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| wither goes the lebanon? |
paraclete |
08/23/06 |
Everybody got a bloody nose, except Iran and Syria
August 23, 2006
Israel's Lebanon adventure failed, but Hezbollah will not be seeking a return bout just yet, writes Tom Teepen.
SO WHO won in Lebanon? Israel? Hezbollah? Right question. Wrong time. Try again in a couple of years or in several. It will be a long time before this nasty little war's dust, swirled by the Middle East's ever contrary and battering winds, settles.
An even better question is rather longer than the terse one above: who won? Who lost? Hezbollah? Israel? Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the US? Moderate Islam or Jihadist Islam? Shiite Islam or Sunni?
In this short run, Hezbollah is crowing and the region's radicals quickly formed a chorale of concurrence. Hezbollah did hold off Israel, although an Israel that pulled up short rather than fully committing. Hezbollah's cadres showed themselves larger, better armed and more determined than just about anyone had expected.
And Hezbollah's Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has emerged as the new poster boy for anti-Israel zealots.
Iran and Syria, Hezbollah's enablers, armers and eggers-on, gained regional stature, with Iran provisionally the area's go-to guy, a status that will be cemented if Iran goes nuclear. Pan-Arabism flopped 30 years ago and Arab nationalism never filled the void. Now supranational Islamism may. Hope that the widening Sunni-Shiite split bars that.
The Iraq war, which George Bush and his people still tout as the front line against terrorism, once again showed itself to be only an ugly sideshow sucking up US treasure and lives in the forlorn service of a sectarian civil war.
Israel failed in its strategic objectives of disarming Hezbollah and implicitly cautioning Iran against adventurism. And in failing, Israel lost its intimidating reputation for military invincibility, which had been a security deterrent in its own right. That just about guarantees that some fool in the region will soon give Israel a chance to re-establish that reputation.
Israel's legendary intelligence, this time askew, brought a microscopic review on itself. Its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, stands on political quicksand. One "victory" Hezbollah may well have won for Islam and the Arab world is the election of a harder-line, more aggressive successor to Olmert.
Although giddy at the moment, Hezbollah is bloody as well. It survived but took huge losses in arms and personnel. Another similarly rash project is unlikely to appeal to Hezbollah's leadership any time soon.
Much will depend upon what the Lebanese make of the set-to in the long run. Right now they are furious with Israel, but they also know that Hezbollah brought this grief upon them, and an eager and skilled mercantile people cannot happily imagine the Islamist state Hezbollah and Iran intend for them. The key question then will be whether the West, with nothing less than its way of life at issue, will rally to the Lebanese if they send up flares.
Cox News Service |
Clarification/Follow-up by EdwardTeach on 08/23/06 1:49 am:
Why did Israel bomb the Christian part of beirut? Are Christians in Hezbo'allah? Clarification/Follow-up by paraclete on 08/23/06 3:43 am:
Israel bombed those areas because Hezbollah was hiding there. who could say who sympathises with Hezbollah in Lebanon, they now have more friends than they used to have. in any case why would the Israeli's discriminate, do they care about Christians?
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