Buffer-Zone Realism versus Holistic Liberalism
by neolibertarian
In response to Sandy, a commenter who gave a very cogent and reasonable response to my last post on Israel and Hezbollah, I'd like to give this post.
First, the 1982-200 occupation wasn't really targeted at Hezbollah. It was targeted at the PLO and Palestinian fighters, not at the Shi'a or Lebanese so much. And against the PLO it was relatively successful, because they retreated from Lebanon and they eventually had to pursue peaceful negotiations (though not without continued violence, of course). They didn't really try to destroy Hezbollah, to my knowledge. Granted, they backed the SLA (South Lebanon Army) as a proxy against the PLO and then against Hezbollah. But their goal was to push the PLO out of South Lebanon, and they achieved that and more. As to clearing South Lebanon entirely of hostiles, they didn't so much achieve that, but it wasn't their real goal. The problem isn't their success, but the goals they chose to begin with.
Also, as Adriana commented, Israel did in fact invade Lebanon in 1978. That was Operation Litani. It was in response to numerous invasions and attacks on Israel, mainly by Palestinian groups like the PLO. I cited a couple of the attacks, the Coastal Road Massacre (Fatah) and the Kiryat Shmona Massacre (PFLP), but there were many others from 1968 to 1978 that led Israel to attack the Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. There was the Avivim school bus massacre, killing and wounding a number of people, including the deaths of nine children - none of them even ten years old. There was the Ma'alot massacre, where DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terrorists from Lebanon killed some people and took over a school, and a failed Sayeret Matkal rescue attempt killed the DFLPers only after they had executed 21 children. The Savoy Operation involved PLO gunmen storming a hotel, and a Sayeret Matkal rescue attempt saved five hostages but the terrorists executed eight. There were other attacks, but together they encouraged Israel to respond to the Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon with Operation Litani in March '78.
For people who've seen the movie Munich (I did just recently), part of Operation Wrath of God, where Israelis brought vengeance on Palestinians who engineered the Munich massacre, included Operation Spring of Youth. The movie was inaccurate in depicting the attack (hey, it's a movie) but the Israeli Sayeret Matkal invaded Lebanon and killed three PLO leaders, as well as a number of other people.
Sidenotes to Spring of Youth:
- It was led by Ehud Barak, the predecessor to Sharon as PM
- Bibi Netanyahu's brother Jonathan (Yoni) was in the group
- Both Barak (Coastal Road Massacre) and Yoni Netanyahu (Operation Entebbe) would both lead subsequent responses to Palestinian terrorism, though Yoni was KIA in his mission
- Barak defeated incumbent Netanyahu to become PM
The goal of Spring of Youth was vengenace, but also to assassinate leaders of Palestinian terror groups. It was not to take down the groups wholesale or to reform Lebanon itself. This is a consistent habit in Israel's realist-driven foreign policy.
Operation Litani, likewise, was meant only to push the PLO back. First it was to capture a certain distance within the sight of the border, and then it was to push them to the Litani River. No attempt to outright destroy Palestinian groups, nor to reform Lebanon in such a way as to make for a lasting peace. It was merely a limited engagement for short-term security, and as a deterrent and harassment aimed at the terrorists. The UN forces arrived in Lebanon as UNIFIL less than ten days after the Israeli invasion in Litani. So the UNIFIL presence dates to 1978, rather than 1982 or later.
Operation Peace for the Galilee set out with somewhat the same goal of a buffer north of the border. They wanted to push the PLO to 40 klicks north of the border. Though Peace for the Galilee extended into an 18-year occupation, much of the forces were withdrawn after a few years.
The Israelis continually pursue a buffer zone for security purposes. They wanted to stop attacks and secure their right to be a functioning nation. The same is true with earlier wars and conflicts involving Israel.
With Egypt, the Gulf of Aqaba access to the open sea is limited by narrow passages at the Straits of Tiran. So for shipping to go to and from Eilat in southernmost Israel (or for Aqaba, the Jordanian port next to Eilat) the Straits have to be open. The narrow portion and the blocking action of the islands to the east of south Sinai means that artillery can easily block shipping there. This has happened twice with Egypt blockading Eilat's access to the sea (an act of war in modern and classical international law) and is part of the reason Israel captured and held the Sinai in 1967 (and why it attacked in the 1956 Suez Crisis). The buffer created by occupying Sinai secured a space for Israel to live and breathe.
With Syria, the Golan Heights are a high plateau overlooking the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias by the Roman name) in Israel and agricultural settlements. A sheer half-klick drop and its position on the border with Israel made Golan a perfect place to launch artillery campaigns against Israel. There was a very high vantage, hence greater distance. Israel captured and held the Heights in order to provide a buffer zone. Without the Golan Heights to provide the altitude advantage, it was easier for Israel to defend itself from Syria. Plus, the water and farming opportunities of Golan are also quite valuable.
With the West Bank, Israel's security fence blocks terrorists (or anyone else, really) from crossing except at designated points. The parts of the fence that are made of concrete prevent sniper attacks as well. This is another buffer move, keeping Palestinians from crossing out of the West Bank to attack Jews.
What Israel does is actually a self-enforced version of classic UN buffer peacekeeping. A traditional UN peacekeeper force does nothing but sit between two combatants, on a border, and prevents either side from crossing. While this hardly prevents rocket strikes above the force (like Hezbollah firing over UNIFIL to hit Israel) it prevents ground invasions. Such a force, though, is only allowed to stay as long as both parties agree. So when Nasser asked on behalf of Egypt for the UN to withdraw from its presence on the border between Egypt and Israel (the first-ever such peacekeeper force, designed and established in response to the Suez crisis) the buffer was removed. The Six-Day War was the result of Nasser's belligerent request for UNEF to be evacuated (Nasser also again shut down the Straits of Tiran for Israeli traffic in the run-up to the war).
The use of a border-sitting peacekeeping force was seen many other times (including UNIFIL today) and the rigidly-designed limitations of the model are one of the reasons why UNAMIR -United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda- failed. It was a border-monitoring force and not a peace-enforcing force, so UNAMIR was not allowed to act against extremist militias. When UNAMIR found ammo dumps and other clear violations of the peace terms, the UN simply reported the infractions to both sides of the border line, to the government and to the rebels. The mission force was specifically ordered to halt its planned seizure of the weapons. Since the Interahamwe Hutu rebels were just a proxy force for the government, their militia weapons caches were completely safe once the government told them the positions had been revealed. Similarly with Israel, however, the Tutsi-dominated rebels did not put much stock into UNAMIR succeeding, and both sustained the attacks and won the subsequent re-emergence of civil war in Rwanda. Other factors were part of UNAMIR's failure as well, including spies amongst its local employees in Rwanda, and the presence of the Rwandan government on the Security Council during a critical period (thus giving it heightened access to confidential materials of UNAMIR). Plus, the world totally chickened out and let hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and Tutsi-friendly Hutus be slaughtered in a few months' time.
But Israel, by going the traditional route of taking the buffer enforcement on itself, is trying to make space for its existence. Russia did the same thing in its history with regard to Eastern Europe; annexations of Polish and surrounding areas theoretically gave Russia space from Germany and France. They did it when Poland was repeatedly partitioned in the 18th century (they split it with Germans - the Prussians and Austrians). They did it again in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact before World War II (again splitting up Poland with Germans). That space came in handy as an attrition tactic against Napoleon and Hitler. Israel seeks comparatively far less buffer, but also has comparatively much greater force versus its neighbors than Russia had against Western Europe. And completely unlike Russia, Israel will free hundreds of violent Palestinians to get back a few Israeli bodies, while Russia will sacrifice literally millions or tens of millions of Russians and scorch its own land just to stop invaders.
The problem I see with perpetually seeking self-patrolled buffers is that Israel never looks to a holistic solution for peace. It pursues more realist-inspired, security-focused concerns. Trying to get space between Israel and its enemies is valuable and normal. When states either overtly or covertly conspire to assist the terrorists (Syria, Egypt pre-1982) or are unwilling or unable to stop the terrorists (Palestinian Authority, Lebanese government) then it's lawful and natural for Israel to take action to do so. And if that means cutting Hezbollah off from its source of rockets (runways and highways), then that's a reasonable action - just as the Allies in WWII bombed the hell out of bridges to retard Nazi movements.
A long-term solution has to recognize what's to become of the peaceful citizens residing in the states that Israel combats. Arabs have rights and hopes. A real solution must place primacy on developing Arab liberalism and Arab democracy. Simply attacking Hezbollah doesn't fight the source of the problem, and unlike fighting against states like Egypt or Jordan (which have institutional interests like maintaining power and borders that push them to seek ceasefire or even peace) there's less incentive for groups like the PLO or Hezbollah to seek peace.
Israel has to smash the hell out of Hezbollah. First things first, Hezbollah must be destroyed or (more realistically) severely crippled. That's the short-term. Neither Lebanon nor Israel is safe while Hezbollah is running around armed.
And when the fighting is over, Israel should compensate accidental victims specifically and the country generally with direct payments to widows, reconstruction of the airport and highways, and generally rebuilding what it broke in the fighting. The US should follow in parallel with the promise of strong support for democracy promotion, including thinkers and philanthropists. Lebanon has the most experience with democracy of any Arab country, so if it'd work anywhere, Lebanon is a good choice (its vicious sectarian conflicts and civil war history notwithstanding). This is the long-term.
For the mid-term, the US and the world need to clamp down on Iran funding Hezbollah. This is a hard part for a country that has the propensity to nuke the region. Iran's regime is an admitted opponent of liberalism, and sees war with the West as inevitable and ideal. We're in a dangerous situation, but unless the funding is closed, Hezbollah will have an easy time re-establishing itself. It might involve border inspections, police raids, police accountants, or whatever else, and it might involve the threat or use of force against Iran. But Iran has to be kept out of Lebanese affairs for Lebanon to set itself up as a free and open society finally.
I just hope that either the Israelis embrace democratization (unlikely) or at least let the US and the West practice it on Lebanon without too much objection. That's we need to focus on.Related Posts (on one page):
- Buffer-Zone Realism versus Holistic Liberalism
- Israel and Hezbollah
What Will Become Of Hamas?
by neolibertarian
Hamas won the Palestinian elections, which has caused anything with working brain cells (and without an undying passion to taste Jewish blood mixed with Mediterranean saltwater) to take a step back and look at thew prospects for Palestinian democracy. That's good, everybody should question elections and democracy, especially in authoritarian or recently authoritarian areas. If we don't question it, we won't see its role or its value.
I think the appropriate response should be to cut off funding from Hamas until they cease terror-sponsoring or terror-condoning activities (which should've been our policy to the Palestinians a week ago, anyway). They did win an election, but it doesn't make us hypocrites to say we don't like the winner - just as Austria had an election where the Freedom party entered governbment and the EU boycotted the country until Haider left the government(he used Nazi-era slogans about 'overimmigration').
Personally I believe we have to see how things develop, but I think running a government will make Hamas more accountable to other governments, and to the Palestinians. Rather than being accountable only to their members and potential recruits as a terrorist organization, they are now a political party and ruling government. That makes them accountable to the Palestinians as a whole, to the opposition parties, and to other governments. Now they have to be the grownups and if no action comes it's their fault.
The downside, of course, is that Hamas now directly controls the aid that comes from the West and the Arab world, giving them the power to increase their activities and funding. One way to get around this problem is to link aid to audits, forcing the Palestinians into para-governmental accountability. No audit = no aid.
I think that democracy is going to move Hamas into a slightly more moderate position (not that it did all that much for Fatah, anyway) and will hopefully show the Palestinians that they deserve democracy.
Right now, it's too easy for terrorists and sympathizers to call democracy and America into question as hypocritical. We have democracy for us but not for them. That gives them ammunition to use against us. If we show them that democracy is good for the Palestinians as well as the Americans then it robs them of a rhetorical tool they use against us.
Hypocrisy and self-interest are the twin rhetorical tools of nihilists of every stripe - communists, fascists, Islamists, and the rest all argue that their opponents are hypocritical and that the hypocrisy comes from self-interest rather than idealism. By sticking to our rhetorical guns (and, if the situations calls for it, our actual guns) we can help win on the level of ideas. That's where a lot of the war on terror has to be fought, to stem the tide of new terrorists.
Democracy for the Palestinians should be our goal, even if it's far from perfect. After all, if the attacks don't stop then a military response later is always available - and fully justified.
Happy Yom Kippur
by neolibertarian
The day of atonement started at sundown yesterday and goes to sundown today.
Sheehan's Insanity
by neolibertarian
I earlier blogged that the President is under no obligation to meet with Cindy Sheehan but that he should anyway in order to call her bluff. I don't think that's still appropriate. If Cindy Sheehan is willing to apologize for, retract and/or condemn some of her worst statements, then I think it would be appropriate. Meeting with the President might even be a good way to tempt her into distancing herself from her absurd comments.
First and most prominently, it's not always fair that people are associated with support from politically controversial strangers, but the right thing for a public figure (Cindy Sheehan has courted the press, she's effectively a public figure) to do is to make clear her position. David Duke's support should be clearly supported or denounced. Duke specifically held her up as an opponent of the Jewish war and Jewish media. She should make clear her feelings on that endorsement. Additionally, this would be the point to make clear just what she meant in saying thatr her sent was sent to die "for Israel." That's an effectively anti-Semitic comment and she needs to clarify just what she meant. If it turns out she does condone (not agree with, but condone) anti-Semitism in thought or rhetoric then the President should not meet with her.
Second, she said America was not worth fighting for and has made statements saying that our entire history is dishonorable. If she's actually anti-American and not just misquoted then the President should not meet with her.
There's one thing to meet with a grieving mother making crazy statements to the media in order to respectfully disarm her "protest." After all, it's not like she's going to convince him to stop the war. It's another thing to meet with her when she's doing it in service of hatred or bigotry. Moreover, meeting with her sends a message; it's unfortunate that meeting with a crazy grieving mother sets a mild precedent for other crazy people, but it's much worse to set a precedent that you can make fun of an ethnicity or this country because of that pain and still meet with the President. It's not a bright line distinction, but it's a sufficient one.
And thirdly, Sheehan's remark insulting the President's daughters was just uncalled for. From Sheehan's original account of their meeting he was nothing but respectful of her loss. She has no reason to insult his children in that manner. Suggesting the President should be willing to risk his own children, though a character attack, is a valid rhetorical point (though not a convincing logical one, since a man could be a hypocrite in his actions but correct in his words) but there was no reason to insult the twins. She should apologize for that comment. Nobody in this debate has insulted her son and there's no reason to insult his daughters.
Sheehan's unlikely to apologize. She sounds just unhinged. She brings in the Jews, the neocon-PNAC agenda, the war for Israel sake; she calls a combat KIA 'murder,' calls the president's daughters names; she insults the country by saying it's not worth fighting for and then she wants to meet the President again in order to bitch and complain about it all. Sorry, that's just bonkers. It was bad enough when she just had bad opinions and was merely bordering on what a broad cross-section of Americans would call inappropriate.
She's gone past all that to have all sorts of crazy things to her name. I've heard she disputes that she said some of the things, and if so I retract all the relevant comments; if she has been misquoted I am sympathetic because there's little in this world so pernicious or lasting as a falsified anecdote. I really suspect that most or all of it is legitimately attributed to her, however.
If for some reason the President does decide to meet with her, I have several suggestions. One, include her in a meeting with other parents, so she doesn't monopolize the meeting. Two, have it be a meeting that was already scheduled, so she's not forcing a major change. Three, squeeze her in at the end, briefly, so that it doesn't detract unnecessarily from the experience of the other parents (and so they can simply leave if they don't want to hear it). Four, ideally the meeting will be at least three weeks away, so that her protest until then has no point and the coverage will die down, and will be neither in Crawford nor in the White House so that it doesn't require inviting her into his home. And five, listen respectfully, don't insult her, and answer with a concise defense of the war, a defense of this country, and an indictment of the terrorists.
Of course, at this point I'm not sure it's quite so good an idea to deal with her. I still think it would silence them because (quite stupidly) their one demand is for her to get a second meeting with the President. I don't see a lot of benefits to her from geeting a few minutes to rant about the Jews and the evil Americans to the President, and I do see benefit in him politely but firmly refuting her statements. It would be unfortunate for the President to meet with a woman that's made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements and who needlessly insulted his daughters. I absolutely don't blame him for not meeting with her even if she does apologize completely for all the boneheaded, bigoted or moonbatty comments she's made.
I guess I just appreciate the potential for contrast. There's Sheehan on one side, totally controlled by emotions, totally aligned with far-left political consultants and media representatives, talking about how evil the Jew-neocons at PNAC are, how they controlled the US into going to war for Israel, and how America deserves to lose. Then there's Bush on the other side, being decorous and resolute, reasonably pointing out that the terrorists attack people of all races and faiths, that they attack without cause, and that the blame must lie with the murderers and not the murdered.
The "Grieving Mother" Status Doesn't Excuse Blaming Israel
by neolibertarian
Cindy Sheehan, in mid-March:Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy.
Look, everyone feels sympathy for the relatives, friends and spouses of soldiers that died in combat zones. But sympathy doesn't elevate bad ideas into good or even neutral ones. The best sympathy does is to soften or silence our criticism of grieving relations that say stupid, bigoted or untrue thing. And example would be when Mrs. Cosby blamed her son's death on racism, and saying that the Slavic immigrant who killed him must've learned his racism in the US because there is none over there.
Sympathy can get us to ignore it when somebody says something inarticulate or awkward, bigoted or cruel, because we realize that under normal circumstances they might not have said it aloud or even have thought it. But sympathy doesn't lend any credibility to a dumb argument.
When she blames Israel as the source of terrorism against us she gives an unhelpful and anti-Israel view of the world more credence. When she asserts that we fought Iraq for Israel, and repeatedly refers to the neocon PNAC agenda, she sounds like a frothing anti-Semite. Unfortunately, anti-Semites seem to agree with that view of Sheehan. Aside from Michael Moore's support, Sheehan's anti-Israel comment garnered her the support of David Duke (renowned racist and former Klansman). Here's Duke's blog entry giving a point-by-point description of how this is a Jewish war for Israel against America's interests.
I don't know that Sheehan hates Jews, but I do know she clings to the same irrational arguments that bigots like David Duke and Jew-hating terrorists use to make their points. She didn't say anything specific about Jews, but she mentioned the major points - she blamed the US and Israel instead of the terrorists, she said this was nothing but a war for Israel, and she asserted that a neocon cabal led by PNAC was behind the conspiracy to 'murder' her son. Taken together, the neocon/PNAC reference is an allusion to Jews controlling the government.
When somebody makes a reference to a Jewish person as a Fagan or a Shylock, they don't need to be explicit to be understood as anti-Semitic slurs. By the same token, when somebody says that the neocons at Project for a New American Century are controlling the government to wage war for Israel, and that America and Israel deserve to be terrorized and bombed over our allegedly joint foreign policy, it's not unreasonable to connect the dots and see an anti-Semitic conspiracy of sorts.
Maybe she's just spouting off theories she read on the Internet or something and she would be genuinely disgusted by bigoted explanations behind the war (that could very reasonably be opposed without the slightest tinge of hatred for Jews), in which case she ought to be perfectly clear about it. It's possible somebody might reference Fagan only for the stingy aspects and not realize that it's a longstanding anti-Jewish slur, and it's possible that somebody might talk about a PNAC conspiracy to send Americans to die fore the world's only Jewish state, but I'd say the assumption in both cases leans toward anti-Semitism.
Either way, what she said is wrong even if she herself is Jewish. It's bad logic, it's bad policy, it's bad IR and it's just idiotic. The terrorists have it out for us no matter what, they aren't going to stop, and they haven't stated a point at which they will stop fighting, killing, bombing and murdering. The same people fight in Chechnya (some of the 9/11 bombers were on their way to fight in Chechnya when an AQ recruiter stopped them in germany and invited them to training camps in Afghanistan) and in Sudan and in Kashmir, and none of those things are about Israel or America. Wholly irrational.
Again, the lefties should be careful about giving too much of a platform to Cindy Sheehan or she'll become something like the Jane Fonda of the war in Iraq.
From Wilson to Sheehan
by neolibertarian
Okay, so when Roberts was nominated some lefty bloggers said that it was a move to stop criticism of Rove over the Wilson-Plame business and the like (a satirical 'Rove' memo from one of the Huffington Post's eighty bajillion bloggers pops to mind). What's interesting is that the Cindy Sheehan business has actually been taken up as the cause of the week by raving lefties. She is the mother of a fallen Marine who decided that her earlier positive visit with Bush was actually a negative one, that she needs to get another visit with the leader of the free world for some reason, and that America and Israel are to blame for terrorism.
Silly me, I was blaming the people that strap bombs to jets and metros terrorism. Thank you, Cindy Sheehan, for explaining to me that the root of terrorism against the US is actually a 2003 invasion of Ba'athist Iraq. I guess Mohammed Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the rest were just shrewdly attacking us in 2001 in order to preemptively respond to an invasion that hadn't happened yet. Your grasp of human nature and international relations astounds me.
If the left really thought the Rove-Plame-Wilson story was going anywhere, why did they drop it? Well, because it had so many holes shot through it. The evidence looks like Rove didn't do anything and he's allowed any reporter to discuss it, waiving his confidentiality as a source. Moreover, Wilson's supposed debunking of the African uranium story ha been itself debunked; there is good evidence of Saddam trying to buy uranium from Africa. Bringing up the story again just shows that there was good reason to think Saddam had weapons.
The story was very weak but momentum and the anger of the left kept it going, especially since reporters are extremely invested in a story about reporters and sources. When it was bumped by Roberts it was actually good for everybody because the left just looked stupid pushing the story as Rove's downfall when the most conclusive part of the affair was that Saddam WAS trying to get uranium from Africa.
The Cindy Sheehan story isn't that much better, though. She veers close to very dangerous waters when she blames America and Israel for being attacked. The balance of the story is lost:
- her original description of the meeting with Bush was very positive, but then much later she said it was a negative meeting
- her family disagrees with her and thinks the son would not appreciate what she's doing
- she can't be reasonably cast as a simple grieving mother, given that she's using political consultants, press representatives, and even doing television ads
- she's way overplayed her hand on opposing the war by blaming America and Israel, which is very unpopular and damaging with most Americans, including moderate opponents of staying in Iraq
The longer the story goes on, the more pro-war people can point all this out. It will be very hard to overcome these mistakes because they're so hard to undo. If she changes her story and tries to partially recant her blaming of the US and Israel then she just looks like a politician, like her handlers and spin doctors have come in to do their work. It's a weak story on balance.
That said, there's still a real emotional appeal to be made and they're also going to pursue the populist thing about waiting on the road to talk to Bush. That'll keep the story going and they'll be waiting for Bush to speak with her. What do they really hope to gain from her speaking to him? It's not like he's suddenly going to reverse promises made to Congress, to allies, to soldiers and above all to the Iraqis and withdraw. What's he going to do, address Congress about his orders to withdraw the troops and suspend aid to Israel, then explain that some fallen Marine's mother told him to? Come on.
If I were Bush or his advisors, my suggestion would be to let the proxies make or not make the four arguments I listed above (the changed story, the son's opinion, the professional entourage, and blaming Israel) and to avoid any of them. They should mention that Bush already did have a meeting with her and that both sides thought it was a very positive one. Then they should schedule her to be included in a meeting -one that's already been scheduled- with Bush that includes the friends and relatives of other fallen soldiers. She can be squeezed in as part of a pre-arranged function in order to voice her concerns.
The president should thank her for her concerns and repeat his sorrow over her loss; then he should tell her that the terrorists are committed to our destruction, that their hatred has been boiling over at least since 1993 and arguably back to 1979, and that they are not rational people that will stop if we stop. They are the kind of people who murder over nothing but ethnicity, who butcher relatives for being gay, who slice up women for the crime of being raped, and who are so politically repressive that the dissent we've taken for granted for centuries is only now becoming a possibility there, and then only because of the efforts of our brave soldiers and of Arab dissidents.
It's not like she's going to assassinate him and she's not going to do anything more than words. If she uses the opportunity to insult the President then it just makes her look cheap. Bush doesn't have to meet with her, given her rhetoric, her status as a proxy of crazy leftwing types, and the fact that he already had a meeting with her. But I believe if he included her in a meeting with other parents it would undercut even the paltry populist and emotionalist arguments going right now, and it would give an opportunity for the President to prepare a concise, respectful, but forceful response in support of the War on Terror.
The long-term risk is that a lot of crazies would suddenly think they could consume all the President's time with their crazy theories. There are a lot of people in the country with all sorts of beliefs about aliens and the CIA and the Jews and so forth and making the President personally interact with all of them would be a waste of time and would present a security risk. By including her in a meeting already arranged for the benefit of others, it sets a far weaker precedent; she didn't get her own meeting, she got five minutes of somebody else's meeting.
And can I just say that if I died as a soldier or contractor overseas and a relative or friend of mine tried to manipulate the situation to do something that I would have fiercely opposed had I been around to do so, I'd be fiercely pissed off. That is not cool at all unless you acknowledge the opinion as your own. She's trying to use her son and herself as victims and martyrs when in reality it appears the son believed iun what he was doing. The disrespect in this situation comes from the mother until she acknowledges that her son would have or might have disagreed with what she's doing.
In conclusion, the left should be careful about embracing a political amateur as the cause of the week because they tend to say very unpolished things and can come off as crude and insensitive. They can't make their case on arguments or policy, so they've reduced themselves to cheap emotional pleas.
Israeli Protests
by neolibertarian
I heard on NPR that the massive Israeli pro-settlement protests resulted in Israeli police arresting tons of people and stopping several hundred busloads of people from going to Gaza to protest. Bus drivers that tried to drive anyway had their licenses revoked. Let's see if the Palestinian authorities can start showing similar good faith by cracking down on terrorists. I'd say Israel is clearly serious about pulling all the settlers out of Gaza and their very strong (perhaps even too strong) moves to pull out settlements prove good faith. I don't think the Palestinian leaders have done as much in return; I'd credit most of the reduction in violence in Israel (though certainly reduction doesn't mean a halt, as we've seen) to the security fence.
The Israelis are working on their side; it's time for the Palestinians to show they want to build peace or to stop complaining when the IDF comes in to do the job they won't do on their own.
Sanctions and the Death of the Wimpy Left
by neolibertarian
The Caterpillar company, which provides defensively armored bulldozers to Israel, just voted 97 to 3 to continue selling to the IDF (lgf). What interests me is that this is part of a longstanding, if largely unsuccessful, divestment push among the hard left. The hard left used to (and still does, at times) criticize sanctions as inhumane or even murderous. For example, Ward Churchill blames the UN sanctions for a half-million Iraqi deaths (and cites Albright's disastrous quote that it is 'worth it'). This is nothing new. They also like to mention the Cuban embargo as an example of a humanitarian disaster, or even the moral equivalent of murder.
I could accept this basic formulation, if you categorize it as something to the effect of 'sanctions punish innocent people for the crimes of their repressive governments, deprive them of access to safe, cheap US-made goods that could often save lives.' I think it's a fair argument to make that sanctions, whether UN or US, clearly worsen the quality of life for the people of the country targeted, and that people should not be punished, as a rule, for the actions of their tyrannical overlords. After all, the people of Cuba and Iraq are in large part bigger victims of their governments than anyone else.
I'd also say that it's not been shown to be very effective. Sanctions against Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq don't seem to have worked; it took the war in Iraq to start shaping up Iraq and Libya, and Iran and Cuba don't look better despite decades of sanctions on both. So I'm amenable to varied criticisms of sanctions (if not to the Ward Churchill we-desereved-it line of 'thought').
What's interesting is that the divestment movement is essentially sanctions for movements without the political clout to get an embargo passed Congress. It's not as impactful, but it essentially serves as a sort of non-governmental sanction effort. In this way, it's libertarian friendly, because private divestment is voluntary and non-coercive in most of its implementation. While libertarians might not agree with the effort, it's at least hypothetically non-coercive. It's basically just a capital boycott. However, the type of people on the left who like to push divestment aren't discussing libertarian polemics or the intricacies of non-coercion. My assertion is that most of them would want to see an embargo against Israel if only it were politically possible, so I'm using divestment efforts as a proxy for the hard-left's support for sanction-esque measures.
At the same time, the more mainstream left, meaning the national politicians and interest groups of the Democratic Party, are moving to defend sanctions outright. They defend sanctions because it allows them to seem tough in foreign policy without resorting to war, and because sanctions are usually the status quo in many situations. Democrats are very big, apparently, on not rocking the boat as of late. So Democratic Senators tend to defend sanctions because it lets them minimize Republican counter-attacks of weakness and appeal to the status quo, which is usually going to have an advantage in politics.
But this means the hard left types have moved from hating sanctions to flirting with more and more sanction-like measures to exert their will. First they did it in the 1980s with South Africa. It was for a wonderful reason: protest apartheid. Now, I might be mistaken, but my understanding is that US companies hired black South Africans and, in accordance with US law and custom, paid them roughly equitable wages compared to white employees. If this is so, then divestment only served to punish the few employers in South Africa that were giving black South Africans a fair shake. So it seems like it's morally righteous - burn the wicked, upraise the righteous - but really it's a radicalization technique that punishes the best companies in the country and has no effect on the non-US, pro-aparthetid companies.
The hard left won't give up their sanctions complaints. They've got too much energy and outrage invested in blaming the US for sanctions on Iraq to drop it. I'm sure an embargo against Palestinian humanitarian aid would really piss them off. But that's not going to stop them from pushing embargoing measures to deal with foreign policy against countries they don't like. And the center-left is, at least in the short term, going to back sanction efforts against countries so that they can undercut the GOP's tough talk with some mildly tough talk of their own. The result is that the anti-sanctions left is more or less depleted.
Was it ever very strong? Not really. There was a resurgence of the anti-sanctions left in the 1990s in light of the embargo against Iraq. In fact, this pressure, much of it outside the US, prompted the Oil-For-Food program to help the people but hurt Saddam. And of course the left is always sympathetic to ending the Cuban embargo, perhaps more from their sympathy for national health coverage than any other reason. But the sympathies on the left against sanctions are dwindling in light of dual radicalization.
They split. Those closer to the center are embracing sanctions to seem tough in light of Republican foreign policy successes. Those closer to the loony fringe are embracing the sanction mindset to push the line against Israel. The result is a dearth of people who oppose sanctions prima facie. It's an interesting development, if not an immediately earth-shattering one; sanctions seemed to do okay even in light of left-wing opposition.
What's interesting is that the left is no longer playing to the quasi-pacifist crowd. They're not trying to be the nice guys, the "give peace a chance" people or the "peace at all costs" crowd. They're either the subtly pro-insurgent hard left or the pro-status quo moderates-playing-tough.
Bias Against Israel in WaPo?
by neolibertarian
From Bernstein at VC, EyeonthePost brings out the mistakes and biases of the Washington Post. Having read it as my local paper for a few years, I knew it was biased, but it's nice to have outside confirmation.
The examples here are comparable: while Israel is deemed an 'occupier' of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there is said to be a 'continued Syrian presence' in Lebanon. While a single example doesn't show consistent bias, it is interesting that one would go to the trouble to construct a grammatically strange 'continued presence' line when 'occupier' is so much simpler and more common to our speech. It's especially funny, since Israel is a democracy that has been in negotiations for years about giving up the WB and GS, while Syria is a one-party dictatorship that only in the last couple weeks has had more than token or local pressure to withdraw - let alone willingness to negotiate the issue.
Anyway, it's not conclusive because it's only one situation, but certainly this one comparison seems to suggest political bias against Israel (OR: for Syria; OR: for Bush's opponents).
Of course, reading the remainder of EyeonthePost makes it seem a lot less accidental - even part of a subtle but persistent anti-Israel bias.
Apologizing Palestinian Terror
by neolibertarian
This is an excellent piece over at TCS on the psychological perspectives of Westerners on Palestinian terrorism. You ought to read the whole thing, but I wanted to excerpt a couple parts.
[I]t is not necessary for us to try to determine the question of who started it. This is because, even when we cannot be clear about who started it, we can be reasonably certain about who is not trying to stop it -- and this is certainly true in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israelis retaliate against terror, and they try to prevent it; but they do not use acts of terror to deliberately disrupt attempts at a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Palestinian terrorist organizations do. They have for decades, and they continue to engage in such terror, despite Palestinian national elections and concessions made by the Israelis. Nor is there any reason to suppose that this terror will end, so long as there are Palestinian organizations whose very existence depends on maintaining a condition of anarchy and disorder. Any stable and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would, in and of itself, rob the terrorist leaders and their followers of their power and importance. Thus, they have a vested interest in keeping uproar and violence alive.
This is a wonderful point. While neither side is wholly innocent, it's clear that the Palestinian terrorists are not interested in any foreseeable end to the 'cycle of violence.' We may not be able to figure out who started it, but it's obvious who is not trying to stop the violence.
[S]ympathetic Americans see the plight of the Palestinian people and think to themselves, "What would be my aspirations if I were in such a situation?" And from this premise, they conclude that the Palestinians would aspire to the same kind of thing that we would aspire to under the same circumstances: to create our own state, to operate it independently, and to live in peace alongside Israel. But this is a classical example of the sympathetic illusion that prevails in so much Western thinking about the aspirations of the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general.
The upshot of this sympathetic illusion is that we unconsciously replace the Palestinian fantasy aspirations of total victory over Israel with our own modest "Live and let live" attitude, thereby creating the mirage of a legitimate goal to which our imaginary Palestinians would be aspiring if they were just like us.
This mirage of a legitimate goal is essential to all Western apologetics for Palestinian terrorism. Thus an organization like Hamas is seen as seeking a legitimate objective, namely the creation of an independent Palestinian state, but is simply going about it the wrong way. Instead of following the roadmap to peace, they are using terrorism. So get them to stop using terror, engage them in the peace process, and that way, the state of Israel will find peace and the "legitimate aspirations" of the Palestinians would be accommodated.
There certainly are a great many Palestinians desiring nothing more than peace, independence, freedom and democracy - and this is the whole underpinning of Bush's foreign policy I might add. But the Palestinian terrorists do not fall into this category any more than Hitler, Goebbels and Goerring would have in their time. When college students play down the demands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and PFLP and the rest they play a game of intellectual dishonesty. These groups want to kill Jews and obliterate the infidels. They do not seek peaceful resolution. We should not proceed as though they could pursue their goals peacefully. For these groups, violence is the end, not the means.
There's much more to the article and it's all quite interesting. What I personally find intriguing - and more than a little humorous - is the way pampered, white, Protestant American students like to attach themselves to the Palestinian cause to prove to themselves their own credibility as quasi-revolutionaries. I could go into depth on the subject, but they're so irrelevant socially and politically it seems like a colossal waste of my time and yours. Suffice to say: they carry the torch for Palestine to try and prove to others and themselves that they are radical and principled. The whole movement is silly; a caricature of itself.
