By: Dr. Farooq Hassan

Harvard University

A major puzzling question agitating many is how to evaluate the end game behind this huge military onslaught that is destroying Lebanon? On 3rd August the Senate Armed Services Committee gave the Defense Secretary a difficult time when he appeared in a public debate to explain the Administration’s stance on the war situation in Iraq and Lebanon.

These exchanges quintessentially centered on Rumsfeld’s earlier upbeat assessments and what has actually occurred. It was an ex post facto analysis of the recent past: the aim being to demonstrate the short sightedness of the US polices. Senator Hillary Clinton categorized the Administration’s policies in Iraq as faltering failures and their execution incompetent. Embarrassing for the Administration, its two top generals, who had been frequently describing American fortunes in Iraq’s war in reserved yet clearly platitudinous semantics, frankly admitted that Iraq was near enough a civil war. Manifestly the army’s think tanks have now come to adopt the same perception of events in Baghdad that the public has known for many months! For many months, with nearly a hundred deaths a day, there is little that any sophisticated spin of concepts could possibly otherwise accomplish.

What is, however, the ultimate goal of the current state of continued bombardment of Lebanon that clearly has Washington’s support? To realize this end game scenario a number of fundamental questions need to be raised.
In pursing Hezbollah, why was the high degree of damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure and people acceptable to the US? Did Secretary of State’s repeated assertions that “sustainable peace” was the US goal, implicitly permit the devastating civil toll? If, for a moment, we accept the underlying rationale of this perspective on account of its possible strategic implications, we still are not told why this was a necessary element in this process. Hasn’t such a policy politically strengthened Hizbollah? If the aim was to destroy their military might this objective has failed. Indeed, this war, now in its fourth week, put an end to the myth of invincibility of Israel’s armed forces.

Alternatively, was this apparently destructive bombardment conducted with the aim of demoralizing the Lebanese government and the people? Or is it to use it as a prelude to attacking Iran? Is an attack on Syria similarly a possibility? And if Israel, hypothetically speaking, succeeds in all these aims, or one of them, how does that advance US interests when political loss of its standing in the Muslim world is obvious? The OIC Declaration in Kuala Lumpur on the same day, 3rd August, affirmatively said as much. What is the US role in the Lebanon War? Is she a party on Israel’s side, or is it neutral? If so, what credence can be given to such avocations by Washington that both Lebanon and Israel are its friends when the former is being physically wiped out of existence by the latter?

The war has not gone well for Israel. Even Hassan Nassullah, despite heavy bombing efforts, could not be prevented from appearing five times on public TV! On the 23rd day of this war, claims of down grading the military potential of Hizbollah were belied when over 200 rockets landed in northern Israel, killing 9 civilians besides four solders during combat. On the same day Beirut was fiercely hit by air attacks and the Lebanese Premier announced that over 900 civilians had been killed by these Israeli bombardments, about one third of the country’s structures demolished, many thousands injured, and over a million made refugees in their own country.

While discussing Lebanon, one should not over look the Iraqi situation. That war, despite worldwide opposition, was started at Washington’s urging to destroy WMD. When they were not found, it was canvassed that it was necessary to continue the military operations as democracy was at stake. As hostilities have still continued, it is now also said to be war against terrorism.

Why this transformation of semantics? Or is it a difference in concepts?

The most affirmative awareness of this phenomenon came recently through a speech delivered last week by premier Tony Blair in Los Angles. Signaling a clear break with American neo-conservatives, and arguably with President Bush, in this address there was no mention of there being in existence now a “war on terror” in Lebanon and possibly in Iraq. Blair remarked:

“We are fighting a war, but not just against terrorism but about how the world should govern itself in the early 21st Century, about global values. We will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world.”

Tony Blair now seems to accept that some of the approaches have been wrong. He was not repudiating the war in Iraq but was saying that not enough emphasis has been put on solving underlying problems, like the Israel/Palestine issue for one. There is thus a muted and belated reference to causation and the need to address it on moral principles.

“Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalize the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win,”

he said.

True neo-conservatives might consider that Tony Blair is going soft, especially in his call for the US not to use “unilateral action” as a “preference”. But the time has come to ask seriously about the goals of the end game in Lebanon.

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