Many Motives Behind a Cease-Fire

By Gerald F. Seib
Wall Street Journal
August 5, 2006

The United Nations Security Council may well succeed next week in cobbling together a resolution to end the fighting in Lebanon. But as with most things Middle Eastern, all won't be as it seems. Each of the parties involved will be trying to use a cease-fire resolution to accomplish something other than simply ceasing the firing.

Hezbollah will want to cement the impression in the region that it successfully stood up to the mighty Israeli military machine. Israel's main goal, by contrast, will be a resolution that brings international help in disarming Hezbollah.

Lebanon itself will want the resolution to pave the way for a rapid end to the embarrassing presence of Israeli soldiers on its territory. And France, which is likely to lead whatever international peacekeeping force goes into southern Lebanon, will want an agreement that limits the duties and dangers its forces will assume.

And what about the U.S.?

Washington's real goal is likely to be far broader, stretching beyond Lebanon itself. Washington's real interest lies in finding a formula that ends the fighting without enhancing the power of Iran, Hezbollah's main patron and the country that poses the real strategic threat to American interests in the region.

The great danger to the U.S. is that the Lebanon conflict could simply further Tehran's rising influence because of its backing of Hezbollah. If Iran emerges in the eyes of the region's restive and disillusioned publics as the one country with the guts and power to stand up to Israel, its stature is enhanced. And because Iran is the biggest Shiite Muslim power center in the region, the influence of the region's Shiites grows overall. That isn't good news for the Sunni Muslim-led governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, America's strongest friends in the Arab world.

That means the U.S. will be trying to steer the U.N. diplomacy to accomplish two things. The first will be to establish a system that prevents Iran from rearming Hezbollah with more missiles and rockets, thereby limiting the power and potency of what has become a kind of proxy force for Iran.

That will require shining "some kind of international spotlight on the arms transfers from Iran to Syria to Beirut," says Aaron Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, a longtime Mideast negotiator. It also means pushing for an international peacekeeping force that has the mandate and the power to stop rocket and missile shipments.

The second goal will be to emerge from the cease-fire diplomacy having cemented greater international resolve to put a lid on Iran's nuclear program. That, after all, is what the U.S. once thought the Security Council would be occupying itself with this month. If the U.S. manages to stay in sync with France and others on the Security Council through the next week's diplomacy, perhaps all can agree that is the next item on a very urgent to-do list.

The neocons' next war

By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon
Aug. 03, 2006

The National Security Agency is providing signal intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation. President Bush has approved the secret program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney's national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries, the source privy to conversations about the program says. (Intelligence, including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to Israel in the past for various purposes.) The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been "briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario. Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.

Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region.

In order to try to understand the neoconservative road map, senior national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves a 1996 neocon manifesto against the Middle East peace process. Titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," its half-dozen authors included neoconservatives highly influential with the Bush administration -- Richard Perle, first-term chairman of the Defense Policy Board; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser, Cheney's chief Middle East aide.

"A Clean Break" was written at the request of incoming Likud Party Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and intended to provide "a new set of ideas" for jettisoning the policies of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Instead of trading "land for peace," the neocons advocated tossing aside the Oslo agreements that established negotiations and demanding unconditional Palestinian acceptance of Likud's terms, "peace for peace." Rather than negotiations with Syria, they proposed "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria." They also advanced a wild scenario to "redefine Iraq." Then King Hussein of Jordan would somehow become its ruler; and somehow this Sunni monarch would gain "control" of the Iraqi Shiites, and through them "wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria."

Netanyahu, at first, attempted to follow the "clean break" strategy, but under persistent pressure from the Clinton administration he felt compelled to enter into U.S.-led negotiations with the Palestinians. In the 1998 Wye River accords, concluded through the personal involvement of President Clinton and a dying King Hussein, the Palestinians agreed to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel and Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from a portion of the occupied West Bank. Further negotiations, conducted by his successor Ehud Barak, that nearly settled the conflict ended in dramatic failure, but potentially set the stage for new ones.

At his first National Security Council meeting, President George W. Bush stunned his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, by rejecting any effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Powell warned that "the consequences of that could be dire, especially for the Palestinians," Bush snapped, "Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things." He was making a "clean break" not only with his immediate predecessor but also with the policies of his father.

In the current Middle East crisis, once again, the elder Bush's wise men have stepped forward to offer unsolicited and unheeded advice. (In private they are scathing.) Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria and now the director of the James Baker Institute at Rice University, urged on July 23, on CNN, negotiations with Syria and Iran. "I come from the school of diplomacy that you negotiate conflict resolution and peace with your enemies and adversaries, not with your friends," he said. "We've done it in the past, we can do it again."

Charles Freeman, the elder Bush's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, remarked, "The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad." Indeed, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki came to Washington in the last week of July he preceded his visit with harsh statements against Israel. And in a closed meeting with U.S. senators, when asked to offer criticism of Hezbollah, he steadfastly refused.

Richard Haass, the Middle East advisor on the elder Bush's National Security Council and President Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director, and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, openly scoffed at Bush's Middle East policy in an interview on July 30 in the Washington Post: "The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction. The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world. Not just the Arab world, but in Europe and around the world. People will get a daily drumbeat of suffering in Lebanon and this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights." When asked about the president's optimism, he replied, "An opportunity? Lord, spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?"

The same day that Haass' comments appeared Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor and still his close friend, published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post written more or less as an open letter to his erstwhile and errant protégé Condoleezza Rice. Undoubtedly, Scowcroft reflects the views of the former President Bush. Adopting the tone of an instructor to a stubborn pupil, Scowcroft detailed a plan for an immediate end to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "the source of the problem." His program is a last attempt to turn the president back to the ways of his father. If the elder Bush and his team were in power and following the Scowcroft plan, a cease-fire would have been declared. But Scowcroft's plan resembles that of the Europeans, already rejected by the Bush administration, and Rice is the one offering a counterproposal that has put diplomacy into a stall.

Despite Rice's shunning of the advice of the Bush I sages, the neoconservatives have made her a convenient target in their effort to undermine all diplomatic initiatives. "Dump Condi," read the headline in the right-wing Insight Magazine on July 25. "Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration's national security and foreign policy agenda," the article reported. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a member of the Defense Policy Board, was quoted: "We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you're doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you'll get out of us is talk."

A month earlier, Perle, in a June 25 Op-Ed in the Washington Post, revived an old trope from the height of the Cold War, accusing those who propose diplomacy of being like Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who tried to appease Hitler. "Condoleezza Rice," wrote Perle, "has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of and increasingly represents a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries."

Rice, agent of the nefarious State Department, is supposedly the enemy within. "We are in the early stages of World War III," Gingrich told Insight. "Our bureaucracies are not responding fast enough. We don't have the right attitude."

Confused, ineffectual and incapable of filling her office with power, Rice has become the voodoo doll that Powell was in the first term. Even her feeble and counterproductive gestures toward diplomacy leave her open to the harshest attacks from neoconservatives. Scowcroft and the Bush I team are simply ignored. The sustained assault on Rice is a means to an end -- restoring the ascendancy of neoconservatism.

Bush's rejection of and reluctance to embrace the peace process concluded with the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. This failure was followed by a refusal to engage Hamas, potentially splitting its new governmental ministers from its more radical leadership in Damascus. Predictably, the most radical elements of Hamas found a way to lash out. And Hezbollah seized the moment by staging its own provocation.

Having failed in the Middle East, the administration is attempting to salvage its credibility by equating Israel's predicament with the U.S. quagmire in Iraq. Neoconservatives, for their part, see the latest risk to Israel's national security as a chance to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran, perhaps the last opportunity to realize the fantasies of "A Clean Break."

By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot.

Time For Plan B

By Thomas L. Friedman
New York Times
August 4, 2006

It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.

When our top commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, tells a Senate Committee, as he did yesterday, that “the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it,” it means that three years of efforts to democratize Iraq are not working. That means “staying the course” is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B — how we might disengage with the least damage possible.

It seemed to me over the last three years that, even with all the Bush team’s missteps, we had to give our Iraqi partners a chance to produce a transitional government, then write a constitution, then hold an election and then, finally, put together their first elected cabinet. But now they have done all of that — and the situation has only worsened.

The Sunni jihadists and Baathists are as dedicated as ever to making this U.S.-Iraqi democracy initiative fail. That, and the runaway sectarian violence resulting from having too few U.S. troops and allowing a militia culture to become embedded, have made Iraq a lawless mess.

Yes, I believe it was and remains hugely important to try to partner with Iraqis to create one good example in the heart of the Arab world of a decent, progressive state, where the politics of fear and tribalism do not reign — the politics that has produced all the pathologies of unemployment, religious intolerance and repression that make the Middle East so dangerous to itself and others.

But the administration now has to admit what anyone — including myself — who believed in the importance of getting Iraq right has to admit: Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, it is not happening, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives.

Since the Bush team never gave us a Plan A for Iraq, it at least owes us a Plan B. It’s not easy. Here are my first thoughts about a Plan B and some of the implications.

I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq’s factions and neighbors. Just as Bosnia could be solved only by an international peace force and the Dayton conference — involving Russia, Europe and the U.S., the powers most affected by Bosnia’s implosion — the civil war in Iraq can be quelled only by a coalition of those most affected by Iraq’s implosion: the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan, India, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria and Jordan. As in Bosnia, any solution will have to be some form of federalism, a division of oil wealth and policing by an international force, where needed.

For such a conference to come about, though, the U.S. would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.

What would be the consequences of leaving without such a last-ditch peace effort, or if it just fails? Iraq could erupt into a much wider civil war, drawing in its neighbors. Or, Iraqis might stare into this abyss and actually come to terms with each other on their own. Our presence may be part of the problem. It’s hard to know.

If Iraq opts for all-out civil war, its two million barrels a day will be off the market and oil could go above $100 a barrel. (That would, however, spur more investment in alternative fuels that could one day make us independent of this volatile region.)

Some fear that Iran will be the winner. But will it? Once we are out of Iraq, Iran will have to manage the boiling pot next door. That will be a huge problem for Iran. The historical enmity toward Iran by Iraqi Arabs — enmity temporarily focused on us — will re-emerge. And Iran will also have to compete with its ally Syria for influence in Iraq.

Yes, the best way to contain Iran would have been to produce a real Shiite-led democracy in Iraq, exposing the phony one in Tehran. But second best is leaving Iraq. Because the worst option — the one Iran loves — is for us to stay in Iraq, bleeding, and in easy range to be hit by Iran if we strike its nukes.

Finally, the war in Iraq has so divided us at home and abroad that leaving, while bringing other problems, might also make it easier to build coalitions to deal with post-U.S. Iraq, Iran, Hezbollah and Syria. All these problems are connected. We need to deal with Iran and Syria, but from a position of strength — and that requires a broad coalition.

The longer we maintain a unilateral failing strategy in Iraq, the harder it will be to build such a coalition, and the stronger the enemies of freedom will become.

Syria Wants to Talk, But Bush Won't Answer the Phone

Damascus has effectively cooperated with Washington on terrorism, says Syria's ambassador.
By Imad Moustapha
IMAD MOUSTAPHA is the Syrian ambassador to the United States.
Los Angeles Times
August 4, 2006

LATE LAST MONTH, a number of congressmen called me and asked for an urgent, unscheduled meeting. There, at the Rayburn House Office Building, we spent a couple of hours discussing in-depth the crisis in the Middle East. The paramount concern of these legislators was not the typical Capitol Hill rhetoric (offering unconditional support for Israel, or delivering the routine condemnation and demonization of Syria). Instead, they simply wanted to know what they could do to stop the ongoing massacre in Lebanon.

Their frustration and exasperation about the total nonchalance of the U.S. administration was overwhelming. The very first question they had for me was to clarify the confusion about whether the White House is talking to Syria or not. Although the media have reported that no contacts have been made between the two countries over the last three weeks, administration officials have sent vague signals that this might be happening through back channels.

But no communication whatsoever has taken place. U.S. policy remains to ignore the Syrian government. And it remains fundamentally wrong.

It hasn't always been this way. When President George H.W. Bush faced Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he realized the strategic need for Syria and knew how to lure us into the American-led alliance: by inviting Syria to the Madrid peace conference.

As a result, and within a short period of time, the Clinton administration engaged Syria and Israel in serious peace talks that, had they succeeded, would have created a very different paradigm in this troubled area.

In Syria, we consider the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as the fatal blow that felled the peace efforts, and since that tragic event, Israel has had no leader with the courage or vision required to accept the inevitable "land for peace" compromise enshrined in U.N. Security Council resolutions 224 and 338.

In sharp contrast, the current U.S. administration has publicly dissuaded Israel from responding to the repeated Syrian invitations to revive the peace process. Syria still hopes that this position might change, as there exists a growing alienation against the U.S. and its policies in the Arab and Islamic world, which is undoubtedly creating fertile breeding conditions for terrorism.

Syria thought that the atrocious events of Sept. 11, 2001, would be a much-needed wake-up call for the Bush administration.

After Sept. 11, we cooperated with the U.S. in fighting terrorism. Syria had been fighting extreme fundamentalist movements in the region for the previous three decades, so we promptly initiated intelligence and security cooperation with the U.S., providing a wealth of information about Al Qaeda, some of which was described in a letter to Congress by former Secretary of State Colin Powell as "actionable information" that led to "saving American lives." Consequently, bilateral relations improved dramatically at the time, much to the chagrin of the neoconservative cabal that doggedly opposed any engagement with Syria, no matter how productive.

This effective cooperation ended when Syria and the U.S. found themselves at odds over how to address the Iraqi problem. Syria fiercely opposed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and continues to do so. The fact that Hussein was Syria's archenemy did not blind our eyes to the grave consequences such an occupation would bear on our region: bloodshed, destruction, instability, extremism and the ugly face of sectarianism.

The Bush administration never forgave Syria for its opposition to the war. Despite the fact that Syrian-U.S. intelligence and security cooperation continued, even after the fallout on Iraq, well up to January 2005, heavyweights in the White House continued to engage in a rhetorical campaign against Syria. Members of Congress, influenced by the powerful pro-Israel lobby, overwhelmingly passed the Syria Accountability Act in November 2003, enacting trade sanctions on Damascus without serious debate or reference to the crucial intelligence support provided by Syria.

Concurrently, administration officials devised a new "policy" toward my country: Don't talk to Syria at all, and maybe its regime will collapse.

That is why the U.S. decided to change its 20-year position toward Syrian involvement in Lebanon. Suddenly, Syria's "stabilizing and necessary presence" in Lebanon became, overnight and without any change in Syria's behavior, "an evil occupation that should immediately be ended."

The underlying idea behind demanding Syrian withdrawal was simple: It would precipitate the fall of the Syrian regime, and the U.S. would end up with a new government in Damascus that is both Israel-friendly and an ally of the U.S. Does that have any resemblance to the neoconservative justification for the war on Iraq?

To the dismay of U.S. policymakers, this belligerent attitude only rallied Syrians behind their own government.

Ultimately, the Bush administration has to realize that by trying to isolate Syria politically and diplomatically, the U.S. continues to lose ability to influence a major player in the Middle East. In the wake of the ongoing instability in Iraq and violence in Palestine and Lebanon, it begs the larger question: Has isolating Syria made the region more secure?

Currently, the White House doesn't talk to the democratically elected government of Palestine. It does not talk to Hezbollah, which has democratically elected members in the Lebanese parliament and is a member of the Lebanese coalition government. It does not talk to Iran, and it certainly does not talk to Syria.

Gone are the days when U.S. special envoys to the Middle East would spend hours, if not days, with Syrian officials brainstorming, discussing, negotiating and looking for creative solutions leading to a compromise or settlement. Instead, this administration follows the Bolton Doctrine: There is no need to talk to Syria, because Syria knows what it needs to do. End of the matter.

When the United States realizes that it is high time to reconsider its policies toward Syria, Syria will be more than willing to engage. However, the rules of the game should be clear. As President Bashar Assad has said, Syria is not a charity. If the U.S. wants something from Syria, then Syria requires something in return from the U.S.: Let us address the root cause of instability in the Middle East.

The current crisis in Lebanon needs an urgent solution because of the disastrous human toll. Moreover, the whole Middle East deserves a comprehensive deal that would put an end to occupation and allow all countries to equally prosper and live in dignity and peace.

Israel's Lost Moment

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
Friday, August 4, 2006; A17

Israel's war with Hezbollah is a war to secure its northern border, to defeat a terrorist militia bent on Israel's destruction, to restore Israeli deterrence in the age of the missile. But even more is at stake. Israel's leaders do not seem to understand how ruinous a military failure in Lebanon would be to its relationship with America, Israel's most vital lifeline.

For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value. At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

But that was decades ago. The question, as always, is: What have you done for me lately? There is fierce debate in the United States about whether, in the post-Sept. 11 world, Israel is a net asset or liability. Hezbollah's unprovoked attack on July 12 provided Israel the extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate its utility by making a major contribution to America's war on terrorism.

America's green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light -- indeed, the encouragement -- is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.

Unlike many of the other terrorist groups in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a serious enemy of the United States. In 1983 it massacred 241 American servicemen. Except for al-Qaeda, it has killed more Americans than any other terror organization.

More important, it is today the leading edge of an aggressive, nuclear-hungry Iran. Hezbollah is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary. Its mission is to extend the Islamic Revolution's influence into Lebanon and Palestine, destabilize any Arab-Israeli peace, and advance an Islamist Shiite ascendancy, led and controlled by Iran, throughout the Levant.

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances and give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Hence Israel's rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron. The defeat of Hezbollah would be a huge loss for Iran, both psychologically and strategically. Iran would lose its foothold in Lebanon. It would lose its major means to destabilize and inject itself into the heart of the Middle East. It would be shown to have vastly overreached in trying to establish itself as the regional superpower.

The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel's ability to do the job. It has been disappointed. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later. He has allowed his war cabinet meetings to become fully public through the kind of leaks no serious wartime leadership would ever countenance. Divisive cabinet debates are broadcast to the world, as was Olmert's own complaint that "I'm tired. I didn't sleep at all last night" (Haaretz, July 28). Hardly the stuff to instill Churchillian confidence.

His search for victory on the cheap has jeopardized not just the Lebanon operation but America's confidence in Israel as well. That confidence -- and the relationship it reinforces -- is as important to Israel's survival as its own army. The tremulous Olmert seems not to have a clue.

The Sound of One Domino Falling

Editorial
The New York Times
August 4, 2006

It’s been obvious for years that Donald Rumsfeld is in denial of reality, but the defense secretary now also seems stuck in a time warp. You could practically hear the dominoes falling as he told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that it was dangerous for Americans to even talk about how to end the war in Iraq.

“If we left Iraq prematurely,” he said, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”

No one in charge of American foreign affairs has talked like that in decades. After Vietnam, of course, the communist empire did not swarm all over Asia as predicted; it tottered and collapsed. And the new “enemy” that Mr. Rumsfeld is worried about is not a worldwide conspiracy but a collection of disparate political and religious groups, now united mainly by American action in Iraq.

Americans are frightened by the growing chaos in the Mideast, and the last thing they needed to hear this week was Mr. Rumsfeld laying blame for sectarian violence on a few Al Qaeda schemers. What they want is some assurance that the administration has a firm grasp on reality and has sensible, achievable goals that could lead to an end to the American involvement in Iraq with as little long-term damage as possible. Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld offered the same old exhortation to stay the course, without the slightest hint of what the course is, other than the rather obvious point that the Iraqis have to learn to run their own country.

By contrast, the generals flanking him were pillars of candor and practicality. Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander in the Middle East, said “Iraq could move toward civil war” if the sectarian violence — which he said “is probably as bad as I’ve seen it” — is not contained. The generals tried to be optimistic about the state of the Iraqi security forces, but it was hard. They had to acknowledge that a militia controls Basra, that powerful Iraqi government officials run armed bands that the Pentagon considers terrorist organizations financed by Iran, and that about a third of the Iraqi police force can’t be trusted to fight on the right side.

As for Mr. Rumsfeld, he suggested that lawmakers just leave everything up to him and the military command and stop talking about leaving Iraq. “We should consider how our words can be used by our deadly enemy,” he said.

Americans who once expected the Pentagon to win the war in Iraq have now been reduced to waiting for an indication that at least someone is minding the store. They won’t be comforted to hear Mr. Rumsfeld fretting about protecting Spain from Muslim occupation.

Most Back Israel, Split on U.S. Role

By Peter Wallsten and Heather Gehlert
Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2006

WASHINGTON — Most Americans consider Israel's bombing campaign in Lebanon justified, but they are divided about what role the United States should play in the crisis and how closely the nation should align itself with the Jewish state, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

The survey, conducted between Friday and Tuesday, also found that U.S. public opinion on the situation was evolving, with support for U.S. involvement in brokering peace rising steadily along with the death toll — particularly after Sunday's Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in the southern Lebanon town of Qana.

The poll found that nearly three in five respondents — 59% — backed Israel in the dispute that has now lasted more than three weeks, leaving hundreds dead and aligning much of the world in disagreement with the United States and Israel over whether to pursue an immediate cease-fire.

President Bush has resisted such an agreement until Hezbollah is disarmed and an international peacekeeping force can be assembled, a position that is generally in line with public sentiment in the United States, according to the survey. Of respondents, 13% backed an immediate cease-fire, while 45% said the United States should work toward both sides accepting an international peacekeeping force.

"I feel badly for Israel. They don't run around looking for trouble, but they are constantly being harassed and attacked by Hezbollah," said Rick Poleck, 54, of Huntingdon, Pa., a poll respondent.

"Suppose this was Mexico and they were lobbing missiles into the United States. How long would we put up with that?" asked Poleck, a Republican who works as an engineer for a rural electric facility. "How do you defeat a terrorist enemy without [people] getting hurt?"

The poll found that 43% said Israel's bombing campaign was justified but not excessively harsh, while 16% described the response as justified but excessive. Fewer than one in three respondents — 28% — said the response to Hezbollah was unjustified.

Although the poll was not designed to track day-to-day changes in public opinion, the sample size each day was large enough to reflect shifting attitudes toward events in the region and the increasingly aggressive moves by the Bush administration to secure an agreement through the United Nations.

On the first day of polling, a plurality of respondents — 46% — said the United States should not get involved in the conflict. But that changed over the course of the violent weekend, with far more backing the idea of the United States working toward a peace deal.

"I know that there's really nothing you can do with Hezbollah, but if the United States doesn't do anything, the whole Middle East is going to blow up," said poll respondent Pauline Fantroy, 68, a retired nurse who lives in New York City.

"Something has to be done," said Fantroy, a Democrat. "I would get them all in a room and bat their heads against a wall like two little kids."

The Times/Bloomberg poll, supervised by Times Polling Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,478 adults, including 1,331 registered voters. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll also found that the Democrats have not yet created a groundswell of opposition over concerns that civil liberties are being inappropriately sacrificed as the administration pursues its national security policies.

A strong majority — 65% — said it was acceptable for the government to be tracking terrorist financing by monitoring international banking transactions, a program that was revealed in reports last month by The Times and other newspapers. The survey also showed that the public is evenly split on the acceptability of a spy program in which the National Security Agency monitors certain phone calls and e-mail correspondence by people in the United States.

Moreover, a majority said the media were behaving irresponsibly by revealing the government's secret terrorist tracking programs.

The poll results suggested that the Middle East conflict could have domestic political consequences in the 2006 midterm elections and beyond, due in part to a growing partisan divide over Israel and its relationship with the United States. Republicans generally expressed stronger support for Israel, while Democrats tended to believe the United States should play a more neutral role in the region.

Overall, 50% of the survey's respondents said the United States should continue to align with Israel, compared with 44% who backed a more neutral posture. But the partisan gap was clear: Democrats supported neutrality over alignment, 54% to 39%, while Republicans supported alignment with the Jewish state 64% to 29%.

No more than 2% in either party supported siding more with Arab countries.

The GOP support for Israel mirrors the staunch backing the country has received from Bush. It also underscores a recalibration in the U.S. electorate — although Jewish voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic, the GOP under Bush has succeeded in winning support from more religious Jews.

In terms of Bush's overall standing among Americans, the poll provided several indications of the political opposition he faces and the polarizing nature of his presidency.

His overall approval rating stood at 40%, with 58% disapproving, a slight improvement over his marks in the spring and comparable to the findings in other recent surveys. Also, 51% said they disapproved of his handling of the situation in Lebanon, while 43% approved. And 50% expressed approval of Bush's handling of the war on terrorism.

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

War Views

Do you think Israel's actions are justified or not justified?

Justified, not excessively harsh: 43%

Justified, but excessively harsh: 16%

Unjustified: 28%

Don't know: 13%

Source: Times Poll

Lebanon’s Force for Good

By ADIR GURION WALDMAN
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
August 2, 2006

IN the summer of 1998, I was an infantry soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. Preparing for an operation in southern Lebanon, my platoon received some unusual orders: no one, under any circumstance, was to open fire. This was a significant departure from our standard rules of engagement, which permitted firing upon sight at Hezbollah forces. The apparent reason was that representatives of the United States, France, Israel, Lebanon and Syria were in the area that day for a meeting of the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group.

Today, Israeli soldiers are again in southern Lebanon. As pundits propose various diplomatic solutions to the crisis embroiling the region, lost in all of these suggestions is the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group, the one institution that in the past was able to prevent war in the Middle East.

The Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group was born a decade ago when, as today, Israel sought to root out Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. In late April 1996, after two months of intense warfare, Secretary of State Warren Christopher set out for a weeklong session of shuttle diplomacy that culminated in an agreement calling for Israel and Hezbollah to shield civilians from violence. The Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group would oversee compliance with this pledge.

Over the next four years, until Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, violence did not cease, but the parties were able to keep it from spiraling out of control. Through regular meetings of high-level military and diplomatic officials, the monitoring group resolved disputes, arranged temporary cease-fires and reined in spurts of violence. In December 1999, for example, when Israeli shells mistakenly hit a Lebanese school, a series of phone calls through the monitoring group prevented Hezbollah from retaliating against Israeli civilians. In another instance, the group facilitated an exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hezbollah.

A long-term diplomatic solution to the current crisis should include the resurrection of the monitoring group and the establishment of a parallel Israeli-Palestinian body. These groups would be modeled on the old monitoring group, but with a new mandate: to oversee the full disarmament of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. If Western troops won’t take on that mission, the Israeli-Lebanese group could monitor the Lebanese Army’s accomplishment of the task. Routine meetings of both groups would help ensure enduring cease-fires on all fronts.

Most important, the monitoring groups would create a constructive new channel of communication among Israel, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. Away from the spotlight that has doomed past diplomatic efforts, these parties could freely negotiate over outstanding differences, and through those meetings, rising military and diplomatic leaders could build key personal relationships.

The monitoring groups would also provide a confidential forum where the parties could work to restrain violent flare-ups, rather than engaging in escalating tit-for-tat attacks. Thus, for example, an Israeli-Palestinian monitoring group, which might also include Egypt and Jordan, could immediately convene in the event of any spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence.

In 2000, I interviewed Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group delegates, who spoke about their work with enthusiasm. They told me of times when, after particularly egregious episodes of violence, the group was able to initiate immediate back-channel contacts that staved off reprisals, and they recalled how Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian military officers formed personal bonds of trust. When an Israeli general’s term on the monitoring group ended, he told me, his counterparts gave their final farewells with tears in their eyes.

Today, diplomatic leaders must not overlook this extraordinary precedent for calming tensions in the Levant.

Adir Gurion Waldman, a lawyer, is the author of “Arbitrating Armed Conflict: Decisions of the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group.’’

9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon

Allegations Brought to Inspectors General
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post
Wednesday, August 2, 2006; A03

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.

In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.

"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied."

Although the commission's landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department's early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that the inspector general's office will soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was "knowingly false." A separate report, delivered secretly to Congress in May 2005, blamed inaccuracies in part on problems with the way the Defense Department kept its records, according to a summary released yesterday.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department's inspector general's office said its investigation is complete and that a final report is being drafted. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she could not comment on the inspector general's inquiry.

In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate -- though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals -- and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts last night.

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD's Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft -- American Airlines Flight 11 -- long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said. The agencies' reluctance to release the tapes -- along with e-mails, erroneous public statements and other evidence -- led some of the panel's staff members and commissioners to believe that authorities sought to mislead the commission and the public about what happened on Sept. 11.

"I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who led the staff inquiry into events on Sept. 11, said in a recent interview. "The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. . . . This is not spin. This is not true."

Arnold, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, told the commission in 2004 that he did not have all the information unearthed by the panel when he testified earlier. Other military officials also denied any intent to mislead the panel.

John F. Lehman, a Republican commission member and former Navy secretary, said in a recent interview that he believed the panel may have been lied to but that he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to support a criminal referral.

"My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don't know," Lehman said. "But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn't seem to make sense to me."

Remarks by Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki Al-Faisal on Middle East Crisis

A Saudi Perspective on the Middle East Crisis and America's Stakes in the Region
a salon dinner presentation by
HRH Prince Turki-Al Faisal, Saudi Ambassador to the United States
New America Foundation/American Strategy Program
Session Chairman: Steven Clemons
Monday, 31 July 2006
Restaurant Nora, Washington DC

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

I appreciate the generosity of the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program and to Steven Clemons for hosting this event. Thank you.

Tonight, I was asked to deliver some remarks about the Middle East. There is a great deal occurring in the region today, but I believe Lebanon is the topic of greatest concern. So this is what I will address.

First and foremost, ladies and gentlemen, it needs to be recognized clearly that the imperative before the world right now is to achieve peace and stability in a region that is historically unstable. Not just for today, or tomorrow, but for decades to come. We require a sustainable peace. One in which the countries of the region are at peace with themselves and the world -- as well as the other way around.

I do not think there is much disagreement on this point.

However, what path we take to achieve this peace requires further deliberation. Robert Frost wrote: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by." The path of aggression is well worn in the Middle East. What if we decide to take the path of peace -- the path less traveled? It may make the difference -- not just for today, but for tomorrow and the next day.

The decisions we are making will have long-term consequences. The decisions made yesterday bear their bitter fruit today. As we have seen time and time again, our choices indeed influence the stability of the region and of particular countries -- as well as the sentiment and opinions of people -- the men and women and children throughout the region who live each day with these issues.

We need to listen to these people -- the people of Lebanon, and of Palestine, and of Israel, who desire only to live in peace. They are the ones who will stand up for peace, just as they are the ones who will become the involuntary victims of the next act of violence based on how the world's problems play out in their back yards. And so we need to engender -- no, I believe, demand -- a new sense of allegiance on the part of our leaders to the virtues of tolerance, understanding and the path of peace, lest even our best intentions let slip the dogs of war.

As King Abdullah said the other day, "If the option of peace fails...then the only option remaining will be war, and God alone knows what the region would witness in a conflict that would spare no one."

This is a frightening prospect -- not just for Saudi Arabia, not just for the greater Middle East, but for the world. The lives and livelihoods of billions of people in the global community are tied into the geopolitical machinations of the region; from an economic standpoint -- because of energy and trade and landgrabbing; from a security standpoint, because of how hostilities feed anti-Americanism extremism and terrorism; and, especially, in terms of religion, the region is tied into every corner of the globe -- Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

For all of these reasons, Saudi Arabia continues to strive for peace. In Lebanon and Palestine, the Kingdom believes the answer is a comprehensive peace. This will allow the international community to broker a lasting solution to this crisis. Realistically, the parties involved in Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel, are incapable of brokering a truce among themselves.

Saudi Arabia feels it is incumbent on international leaders, particularly the United States and the United Nations, to restore peace through the creation of an international force to help the Lebanese government extend its sovereignty and authority over all Lebanese territory. This will redress the balance and allow the Lebanese government to negotiate in the interest of the Lebanese people.

We are further confident that for a lasting peace to come, it is imperative the world community shoulders the responsibility of protecting the Lebanese people, moving rapidly to halt the Israeli war on Lebanon, and providing support for the Lebanese government as it strives to preserve national unity, maintain its sovereignty, and exert control over its territory. In addition, it is just as critical the Israeli siege of the Palestinian people end.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Please, let there be no mistake about this position. Saudi Arabia holds firmly responsible those who first engaged in reckless adventure under the guise of resistance. They have brought much damage and danger to the region without concern for others.

However, these unacceptable and irresponsible actions do not justify the Israeli destruction of Lebanon or the targeting and punishment of the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations. These actions are without consideration for international pacts, conventions, and norms. This is not the way of peace.

And if the idea is somehow to create conditions that will leave Lebanon stronger, the stakes of this gamble are enormous. We are gambling with the people's lives, their livelihoods, and their homes and families. In the end, we are all standing witness to the killing of the body and soul of Lebanon to cure the cancer of occupation that we all agree need to be excised.

To achieve a lasting peace we need to balance the interests of all the conflicting parties in such a way that they all feel they have achieved something of importance without a loss of face -- only then will they remove their collective fingers from the trigger. The question for us today is how to arrive at that point of balance -- through the continued ruthless exercise of power or under the umbrella of a cease fire.

Two months ago, Prince Saud, our Foreign Minister, brought a letter to President Bush from King Abdullah, advocating an end to the process and instead, an implementation of peace. The President expressed excitement and willingness but, alas, there was no follow through.

Currently, Saudi officials are working diligently to generate support for a cease--fire and a lasting resolution. Prince Saud and others have been meeting with world leaders. One week ago, Prince Saud delivered another letter from King Abdullah to President Bush requesting he act to help save Lebanon and its people from the terrible ordeal they are suffering. The actions of the U.S. in this matter are of vital importance. And we continue to press for an immediate peace.

And certainly, we cannot stand by as our neighbors and friends suffer brutal transgressions born of a war not of their own making.

So to help alleviate the misery, Saudi Arabia has been providing aid to the affected areas. Last week, King Abdullah approved $50 million for emergency relief assistance for the Lebanese people. In the last few days, an additional $500 million was earmarked for a grant to form the nucleus of an Arab and international fund for the reconstruction of Lebanon. The King has also directed $1 billion to be deposited with the Lebanese Central Bank to support the country's currency and liquidity. And the Palestinian people will receive a $250 million grant from Saudi Arabia for reconstruction and relief.

The Kingdom is doing what it can -- brokering peace and providing aid. We understand that we live in an age in which the problems of one nation or one people are the problems of the world. It is, therefore, critical that we truly consider how our political decisions impact the people -- not just of our particular nations -- but those of the entire global community. In the Middle East, today, this consideration is truly important. Let us now recoup and look at the problem holistically. The Israeli occupation of Shabaa and Palestine is the casus belli of all that is happening today in Lebanon and Palestine. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine have captured three soldiers of the vaunted Israeli army, whose incompetence was clearly displayed by these captures. The same vaunted Israeli army has struck back with surgical accuracy in killing innocent civilians and UN observers in both Palestine and Lebanon, further demonstrating their ineptness and brutality.

The Arab world has offered the most comprehensive peace plan to Israel, The Abdullah Peace Plan of 2002. The plan offered Israel, the end of hostility and normalization of relations in return for total Israeli withdrawal from Arab occupied territories, including Jerusalem. The United States must play the role of pacifier and lead the world to peace and not be led by Israel's ambitions.

The poet Yuhuda Amichai wrote: "They'll beat swords into plowshares and plowshares into swords, and so on and so on, and back and forth. Perhaps from being beaten thinner and thinner, the iron of hatred will vanish, forever.

We can only hope this will be the case. In the mean time, let us all continue to work tirelessly to promote peace, tolerance and understanding among our neighbors and friends.

Thank you. (end)

Israel Is Losing This War

By Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
August 1, 2006

Israel is losing this war.

This is not to say that it will lose the war, or that the war was unwinnable to start with. But if it keeps going as it is, Israel is headed for the greatest military humiliation in its history. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israelis were stunned by their early reversals against Egypt and Syria, yet they eked out a victory over these two powerfully armed, Soviet-backed adversaries in 20 days. The conflict with Hezbollah -- a 15,000-man militia chiefly armed with World War II-era Katyusha rockets -- is now in its 21st day. So far, Israel has nothing to show for its efforts: no enemy territory gained, no enemy leaders killed, no abatement in the missile barrage that has sent a million Israelis from their homes and workplaces.

Generally speaking, wars are lost either militarily or politically. Israel is losing both ways. Two weeks ago, Israeli officials boasted they had destroyed 50% of Hezbollah's military capabilities and needed just 10 to 14 days to finish the job. Two days ago, after a record 140 Katyushas landed on Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice he needed another 10 to 14 days. When the war began, Israeli officials spoke of "breaking" Hezbollah; next of evicting Hezbollah from the border area; then of "degrading" Hezbollah's capabilities; now of establishing an effective multinational force that can police the border. Israel's goals are becoming less ambitious while the time it needs to accomplish them is growing longer.

It is amazing how much can be squandered in the space of three weeks. On July 12, Israel sat behind an internationally recognized frontier, where it enjoyed a preponderance of military force. It had deterrence and legitimacy. Hezbollah's cross-border raid that day was widely condemned within Lebanon and among Arab leaders as heedless and provocative. Mr. Olmert's decision to respond with massive force enjoyed left-to-right political support. He also had a green light from the Bush administration, which has reasons of its own to want Hezbollah defanged and which assumed the Israelis were up to the job. But it seems they are not up to the job. The war began with a string of intelligence failures: Israel had lowered its alert level on the northern border prior to the raid; it did not know that Hezbollah possessed Chinese-made antiship missiles, one of which nearly sank an Israeli missile boat off the coast of Beirut; it was caught off guard by the fierce resistance it encountered in the two Lebanese villages it has so far attempted to capture. Such failures are surprising and discouraging, given that Israel has been tracking and fighting Hezbollah for nearly a quarter-century.

Harder to understand is a military and political strategy that mistakenly assumes that Israel can take its time against Hezbollah. It cannot. Israel does not supply itself with precision-guided bombs; it does not provide its own cover at the U.N. Security Council; it does not have 130,000 troops at risk in Iraq of an uprising by Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army. It should be immensely worrying to Israel's leaders that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is calling for an immediate cease-fire. Ayatollah Sistani -- unlike, say, Kofi Annan -- is the sort of man who can get George W. Bush's ear.

Israelis have compounded that mistake with an airpower-based strategy that, whatever its virtues in keeping Israeli troops out of harm's way, was never going to evict Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, just as airpower alone did not evict Saddam from Kuwait in 1991. The law of averages, however, guaranteed that over the course of 5,000 bombing sorties one bomb (or two or three or four) would go astray.

That may have been what happened over the weekend in Qana, where an Israeli air attack reportedly caused the deaths of 27 people, including 17 children. Yes, Hezbollah bears ultimate responsibility here for deliberately placing its military assets among civilians. Yet the death of those children should be counted as a crime if Israel's purposes in Lebanon are basically feckless. A line being bandied about in Israeli security circles is that the purpose of the bombing is to show Hezbollah that "the boss-man has gone berserk." What kind of goal is that? Nobody in this conflict ever doubted Israel's ability to set Lebanon back 20, 50 or 500 years (about where Hezbollah itself wants the country to be).

The goal, rather, is to ensure that Hezbollah will never again be in a position to spark a similar crisis, and to do so with maximum effect in the shortest possible time. Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz warned two weeks ago that Hezbollah wants a long war: "They realize that prolonged attrition causes internal pressure from Israeli citizens and international pressure, and think those are our weak points." That's right, which makes his three-week bombing campaign puzzling.

More puzzling was the Israeli cabinet's decision last week against launching a full-scale ground invasion. Instead, they will content themselves with a narrow security strip in southern Lebanon, one that is too narrow to prevent rocket fire from reaching Israel but will give Hezbollah a fresh excuse to fight the new "occupation." The cabinet also went out of its way to reassure Syria -- a country Mr. Olmert listed in his own Axis of Evil only the week before -- that it had no intention of dragging it into the conflict. But Israel need not have bombed Damascus to derive the benefit of keeping Bashar Assad awake at night, to guess what his patronage of Hezbollah will get him.

Last night in Tel Aviv, Mr. Olmert delivered another blood, toil, tears and sweat speech, warning of many days of fighting ahead. "This is a unique opportunity to change the rules in Lebanon," he said. Meanwhile, Ms. Rice left Jerusalem for Washington with a different idea: "I take with me an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent cease-fire and a lasting settlement. I am convinced we can achieve both this week."

Timelines are colliding here; agendas may follow. Israel has a prime minister who's learned to talk tough. What it really needs is one who can act fast.

Israel Can't Keep on Like This

Qana horror exposes limitations of beating Hezbollah by bombing civilians.
EDITORIAL
Los Angeles Times
August 1, 2006

'IT'S TIME," SECRETARY OF STATE Condoleezza Rice said Monday, referring to the need for a cease-fire in Lebanon. It certainly is. The horrific Israeli airstrike that killed nearly 60 civilians in the town of Qana on Sunday ratcheted up the outrage over the scale of the Israelis' 3-week-old retaliatory attack on Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist terrorist group.

If Rice appeared shaken in Israel on Sunday, it's because the United States, which had implicitly granted Israel a blank check to smash Hezbollah for a limited period of time, is held accountable for Israel's actions in most quarters. And because it was the site of an uncannily similar attack on a U.N. refugee camp a decade ago, Qana itself conjures up among many in the Arab Middle East a sense of victimization at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli military. The Qana strike forced Rice to cancel her trip to Beirut.

Israel entered this conflict with the moral upper hand. Hezbollah crossed the border to attack Israeli troops several weeks ago, and since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, neither the international community nor Lebanon have been able to disarm the group. The danger now is that Israel's bombing campaign is driving much of the aggrieved population into Hezbollah's camp. If most Lebanese were hostages to Hezbollah at the outset of the conflict, a few more weeks of Israeli bombardment may turn them into Hezbollah recruits.

The challenge for Rice and the U.N. Security Council is to craft a cease-fire and mobilize a multinational force in a manner that does not constitute a victory for Hezbollah. It is still the case that a cease-fire at any cost, one that does not address the need to disarm Hezbollah and bolster the Lebanese state, would be a costly mistake. Within the next week, the Security Council needs to authorize the deployment of a force that can back up the Lebanese army, ensure Israel's security and disarm Hezbollah.

A traditional U.N. peacekeeping force is not up to this task, especially because there is no preexisting peace to police. Whatever new acronym is conjured up for this force, battle-ready NATO troops, presumably with large French and Turkish contingents, need to make up its core.

If the idea is for these troops to occupy a land vacuum, then expect a related debate about a timing vacuum — between the moment a cease-fire is declared and the arrival of the multinational force. Israel is understandably wary about this potential window of opportunity for Hezbollah; hence its approval of a more ambitious ground offensive into Lebanon. Israel may well have to occupy the southernmost strip of Lebanon until the arrival of a multinational force, but it cannot indefinitely continue its air campaign. It is proving too costly, not only to its own long-term interests but to those of the United States.

A Solution for Lebanon

Behind all the rhetoric, there's a consensus that Hezbollah must be weakened and contained.
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; A16

DESPITE THE terrible bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel over the weekend, including the tragic death of scores of women and children in the village of Qana, the United States, Israel and the Lebanese government continue to seek the same outcome to the war. That is the removal of Hezbollah's militia from the Lebanese-Israeli border as well as steps toward its disarmament; the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south; and the extension of the Lebanese government's sovereignty to all of the country's territory. Despite all the rhetoric about an immediate cease-fire and the predictable focus by media outlets around the world on Israel's mistakes and excesses, every party in the Middle East other than Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors believes that a resolution to the crisis that fails to achieve those conditions would be a catastrophe.

In other words, it's not just President Bush who believes that a solution in Lebanon must address "the root cause of the problems." The administration's rhetoric about the crisis as "an opportunity" for "a new Middle East" may horrify Washington's self-described realists. But a more hardheaded way of spelling out the same stakes came from Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader who is no friend of the United States or Israel. "Either we will have a state able to establish its control over the country or we will have . . . a reduced weakened state and a strong militia beside the Lebanese army that decides war and peace at any time and has its schedule decided by the Iranians and the Syrians," Mr. Jumblatt told The Post's Anthony Shadid. "I don't see a state of Lebanon surviving with a militia next to an army. That's it."

This quiet consensus explains why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was vowing yesterday to get a cease-fire resolution through the U.N. Security Council sometime this week, but also saying that it must be accompanied by a mandate for disempowering Hezbollah. All sides -- including Israel -- understand that the movement, which represents many Lebanese Shiites, cannot be destroyed or entirely disarmed by military means. But it can, and must, be weakened, forced to retreat and deprived of the ability to attack across the international border at will.

The trick is determining how much of this should be left to Israel's ongoing military campaign, how much to the international force the United Nations will be asked to authorize for Lebanon, and how much to the political and diplomatic pressure that might be exerted by Lebanese political parties on Hezbollah, or by Western and Arab governments on Iran and Syria. While it would be convenient to conclude that no further military action by Israel is needed, its army's slow progress suggests otherwise. In fact, any Israeli stand-down will depend heavily on whether European governments and other Security Council members are prepared to authorize and supply an international force with sufficient strength and authority to deter Hezbollah.

As for diplomatic leverage, a first step in the right direction was the Security Council's passage yesterday of a resolution ordering Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program and reiterating an offer of incentives in the event it does. In the coming weeks both the Iranian and Syrian governments need to hear a consistent message: A decision to cooperate in stabilizing the Middle East, from Iraq to Lebanon and Gaza, will ease their present isolation. But attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction or wage proxy war through groups such as Hezbollah will be answered with strength, not appeasement.

Bush Calls Attack on Qana ‘Awful,’

but Refrains From Calling for Immediate Cease-Fire
By JOHN M. BRODER
The New York Times
August 1, 2006

WASHINGTON, July 31 — President Bush used the word “awful” to describe the lethal Israeli air attack on an apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, that killed dozens of civilians over the weekend, but he continued to resist calling on Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire.

Facing one of the most awkward moments in recent relations with Israel, he described the current Middle East crisis as part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror. He said the United States remained steadfast in its support of Israel’s right to defend itself against cross-border attacks by Hezbollah militants. But he also said the administration was working urgently through the United Nations to fashion what he called a “sustainable” cessation of hostilities.

He sought to broaden the context of the current fighting, saying that Iran and Syria must end their support of terrorism in the Middle East and beyond.

“For decades, the status quo in the Middle East permitted tyranny and terror to thrive,” Mr. Bush said at an appearance before members of the Coast Guard in Miami. “And as we saw on Sept. 11, the status quo in the Middle East led to death and destruction in the United States, and it had to change.”

He did not refer directly to the airstrike on the village of Qana in his public appearance in Miami, but in a later interview with Fox News Channel, he said that he wanted to see the killing in southern Lebanon end.

“And look, it’s a terrible situation when innocent people lose their lives,” Mr. Bush said. “And yesterday’s situation was awful. We, I understand that. But it’s also awful that a million Israelis are worried about rockets being fired from their, from their neighbor to the north.”

Mr. Bush has not spoken directly with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, about the Qana bombing and did not plan to do so, a White House spokesman said Monday.

Support for Israel remained strong in Congress but as the military and civilian crisis grew, Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said that American friendship with Israel had to be balanced by concern for relations with Muslim nations. He urged Mr. Bush to become more deeply engaged in the region and broker an end to the fighting quickly.

“The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now,” Senator Hagel said in a floor statement. “President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop.”

White House officials said they believed that the president was not yet facing serious erosion of domestic political support for his approach to the Middle East, but that they hoped the administration’s diplomacy would bear fruit over the next few days.

If the White House seemed shaken on Sunday, by Monday it had turned back forcefully to the line it had held since the crisis began nearly three weeks ago.

“In terms of the overall outlines of the strategy, they are the same,” Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “Nor are you going to change your approach to what you think a real effective solution to the problem in Lebanon is, which is to have Hezbollah cease operating as an independent force.”

President Bush told Fox News that one element of the emerging plan for a cease-fire was to restore Lebanese military control over its southern border with Israel, which the nascent government in Beirut had essentially ceded to armed Hezbollah fighters.

“We want that young democracy in Lebanon to succeed,” Mr. Bush said. “And one way to help it succeed is to help the Lebanese Army move to the south, and then, with help from forces from elsewhere, begin to bring some security to the region, for the sake of the Lebanese people and the Israelis.”

President Bush planned to meet with Secretary Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley on Monday night to discuss strategy for dealing with the crisis.

Israel Kills 34 Kids in Qana

How Can We Stand By and Allow This to Go On?
By ROBERT FISK
CounterPunch
July 31, 2006

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. " Mehdi Hashem, aged seven Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 Qana", "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint accuracy" it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening " western civilisation" as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.

And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that killing -- a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning camp. It is as if Qana, whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine, has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.

And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died.

I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. "We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o'clock in the morning,'' she said. "What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?"

Yesterday's deaths brought to more than 500 the total civilian dead in Lebanon since Israel's air, sea and land bombardment of the country began on July 12 after Hizbollah members crossed the frontier wire, killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. But yesterday's slaughter ended more than a year of mutual antagonism within the Lebanese government as pro-American and pro-Syrian politicians denounced what they described as " an ugly crime".

Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.

No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire, a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms Rice would say only: "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible,'' a remark followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks.

Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in colorful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave their homes. Yet twice now since Israel's onslaught began, the Israelis have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun close to the scene of Israel's last military incursion at Bint Jbeil and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads.

And Mr Olmert's reaction? After expressing his "great sorrow", he announced that: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation." But how much further can it be broadened? Lebanon's infrastructure is being steadily torn to pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorized and terror is the word they used by Israel's American-made fighter bombers. Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid agencies.

Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Program aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number still trapped in the south. Khalil Shalhoub, who survived amid the wreckage in Qana yesterday, said that his family and the Hashims were just too "terrified" to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked by aircraft for more than two weeks. The seven-mile highway between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army's Al-Mashriq radio, which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them. But anyone who has watched Israel's bombing these past two weeks knows that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the Hizbollah are firing missiles, and when they do they frequently miss their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian houses just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on such a scale?

Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.

Anyone Who Opposes Israel is Labeled a Terrorist

By VIJAY PRASHAD
CounterPunch
July 30 2006

The G-8 statement on Israel's war on Lebanon puts the onus on Hezbollah. The Europeans are wringing their hands. Mr. Blair begs Mr. Bush to give him leave to mollify public opinion in Britain. Meanwhile, the Syrian ambassador to the US, Imad Mustafa, the Lebanese Cardinal Nasrallah P. Sfeir, and the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faysal plead with the U. S. government to "restrain Israel." The mad dog has been let loose, but no-one can seem to get the owner to apologize for it or to bring it back home. Among the emissaries of the Arab ruling class, the plea to the U. S. is made to indicate that they don't want to beg Tel Aviv, to whom they cannot be seen to be subservient. Their cringing in Washington D. C. is acceptable, and it is understood by the eminences that this is a message to Israel.

But among U. S. liberals there seems to be no such subtlety. The illusion is well-fed, that the U. S. government is outside this current conflict and that pressure from Washington, D. C. could force the Israeli army to the barracks. The plea that we should put pressure on the White House to act is misguided. The White House is deaf to these calls; it already has a dog in this fight. The call for the U. S. government to restrain Israel relies upon at least two premises:

(1) That the U. S. government and ruling class do not share a foreign policy with the Israeli ruling establishment.

(2) That the U. S. government is capable of telling the Israelis to back off.

The second point is mooted by the first. The U. S. government is not prepared to tell Israel to back off. Indeed Bush's enthusiastic statements and the fresh shipments of U. S. armaments to Tel Aviv egg on the Israelis to prosecute this assault. Even if the U. S. government did ask Israel to slow down or shutdown the assault, history shows us that Israel will not listen. One might recall the visit by the "man of peace," Ehud Barak, to Washington, D. C. shortly after his election victory (enabled by Clinton pal James Carville). After he signed a $2.5 billion deal to get fifty F-16E bombers, Barak hit Clinton hard for being "patronizing" and reminded the U. S. never to become the "policeman, judge and arbitrator" of Israeli relations with the Arab world. It is with some irony that I recall reading Clinton's carp over the July 2000 Camp David fiasco, when he told Barak that he could no longer countenance being treated "like a wooden Indian doing your bidding."

Bush in Moscow carped with his wingman, Mr. Blair, about the United Nations' role in the current fracas. "What about Kofi," he asked, "That seems odd." Before Israel ruthlessly killed four U. N. unarmed observers, Mr. Annan had made noises about a ceasefire (now his tone is more militant, angered by the cold-blooded killing not of the Lebanese, but of the four U. N. employees). "I don't like the sequence of it," Bush told Blair, "[Annan's] attitude is basically, cease-fire and everything else happens." Bush does not want the fires to cease. He wants Israel to continue. This comes from the old theory of how to deal with the mosquitoes.

Major-General Yehoshafat Harkabi had been Israeli's chief of military intelligence from 1955 to 1959, and a major proponent of the armed road against the Palestinians. Over time, Harkabi came to realize the futility of Israeli intransigence, and he began to call himself a "Machiavellian dove." In 1984, Harkabi noted that the solution to terrorism was not an escalation of Israeli military response, but the completion of a political settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. "To offer an honorable solution to the Palestinians, respecting their right to self-determination: that is the solution to the problem of terrorism. When the swamp disappears, so will the mosquitoes." Harkabi's point is simple, that a political solution would remove the grievances (the swamp) and peace would drive out the militants (the mosquitoes).

On September 18, 2001, during a press conference at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld borrowed and twisted Harkabi's metaphor. "Terrorists do not function in a vacuum," he noted. "They don't live in Antarctica. They work, they train, and they plan in countries." The only way to undermine terrorist networks, said the Pentagon's leader a week after 911, is to "drain the swamp they live in." Unlike Harkabi, Rumsfeld did not mean that the U. S. should create a political settlement with those who bear grievances against it. Rather, he argued, they and their neighborhoods must be obliterated. "This adversary is different. It does not have any of those things [armies, navies, air forces] or any high-value targets we can go after. But those countries that support them and give them sanctuary do have such targets."

Hezbollah, formed in 1982 in reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was placed on the U. S. State Department terrorist list in 1997. The U. S. like Israel, therefore, sees Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. In 1992, Hezbollah began to play an active role in Lebenese electoral politics, and seemed, if the conditions were ripe (i. e. if Israel conducted a political settlement with the Palestinians and truly withdrew from all of Southern Lebanon, including the Shams Farms), to move in the direction of the IRA-Sinn Fein. This was not to be. The provocations continued, and were intensified recently. Since the U. S. sees Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, it gives Israel the widest latitude to do to Lebanon what it did to Afghanistan and what it is doing in Iraq. The civilian population is the oxygen of groups like Hezbollah and they must therefore be "drained" if the mosquitoes are to be destroyed. Israel has been catholic in its choice of who to name a terrorist. Shimon Peres once noted, "If there were an Israeli in Central America, the Americans would not have the problems they do there." In other words, the IDF would be so much more reliable than the Contras. The PLO, the African National Congress, the Algerian FLN ­ anyone who crossed Israel's path was tarred with the label "terrorist." How must these groups be dealt with: as Chief of Staff General Rafael Eitan said, "The PLO must be fucked" (Ma'ariv, January 3, 1986). The IDF's pacification campaign against the Palestinians and the Lebanese is a reflection of this, a policy that is being followed with American accents in Iraq.

Harkabi must feel shifty in the afterlife. This invasion and the "peace process" are designed to do one thing: not to create stability in the Middle East, but to pacify those who neighbor Israel. A condition of being human is to demand freedom. Pacification is a myopic solution to Israel's long-term problem. Hezbollah and the people of southern Lebanon might be destroyed, but from that earth and from the blood around it, other forces will arise. The swamp is never drained. It finds its water, and breeds its own mosquitoes.

Vijay Prashad teaches at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. His latest book is Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare (Boston: South End Press). His essay, "Capitalism's Warehouses", appears in CounterPunch's new book, Dime's Worth of Difference. His forthcoming book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (The New Press, November 2006).