or honest lunacy? My bet is on lying.