Turning Toward Iran

Michael Barone has an article up at Real Clear Politics, where he talks of the difficulty of defining the "turning points" that change the course of military conflicts, especially regarding the current conflict in Iraq and any future US involvement in other wars in the Middle East.

The first he identifies as "the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006."

This was intended to, and evidently did, spark an upsurge of sectarian violence -- Shias killing Sunnis and vice versa.

So far, we can all agree with his logic. The bombing of the Golden Mosque was indisputably a turning point. As often happens with Bush supporters, Barone starts with something that we can all agree on in order to, hopefully, lend credence to his next statement.

His next statement is this:

The other turning point, as I look back, was Hezbollah's invasion of Israel last July.

This is fantastical. What invasion of Israel?

He is no doubt referring to Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on Israel's border.

However, that cannot be seriously referred to as an "invasion". Or rather, it could only be referred to as such if one was to ignore all that preceded that incident.

It is true that Israel at the time referred to this incident as "an act of war", ignoring the fact that the incident was carried out by Hizbullah rather than the Lebanese government. Israel, as we all know, went on to conduct a brutal war in Lebanon that resulted not in the defeat of Hizbullah, but rather in it's victory over Israel (based on the very fact that they survived) which left it free to challenge Siniora's government.

However, the story of Israel's war with Hizbullah did not begin with the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers, it began with the election of Hamas and with the US and Israel's decision to punish the Palestinians for having the temerity to vote for a government that they disapproved of. This election led the US and Israel, shamefully assisted by the EU, to adopt a policy of starving the Palestinians in the hope of forcing the Hamas government to fall. In the memorable words of Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.'

So, apart from conducting a policy of starving the Palestinians, Israel on June 24th took things further and abducted two Gazan civilians, a doctor and his brother. The next day militants in Gaza abducted Gilad Shalit in the hope of forcing the Israelis to agree to a prisoner swap. The Israelis responded by invading Gaza. The day after Hizbullah abducted two Israeli soldiers on Israel's border in what was generally agreed to be an attempt to reduce Israel's pressure on the Palestinians by forcing the Israelis to fight on two fronts simultaneously.

So that is the proper background to Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. One can disapprove of this action, but only a fantasist would refer to this action as an invasion. Indeed, the level of Barone's fantasy is summed up best by his confusion at what result the war produced.

The military effectiveness was hard to gauge and Israelis are still arguing about whether they suffered a defeat, scored a victory or managed a stalemate.

Most reasonable people - indeed, most Israelis - have agreed that Israel suffered a massive defeat based on the fact that Olmert was not able to succeed in obtaining any of his war aims, the first of which was the fantastical claim that he intended to wipe out Hizbullah.

However, it is not Barone's misreading of the past which I find most offensive, it is rather the conclusion that he draws from this misreading of the past and the direction that he believes this incident should lead us in.

The Sunni Arab states viewed the Hezbollah attack -- undertaken without even the notification of the Lebanese government, yet putting Lebanon at grave risk -- as an Iranian offensive aimed at establishing something like hegemony over the greater Middle East.

So, not content with exaggerating the kidnapping of two Israelis and turning it into "an invasion", Barone takes it further and turns it into an Iranian invasion.

His conclusion?

As with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, so with the Hezbollah attack on Israel, the United States took time to respond -- more time, I suspect, than future historians will decide was appropriate. But after the policy review that followed the Republican defeat in the November elections, we have responded. The rules of engagement have been changed in Iraq: U.S. forces captured and held Iranian "consular" officials in Erbil, and there is reason to believe we're stepping up interdiction of Iranian weapon supplies to various hostile forces in Iraq.

It's war with Iran, of course. And anyone who points out that this course is madness is obviously a friend of the mullahs.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded by demanding that the administration not take action against Iran, and The New York Times condemned Bush for "bullying" poor, sweet little Iran. These responses are typical of the fundamentally unserious criticism being lobbed against Bush these days. The correct criticism is not that we're doing too much to hurt the mullahs, but that we're doing too little.

The critics ignore the fact that Iran has been making war against us for 27 years, since they violated the most fundamental law of diplomacy by taking our diplomats hostage. The critics seem more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win. Fortunately Bush still wants to prevail.

So, in order to construct a case against Iran, Barone has had to completely reinvent what took place on Israel's border. He does so by exaggerating what happened and by ignoring totally the context in which the event occurred. He then argues that action against Iran is something that historians will conclude was taken too slowly, and that anyone who thinks expanding the US's wars in the Middle East to be a bad idea are, "more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win".

Indeed, anyone who challenges this misguided and essentially untruthful version of events is indulging in, "fundamentally unserious criticism".

Only those who advocate an insane war against Iran, a war that would be catastrophic for the US, are deemed "serious".

And so by lies, distortion of past events and labelling all who disagree with them as "more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win", do the right wing promote their desired future confrontation with Iran.

Logic is beyond these people. Their truth so skewered that they look at even fairly recent history and learn nothing. But make no mistake, they now want war with Iran. And they are already preparing to label anyone who tries to stop them as unpatriotic persons indulging in "fundamentally unserious criticism".

Click title for Barone's article.

tag: Bush, Israel, Lebanon, Gilad Shalit, Gaza Strip, Iran, Olmert