How a failed policy led to even greater failure

The conventional wisdom in the capitalist media concerning the immediate origin of the conflict in Lebanon is that the Iranian government instigated military action by Hezbollah against the Israeli army in order to shift the focus of international attention away from Tehran’s determination to develop nuclear power.

This interpretation of events by capitalist propagandists and politicians, seeking to set the stage for future aggression against Iran, actually turns reality into its mirror opposite.

The fact is that the immediate origin of the bloody assault on Lebanon is the U.S. government conspiracy with its Israeli clients to open a savage attack on Hez bol lah in order to divert the focus of U.S. and world attention away from the descending fortunes of the Bush administration.

Bush hoped a quick and resounding victory by the U.S.-supplied Israeli military would reverse the sagging fortunes of the phony “war on terrorism.” The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld group is on the verge of being among the most discredited imperialist administrations in the past century.

Bush’s poll numbers before the invasion of Lebanon were the lowest of any sitting president in many decades. His presidency has been defined by the U.S. quagmire in Iraq.

Bush is increasingly discredited within the ruling-class establishment for undermining the fortunes of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and beyond. And he is discredited among the masses for dragging them into an unending war, costing hundreds of billions of dollars, in which unspeakable war crimes are coming to light day after day.

The Iraq debacle is the central disaster in what is a broader regional failure of the imperialist policy of conquest in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Bush administration carried out its preemptive warfare against Iraq and Afghanistan under the twin slogans of the “war against terrorism” and the export of “democracy.”

Here is a summary of the results of Bush’s “accomplishments” in the region.

After 9/11, the Bush administration had given then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon full backing to destroy the Palestinian Authority. And Washington wanted to use an election to maneuver a more pliable Palestinian leadership into position. However, this backfired on the U.S. when instead Hamas was elected, winning a genuine democratic victory on the basis of being the party of resistance to the occupiers.

Washington also tried to isolate Hezbollah in Lebanon. But in its first parliamentary participation in 2005, the popular mass-based movement won 35 out of 128 seats in parliament and brought two of its ministers into the coalition government.

The Bush group has organized the European imperialists to try to intimidate the Iranian government and force it to abandon its sovereign right to develop nuclear power. However, each threat and act of intimidation so far has met with a rebuff from Tehran.

Washington has faced mass resistance on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, Washington has just dragooned NATO into taking over the defense of the puppet government in Kabul against a growing resistance. The U.S. was losing soldiers there on an increasing basis and needs them for Iraq.

Just before the war on Lebanon was launched, the U.S. military was losing more and more control in Iraq. The Pentagon had to backtrack on earlier announcements of troop reductions and actually increase troop levels and shift more soldiers into Baghdad.

Washington failed to topple the Syrian government. It also failed to overturn the Iranian government, which Bush had branded as part of the “axis of evil,” and which had been targeted by the U.S. for regime change. The Iranian government grew stronger among its population, based upon standing up for national sovereignty against U.S. government threats.

In each case, U.S. policy resulted in bringing about the opposite of its goals.

In short, just before the invasion of Lebanon, the broad strategic thrust upon which Bush based his presidency—the conquest of the Middle East, under the slogan of the “war against terrorism”—was collapsing on every front.

These failures are underneath the sudden unleashing of massive military violence against Hezbollah and Lebanon by the Israeli military. They also account for the coordinated, aggressive and stubborn campaign by the Bush administration to impose—on the entire imperialist camp and on the moderate Arab governments—an iron veto in the UN Security Council against a cease-fire or any political or military conditions unfavorable to Tel Aviv.

This is Bush’s war

This war is a Bush administration war. Bush is banking on Israeli forces being able to crush Hezbollah. He is demanding it. He is trying to openly take credit for it. This is a way of trying to recover from a continuous series of defeats at the hands of popular anti-imperialist resistance. The aggression against Lebanon is an extension of the war against Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. It is also meant as a threat to Iran and Syria.

The Israelis are willing executors in this scheme. They have long planned out the military side of the attack with the full, detailed knowledge of Washington. The July 21 San Francisco Chronicle quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, as saying, “Of all Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared.”

Steinberg explained that, “By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”

The Chronicle article reported: “More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think-tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail.”

The “three-week campaign” was supposed to consist of two weeks of bombing and one week of ground forces to finish things off. Washington was fully apprised of the plan of attack in detail.

The planning of the attack coincided with the U.S. government campaign against Hezbollah—officially codified in United Nations resolution 1559 in September 2004. That resolution called for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah. Washington engineered the so-called “Cedar Revolution” to pressure Syrian troops to get out of Lebanon.

This was important, not just to reduce Syrian influence, but to get Syrian troops off Lebanese territory so that if war were to be unleashed against Hezbollah, it would not lead to immediate combat with Syrian troops and a possible full-scale war on two fronts.

The idea that Israel destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon, killed and wounded thousands of civilians and displaced a million people—more than one-fourth of the Lebanese population—because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers is preposterous on its face.

Since 2000, when the Israelis were driven out of Lebanon, the Israeli military has been provoking along that border and Hezbollah has been responding.

George Monbiot, writing in the Aug. 8 Guardian of Britain, cited reports from the United Nations Interim Force (Unifil) saying that before the war Israeli aircraft crossed into Lebanese airspace “persistently” and “caused great concern to the civilian population, particularly low-altitude flights that break the sound barrier over populated areas.”

Monbiot cites numerous instances of border clashes between Israeli military and Hezbollah, including capturing and killing of soldiers on either side, shelling by the Israelis and the launching of rockets by Hezbollah.

As recently as May 26, two Islamic Jihad officials were killed by a car bomb in Sidon, Lebanon. The bomb was planted by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in response. There were clashes on the border but no major escalation.

What’s clear is that the July 12 massive escalation against Lebanon by Tel Aviv was a premeditated, planned sneak attack. Furthermore, the Bush administration instantaneously came out backing Israel’s “right to self-defense.” Bush immediately declared the Israeli attack to be a necessary part of the “war on terrorism.”

U.S. diplomats let it be known that they were going to give the Israelis four to six weeks to carry out their campaign of aggression. (Goldstein, “Israeli terrorists bomb Lebanon,” Workers World, July 20)

Shattered myth
of Israeli invincibility

The current Iraq War is an historic turning point in that it reveals the vulnerability of U.S. imperialism when confronted by a popular resistance.

In the same way, the U.S.-backed Israeli assault is an historic turning point in the struggle in the Middle East because the resistance of Hezbollah and the Lebanese masses to its onslaught has shattered the myth of the invincibility of the Israeli state.

During the 24 years since the occupation of Lebanon by the Israelis in 1982, the Lebanese masses—spearheaded by Hezbollah—have perfected the methods of resistance. They have mastered the technical aspects of guerrilla warfare and have obtained arms for their struggle.

Now the Israeli military has to fight desperately for every hilltop, every village and every inch of its advance. In 1982, it took the Israelis just two days to arrive within 10 miles of Beirut. Now, after 24 days, they are still fighting desperate skirmishes with guerrilla fighters near the southern border.

And instead of the war in Lebanon rescuing its failing policy, the Bush administration is facing another disaster.

Just as the Bush group followed the advice of those who said Iraq would be a “cakewalk,” they listened to the Zionist generals who promised to dispatch Hezbollah in short order if given the go-ahead and the necessary political and diplomatic protection.

Now U.S. imperialism has come out front and center on the world stage—not just as the passive supplier of weapons to Israel and a behind-the-scenes strategist, but as the open advocate and defender of the massacre in Lebanon by Tel Aviv. This is a new development.

Instead of hiding behind the scenes, the Bush group has openly run interference for the Israelis and championed their cause while the whole world watches aghast at the ruthless massacre of Leban ese civilians—in basements, cars, hospitals, farms, ambulances—wherever Israeli bombs can reach.

Yet after all this carnage—and being out front to enable it politically, military and diplomatically—the U.S. has still not achieved its only real objective: the destruction of Hezbollah. In fact, from a political point of view, Washington and Tel Aviv have defeated themselves. Hezbollah has gained widespread popularity in Lebanon, in the Arab world, throughout the Middle East and beyond. At the same time, the U.S. government has gained equally widespread hatred as the patron of the Israeli occupation government.

It is now clear to the world that the bombing of Lebanon is linked to the aggression in Gaza and the U.S. occupation and torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this linkage will further undermine the fortunes of Wall Street and Washing ton throughout the world. The U.S. is understood to be the architect of it all.

The united front of the entire U.S. capitalist establishment, in trying to justify and defend the Israeli aggression, can no longer cover up the crimes of Tel Aviv. They are there for everyone to see every day on the television screen.

For the first time in history, the Israeli client settler state has failed to fully accomplish the mission assigned to it by U.S. imperialism. When the smoke clears, Wall Street may have to reevaluate its relationship to a settler state that is becoming more and more historically nonviable.

Charles Krauthammer, a right-wing columnist, put things quite bluntly in the Aug. 4 Washington Post: “America’s green light for Israel to defend itself is seen as a favor to Israel. But that is a tendentious, misleadingly partial analysis. The green light—indeed, the encouragement—is also an act of clear self-interest. America wants, America needs, a decisive Hezbollah defeat.”

This was “Israel’s rare opportunity to demonstrate what it can do for its great American patron,” Krauthammer concluded. “The United States has gone far out on a limb to allow Israel to win and for all this to happen. It has counted on Israel’s ability to do the job. It has been disappointed.”

Danger of wider war

The most dangerous prospect, should U.S. imperialism be unable to impose its will in Lebanon, is that another failure will lead the Bush group into even larger adventures in an attempt to recoup the losses for the U.S. ruling class. In particular, failure in Lebanon increases the danger of an attack on Syria or Iran.

According to an Aug. 3 article posted on salon.com by Sidney Blumenthal, “Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security staff and Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for the Near East on the National Security Council, are prime movers in sharing NSA intelligence with Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli bombing of both countries … .”

Blumenthal described how right-wing militarists within the Bush administration are talking about a “cleansing war” which “somehow will redeem Bush’s beleaguered policy in the entire region.”

The entire capitalist political establishment in the U.S.—Republicans and Democrats alike—are cheering on the aggression by the Israelis and vilifying Hezbollah and its defense of Lebanon. Each party vies to sound more warlike.

Under these circumstances, the anti-war movement must use its resources to reach out and mobilize in this country in order to defend the self-determination of the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan peoples, and to stay the hand of U.S. imperialist aggression against Syria and Iran.