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• Tuesday, January 6, 2009 07:57 AM

  Analysts on how the current invasion is likely to again help Hamas and other extremists

  Each and every time the cheerleaders of force and brutality tell us that they know what they're doing, that this operation or invasion or covert operation is really, really going to make Israel safer and give one to the extremists and so on and so forth.

  Via DefenseTech, a blog of close followers of U.S. military equipment and tactics, quoting Tom Ricks of the (typically excitedly pro-Israel hawk Washington Post):

  [Ricks] summed up for me a thought I'd had since this whole Gaza goat rope started. Seems to me Israel can't possibly "win" with Operation Cast Lead as it stands. I just don't understand the goals here and can't put together the logic that must have led them to this decision -- unless of course it's PURELY politics (don't forget, FM Livni and DM Barak are both running for PM in February against Likud hawk Netanyahu).

  Here's what Ricks pulled from his sources:

  Terry Daly, one of the smartest people I know on counterinsurgency issues, doesn't see much hope for Israel's crackdown in Gaza.

  "Don't ask me what the solution is to Israel's strategic problem," he comments in a note. "Thomas Henriksen's excellent 2007 Joint Special Operations University monograph, 'The Israeli Approach to Irregular Warfare and Implications for the United States,' clearly relates how the Israelis have tried most of the usual solutions.

  For 60 years, though, Israel through the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), basically has relied on 'the utility of force.' The IDF became and remains a shining example of conventional military excellence, but it also seems to be heading for defeat in 'war amongst the people,' where the objective is to win peoples' support not to kill them and break all their toys...

  Meanwhile the Muslim nihilists must be salivating at the thought of getting the IDF on the ground in the Gaza Strip."

  Exactly...and how in a million years did Israel think it would get anything but international condemnation for its invasion -- despite the moral justification for responding to repeated rocket attacks from a newly independent state free of the excuse of "occupation." Humanitarian crisis, proportionality, civilian casualties...all the vocabulary of the news leads describing Israel's strike. And where does it end? What's the goal?

  Ricks suggests reading this analysis from the Guardian newspaper...

  "Islamic Jihad - the extremist group behind many of the rocket attacks on Israeli towns - has got the war it wished for at least."

  http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004618.html

  Needless to say, these again aren't the people who are easily insulted as "anti-Israel" (meaning dissenting from the hawks) or pro-Hamas, anti-military, pacifist, etc.

  What they're saying is that this continuing "utility of force" approach is the exact opposite of the counter-insurgency strategy which was so eagerly cheered over the past 2 years by Iraq hawks, in which even payoffs to Sunni (Islamic) militants to not attack U.S. forces, I mean, collaborate in fighting terrorist forces, was considered the way forward.

  When it's U.S. forces paying off Iraqi militant groups, it's all part of bringing the people to our side. When it comes to Palestinians and Palestinian militant groups, why, the only thing they understand is force and more force.

  I think the record shows pretty clearly that Israeli militarists who oppose any negotiated final state settlement to this dispute happen to continually carry out operations which make it easier to avoid such a settlement due to the extremism of the negotiating partner. First it was the lack of leadership among the Palestinians, then it was the PLO which was unacceptable, then it was Arafat who was unacceptable, then Fatah was unacceptable, and now Hamas is unacceptable, possibly to be followed by new extremists who are even less acceptable.

  So, it's good for Israeli militarists that Hamas and other Palestinian militarist groups gain power, because then of course it's easier to dismiss pressure to negotiate with The Enemy.

  —El Cid Read El Cid's other letters
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