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| July 29, 2006 | ||||
The Dangers of Keeping the 'Peace' in Lebanon |
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| by Christopher Deliso | ||||
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In the good old days of warfare, states or empires on the offensive would flesh out the front lines with hired mercenaries or captured opponents (or both). The results were often bizarre. Take, for example, the Battle of Ankara (1402), which pitted the proto-Ottoman Turks against an unstoppable Mongol force. Those who died from the ranks of the former were mostly subjugated Serbs, whereas many Turks had found service in the Mongol army. Similarly, when the Ottomans turned on Constantinople half a century later, a forced charge was carried out by Greeks and other captured Christians, mowed down out of necessity by their own countrymen defending from the ramparts. If there was no logic to anything other than the guiding hand of money and oppression in those days, then in the last century there was (allegedly) no other logic to war than the honor of dying for one's nation or cause. Yet are we reverting today to the medieval conception of war, where only the illusion (expressed in effulgent political speeches and the flag-draped coffin) of dying for one's nation remains, a thin veneer over a much more sordid reality? The aftermath of Israel's new war would seem to indicate so. Hubris and the UN The UN's failure to condemn a deadly attack on its own personnel by the Israeli military, and its likely forced exclusion from an investigation into their deaths, shows the awesome power that Israel has to influence America in its role as a Security Council member. It also reveals an unsettling bravado bordering on hubris. You have to give the Israelis credit for one thing – at least they don't mince their words. Take the remarkable statement of Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman, who ruled out UN participation in an investigation by comparing his tiny Middle Eastern state to the U.S. and some of its major allies: "[I]srael has never agreed to a joint investigation, and I don't think that if anything happened in this country, or in Britain or in Italy or in France, the government of that country would agree to a joint investigation." The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that the crime did not occur in Israel, but in a foreign country, Lebanon, and the individuals killed were also foreigners. More hubristic still was the controversial Israeli statement that it had received "permission from the world" to continue its conquest of Lebanon by the (non)result of the Rome conference, where a strong and united international stand was again sabotaged by American lobbying for Israel. Even if the flamboyant statement is essentially true, it is one of those tactless things that a diplomat really shouldn't say – unless, of course, he feels sufficiently powerful to disregard world opinion, as Israel seems to feel itself. A Peacekeeping Mission for Qualified Cannon Fodder While it is not necessarily averse to a peacekeeping mission held under the aegis of the United Nations, Israel wants something other than the kind of ragtag, third-world UN contingents typically posted to conflict zones. Killing the four peacekeepers the other day was a forceful message in this regard. While any future armed mission could have a "mandate" from the UN, says Israel, to meet their conditions it would have to be manned by "someone else"; the world body's currently "hopeless" peacekeeping force in Lebanon apparently "has never been able to prevent any shelling of Israel, any terrorist attack, any kidnappings." For Israel to be satisfied, the new peacekeeping force will thus have to be "a professional one, with soldiers from countries who have the training and capabilities to be effective." In other words, they will be de facto front-lines soldiers for the Israeli army, recruited from the militarily strongest countries, led ideally by the United States. The murder of the four peacekeepers, followed by this statement, has an eerie resemblance to the way it was in the old days of war; take the aforementioned example of the Turks storming Constantinople. Then, the captive Christian soldiers led the Turkish charge, rushing toward a certain death, knowing that the same end awaited them were they to turn around to flee or to fight their captors. The UN has now been put on notice: keep on keeping the peace as you have been doing, and suffer the consequences. Or fight for us – and expect the same. The Neocons Salivate The Israelis' bold diplomacy, for lack of a better word, reveals a high level of confidence that the U.S. will continue its unconditional support. So far, there has been no change in this time-honored policy: not only did the U.S. give Israel the green light to step up the war by doing nothing to stop it, it used its influence to water down the UN's protest. So little surprise that the world body is now making a further observer pullout – you might call it a tactical retreat – from Lebanon. Unconditional American support for Israel will continue so long as its main U.S. government backers, the neoconservatives, remain powerful. The smell of fresh blood has apparently revitalized them, and it is clear that they are now seeing their chance to bring about the long-desired goal of a region-wide war for the sake of "democracy" and "freedom." Jim Lobe described it recently as "a deliberate campaign by neoconservatives and some of their right-wing supporters to depict the current conflict as part of global struggle pitting Israel, as the forward base of Western civilization, against Islamist extremism organized and directed by Iran and its junior partner, Syria." Verily, these very words found themselves in the president's mouth on Friday, when he was meeting with Tony Blair to decide the fate of the Middle East. "In Lebanon, Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors are willing to kill and use violence to stop the spread of peace and democracy," said Bush. It is clear that the neocons, having won over Bush and Rice, are savoring this chance to reshape the whole Middle East in one fell swoop. They are thus not eager to stop the current war. The president is happy to oblige. "The Middle East is littered with agreements that just didn't work," says Bush. "And now is the time to address the root cause of the problem. And the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracies." The real "root cause" is not the obstruction of "democracy." The real problem is war. Fighting that just leads to more death and yet another generation of hatred is hardly a basis on which to build the lasting peace they are so optimistic about. By failing to demand an immediate cease-fire, Bush and co. are not advancing the cause of democracy one iota. But they are abetting the working of warfare. The Many Pitfalls of a Peacekeeping Force Peacekeeping forces are feel-good ideas that conjure up hopeful images in the minds of credulous Western populations. Even talking about the possibility of having one helps remove the pressure to conduct rapid and successful diplomacy. It is also clear that the Israelis are using such a "concession" as allowing in a peacekeeping force as a kind of stalling tactic. First of all, it will take days if not weeks to negotiate what sort of force will be sent, and which countries will participate, especially if it is not going to be sent from a preexisting alliance such as NATO, with its set protocols and harmonized operations. After that, preparing the soldiers and packing them off will also take time. And all of this presumes that there won't be at the same time some other major world event, some wider crisis in the region or elsewhere that diverts attention from Lebanon. So it becomes hard to predict exactly how much of the country will be left at that stage. It seems that there is very little in it for anyone. The Europeans, their typical concerns voiced by Jacques Chirac, don't want to touch it, at least not as a NATO mission. Turkey, both a strong ally of Israel and a Muslim state, is open to the idea, but only if the mission has a UN mandate and only if a clear cease-fire is in place. At the same time, however, the Turks have 260,000 troops locked down in the southeast of their own country, fighting Kurdish rebels, with talks of taking the fight to northern Iraq as well. A peacekeeping mission would not augur well for other Muslim countries, who would no doubt quickly be labeled partisan by the IDF. If peacekeepers from Austria, Canada, China, and Finland can be killed because Hezbollah was allegedly firing from their neighborhood, how long would it take Israel to declare Muslim peacekeepers collaborators and bomb them too? And then what sort of reaction could be expected from their home states? American participation would not be beneficial for either America or Israel. It would increase anti-Semitism among those who malevolently depict the Jews as all-powerful. America's non-criticism of Israel is already increasing anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. And, if the force is made up largely of Europeans (even easily dispensable Eastern ones), it will seem to give credence to the rhetoric about crusaders espoused by al-Qaeda. In short, such a mission could only bolster the ranks of al-Qaeda, making Lebanon a magnet for terrorists from around the world. Only bin Laden, the neocons, and the End-Timers could relish such a scenario. For everyone else in the region, it is likely to result in (to paraphrase an injured Israeli soldier) "hell on earth." |
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Christopher Deliso is an American journalist, travel writer and author concentrating on the Balkans and Southeast Europe, where he has lived and traveled for almost a decade. His criticisms of interventionist foreign policy can be found in his writings for Antiwar.com, and in his recent work on the West's failures to eradicate foreign-funded Muslim extremists in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Praeger Security International, 2007). Mr Deliso directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website, Balkanalysis.com and is also the author of a travelogue, Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London). He holds an MPhil with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University.
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