Failed Objectives in Lebanon

Now let’s consider the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Again, what were the possible objectives?

• If the objective was to humble Hezbollah, the opposite has happened. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah is now more powerful than before. Furthermore, he is now seen throughout the Muslim and Arab worlds as a hero, the only Muslim or Arab ever to successfully fight Israel to a standstill on the battlefield.

• If the objective was to eliminate Hezbollah’s military power, it failed completely. On the last day of fighting before the cease fire Hezbollah launched more rockets into Israeli territory than at any previous time in the fighting. Furthermore, neither the Lebanese army nor any of the military forces that might make up the UN force make any claim that they can or will even attempt to disarm Hezbollah.

• If the objective was to strengthen the democratically elected government in Lebanon, the opposite has happened. While the central government in Beirut stood powerless to stop the fighting, Hezbollah showed it had the strength, determination, and strategy to stand toe to toe with the full force of the Israeli military machine and not back down. As a result, any political initiative undertaken today without the full involvement of Mr. Nasrallah, an unelected leader, stands a slim chance of success.

• If the objective was to diminish the social standing of Hezbollah, the opposite has happened. Even previous Lebanese foes of Hezbollah such as Druse leader Walid Jumblat backed Hezbollah during the conflict. And now, Hezbollah is leading the reconstruction effort, which will only cement their legitimacy and leadership in the minds of southern Lebanese.

• If the objective was to demonstrate the invincibility of Israeli military power, the opposite has been shown, and so the political leverage of Israel is correspondingly diminished.

• If the objective was to diminish the influence of Iran and/or Syria, the opposite has been accomplished. The weapons and support provided by the U.S. to Israel were insufficient to overcome the weapons and support supplied by Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, and the world has seen this plainly on TV.

• If the objective was to return the captured Israeli soldiers, they are still in captivity and now the threat of military force to get them back has proven itself hollow.

Washington’s protestations notwithstanding, it is hard to see the recent Lebanon conflict as anything other than a significant defeat for both Israel and its sponsor the United States. Not only were the objectives not achieved, but in nearly every case, the opposite was accomplished.

The situation closely mirrors the quagmire confronting the U.S. in Iraq. No long term objective has been achieved and most genuine geopolitical objectives have either been set back significantly (such as nuclear non-proliferation) or have seen their opposites accomplished.

Even in Afghanistan, the political objectives of installing a democratic government and eliminating the Taliban appear to be receding from our grasp, rather than coming closer. And in Afghanistan we have also seen the unfortunate explosion of the heroin trade and the resurrection of warlord power and politics as additional negative consequences.

We have to ask ourselves therefore, is warfare, especially when accompanied by a military occupation, a useful means for accomplishing American objectives in the world? The evidence points overwhelmingly to an answer of no. In fact, it appears to be strongly counterproductive. In today’s age of global communication, globalization of the means of production, and the rapid dissemination of knowledge and news, power has shifted away from those with traditional military strength. As Jonathan Schell puts it in his book The Unconquerable World, “local peoples have discovered the will and the means to resist imperial powers” (emphasis added). The conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and, to a lesser degree Afghanistan, clearly demonstrate this point. Furthermore, a comprehensive study conducted by Prof. Robert Pape of the University of Chicago for his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism shows that the primary motivation for suicide terrorism throughout the world is the military occupation of territory claimed by the suicide bombers. This study reinforces the futility of deliberately invading and occupying a country in order to avert terrorism. Such actions produce the opposite results.

Leaders Must Stand Up to Aggression

So how should Democrats or other elected leaders who oppose war and occupation respond to this emerging global reality? They can do it by redefining national security and the war on terror. Although such a redefinition is not a new idea, recent events make it a much more reasonable sale to the American electorate. But to do so will take courage and determination in the face of what everyone knows will be a witheringly vicious response by the current administration.

• First, it’s essential to show the American people the abject failures of both the Iraq mission and the Lebanon conflict. We can’t be squeamish about this. We can’t say, well the war was OK when we first thought about it, but the administration fumbled it. We have to say it was unwinnable from the start, and is now a completely lost cause. This is the indisputable truth of the matter, as evidenced by the lists of failed objectives above, and a strong political position must rest on such a foundational truth.

• Second, we must tell America that modern war and occupation are the wrong tools for achieving our objectives. We need only look at the lists of failed objectives above to see this clearly. In fact, we must tell America that wars of aggression and occupation today are most likely to achieve the opposite of their intended objectives. Clausewitz alluded to this when he coined the phrase “the fog of war” by which he meant that during the confusion of battle it is very hard to determine what is actually happening, but which today can just as easily mean that because of the enormous number of variables in any conflict, the end result simply cannot be seen at the outset.

• Third, war is a fool’s choice. It is a zero sum game, which means that one side can win only by the other side’s losing. But diplomacy is a non-zero sum game. In negotiations each side can come away with an acceptable result, producing a “win-win” situation. Since the outcome of war cannot be foreseen, there is always a chance that the aggressor will lose, and in today’s world of asymmetrical warfare and the easy globalization of conflict, losing is the most likely outcome for an aggressor/occupier state. We can see the results of that fool’s choice all around us in Iraq, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East and the world.

• Fourth, genuine American leadership arose from our reputation as not only a peaceful nation, but as a peacemaker nation. There was a time when the U.S. was considered a reliably neutral third party in helping resolve terribly difficult crises, but we have lost that credibility and in so doing sacrificed our ability to influence world events. We must reclaim that leadership in order to advance American interests around the world. And we can do it only by clearly repudiating the war-first policies of the current administration.

• Fifth, if our objective is to reduce the threat from international terrorism, we cannot do so by increasing the amount of violence in the world, as has been amply demonstrated by the failures of the war-first Bush policies. We can only begin to address the threat by reducing the level of global violence, instead of adding to it as the current administration continues to do. Reducing global violence can only begin when we repudiate the war-first approach and begin to focus on other solutions. This is NOT a sign of weakness! It is a sign of using our heads instead of our fists, something every child should have learned in kindergarten.

Globalization and the existence of nuclear weapons (which put an absolute limit on the ability of a country to militarily overwhelm an opponent) have fundamentally changed the world and the nature of war and occupation. The most common complaint about military institutions is that they prepare fastidiously to win the war just past, not the war of the future which no one can foresee. This administration continues under the ludicrous belief that military power designed to defeat the Soviet Union on the battlefields of Europe can today be used to defeat a stateless popular political movement spread throughout the world. This is absurd on its face and the visible results of its implementation prove that absurdity. The conflation of American leadership with American military power is a siren’s lure, and the disastrous shoals it beckons us towards are already demonstrating their destructive power throughout the Middle East. It is time for us to make a fundamental change in our beliefs about American leadership, military power, and the methods for resolving global conflict. War-first is not the answer.

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