[lit-ideas] Re: A rhetorical opportunity for al-Qaida?
- From: "Helen Wishart" <hwishart@xxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:35:40 -0400
And here is a speculation on how this war will be used by al-Qaida
http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/ViewPopUpArticle.jsp?id=2
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/ViewPopUpArticle.jsp?id=2&articleId=3
766> &articleId=3766
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/wider_war_3766.jsp>
Lebanon in the wider war
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/ViewPopUpArticle.jsp?id=2&articleId=3
766> Paul Rogers
25 - 7 - 2006
George W Bush's portrayal of Israel's campaign against Hizbollah as part of
the war on terror is a gift to al-Qaida.
Two weeks into the war in Lebanon, the United States is reported in the
Israeli press to be giving the Ehud Olmert government at least another week
to pursue its military campaign before agreeing to discuss a ceasefire. This
contrasts with the other, pro-ceasefire message coming from Washington, even
if the Bush administration regards the possibility only as an
<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3280955,00.html> interim step
that must be followed by the disarming of Hizbollah.
In any case, the fact that the Bush administration feels obliged to hint at
an early end to hostilities, and indications from Jerusalem that Israel
might accept a powerful international buffer force, are probably a response
to the wave of critical international media coverage of the civilian
<http://www2.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACIO-6S2HPT?OpenDocument&rc=3
&cc=lbn&emid=SODA-6RT2S7> impact of the bombing. This reaction was already
profound across media outlets in the majority world (especially across the
middle east), but it only came to the fore in Europe around 21 July, when
the war had been underway for nine days.
In any case, whatever is said in public, a better indication of United
States attitudes is Washington's decision to fast-track an Israeli order for
some 4,000 precision-guided bombs. This hardly equates with any demands for
an immediate ceasefire, and makes Condoleezza Rice's current
<http://www.state.gov/secretary/trvl/2006/69333.htm> travels in the region
appear even more of a cosmetic exercise.
The dynamics of war
In the war itself, three issues are becoming relevant to an assessment of
what is
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/israel_and_the_palesti
nians/default.stm> happening and what the dynamics are.
First, almost two weeks of air strikes have had little effect either on the
Hizbollah leadership or on the militia's ability to continue to wage its
campaign against Israel. The destruction of civilian neighbourhoods in
southern Beirut, apparently part of an attempt to kill a number of Hizbollah
leaders, failed in its immediate objective and has proved counter-productive
in its effect on the civilian population. The devastation of residential
areas, and the deaths of many civilians, have been widely featured in
European media, although even this is still minimal compared with the near
wall-to-wall coverage on Arab TV channels.
Second, Hizbollah is proving capable of continuing with its missile attacks
- around 300 were launched from 22-24 July alone, including another salvo
fired against <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/742563.html> Haifa on
Sunday. On 17 July, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were still claiming
that half of Hizbollah's stocks of around 12,000 missiles had already been
destroyed (see " <http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3749>
War defeats diplomacy", 18 July 2006), yet more than half of the 1,700
missiles fired by Hizbollah so far have been launched since then. This
operational level is being sustained in face of an Israeli assault that has
included air attacks on 1,500 targets, including another seventy-four on 24
July, and the firing of 12,000 artillery rounds across the border.
Third, when Israeli ground troops do
<http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3281031,00.html> engage with
Hizbollah militia close to the border they discover an adversary that is
determined, well-trained and well-armed. Hizbollah may lack airpower and it
has none of the IDF's heavy artillery, yet it is well-practised in guerrilla
warfare and will almost certainly be impossible to dislodge with anything
short of a full-scale Israeli invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon.
This is deeply problematic for Israeli military planners, given the
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5F07B1D9-6440-43C5-889C-08E0AFE5C32C
htm> ability of the Hizbollah militias in recent days to resist the
attempted advances of Israeli infantry and special forces. Furthermore,
behind this unease lies the memory of Israel's enforced withdrawal from much
of southern Lebanon in 1985 in response to Hizbollah actions.
That may influence the determination of IDF leaders to destroy Hizbollah's
military forces, given that many of them were young officers at the time of
that defeat (see " <http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3743>
Israel, Lebanon, and beyond: the danger of escalation", 17 July 2006). At
the same time, any such intention will have to be seen in the context of
(and perhaps will be constrained by) the experience of fighting in the
border areas in recent days; the indications are that this reveals Hizbollah
to be even more effective than it was in the mid-1980s.
At least on present trends, these factors mean a continuation and possibly
even an increase in the intensity of the Israeli air strikes and artillery
bombardments, with all the civilian casualties that will entail. It is also
possible that Hizbollah will, in turn, escalate the conflict, perhaps by
launching longer-range missiles that can reach as far as Tel Aviv. These are
reliably reported to be an Iranian-built variant of the old Soviet Frog-7
missile of cold-war days, but with a rudimentary guidance system making them
more accurate than the unguided "free rocket over ground" (
<http://www.missilethreat.com/missiles/frog-7b_russia.html> Frog).
Such an attack, even if it had little direct impact, would make it essential
for the Ehud Olmert government to
<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG26Ak03.html> expand the war. But
even without such an escalation, and independently of any public statements
from Condoleezza Rice and the Israeli government about a ceasefire and
international intervention, it is more likely that Israel's war will
continue.
The wider context
A few voices in Washington may be calling for a ceasefire, but it is clear
that President Bush sees the war in Lebanon as very much a part of his
overall war on terror (see "
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=3758> Hit Beirut, target
Tehran", 21 July 2006 - and especially the reference to Michael Abramovitz's
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/20/AR200607200
1907.html> article, "In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step to peace",
Washington Post, 21 July 2006).
The administration regards support from the rogue states of Syria and Iran
as integral to <http://www.cfr.org/publication/9155/> Hizbollah's current
actions, and that as a result Israel must be allowed to continue its attacks
against Hizbollah through to completion. Whether that is feasible even in
military terms is highly doubtful, but the Bush administration has little
alternative to maintaining its current support for Israel.
If the Lebanon war is indeed part of Bush's global war on terror, then it is
also worth reflecting on the perspective not from Jerusalem, Washington or
London, but from the cave, house or city apartment block somewhere in
Pakistan that is currently home to Osama bin Laden.
For bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the wider al-Qaida
movement, the Lebanon war could hardly have come at a better time. Because
of the growth of the satellite news media, especially channels such as
al-Jazeera and <http://www.alarabiya.net/english.htm> al-Arabiya, the
destruction wrought by Israeli air raids in southern Beirut, Tyre and Sidon
is already far better known than the much greater destruction during the
Israeli siege of Beirut in summer 1982.
Al-Qaida propagandists readily point out that Israel is flying American
strike aircraft and helicopter gunships and that it is dropping American
munitions, including the emergency deliveries now being rushed to Israel.
Moreover, the complex and deeply embedded relationships between the Israel
Defence Forces and the US army in Iraq are well-known across the middle
east, even if they are unknown to the general public in the United States
and Britain (see " <http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=1858>
Between Fallujah and Palestine", 22 April 2004). This makes it easy for
al-Qaida to say that the Israeli air assault on southern Lebanon is
essentially a joint operation with the United States, just as it claims that
the US occupation of Iraq is both part of a strategy to control Arab oil and
a neo-Christian Zionist conspiracy aimed against the historic Abbasid
caliphate in Baghdad, one of Islam's holiest sites.
This representation of events is far from fantastical - it is routine in the
DVDs, videos and websites that permeate the output of the more radical
Islamist groups. Indeed, at this stage in the 2006 Lebanon war, it is worth
remembering Osama bin Laden's
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F
htm> message to the United States released just before the US presidential
election of November 2004.
As a column of the same week put it:
"In the broadcast, Osama bin Laden appears in an almost authoritative light,
using a lectern and avoiding camouflage gear or any display of armaments.
Alongside direct condemnation of President Bush and castigation of Arab
elites, bin Laden makes pointed references to the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon and siege of West Beirut. This last reference in particular would
resonate with Arab audiences by connecting the Israeli destruction of
high-rise buildings in Beirut, part of a protracted military action in
July-August 1982 that killed well over 10,000 people, with the 2001
destruction of the World Trade Center towers" (see "
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2210> Four more years for
al-Qaida", 4 November 2004).
This rhetorical connection is skilful in two ways. The first is its
retrospective linkage of the United States to Israel's 1982 operation in
Lebanon, which the US had tacitly backed. By making this connection, bin
Laden seeks to establish that the much-vaunted
<http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/View.jsp?id=2329> American-Zionist
axis has existed for decades, and that the 9/11 attacks were little more
than reasonable responses to an alliance that was already evident more than
twenty years ago.
The second element is that both the United States and Israel suffered
"defeats" in the months and years after the 1982 campaign. In
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_barracks_bombing> October 1983, the
United States marine corps lost 241 troops in a suicide-bomb attack on its
barracks at Beirut airport, leading to the US's subsequent withdrawal from
Lebanon; by 1985, the Israeli armed forces had encountered such difficulty
in controlling southern Lebanon in the face of Hizbollah guerrilla action
that they withdrew from most of the territory they had occupied.
Whatever else happens in the coming weeks - whether the war in Lebanon
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5DBAC798-23CF-4746-A84E-200073449332
htm> intensifies or ends in an early stalemate - one impact will be a
considerable boost to support for the wider al-Qaida movement. In that
sense, President Bush's view of the Israeli operations in Lebanon as being
an essential part of his global war on terror might well prove correct, but
in ways very far from those he intends.
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