Daily Archives: Friday, January 16, 2009

“No U.S. president can justify a policy that fails to achieve its intended results by pointing to the purity and rectitude of his intentions,” – Paul Wolfowitz, “Statesmanship in the New Century,” in Kagan, R. and Kristol, W, eds. Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, San Francisco, 2000, p. 335.

h/t andrew sullivan

But Bush leaves with his “head held high”.

From an update on Glenn Greenwald’s post (see prior entry here) where he quotes from Haaretz:

In an interview Friday with the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, [GOC Northern Command Gadi] Eisenkot presented his “Dahiyah Doctrine,” under which the IDF would expand its destructive power beyond what it demonstrated two years ago against the Beirut suburb of Dahiyah, considered a Hezbollah stronghold.

“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he said. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized” . . . .

Major General (Res.) Giora Eiland, formerly head of the National Security Council, belongs to a similar school of thought, and even goes a step further.

He believes Israel failed in the Second Lebanon War and is liable to fail in a third such war, because it is fighting the wrong enemy:  Hezbollah, instead of the state of Lebanon itself. . . .

Eiland recommends preemptive action: that Israel pass a clear message to the Lebanese government, as soon as possible, stating that in the next war, the Lebanese army will be destroyed, as will the civilian infrastructure.

It’s a bit hard to deny that this is Israel’s strategy and intent when their own military officials (and their own President) openly proclaim that it is.  In an excellent and well-document article today in Salon, Robert Bryce documents how so much of what Israel is able to do in this regard is funded and supplied by the U.S., including not only huge amounts of cash and weapons, but also fuel resources which the U.S. itself has a substantial need.  Is there anyone who actually believes that this assault has advanced Israeli interests, to say nothing of American interests?