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Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah Crisis Thread was the "Is Israel right" thread
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Israel wrote:opps we appear to have hit the wrong target again
America wrote:ahh well, **** happens, need some more bombs
what the hell is going on, why are they killing us and noone is doing anything about it :eek:
To be honest it’s looking less like “mistakes” and more like a well engineered plan with each day that passes as far as I'm concerned.U.N. wrote:thats some bad **** going on there and we condem the Israelis to the hilt but theres not much we can do without the americans been willing to play ball
One way of looking at it is that this is an over reaction and not very sound tactics but understandable considering that Hamass and Hezbollah started all this.
If you look at the bigger geopolitical picture though, it could be argued that a more sinister and pre-engineered plan is playing out exactly as expected.
What do we know about the region……..
The U.S. wants to attack Iran and has being trying to build international support for an attack for quite some time. Russia and china aren’t really playing ball as they have strategic interests in Iran and will more than likely block any U.N. resolution authorizing force and will make it difficult for America to form a coalition willing to attack unilaterally.
It is a well known fact that the U.S. doesn’t have much time for the U.N. and the American U.N. representative is someone who actually wants the U.N. to cease to exist. They see the U.N. as a barrier to achieving their objectives and more or less ignored the U.N. when they went into Iraq with the U.N. only approving the action after the fact and only then because not to do so would effectively mean that we had a new world order where the U.N. was obsolete. Such a situation would be very dangerous with not just America taking unilateral action but also any other country who felt like it could justifiably do it too with out the permission of the U.N.
Iran and Syria are members of the U.S. proclaimed “axis of evil”, an almost comic book like term but one that is commonly used and accepted in the reality of international politics. In other words America doesn’t like them and have hostile and aggressive relations with both countries just short of the point of a state of war. America is finding it difficult to gather enough support for another pre-emptive war, both in terms of international will and in terms of getting enough domestic support from a war weary American public. The terrorist card and the clear and present danger to American security line might not work again on an increasingly sceptical American public.
So what to do if you want to start a pre-emptive war but cant get the support to carry it out? Answer of course is not to look like you’re starting a pre-emptive war but instead are responding to provocation and acting in defence of an ally under threat.
In the lead up to the assumed focal point which triggered all this off, i.e. the capture of the Israeli soldier, we had an escalation of operations in Gaza by the Israelis. The Israeli government weeks before the kidnapping approved the necessary legislation needed to mobilise their army on a large scale. Why did they pre-plan a large mobilisation? We also had an increase in incursions into Gaza and a few really indiscriminate bombings of Palestinians. Obviously there was going to be an escalation from hamass in response to the Israeli increased activity. Rockets were lobbed into Israel and this is the point where the Israeli soldier gets captured, a legitimate target when at war, which in effect they were un-officially at the time due to the (under reported but mentioned in news briefs none the less) Israeli escalation in the previous weeks. Almost immediately after the Israeli army is mobilised and we all know the result of what happened next.
At that stage it did indeed look like a legitimate, albeit typically heavy handed and counter productive response, but a response from Israel that people could understand if not agree with.
What happened next?
Lebanon gets blasted in a really obvious indiscriminate way in response to increased activity by Hezbollah on the southern boarder of Lebanon. Again on the face of it, it looks like a heavy handed response by the Israelis but again you can understand it if not agree with it.
Everyone expects the bombardment to stop fairly sharply once Israel had let off some steam, but the opposite has happened and the bombardment becomes more intense and even more indiscriminate. In an almost purposefully and nearly mocking manner, the U.S. as expected refused to condemn Israel but more than that, seem to be going out of their way to frustrate any effort to bring an end to the violence. In a very public way the U.S. has made it really obvious that they have no intention of doing anything to try and end the violence and infact are sending more weapons to Israel so as they can continue the bombardment. This has the obvious effect of angering and hardening an already Arab public opinion that the West cares nothing about Middle Eastern deaths.
The Lebanese government, knowing they are no match for Israel has begged Israel to stop and begged someone to intervene and save them but they warned that if there was a ground invasion they would have no choice but to engage the IDF in a ground war. They have so far resisted the urge to defend themselves despite their country being laid to waste, their civilians killed and some of their military targeted by the IDF (none of which were legitimate targets) but warn that as a last resort will have no option but to fight if Israeli soldiers occupy the country with a ground force.
Q an Israeli ground force massed on the boarder and reservists been called up in order to occupy south Lebanon. Other Middle East countries are now starting to get really nervous and warn that if Israel don’t withdraw and stop the killing they will be forced to intervene. Meanwhile America sits back and watches everything unfold. Despite clear warnings from other countries such as Syria, Iran and most recently Egypt that they will have no choice but to intervene if the violence and displacement of people continues the Israelis actively increase the bombardment, targeting civilians, infrastructure, the U.N. now, and making it impossible for any aid to reach those who need it. Leaflets are dropped in south Lebanon ordering civilians to go north and then bomb them anyway as they try to flee.
It is obvious to even the casual observer that the tactics been used by Israel and the U.S. are not designed to ease tensions or avoid a wider multi-national conflict. Quite the opposite in fact, it looks more likely that the tactics been used are a well engineered plan to suck Iran and Syria into a war against Israel so then the U.S. can intervene and attack Iran and Syria like they wanted to all along but couldn’t muster up enough support to do it pre-emptively.
Only problem is can they really contain and control who the players might be. No doubt a U.S. / Israeli/ British coalition is a formidable force but what if its not just Syria and Iran who weigh in on the Lebanese side, what if other countries in the region are forced to join their Arab brothers against what they quite rightly see as slaughter by the western powers, will other western powers then be obliged begrudgingly to side with the U.S./Israeli / British coalition. I actually feel sorry for the British in all this. I’m sure many British leaders are regretting getting into bed with the Americans and are not happy about being lead up the garden path as all this plays out before our eyes.
Anyway, in a very short time from now it is not at all inconceivable that the U.N. for whatever its worth now will officially become redundant if a large scale international conflict breaks out. The logical thing to do to avoid this whole potential massive scale war would be to cease the bombardment and create a window for a strong international peace force to police the boarder in cooperation with the Lebanese state forces, training and equipping them to do the job themselves. It would be logical for America to at least be seen to look like they are trying to defuse the situation but instead they seem to be going out of their way to look like they want everything to escalate further. It would be logical of course, only if it was the intention of Israel and the U.S. to find a solution before the conflict escalates to involve other nations.
To be fair Arab leaders are being very quiet and restrained considering what is going on in Lebanon. No doubt they know what the game plan is and are hoping that the U.N. and the international community will actually do something before they are forced to intervene as once they intervene it will mean only one thing:- war with the West.
Hopefully the above scenario won’t play out fully, even though it is at a very advanced stage, but if a full scale major multi-national war is to be avoided it will be despite U.S. and Israeli tactics and not because of them. Whether you believe this was an intentionally pre engineered plan to suck in Syria and Iran or whether that is an unfortunate side effect that wasn’t planned for, the fact is it looks more and more likely with each day that that is what’s going to happen.
Who has the power to stop it before it escalates?
Who has the choice to avoid an all out war?
Who is being very restrained in the face of unjustified provocation?
Who wants to avoid a major war and who would like to see others get sucked into such a war?
Who are the terrorists and who are the civilised people calling for deals and making offers?
apologies for the size of the post but I do enjoy a late night rant.0 -
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