Hezbollah: entwined and enmeshed in Lebanon

The New Neo Posted on by

Many–including myself–have used the phrase “hostage” to describe the Lebanese people in the current crisis. And no doubt many of the citizens of that country are in just that position.

But not all. Although it’s difficult to know the true percentages, one cannot deny that Hezbollah has a great deal of support in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, the organization that is driving the present action in Lebanon, was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But over the years it has insinuated itself so deeply and profoundly into Lebanese life that one can say that, if the Lebanese people are being held hostage, it is by an organization that many of them have supported and/or tolerated, and have been the social beneficiaries of, for decades. Lebanon has not only failed to eradicate Hezbollah, the group has grown in power in recent years and is now closely intertwined in Lebanese life and politics.

Take a look at the history of Hezbollah in Lebanon (and yes, it’s from Wikipedia, but it seems to be a fairly straightforward and undisputed article). Originally arriving in Lebanon 1982 as an arm of the mullahs of Iran, devoted to the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeni and aimed at engaging the Shiite majority of Moslems in Lebanon, Hezbollah positioned itself from the start as the potential liberator of Lebanon from the Israeli occupation that began in 1982 and lasted until Israel’s withdrawal in 2000. All the while, Hezbollah has been openly and unabashedly dedicated to the destruction of Israel, rather than any sort of coexistence or negotiation with it.

There is no question that the events of 2000 allowed Hezbollah to claim victory over Israel, and earned it regard throughout Lebanon for this. In 2003, for example, the Maronite Christian President of Lebanon at the time, Emile Lahoud, is quoted as saying [emphasis mine]:

For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn’t for them, we couldn’t have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.

Like many terrorist organizations, and in the time-honored fashion of other political groups with power agendas, Hezbollah has also won over the people by establishing organizations such as schools and hospitals, filling gaps in the system of social services (much as the decidedly non-terrorist but extremely corrupt Tammany Hall did in New York City of the 1850s through 1930s).

After 2000, Hezbollah made it clear that not only did it take responsibility for the Israeli withdrawal, but that it considered said withdrawal a reflection of Israeli weakness. Ever since, Hezbollah has been consolidating its power in Lebanon and burrowing its way ever deeper into Lebanese political and military life.

The relative calm in Lebanon has enabled Hezbollah, in its role as liberator, to become the de facto army of southern Lebanon, and to seed throughout that area the Syrian- and Iranian-supplied rockets used in the present attacks, storing them in strategic locations–“strategic,” in this case, being (of course!) embedded in the midst of civilians, the better to maximize Lebanese civilian casualties when Israel retaliates.

In the Lebanese election of 2005, Hezbollah increased its representation in Parliament by a multiple of three, going from a previous high of eight representatives to its present twenty- three, as well as gaining, for the first time, ministers in the executive branch of the government.

It’s interesting to speculate whether those Lebanese who supported Hezbollah as liberators and social workers ever thought about the hidden Hezbollah agenda, which was to use the Lebanese people as the aforementioned hostages to score propaganda points with the press and the West when those hostages inevitably become victims. Were they aware of this plan, as well as the very clear statements by Hezbollah that their goal was not peace, but the eradication of the state of Israel? If so, did the supporters of Hezbollah care? Did they see the possible consequences for themselves?

Going back to the bank robber/hostage analogy, one might say that many of the Lebanese people are in the position of having been minor accessories to the crime–roughly analogous to those who might gain prior knowledge of a crime about to be committed but who fail to act or to alert authorities so that it might be prevented–who then find the main actor in the crime (the bank robber), a former trusted friend and accomplice, suddenly grabbing them and placing them between the police and himself. It may be a surprise to the hostage–but should it be?

It’s clear that Hezbollah needs to be rooted out of Lebanon. But it’s very difficult to see how this could happen if the Lebanese people themselves don’t wish it to happen–and even then, it would be far from easy to accomplish at this point. Syria, as Hezbollah’s main supplier, could theoretically be involved, but that has the danger of “inviting” the Syrians back into greater power in a country that’s only recently begun to detangle itself from its nefarious influence.

That word “detangle” is a good one, because excising Hezbollah from Lebanon is not going to be a simple act of surgery. Many metaphors come to mind: Hezbollah in Lebanon is like a tumor without sharp borders or boundaries; a neuroma that’s burrowed itself into the tissue in a deep and complex manner, a family that’s too deeply enmeshed for members to individuate and separate.

This is one of the reasons that Condoleezza Rice’s words at Friday’s news conference were so interesting. If you read the transcript, you’ll find that, over and over, she emphasizes the issue of Lebanese sovereignty, an appeal to Lebanese pride in its own autonomy. Knowing how instrumental Hezbollah was in Lebanese perception of that autonomy from Israel back in 2000, and how pleased the country is to have recently expelled the Syrians, she carefully phrases the eradication of Hezbollah from Lebanon as an issue of Lebanese sovereignty as well.

Whether this will be at all effective is unclear. But it’s the right sort of rhetoric for the occasion, to be followed by tough negotiations that–as Rice herself says–don’t just put into place a meaningless cease-fire that perpetuates business as usual, but some sort of lasting change for the better that damps down Hezbollah’s power in the region.

[Cross-posted at Winds of Change.]

Hezbollah and the “occupation” argument

The New Neo Posted on by

If you look at the wide variety of opinions in the highlighted articles at Real Clear Politics as to how the current Mideast conflict is going to play out, you realize how much disagreement and confusion there is. In truth, we’re in the fog of war, and no one knows. Read them and decide what makes the most sense to you, and then watch as events unfold, no doubt in some direction no one quite foresaw.

That’s one of the many problems with war; it’s unpredictable, and unleashes strong and powerful forces that are destructive to human life, although in the end they can resolve certain issues and topple certain regimes. As Churchill–no stranger to war, and a man who did not shy away from it–said:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

That said, Dennis Ross (former Mideast “peace process” negotiator) has an interesting article in the New Republic about the significance of Hezbollah’s actions in this war, and the message it sends to the world, including the Arab world. For decades, the Arabs of the region have presented their animus towards Israel as the result of Israeli “occupation.” Although the historical record indicates otherwise–the Arab nations tried to destroy Israel long before there was any occupation–it was a convincing argument for many.

According to Ross:

When Hezbollah was fighting Israeli “occupation,” it was untouchable. But the general Arab narrative has been that the violence, meaning terrorism, is driven by occupation: no occupation, no violence. Hamas has already cast doubt on this narrative by launching attacks from Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, but it is hard for Arab regimes to challenge Hamas’s legitimacy. Hezbollah, however, is another story.

Ross goes on to list the many condemnations of Hezbollah’s recent actions offered by the Arab countries of the region. He sees the situation as an opportunity–a tricky one, to be sure, filled with perilous traps and the need for delicate balance–to check Iran’s rise in the region.

In recent years, Israel has pulled back from the Arab territories it formerly occupied and fortified its borders with the famous defensive fence. These acts had the effect of calling its enemies’ bluffs. But this retreat was widely seen by those enemies as Israeli weakness rather than strength. Now Israel is trying to show that perception to be a false one.

Getting around in their Pajamas

The New Neo Posted on by

The Anchoress observes that Pajamas Media is doing an impressive job of covering the current Mideast war.

I’ve noticed the same thing myself. Of course, as a member of Pajamas, I guess you can’t call me unbiased; I most definitely have a dog in this race.

When PJ began, I saw it as an experiment that might or might not work out. But I was more than willing to go along for the ride. After all, I had nothing to lose, and it sounded like a good idea and a fun idea.

At first, I didn’t go to their website much. It seemed a haphazard collection of random blog posts, with nothing special to recommend it. But I figured that would change over time, as they found out what worked and what didn’t.

And it most certainly has. Now I go there not because I’m curious about how they’re doing, or loyal, but because their coverage has become excellent. In fact, they feature the best roundups of news and opinion about the war that I’ve found online.

One of the ways I can tell that the Pajamas readership has risen considerably is by the amount of traffic they drive. At first, when I was linked there, the uptick on my sitemeter was very modest indeed. Then there was a slow increase over time. Now any link from PJ causes a very respectable surge.

I noticed a sharp upturn in both the traffic and quality of the website with the appointment of Gerard Van der Leun, who brings his extensive expertise and ebullient energy (love those alliterations–watch for more!) to the job of Editor in Chief. Head honcho, the refreshing and resourceful Roger Simon, has been burning the midnight oil as well, as have those cover-the-globe editors: the judicious and jocund Juliette Ochieng, the hardworking and humane Jose Guardia, and the remarkable and reflective Richard Fernandez.

Last November, at the PJ kickoff in New York–back when the group was laboring under the fortunately short-lived moniker OSM–I met the majority of these people, as well as a host of my fellow PJ bloggers. You can read my description of the event here, in case you missed it first time round. Fun.

Fighting elephants; trembling mice

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an old saying, rendered variously as:

When elephants fight, it’s the mice who must tremble.

When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.

The applicability to the current situation in the Middle East? When Hezbollah goads Israel from its hiding place in Lebanon, and Israel retaliates, the ordinary people in both countries suffer.

Right now, as Fouad Ajami points out in today’s Opinion Journal (and as I pointed out some days ago, here), the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah. Yes, of course, some of the Lebanese people support Hezbollah, even though it was originally a foreign graft from Iran. But the majority? Doubtful. But that didn’t stop Nasrallah from provoking the Israelis into this war in Lebanon; elephants don’t ordinarily ask the mice’s permission when they start a battle.

Ajami believes that Nasrallah miscalculated, thinking it would be just business as usual when he provoked Israel, underestimating the spine of the new, non-Sharon, government (as well as the opposition of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan). Gone were the old warriors of Israel, Nasrallah thought–the elephants, as it were–and in their place were the bureaucrats.

But Israel seems to have found a new resolve, exemplified by this passage from a speech Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made last Monday:

“There are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more!” Olmert said in a speech in the Knesset plenum Monday evening. “And I say to everyone: no more! Israel will not be held hostage – not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state.”

There’s that metaphor again: being held hostage. And the linked Jerusalem Post article goes on to point out that Israel and its leaders (usually so fractious) are presently united behind Olmert.

Why is this? It seems to me that it’s because so much else has been tried, for so very long, and been found so very wanting. If the slogan of the peace movement is “Give peace a chance,” Israel can honestly say (although its enemies will never credit this, of course) “Been there, done that, many times. And it didn’t work.”

Another reason Olmert can stand firm is that the Bush administration is refusing to pay any more lip service to the ‘peace process” as a way of dealing with terrorist entities such as Hezbollah.

The tricky part, of course, is to stand firm in such a way that the Green Revolution in Lebanon is not destroyed–that the mice and the grass (to continue the green metaphor) don’t tremble too much as the elephants collide.

Secretary Rice is going to the region to try to strike that delicate balance. It will not be easy, as blogger Alcibiades at Kesher Talk points out, here:

…the crumbling of prosperous, pro-Democrat Lebanon may represent a crumbling of what could have been a very important bulwark against the Islamist night that will never be built up again in quite the right way.

But, unfortunately, for Lebanon to ever become that bulwark, Hezbollah has to be rooted out. You can’t have it both ways. The hope is that the cure isn’t worse than the disease.

Secretary Rice is declaring her own version (or Bush’s version, or their combined version) of Olmert’s cry of “No more!” Her version is a “no more, enough!” to the false promise of the ceasefire in this case:

We do seek an end to the current violence and we seek it urgently,” Rice told reporters at the State Department. Still, “a cease fire would be a false promise if it just returns us to the status quo.”….`Hezbollah is the source of the problem,” Rice said. No diplomatic solution can allow Hezbollah to stay in place, she said. The U.S. is working to put pressure on Iran and Syria, which sponsor Hezbollah, to ease the strife diplomatically…

Rice is clear: a diplomatic solution is not ruled out. But it must involve an end to the Hezbollah presence in Lebanon. Only then can a ceasefire be meaningful; until then any cease-fire would be premature and counterproductive.

“Cease-fire.” It’s a wonderful word, is it not? It speaks of peace and tranquility; the poor mice and the defenseless grass can finally stop suffering. Who wouldn’t want that? And there are those who are calling for an immediate ceasefire–such as Kofi Annan, not unexpectedly.

But ceasefires in the region, especially ones with a terrorist entity as one of the parties, don’t have a good track record. The status quo is unacceptable.

Enough is enough.

Oh yeah? (who is “bound” by international law?)

The New Neo Posted on by

The International Red Cross has said that Israel’s response in Lebanon violates the “proportionality” principle of the Geneva Conventions (see this for my views on proportionality). The group has also issued the following statement about the terrorist group Hezbollah:

Hezbollah fighters too are bound by the rules of international humanitarian law, and they must not target civilian areas.

I’m sorry, but what’s the International Red Cross been smoking?

Earth to International Red Cross: Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. They exist to target civilians.

Furthermore, there’s a general principle involved, one that should be readily apparent to anyone with a modicum of sense:

To be “bound” by a certain law, one (or both) of two things need to be true: (1) the “bound” entity has to agree to the authority of those administering the law; (2) the authority has to have the power of enforcement over that entity.

The International Red Cross has neither over Hezbollah at this point. The only way it would get that power–and it could never obtain #1, only #2–is by a military defeat of Hezbollah, a capture of its leaders, and the act of subsequently bringing them before an international tribunal.

And, of course, to defeat Hezbollah would require a response the International Red Cross already has already condemned as violating the principles of proportionality, since Hezbollah is well aware of the value of hiding behind civilians, and does so purposely and frequently. So, how in heaven’s name would any international court ever get authority over Hezbollah, except to try them in absentia? And a fat lot of good that would do, except as meaningless theater.

I’m wondering: has any Islamic terrorist ever been successfully tried under international law for violating the Geneva Conventions? None comes to mind–the only trials I can think of, such as those of Richard Reid or the 1993 WTC bombers, are national rather than international. (I can’t say, however, that I’ve done an exhaustive search, so please feel free to offer any such international cases in the comments section, if you can find them.)

The remark by the International Red Cross about Hezbollah being “bound” by the Conventions made me think of a popular comeback when I was a kid. When someone would say, I’m gonna make you do it, the usual retort was Oh yeah? You and what army?

Somehow I think that’s exactly what Hezbollah would say.

Beating the heat while you sleep

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night was the first night in I don’t know how long that it wasn’t beastly hot.

I’m one of those people–not all that rare in New England–who doesn’t have air conditioning, so believe me, these things get my attention.

I live in an area where it doesn’t get too hot too often. But every summer there are always a number of sweltering days and nights, although that number varies widely from year to year. My bedroom is distinguished by casement windows and something called awning windows (I had to look the term up to get it right), neither of which are particularly simpatico to the installment of an air conditioner. I’ve never gotten around to cutting a hole in the wall for one, either.

And really, most of the time there’s no need. I have windows on three sides of the bedroom, so I not only have cross-ventilation, I have double-cross ventilation, as well as a large ceiling fan. In fact, when the windows are open on all three sides and it’s a bit breezy outside, I find I don’t have to sweep the floor–the dust just piles up of its own accord in whatever corner the wind happens to be blowing towards. Better than a Roomba.

But this past week there was no breeze to be had, except for the steamy air, weakly stirred by the feeble ceiling fan. Sweating was continual, perpetual, and copious (yes, I know; too much information).

I hear it’s been that way throughout much of the country. So, for those of you who, like me, might be air conditioner-challenged, here are some tips for how to keep cool without AC on a hot summer night.

Absent among the suggestions is a traditional New England fixture, the sleeping porch. You can see them on big old houses here. They’re usually attached to the second floor and adjacent to the bedrooms there, screened on all sides to let in the cooler night air and keep out the ubiquitous mosquitoes. But, since most of us lack sleeping porches, the fan and the ice cubes and the wet sheet and the wet socks might just do the trick.

I hope you sleep well tonight, and every night.

Terrorists and the nations that harbor them

The New Neo Posted on by

Jihadi terrorists are not strictly bound to the confines of a state, and their calling cards are sometimes hard to read. That’s one of their strengths; it makes it very difficult to strike back at them with weapons of conventional warfare.

But that doesn’t mean they operate on their own without any state support (Austin Bay has written this must-read piece on how the terrorists exploit the system of states and failed states to their advantage).

Afghanistan was a relatively easy case, at least conceptually, because the state sponsoring of Al Qaeda in that country was clear and overt. The other heavy lifters in the promotion of terrorism around the globe are Iran and Syria, while Saudi Arabia has a leading role as well through Wahabism, which acts as a sort of carrier of terrorism.

Remember Bush’s post-9/11 address to Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001? In that speech, he formulated some of the basic principles of dealing with state sponsors of terrorism, an early version of the Bush Doctrine:

The Taliban must act immediately. They will hand over terrorists, or they will share in their fate….Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them…From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Although the present war in Lebanon is not being waged by the US, it’s certainly an example of the application of this doctrine. The government of Lebanon has winked at terrorism, failed to root it out, given it safe haven–and even made a home for it in its Parliament, one-fifth of whom are Hezbollah members.

Why is this? Lebanon is a country that used to be one of the most stable in the region. But that all ended, starting with the arrival of the PLO in the late sixties and early seventies, after that group’s violent expulsion from Jordan, where it was trying to topple the government. Lebanon was thereafter ravaged by civil war for several decades. During that time, Israel invaded at intervals to try to root out the terrorists that had taken hold, and Syria took control and rendered Lebanon its puppet state (the latter situation has only recently improved with the expulsion of the Syrians–although not the Syrian influence–in 2005).

It’s interesting to contrast the response of Jordan’s King Hussein to the terrorists who were in his midst and threatening his regime. “Black September“, the name given to the day Hussein cracked down and expelled the PLO from Jordan, was an example of bitter Arab-on-Arab violence. It’s estimated that, in the ten days of that action, between three and five thousand Palestinians in Jordan were killed, both PLO militants and civilians alike. This indiscriminate crackdown never elicited the sort of condemnation that would have occurred had it been performed by Western powers. What’s more, it was effective; the PLO were routed from Jordan and relative stability returned.

After Black September, Jordan’s loss was Lebanon’s gain–or rather, we might say that Jordan’s gain was Lebanon’s loss. The PLO–and Yasser Arafat–relocated to Lebanon, and the country was never the same again.

The lesson is a harsh one. Harboring terrorists does not pay, and not just because of the Bush doctrine or the reaction of the Israelis. Terrorists take advantage of the conditions inherent in failed states, it’s true. But the arrival of terrorists en masse can help to cause a state to fail. That didn’t happen in Jordan because Jordan adopted harsh and somewhat ruthless measures against those terrorists. It happened in Lebanon because Lebanon either wouldn’t or couldn’t do the same effectively.

Now, over three decades later, Lebanon is still reaping the bitter harvest of harboring terrorists, this time Hezbollah. Whether it lacks the will or the ability to root them out, or whether it’s a combination of the two, I don’t know. But the truth is that terrorism is a blight on both the terrorist’s targets and on those who give the terrorists refuge.

The Israelis are attempting in Lebanon to effect a somewhat kinder, gentler Black September (in this case, a Black July), and expel Hezbollah from Lebanon. Will they succeed? They haven’t before; despite previous Israeli incursions into Lebanon for that purpose, Hezbollah has remained there. And, of course, driving Hezbollah from Lebanon would not mean the end of Hezbollah in the world.

But perhaps now the world climate has changed (including that of the Arab world), and it’s understood how necessary this action is. Criticism of Israel in this conflict has been curiously muted, considering that it’s Israel. Maybe the world has finally learned the lesson that terrorism is a blight on us all.

It shouldn’t have had to take this long to understand that.

Thoughts on a wedding

The New Neo Posted on by

This weekend I went to the wedding of the daughter of a good friend. It’s the first wedding I’ve attended of a contemporary of my own son, although probably not the last. The bride is someone I’ve known since she was two months old.

It’s a cliché at a wedding to ask where all that time went—in fact, there’s even a tearjerker of a popular song to that effect, “Sunrise, Sunset” (“Is this the little girl I carried…”). And I followed that cliche; for me, the wedding was pretty emotional. I teared up, although I managed not to cry.

It was a beautiful day—(although very hot!)—in a beautiful setting. Take a look—this is where the ceremony was actually held:

But the main source of emotion for me was that the bride and groom seemed so deeply in love. Knowing the bride’s family very well, and knowing at least the history of the groom’s, I’m aware that both have come from families where the parents had exceptionally bitter divorces that impacted heavily on both bride and groom, adding a burden of suffering that clouded their childhoods.

And yet, here they were, starry-eyed over each other. Is this merely the triumph of hope over experience, the naivete and beauty of youth, an example of denial? I don’t think so. I like to think—in fact I sense, and I certainly fervently hope—that these two young people
have learned through their travails what to value, hard lessons that will help them through the inevitable conflicts in their own marriage.

An extra poignancy was added by the fact that all the previously-warring parents attended the ceremony, and all seemed more or less civil to each other. That, in and of itself, probably could not have happened without the passage of a great deal of time since the divorces, as well as strong motivation to make the day pleasant for their children.

Looking at the bride’s parents—a couple I first knew about twenty-five years ago, right before their very necessary divorce, but have not seen together since—I couldn’t help but remember their former selves, hardly older than their own child is today. Now they’re the mother and father of the bride, united for this day by that commonality. Their marriage was a disaster, but their child most definitely is not.

The rockets of Hezbollah: all the world’s a stage, and all the civilians merely props

The New Neo Posted on by

In line with the theme of some of my other posts today, we have this, about Hezbollah’s tactics in the current conflict in Lebanon:

Hizbollah hid many of the rockets in private homes, and had teams that launched the rockets from next to these homes, forcing the Israelis to “attack civilians” if the launching effort was spotted and attacked with bombs or artillery.

This is a textbook and commonplace case of terrorist strategy.

It starts with utter contempt for the lives of civilians. It’s no surprise, of course, that Hezbollah has contempt for the lives of Israeli civilians, and wishes their destruction. Katushas are not guided and “smart,” they are the dumbest of dumb bombs, aimed only at a general vicinity–in this case, Israeli cities and the citizens therein.

But the contempt Hezbollah has for the lives of its own people is just as great, if not greater, because of the placement of the rocket launchers themselves. And yes, I know, it’s not technically “its own people” Hezbollah is sacrificing here, because Hezbollah is Iranian in origin rather than Lebanese.

It’s as though there’s been a bank robbery, and the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah, which hides behind them for protection. And, from its hiding place, Iran–hiding behind both the Lebanese people and the terrorist entity Hezbollah–commences a war both hot (the bombs themselves) and, more importantly, cold–the war for public opinion.

By hiding behind Lebanese civilians it’s not even primarily protection Hezbollah craves, it’s theater–as in Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players on it.”. Hezbollah is well aware that if, by taking out the missile launchers, Israel kills Lebanese civilians–which is every bit as much Hezbollah’s goal as the initial killing of Israeli civilians by the rockets themselves–then, as sure as day follows night, this fact will be reported heavily by the Western media (mostly without the all-important background context), flashed around the globe, and widely condemned. Civilians are not only expendable on the part of the terrorists, they are important and vital tools–stage props. And it’s ironic that civilians are used by terrorists in this way to try to make the point that it’s the others–the US and Israel–who are purposely targeting civilians.

The propaganda value is immense, and may be the most important part of the exercise in rocketry, as far as Hezbollah is concerned: free publicity against Israel, courtesy of the West itself.

This sort of theater has been going on for a long time, and not just in the Middle East–for example, it was part and parcel of the tactics of the Vietcong, in a strategy known as “clutching the people to their breast.”

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: “some mother, some breast.”

[Big Pharaoh makes a related point.]