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| Ehud Barak and Barack Obama: More in common than a name? |
Today US forces in Afghanistan are fighting in a manner that is depressingly similar to that forced upon IDF forces in Lebanon in the 1990s. Like the US forces in Afghanistan today, during the 1990s, concerns about civilian casualties caused Israel's political leadership to constrain IDF actions in southern Lebanon in a manner that effectively transformed soldiers into sitting ducks. Israel's finest were reduced to fighting from fortified positions and Hizbullah was given a free hand to intimidate Lebanese civilians, commandeer private homes and schools to use as firing positions and forward bases, and generally maintain the initiative in the fighting.Like Hezbollah, all that the Taliban needs in order to declare victory is to survive--and if US forces adhere to the schedule for withdrawal that Obama has laid out, the Taliban need only bide its time.
As he withdrew IDF forces from south Lebanon ten years ago - like Biden today - then prime minister Ehud Barak claimed that Israel didn't need boots on the ground to fight Hizbullah. If we needed to go in to fight, we would send in commando squads or fighter jets to do the job. Of course, as US drone operations in Pakistan again demonstrate, without a presence on the ground, you cannot have any certainty that you are attacking real targets.
The important story this week was not about a US general with abysmal judgment about the media. Rather the story is that in Afghanistan, the US is repeating a sorry pattern of Western nations of not understanding - or perhaps not caring -- that if you are not willing to fight a war to victory, you will lose it.
The stakes in Afghanistan are clear. NATO forces can defeat the Taliban, or the Taliban can defeat them. To win, all the Taliban needs to do is survive. Once NATO is gone, like Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban will be crowned the victors and from their failed state, they will be able to again attack the US and its allies. [emphasis added]
At least when Israel fights its wars, it fights to win, no matter how one may find fault with its tactics. That is not the case now in Afghanistan, and Americans will not need a Winograd Commission to see what went wrong.
Technorati Tag: Obama and Afghanistan.
2 comments:
"At least when Israel fights its wars, it fights to win, no matter how one may find fault with its tactics."
I do not totally agree with this, for if you are waging this type of complicated urban-civilian messed war, then you ought to know that it will take much longer than a month. And you would not care about any international pressure exerted on you.
I guess same reasoning applies to Cast Lead. The war might have punished severely Hamas and its infrastructure but to wage war until the end, one must go house by house hunting terrorists down.
I'm not trying to say that it was wise or unwise to stop the operations upon international pressure. I think it's hard for me to make that judgement. But I am trying to say that Israel knows these wars cannot be won through regular, not extended in time, military campaigns but rather extended and thorough campaigns.
Granted, there have been miscalculations on the capabilities of Hezbollah and Hamas.
I was going to continue that I don't believe that Israel goes in with the attitude of anything less than victory, and does not announce plans of unconditional withdrawal--but the same effect is created during a war, once Israel has to care more for the needs of Gazans than than Hamas does.
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