Why Is Everything Such a Surprise?
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
August 3, 2006; Page A6
A thinking person, having to consider the horrible recent events on the Israeli-Lebanon border, has to bear a number of considerations in mind simultaneously. The most salient of these include:
(1) The right of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Arab and Druze, to be free of random attacks from Katyusha missiles fired across an internationally recognized border that is further supposedly guaranteed by U.N. forces; (2) the right of Lebanese civilians, Maronite, Druze, Armenian, Sunni and Shiite, to be protected under the customary laws of war from any retaliation directed at these missiles and those who fire them; (3) the continuing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the demarcation of Israel's borders and the right of Palestinians to self-determination; (4) the emerging alliance between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and certain Shiite forces engaged in sectarian warfare in Iraq; (5) the interest of Tehran in providing a "sideshow" to distract attention from its acquisition of WMD; (6) the state of domestic opinion in Iran; (7) the state of domestic opinion in Syria; and (8) the encouragement of pluralism in a now quasi-independent Lebanon.
It is only when one has reviewed these interlocking elements that one fully appreciates the extreme unwisdom of the Bush administration in having allowed if not encouraged the Olmert government to pursue a policy of wide retaliation across Lebanon. Much criticism has been focused on the second-order question of whether there was an Israeli (and American) "intelligence failure" which both over- and underestimated Hezbollah, and which therefore allowed a military and a moral trap to be sprung. But this is describable as "second order" only because it raises the question of whether Israel's campaign -- no doubt useful for the internal requirements of the untried Kadima coalition -- meshes with America's responsibility for taking all the above points into account.
Regarding those points, Israel is principally concerned only with the first, and to a lesser extent with the third and fifth. The northern border has been an issue for some time; the current phase of Israeli-Palestinian estrangement began when an Iranian ship loaded with weapons was intercepted off Gaza; and it has been a mantra of Israeli rhetoric for some time that "terror" has a return address in Tehran. Moreover, though it may well be doubted that the Iranian mullahs want to blow away the Dome of the Rock and the Palestinian population in a thermonuclear mist (a consideration invariably ignored in febrile discussions of "the Islamic bomb"), nobody can quite overlook the latent connection between Iran's weapons program and the apocalyptic ravings of its leadership.
But all of this was, or ought to have been, well understood in Washington long before the predictable recent provocations. Was there even a contingency plan for what to do when that looming moment arrived? The astonishing answer appears to be no. No call for the U.N. to live up to its resolutions and responsibilities was made until the fighting had begun. No estimate of the effect of a clash with Hezbollah on the internal affairs of Iraq appears to have been made. No care for the balance of forces in Lebanon, or the fraught question of Beirut's relationship with Damascus, seems to have been taken.
The outcome is so astoundingly awful that it has taken weeks to sink in. Iran hands out missiles to a theocratic gang that was until recently mounting pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, all the while spitting in the face of the U.N., the U.S. and the EU on the nuclear issue -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria openly parades the leader of Hamas in a Damascus hotel, while accepting Iranian largesse (and incidentally proving once again that "secular" Baathists can indeed collude full-time with religious fundamentalists), sends its death-squads to murder Lebanese politicians and journalists -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences. Syria and Iran send sophisticated explosives for the use of Shiite sectarians in Iraq, who employ them to murder American soldiers and Sunni civilians -- and are subjected to precisely no consequences. While all the time, because of its arming and encouraging of Israel, the otherwise passive United States is regarded with as much hatred and fury as if it had in fact tried to remove Assad and Ahmadinejad from power!
To suffer all the consequences of being imperialistic, while acting with all the resolution and consistency and authority of, say, Belgium, is to have failed rather badly. Fortunately, the U.S. has a secret weapon in all this. Iran's Arab neighbors do not relish its bid for regional and nuclear hegemony. Iran's population, to judge from many samplings of its opinion, wants improved relations with the U.S. and not the projection of a dead-handed theocracy through fanatical foreign militias and wasteful nuclear expenditure. Many Lebanese, including many Shiites, are openly resentful of Hezbollah for the impasse into which it has brought them. Democratic and secular forces exist in Syria and are fighting extremism in Iraq. Had the Palestinians been asked (as President Abbas was planning to ask them in a referendum before the Hamas/Hezbollah sabotage) they would very probably have voted to recognize Israel as a negotiating partner.
But what use is being made of this civil and democratic element in the equation? Opinion is curdling, in many instances, into a simple revulsion against the incompetence and cruelty of Israel's highly visible actions. Has Karen Hughes been heard from lately, or at all? Who decided that the president should ignore the eccentric recent letter from Ahmadinejad, and thus miss the chance of addressing the Iranian people over the heads of their self-selected leaders? Whose job is it to consider the whole intricate web of which Tehran constitutes the center? John Wayne, a hero to many "stand tall" conservatives, used to say modestly that he didn't really "act," he just "reacted." That seems a regrettably apt description of the administration over the past three weeks, as it appears to find absolutely everything coming to it as a surprise.
Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair, is author of "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America" (HarperCollins, 2006).
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