Here is another article by Ralphie in the NY Post, warning, as a “lifelong Israel supporter,� that the Israel might lose the current war if it doesn’t use more troops in crushing the Lebanese resistance.
NEW YORK POST
CAN ISRAEL WIN?
By RALPH PETERSJuly 22, 2006 — ISRAEL is losing this war. For a lifelong Israel supporter, that’s a painful thing to write. But it’s true. And the situation’s worsening each day.
A U.S. government official put it to me this way: ” Israel’s got the clock, but Hezbollah’s got the time.” The sands of the hourglass favor the terrorists – every day they hold out and drop more rockets on Israel, Hezbollah scores a propaganda win.
All Hezbollah has to do to achieve victory is not to lose completely. But for Israel to emerge the acknowledged winner, it has to shatter Hezbollah. Yet Israeli miscalculations have left Hezbollah alive and kicking.
Israel has to pull itself together now, to send in ground troops in sufficient numbers, with fierce resolve to do what must be done: Root out Hezbollah fighters and kill them. This means Israel will suffer painful casualties – more today than if the Israeli Defense Force had gone in full blast at this fight’s beginning.
The situation is grave. A perceived Hezbollah win will be a massive victory for terror, as well as a triumph for Iran and Syria. And everybody loves a winner – especially in the Middle East, where Arabs and Persians have been losing so long.
Israel can’t afford a Hezbollah win. America can’t afford it. Civilization can’t afford it. Yet it just might happen.
Israel tried to make war halfway, and only made a mess. Let’s review where the situation stands:
* By trying to spare Israeli lives through the use of airpower and long-range artillery fire instead of ground troops, the IDF played into Hezbollah’s hands. The terrorists could claim that Israel feared them. Meanwhile, Israeli targeting proved shockingly sloppy, failing to ravage Hezbollah, while hitting civilians – to the international media’s delight.
* The IDF is readying a reinforced brigade of armor and 3,000 to 5,000 troops for a “limited incursion” into southern Lebanon. Won’t work. Not enough troops. And Hezbollah’s had time to get locked and loaded. This is going to be messy – any half-hearted Israeli effort will fall short.
* Famed for its penetration, Israeli intelligence failed this time. It didn’t detect the new weapons Iran and Syria had provided to Hezbollah, from anti-ship missiles to longer-range rockets. And, after years of spying, it couldn’t find Hezbollah.
This should set off global alarm bells: If Hezbollah can hide rockets, Iran can hide nukes.
* The media sided heavily with Hezbollah (surprise, surprise). Rocket attacks on Israel were reported clinically, but IDF strikes on Lebanon have been milked for every last drop of emotion. We hear about broken glass in Haifa – and bleeding babies in Beirut.
* Washington rejoiced when several Arab governments criticized Hezbollah for its actions. But the Arab street, Shia and Sunni, has coalesced behind Hezbollah. Saudi and Egyptian government statements are worth about as much as a greeting card from Marie Antoinette on New Year’s Day, 1789.
* Syria and Iran are getting a free ride. Hezbollah fights and dies, Damascus and Tehran collect the dividends.
* Israel looks irresolute and incapable – encouraging its enemies.
* The “world community” wants a cease-fire – which would only benefit the terrorists. Hezbollah would claim (accurately) that it had withstood Israel’s assault. Couldn’t get a better terrorist recruiting advertisement.
* A cease-fire would be under U.N. auspices. Gee, thanks. No U.N. force would protect Israel’s interests, but plenty of U.N. contingents would cooperate with or turn a blind eye to the terrorists. Think Russia’s an honest broker? Ask its Jews who fled to Israel . Would French troops protect Israeli interests? Ask the Jews Vichy bureaucrats packed off to the death camps. (The French are more anti-Semitic than the Germans – just less efficient.)
* One bright spot: The Bush administration continues to resist international attempts to bully Israel into a premature cease-fire. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is flying off to the big falafel stand as a token gesture, not to interfere with Israel’s self-defense.
But the clock’s ticking. Washington can only buy Israel so much time.
* Every rocket that lands in Israel is a propaganda victory for Hezbollah. After 1,000-plus Israeli air-strikes, the rockets keep falling, and Israel looks impotent. The price of sparing Israeli infantrymen has been the elevation of Hezbollah to heroic status through the Muslim world.
* The Olmert government tried to wage war on the cheap. Such efforts always raise the cost in the end. Olmert resembles President Bill Clinton – willing to lob bombs from a distance, but unwilling to accept that war means friendly casualties.
* Israel needs to grasp the power of the global media. Long proud of going its own way in the face of genocidal anti-Semitism, Israel now has to recognize that the media can overturn the verdict of the battlefield. Even if Israel pulls off a last-minute win on the ground, the anti-Israel propaganda machine has been given so big a head-start that Hezbollah still may be portrayed as the victor.
The situation is grim. Israel looks more desperate every day, while Hezbollah appears more defiant.
This is ultimately about far more than a buffer zone in southern Lebanon . In the long run, it’s about Israel’s survival. And about preventing the rise of a nuclear Iran and the strengthening of the rogue regime in Syria. It’s also about the future of Lebanon – everybody’s victim.
The mess Israel has made of its opportunity to smack down Hezbollah should be a wake-up call to the country’s leadership. The IDF looks like a pathetic shadow of the bold military that Ariel Sharon led into Egypt three decades ago. The IDF’s intelligence, targeting and planning were all deficient. Technology failed to vanquish flesh and blood. The myth of the IDF’s invincibility just shattered.
If Israel can’t turn this situation around quickly, the failure will be a turning point in its history. And not for the better.
Ralph Peters’ new book is “Never Quit the Fight.”
This looks likethe product of a conversation between the Young Turks and Gertrude Bell.
An interview with Ralph Peters:
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2003/1/2003_1_45.shtml
In the article on redrawing boundaries in the Middle East our Mr. Peters declares:
“As for those who refuse to “think the unthinkable,” declaring that boundaries must not change and that’s that, it pays to remember that boundaries have never stopped changing through the centuries. Borders have never been static, and many frontiers, from Congo through Kosovo to the Caucasus, are changing even now (as ambassadors and special representatives avert their eyes to study the shine on their wingtips).
Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works. “
So while calling for a “fairer” drawing of national boundaries in the region, he ends up making arguments very similar to those of the cynical European colonizers he sneers at (poring over their maps, pipe in hand, and designating dominant tribes in various territories), and channels his inner Saddam with a hurrah for ethnic cleansing, too. Nice.
I suppose it would be asking too much of Ralph the Maker of Maps and National Destinies to explain what Kashmir is doing in Afghanistan
my thoughts, exactly. Perhaps we can hold a seance with Ralph and call on Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark for assistance. They were so much better informed than Rice.
I find it ironic that on his “after” map the status of the West Bank is still “undetermined.”
But really, shouldn’t the Armed Forces journal be more serious than this? I mean this is ok for the New Republic, but the journal of American military minds?
It’s kind of like that joke, military intelligance is an oxymoron. None of these people had any workable. concrere plans for Iraq, either.
I just noticed something. Is he envisioning “the Islamic Sacred State” like some sort of Vatican City? Why is it so large and who would run this thing?
Issandr you overestimate the American military. There are a few good scholars who really know what they are talking about in the War Colleges, etc but a lot of their so-called regional experts have very little history to draw on other than military history. I remember reading at the outbreak of the Iraq war that copies of The Arab Mind or something similar were distributed to war college brass.
And yeah, surprising that he should be so coy about the status of the West Bank after slashing up the map in all sorts of other places. As for the Islamic sacred state and the logic behind that, he explains a little in the article attached to the map and linked above (not the article posted above).
This guy. He’s the one who went to Iraq and talked about how all the journalists just sat in their luxury hotels and wrote spurious reports about how bad the situation was while he was the only journalist doing on the ground reporting in Baghdad. His secret? He rode around with the 101st Airborne in southern Baghdad. Gee. That’s called an embed, something which pretty much every news outlet does on a regular basis.
His evidence that all was well in Baghdad, kids waved at the troops as they drove by. I’ve seen kids wave at the troops in Ramadi, doesn’t mean all is well there.
He also discounted reporting done by Iraqi staff of Western news outlets as automatically biased.
wanker.
This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. I’m sure the Syrians will be pleased to have their “littoral” chopped off and their access to the Mediterranean blocked by a reborn “Phoenecia.” Ethnic cleansing works, eh Peters? Maybe you should ask the one million dead Pakistanis and Indians who perished when the subcontinent divided. They would have loved the borders of their new states.
So this is the plan. 1-9/11 happens, the Arabs are blamed for it, the west in inflamed, the call to war is acceptable to the western population.2- Nato invades Afghanistan, claims that Pakistan in “no longer friendly to the west” thus justifing the start of another western friendly state, help build “Baluchitan” for this purpose. 3- Invade Iraq, chop it in three, support the new Shiiate and the new “Kurdistan”. 4- Nato looses a lot of poeple in the war, America gets angry, declare the Draft, deploy 15 to 25 million American soldiers in the region as this is World War Three. The Shiiate state expands to take over all the Persian gulf Oil fields, flagged under Kewait. 5- Israel invades Lebanon, pushes north as far as possible, occupy Lebanon completly, push further north to shake hands with Turkey, and block Syria from the Mediterinean, Turkey joins European Union, Nato forces and the Israelies IDF shake hands along the Turkish borders, then EU twists the arm of Turkey to give up half of its land to Kurdistan if they want to stay in the EU. 8- America declares that Saudi Arabia is under American occupation toppeling down the Suadi Government, thus calling it “The Arabia Territories” just like PortoRico and Costa Rica. 9- To keep the sentiment of the 1.2 billion Muslims calm and not to declare full Jihad, America separates the Mecca to be under a Jordanian rule, thus friendly to America, with Sherief Hussien, the uncle of King of Jordan, in charge of Mecca, praising the new American Democracy from Mecca . 10- Another World War is won by America, saving the Jews after another alleged Holocost, thus embedding the same feelling of guilt in the Arabs just like Europe. The plan is now clear, and at work.