Check out Daniel Levy's thoughts on the Annapolis Conference.
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Levy on Annapolis
27 Nov 2007 01:14 pm
Comments (21)
The problem here is that we have three cripples trying to accomplish something. We have Dubya, still mired down in the ongoing disaster in Iraq, Olmert whose total incompetence led to the IDF failure to eliminate Hizbollah in the summer of 2006, and Abbas whose incompetence led to his forces being ousted from the Gaza Strip last spring. These guys are losers and will be totally unable to enforce any agreement they might make (Olmert, who could be indited for corruption after the meeting, is barely keeping one step ahead of the sheriff). Mr. Levy is totally living in la la land.
Yes, Hamas shows why democracy is bad unless you can be sure that the right people get elected.
Just why wouldn't Hamas - and the people of Gaza who voted for them - want to destroy the Israeli state? What reason have they to welcome its presence?
I hate to say it, but ... SLC is making sense. These are Dead Men Walking.
... although Levy more or less acknowledges this, so it isn't really a fair critique of his piece.
Dave advises Daniel Levy to "read the Hamas Charter."
I would advise Dave to look at a map of the Israeli "settlements," and weep at the moral dishonor brought on World Jewry by a decades-long Israeli subjugation of the Palestinian people. As long as the Zionist irredentism actually persists it is morally and intellectually dishonest to divert attention from that actuality, and the horrors onsequent to it, onto a Palestinian irredentism that remains and will always remain theoretical.
Re ndn
Yessir, Palestinian irredentism in for form of homicide bombers, qassem rockets, Katuscha rockets, etc. is indeed theoretical. Not.
Re Odalchini
Nobody is asking Hamas to welcome the presence of the State of Israel. They are merely being asked to cease and desist their terrorist activities against it. The reason they are allowed to get away with it is that the Prime Minister of Israel refuses to ask himself the following question, "What action would Hafaz Assad take if he were sitting in my seat and were confronted with the ongoing terrorist activities from the Gaza Strip?" We know what the answer to that question is, Hama Rules.
he participated in a great event on this--the best analysis of annapolis i have heard--last week at NAF, it was broadcast on cspan and is probably in their online archive
bloody hell, it's not even December and they already have the Christmas deco up in the White House - where can I sign up for the war on Christmas?
erm, ok, Annapolis and not the White House, but still
The Annapolis meeting is happening because the Bush administration finally realizes that Israel's ocupation breeds anti-American terrorists, as in 9/11. (It is also said that it is only near the end of a president's last term that peace talks can take place as he is then free of the need for Israel Lobby-generated campaign funds.) Negotiators were very close to peace at Taba, and they should start right at that point. Hamas has said that it would agree to long-term peace if Israel ends the occupation and its policy of targeted assassinations all over the place. Unfortunately, there are many Israelis who have no intention of returning their stolen land and thus enjoy the status quo. As Netanyahu said on CNN today, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Radical Zionists are of course supported by the US Israel Lobby which cares only about Israel and not the US.
"We have Dubya, still mired down in the ongoing disaster in Iraq, Olmert whose total incompetence led to the IDF failure to eliminate Hizbollah in the summer of 2006, and Abbas whose incompetence led to his forces being ousted from the Gaza Strip last spring. These guys are losers and will be totally unable to enforce any agreement they might make."
The incompetence dodge lives on! One can only imagine how effective the IDF would have been at "eliminating" Hizbollah last year if they'd been led by any one of the previous Israeli PMs who failed to eliminate Hizbollah.
Considering that the Camp David Accords were brokered by such popular, successful leaders as Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat, I'm willing to take my chances.
The reason they are allowed to get away with it is that the Prime Minister of Israel refuses to ask himself the following question, "What action would Hafaz Assad take if he were sitting in my seat and were confronted with the ongoing terrorist activities from the Gaza Strip?"
And then, presumably, you would suggest that the Prime Minister take the exact same steps Assad would take in his shoes, right? Damn, it must be morally fulfilling and emotionally satisfying to advocate violent authoritarian reprisals from the comfort of your own office.
LFP, I don't really like the Assad family, but Hafez flattened Hama after an action movie-like attempt on his life where he killed his own attackers like Harrison Ford.
Papa Assad didn't mind getting his hands dirty.
Anybody worried about Israel's ability to destroy Hizballah can just wait for attempt number two, which is in the cards, along with a simultaneous attempt to take out Syria.
Both, of course, will fail miserably, because Israel is not capable of taking out any 4th Gen War actor. Plus, they will make the classic mistake - a two-front war - by taking on Syria and Hizballah at the same time. They'll end up taking 1,000 or more casualties from Hizballah, plus harassment from what's left of the Syrian military in their rear. Meanwhile, Israel's propensity for war crimes will be established yet again.
Annapolis is an irrelevant joke.
Just why wouldn't Hamas ... want to destroy the Israeli state?
1. They can't.
2. As long as they continue to insist on that being their goal, Israel has no reason to change its behavior.
Re Richard Steven Hack
Well, another rant from Mr. Hack, this blogs favorite ex-con who advocates assassinating police officers. Mr. Hack is lucky that the bank teller he robbed was not armed as he wouldn't be here shooting off his mouth if the latter had been. However, we should notice how Mr. Hacks' lack of respect for the IDF seems to waver now and then. Thus he states, "They'll end up taking 1,000 or more casualties from Hizballah, plus harassment from what's left of the Syrian military in their rear." That doesn't show much respect the for regular Syrian Armed Forces. It also assumes that the new leadership of the IDF, namely former General and now Defense Minister Barak and Infantry General Ashkenazi will be as incompetent as their predecessors, Peretz, a man with no military experience and Halutz, an air force general. The replacement of Halutz by Ashkenazi will resemble the replacement of Fredendall by Patton in North Africa during WW 2 and the replacement of Peretz by Barak will resemble the replacement of Battenberg by Fisher as First Sea Lord in WW 1.
Levy's right, the Palestinians can't promise security while being under occupation. Plus their main backers are the decrepit oil-rich theocrats, the Saudis. Have to feel sorry for them.
The Likudniks need to be told, look, we took out the crazy Anton Chigurh-like Saddam Hussein and it cost us lives and cash. Now get your act together.
At least Syria was invited and is coming to the conference. Better than being bombed.
SLC babbles: "That doesn't show much respect the for regular Syrian Armed Forces."
No, it doesn't, nor should it. I have no trouble believing that the IDF can take down any conventional Arab army in the area - and probably any two or even three of them.
What they can't do is take down Hizballah. Hizballah handed them their asses last year and will continue to do so.
Meanwhile, presumably the Syrians, if any were paying attention last year, should have noted how well Hizballah did with prepared territory and should be preparing Syria in the same manner now. In any event, even if they don't, nobody wipes out an entire army, so when the IDF cuts left into the Bekaa Valley, what's left of the Syrian military can conduct harassing operations to their rear while Hizballah blunts their forward front.
And citing names of Israeli generals does not impress me, any more than citing Petraeus - who plagiarized his counterinsurgency manual - impresses me. Results impress me.
Re Richard Steven Hack
1. Mr. Hack, what is the source of the charge that General Patraeus plagiarized the counterinsurgency manual attributed to him? Let's back up charges like that with some evidence. And don't point me to counterpunch which has no credibility.
2. Mr. Hacks' assumptions about the IDFs' military strategy in the event of a war with Hizbollah don't agree with the plan that was put forward by the planners and rejected by Halutz and Peretz. The proposal was for an Inchon strategy in which several brigades would be landed just south of the Litani river by ship and would deploy along the south bank of that river. This would cut off the communications of the Hizbollah main fighting force which was deployed between the Lebanese border and the Litani River and subject it to a pincers movement as the main IDF force moved north and the landed force moved south. If Mr. Hack doesn't think that this is an effective strategy, he should consult the North Koreans who were the victims of such a strategy as devised by General MacArthur during the Korean War.
SLC burbles: "And don't point me to counterpunch which has no credibility."
That's nice. Eliminate the source of the charge at the start. That's like saying don't bother to listen to Valerie Plame or the CIA as to whether she was outed by Cheney or not.
I'm uninterested in strategies that MIGHT have worked. There is no evidence that the simple movement of IDF troops in one direction or another would have altered the outcome. It might have extended the war if the IDF had come in from further north, but that's about it. Colonel Pat Lang thinks in the next war that's what the IDF will do - cut left on the way to Damascus and come in on the Bekaa Valley - which is why Hizballah is preparing the Valley.
The problem for the IDF was that Hizballah had cracked their codes for troop movement (probably with Syrian Intelligence assistance, although Iran is another suspect for the assistance - I assume Syria since they're likely to be monitoring IDF commo regularly more than Iran would be) and knew where the IDF was and was going at any given time.
They also had redoubts and bunkers everywhere. As soon as the IDF wandered into a location, they got hit with anti-tank rockets and took fire. I remember reading a description of that - a Merkava starts rolling into a small valley in southern Lebanon. Next thing the observer saw was, pop! Out comes an anti-tank missile from some hole in the hillside that couldn't otherwise be seen. Scratch one Merkava...
So it wouldn't matter where the IDF troops were coming from - in front or behind - they still would have spent weeks or months rooting out Hizballah bunkers while taking fire from all directions from the other bunkers.
As usual, SLC and his masters in Israel are thinking in terms of conventional military maneuvers - as is illustrated by the pointless North Korea comparison - which is precisely why Israel lost.
Re Richard Steven Hack
1. Mr. Hacks' analysis makes the claim that the IDF "lost." That is true only in the sense that the IDF failed to win. If one looks at the casualty rates, Hizbollah suffered 3 times as many casualties as did the IDF. This reminds me of the claim by British officers after the battle of Guilford Court House during the Revolutionary War that the British army had won. The British commander was far more sanguine. "Another such victory and we are undone." Something similar was the reaction of Hizbollah leader Nasrullah who admitted afterwards that his forces had taken a substantial beating.
2. There has been much erroneous reporting about the supposed vulnerability of Israeli tanks to anti-tank fire. The military reporter for the Jerusalem Post did an analysis after the war was over and found the following. The Lebanese opposition fired several hundred anti-tank rounds which resulted in some 51 tanks being hit. Of these, some 20 were damaged seriously enough to cause casualties to the crew. None of these 20 were the Merkava IV, the most advanced tank in the Israeli arsenal, roughly equivalent to the Abrams 2.
3. What is the source of the information that Hizbollah cracked the Israeli codes? Probably more nonsense from counterpunch.
4. I find myself in partial agreement with Mr. Hack on the question of whether the Inchon strategy would have succeeded better then the non-strategy that was actually chosen. As the late USNA professor of navel history, H. Holloway Frost once stated in an article about the Battle of Jutland, in war, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. There are two objections which could be made to the Inchon approach. The first is a question as to whether the Israeli Navy has sufficient lift capacity to land several brigades of troops on a hostile shore together with their equipment in a relatively short period of time. The second is the lack of experience of the IDF in conducting such amphibious operations. These were the reasons the plan was turned down. The trouble is that the people who put the kibosh on the plan were not competent to evaluate it.
5. The problem with the non-strategy finally employed by the IDF was the failure to properly employ air power, mainly because of the perceived risk of collateral damage. The clowns in charge of the IDF chose to engage in strategic bombing raids in the Beirut area. Those raids were a complete waste of time and resources and accomplished no strategic goal (its not even clear that the clowns even had a strategic goal in mind). These resources could have far better been employed in tactical missions in support of the ground troops. Until such time as the IDF and other Western armed forces get off this collateral damage reluctance kick, we will continue to look like losers to the opposition. I guarantee Mr. Hack that the opposition will not show such reluctance. We would be better advised to absorb a lesson from the late Dictator of Syria, Hafaz Assad who showed no regard whatsoever for collateral damage in crushing terrorists cells in the City of Hama in 1982. Brutal but effective.
Comments closed December 11, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"That does not change the basic equation that for the vast number of Palestinians, Hamas included, this is about addressing a real grievance and not about destroying Israel or America."
Daniel Levy should read the Hamas Charter:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"
Posted by Dave | November 27, 2007 1:44 PM