International Herald Tribune
"I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak," Mahmoud said, referring to the president of Egypt. "That is why I am proud to be a Muslim."
The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings across Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.
"The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself," Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in the Tuesday issue.
"The resistance celebrates the victory," read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt.
Hezbollah's perceived triumph has propelled, and been propelled by, a wave already washing over the region. Political Islam was widely seen as the antidote to the failures of Arab nationalism, communism, socialism and, most recently, what is seen as the false promise of American-style democracy. It was that wave that helped the banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood win 88 seats in Egypt's Parliament last December despite the government's violent efforts to stop voters from getting to the polls. It was that wave that swept Hamas into power in the Palestinian government in January, shocking Hamas itself.
"We need an umbrella," said Mona Mahmoud, 40, Jihan's older sister. "In the '60s, Arabism was the umbrella. We had a cause. Now we lack an umbrella. We feel lost in space. We need to be affiliated to something."
The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity. Hezbollah's perceived victory has highlighted, and to many validated, the rise of another unifying ideology, a kind of Arab-Islamic nationalism.
"The losers are going to be the Arab regimes, U.S.A. and Israel," said Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. "The secular resistance movements are gone. Now there are the Islamists coming in. So the new nationalism is going to be religious nationalism, and one of the main reasons is dignity. People want their dignity back."
The terms Islamic nationalism and pan-Islamism have a negative connotations in the West, where they are associated with fundamentalism and terrorism. But that is increasingly not the case in Egypt. Under the dual pressures of foreign military attacks in the region and a government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate, Islamic groups are seen by many people as incorruptible, disciplined, efficient and caring.
"Hezbollah is a resistance movement that has given us a solution," said Yomana Samaha, a radio talk-show host in Cairo who identified herself as secular and a supporter of separating religion and government.
[...][During the] voting in Egypt's parliamentary elections, a months-long process [...] was marred by police officers who were ordered to block voters from getting to the polls in many districts. The government grew concerned after candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood began winning in record numbers. The government says that the police did not fire live ammunition at citizens, but many people were killed and doctors and witnesses - including Western diplomats - said that the police did fire live rounds into people trying to vote.
Even the conservative spectrum foreign policy experts are bemoaning the outcome. The Belgravia Dispatch has an outstanding post outline his view about the Lebanon debacle. He calls it "The Israeli-Lebanese Denouement: A Tragicomedy of Errors".
Beating Hezbollah ultimately must rely more on what might be described as counter-insurgency tactics, not some Dresden redux. To beat back Hezbollah one must moderate the 40% of Lebanese who are Shi’a, by over time having them pledge their primary allegiance to a strong central government, one that is sharing the economic fruits of Lebanon’s revival with all ethnic groups, so as to ultimately render the social welfare arm of Hezbollah largely irrelevant. Given this, it is manifestly clear that Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah’s provocation should have always been limited to targets south of the Litani River (save the very exceptional target to the north of truly imperative strategic value). This is so that the greatest pain would have been inflicted solely on the perpetrators of the rocket attacks and kidnapping themselves, rather than Lebanon writ large. (One might have thought, for instance, that some of Israel’s best commandos might have been air-dropped at the Litani, worked their way southwards so as to catch Hezbollah by surprise, and in conjunction with the judicious use of airpower, inflicted some significant pain on Hezbollah guerillas acting near the border. This would have been more by way of an intense 7-10 day security operation, serving to create a deterrent effect, and with the Americans fully briefed on the details and moving swiftly to put a cease-fire in place a week or so into the Israeli action).
Instead, of course, Israel fought a month long war (mostly a rather brutal, too often indiscriminate air campaign) that involved the death of hundreds and hundreds of civilians, as well as: 1) imposition of a total naval and air blockade on the entire country, 2) the destruction of a very significant number of roads and bridge networks, 3) an environmental disaster in the Mediterranean Sea of worrisome scope, 4) a massive pummeling to much of Lebanon’s infrastructure causing billions of dollars of damage, not to mention 5) reducing large swaths of southern Beirut neighborhoods to rubble, as well as so many towns in the south, including important population centers like Tyre.
Such a strategy was doomed to failure, as it has had precisely the opposite effect than that Israel had (or should have) intended. The population of Lebanon, including Sunnis and even Christians and Druze, stand today united in their disgust at Israel’s tactics. To be sure, this pervasive anti-Israeli sentiment will diminish some in coming weeks, as internal fissures increasingly rise to the fore instead.
[...]There is also the fact, however old fogey-like and apparently drearily Scowcroftian this may sound, that getting at the real “root causesâ€, as our rather impressionable Secretary of State is so fond of saying, means addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict on a comprehensive basis. As for Hezbollah, it means talking to the Syrians in serious fashion (that is to say, no more of the “they know what they need to do†woeful cop-out), lest Hezbollah arms coffers simply be replenished by Damascus going forward—even if mostly to Hezbollah assets north of the Litani. Put simply, to speak of getting to the "root causes" of Hezbollah, without broaching the overall Arab-Israeli peace process, or the Syrian and Iranian role, well, it's just a joke.
[...]Nasrallah is undoubtedly the winner in this sad affair, having outlasted the combined might of the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in a head on struggle with Israel. Israel has been shown to be strategically vulnerable to rockets (to which one might query, what is so important about the Golan when rockets can fly over it?), and Assad and Ahmadinejad have surely taken note of same. The French were somewhat winners, flexing some muscle with boots on the ground in the international force and so having a stronger hand to play going forward (if they aren’t attacked and scared away, that is, as in previous Lebanese deployments).
[...]Condi Rice's unfortunate talk referencing the “birth pangs†of a New Middle East, or presence in Jerusalem amidst the carnage in Qana—well, no one could have really divined better blows to America’s image in the region if they had tried mightily.
[...]And so we had a rather big exercise in futility, a futile little war, as I said, only a tragic one too, with all the blood spilled and damage done. The reality is that Lebanese hearts and minds, certainly Shi'a ones, are going to support Nasrallah even more now, not to mention the many in Cairo and Baghdad and points beyond hailing Nasrallah as a new Nasser. Hezbollah is far further from 'eradication', however absurdly unrealistic a goal that was regardless (particularly given the U.S. and Israeli approaches), than before. What we've just witnessed is a (tragi)comedy of errors, really, featuring incompetence (the bungled Israeli military campaign), fake showmanship (Bush and Olmert finally talking four weeks into the war with Olmert thanking the American President for his help with the UN Resolution, in a butt-covering, farcical coup de theatre par excellence!), historical innocence mixed with hubris (that because Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza and south Lebanon, in her self-interest more than anything else, this would mean no attacks from either quarter--in the absence of an overarching settlement--so that any attack would demand a hugely asymetrical response, the better so as to discipline the recently liberated ingrates), another low ebb for America's repute in the region (the disasterous Rome Conference where the world judged, correctly, that only the U.S., and perhaps Tony Blair, to the ire of his government colleagues and people, were willing to give Israel's ill-fated campaign additional time), and more. One that occured, to boot, in the midst of an Iraq debacle that grows worse by the day, where Iranian influence is increasing in lockstep with America's mushrooming impotence there. The entire sad spectacle must look almost amusing from Teheran.
It's time for a major reassessment of foreign policy direction. An about face may well be a good metaphor. The world of Islam is falling into bin Ladin's hands. Hizbullah has become the new Nassar and the greatest hope of Islam world wide. I can't think of a worse disaster for the US or Israel.
2 comments:
What changes in foreign policy would you advocate? A volte-farce may be necessary but I don't get a clear sense of what new policies you would implement.
If you had a name, I'd spend more time on my answer. But you can find your answer by looking at various previous posts. My overall approach to the war against Al Qaeda would be a combination of what Kerry called for in his election campaign and what the foreign policy experts called for in July.
I've also said that we've sorely neglected the propaganda war against Al Qaeda. You can find lots of ideas here.
Iraq is probably a lost cause. My view about what we should is closely akin to Juan Cole's and also expressed in this article.
Identify yourself and give me some more pointed questions, I'll consider a full post.
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