Miscalculation
Hezbollah, and it's Iranian puppetmasters may have really, really overplayed their hand if this report is true.
Israel, with U.S. support, intends to resist calls for a cease-fire and continue a longer-term strategy of punishing Hezbollah, which is likely to include several weeks of precision bombing in Lebanon, according to senior Israeli and U.S. officials.
For Israel, the goal is to eliminate Hezbollah as a security threat — or altogether, the sources said. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah is a target, on the calculation that the Shiite movement would be far less dynamic without him.
For the United States, the broader goal is to strangle the axis of Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, which the Bush administration believes is pooling resources to change the strategic playing field in the Middle East, U.S. officials say.
Whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants — with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.
"What is out there is concern among conservative Arab allies that there is a hegemonic Persian threat [running] through Damascus, through the southern suburbs of Beirut and to the Palestinians in Hamas," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity because of sensitive diplomacy. "Regional leaders want to find a way to navigate unease on their streets and deal with the strategic threats to take down Hezbollah and Hamas, to come out of the crisis where they are not as ascendant."
Iran may be in for a serious surprise. In playing to become a a regional power, it is risking the wrath of other, non-Shia Arab nations who would really not see a splinter-sect theocratic power evolve. The fact that the Saudis themselves denounced Hezbollah's actions should be a red flag that Iran may not quite be sitting as pretty as their whackjob of a president thinks they are.
By TC@LeatherPenguin, Sunday, 16 July , 2006 @ 4:42 pm
< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
Gaius? If this plays out the way i'm looking at it, Boy Bashir is over, and the Russians are gonna get bumrushed by our swarthy, mustache armed UN school marm. W: "Look, we're gonna help the Jews kick those ******** square into ***** Street (now go call Sullivan so he can couch his anti-'whatever the ****' crap). You wanna keep them Pali guys alive? Tell the Ceder bastards to start shooting Hezbollah. Tell the Arabs to admit it: "Palistinian" equals "*" and not one Arab gov will claim them as kindred souls.
(TC - Please tone down the language - my underage kids read this blog and the comments.)
By TC@LeatherPenguin, Sunday, 16 July , 2006 @ 8:07 pm
yeah, sorry. Kinda kicked the dog in the yarbles there, didn’t I…
By Gaius, Sunday, 16 July , 2006 @ 8:26 pm
No problem - I didn’t take it as you trying to be offensive so much as trying to be emphatic. I just have minors who do read this. The standards are the same for everyone.
By crosspatch, Monday, 17 July , 2006 @ 12:56 am
If I were sitting in Lebanon and I had just witnessed Israels reaction to the taking of the soldier in Gaza, I would be fairly certain I would get a similar reaction for performing a similar deed. I see this as something wider. Notice the coordination. Three tapes from Bin Laden? When was the last time we saw that? Attack on Israel from Gaza, attack in India, attack from Lebanon. Al Qaida’s trademark is multiples. They never do one of anything.
I believe you have fanatics that have made the same mistake the fanatics have always made. They believe that if they take these spectacular actions, it will rally the masses to follow them into the fires of hell. I think they honestly believe that these actions will result in some more general rising up resulting in widespread mayhem. Problem is that the masses so far don’t seem to be buying it. They didn’t buy it after 9/11 or when Al Qaida appeared in Iraq either. Sure, there were a few thousand who trotted off to their deaths but that is nothing compared to the estimated billion Muslims on this planet. The vast majority just aren’t buying it at all.
I believe we are witnessing a desperate attempt to create that rallying point by attacking the one target the masses can’t refuse to go along with, Israel. It is a desperate attempt to revive their movement. But one major problem is that their best leaders are dead and most of those who would be likely to rise up and join their bloody campaign of hirabah have already been killed, captured or imprisoned. The areas surrounding Israel and the Horn of Africa are probably the last remaining places with any reserves of potential “martyrs”.
If you listen to the rhetoric coming out of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, the talk is of a war by the Islamic Nation. They are attempting to portray this as being on the scope of a war by all Muslims and in so doing, implying that it is somehow the duty of all Muslims to come to the aid of Hezbollah and Hamas. Besides the masses not buying into the whole notion that hirabah is somehow a noble cause, there is another problem.
Israel has been quite effective in blocking any way for a would-be terrorist to get to the area of fighting. Air routes are closed, sea routes are closed, fuel is scarce and what roads are open are flooding with refugees and foreigners trying to get out. There is practically no way for any significant number of volunteers to get to the area of the fighting even if they have the means. It looks like Israel is following the Powell doctrine of “First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it” that was so effective in the first Gulf War.
I believe there is been a miscalculation but the Israeli response isn’t it. What they miscalculated was the level of support this would have and what the global response to this coordinated series of spectacular actions would be. This could well be a clear sign of the begining of the end for these terrorists. If this turns out to be a spectacular failure, look for Iran to crumble from within and for Osama to fade away. If this push becomes an embarrasment, the concept of Islamic Revolution is probably dead.