New Sy Hersh piece

Perhaps the most terrifying thing in Seymour Hersh's latest New Yorker piece is that Donald Rumsfeld - Rumsfeld! - may be the only voice of sanity in the administration when it comes to Lebanon:

Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that “there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war.” He added, “Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn’t work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy.”

Saint preserve us! We have to rely on Donald "Armor? What body Armor?" Rumsfeld to save America from another disaster.

One of the weirdest things about the whole Lebanon mess has been Israeli PR's reliance on the Kosovo war as a rhetorical device. For example:

On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, “Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I’m not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don’t preach to us about the treatment of civilians.” (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.) [emphasis mine - JM]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a reasonable person might expect the Jewish state not to play games with casualty figures. Other people play that game, and the Israeli government ill-serves the Jewish people when it joins in.

More importantly, the whole notion of comparing totally different situations to each other is ridiculous. But then, the neocons love this game - Iraq after we invade will be just like Japan! Bremer is the new MacArthur! Still, the Kosovo example is bizarrely bad.

The most obvious example is that we were on the side of the Hezbollah-equivalent in that conflict. NATO may not have admitted it, but NATO was effectively providing air cover for the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA were the decently-armed non-state actors, fighting against the standing army and police forces of the Yugoslav Republic. Like Hezbollah, the KLA was being supported by a number of "external" groups, such as the Albanian diaspora. After the US did things like send Richard Holbrooke to have his picture taken with the KLA, it was pretty damn clear whose side we were on.

(If you've never seen those pictures of Holbrooke and Albright with members of the KLA, I assure you, Serbs have. And they remember.)

I don't want to sound like I'm weeping over the Serbs, but the point is that drawing a parallel between Israel/Lebanon and NATO/Yugoslavia is a sucker's game. Getting taken in by such comparisons is foolish. You could just as easily - using the Kosovo example - say that NATO should take Hezbollah's side in the conflict, and it would make about as much sense. (Obviously, I don't think NATO should do that, but you get the point.)

Moving on from the ridiculous talking points of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the "good" news from Israel's setback in Lebanon is that they've pushed back the people in Washington who are advocating for strike on Iran. The bad news is that, after five years of these crazies, we can't be certain they're perceiving these events rationally. Indeed, we can be certain they're not:

The surprising strength of Hezbollah’s resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, “is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.”

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. “There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this,” he said. “When the smoke clears, they’ll say it was a success, and they’ll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.”

I'll close with just this: If this JCS officer is right, then France's troops are going to be busy for the next few years.