A few years ago, while doing some research at my university's library, I stumbled
across a series of large books published by the Iranian Defense Ministry,
entitled "The Imposed War." Leafing through these folios, I caught a stunning glimpse of what government
propaganda looks like. Nicely bound, written in English, Arabic and Farsi,
and with expansive color images, the books told the story of the Iran-Iraq
War, that eight-year conflict that resulted in so much misery, death,
destruction, and little gains by way of warfare.
Since then, I've occasionally gone back to look at those volumes, always
remembering the title and how the writers (I'm sure there was more than
one) took the single theme of an imposed, unjust war on an innocent people,
that inflicted horrid damage. It's a well-known fact that Saddam Hussein's
Iraq used chemical weapons against the Iranians, lobbing missiles at
Teheran and other Iranian cities. The photographs in these folios were
unsparing, brutal, and not for the faint of heart. What struck me the
most where the pictures of family members, in those large, oversized
frames that I find quite often in the Muslim world of the Middle East.
The portraits are never usually a standard 8 x 11, but oversized and arresting.
Seeing images of loved ones who died in the fighting or in a bombardment
made me feel for the suffering of these people, even though we Americans
had been reared to dislike (if not outright hate) the Iranian government
since the taking of the American embassy in 1979.
So we flash forward several years since I found those books stuffed in
between other forgotten volumes to the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.
The destruction is horrible, as is the image of scores of Lebanese leaving
their villages and towns, hemmed in by airstrikes in the south and the
north of the country. There seems to be no way out of Lebanon, what with
the main highway with Syria destroyed and the Beirut airport a target.
It's a scene of utter horror and devastation.
It seems that we have an imposed war unfolding before us, and the ambiguity
of that phrase is deliberate. For the Israelis, their military strikes
were provoked by Hizbullah's brazen abduction of two Israeli soldiers
in the
north of the country, and the killing of several others to accomplish
that goal. (And it begs the question, what was the point of that operation?
It's a small query that no one in the media seems
to be asking.) Suddenly, according to the Israelis, they were engaged
in a two-front war: the ongoing siege of Gaza to retrieve another
kidnapped soldier, and now the Lebanese border coming alive. Not
only flying from Gaza, but longer-range weapons appearing over northern
Israel and striking, for the first time, the port city of Haifa.
It's a curious thing that another question left unasked by the media
is where Hizbullah is getting these weapons, which are far more sophisticated
than the "regular" old Katyushah rockets used in the past. It's difficult to imagine that the Lebanese
have been manufacturing these weapons and then giving them to Hizbullah.
Israel maintains that the weaponry comes from Iran, and that Syria (not
willing to lose any foothold on Lebanon) offers its own blessing. The
Iranians, predictably, deny all of this, but this reads like a bad joke.
(And it makes me think, if you hate Israel so much, why not admit you
openly support a group fighting the "Zionist entity" with weapons loud and clear?) Israel has demanded that the Lebanese Army be
deployed along the southern border, but of course, the Lebanese central
authority is fairly weak. While Hizbullah has gone mainstream into politics
in Lebanon, they control the south portion of the country and don't necessarily
heed to what Beirut says. That alone poses a vexing problem that
the Arabs want to avoid bringing up: how is that you have "resistance" organizations in your government that refuse to disband their armed wings? It's
a sad case of having your cake and eating it, too.
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So for the Israelis, they have an imposed war (seemingly) wrought by Iranian and
Syrian puppet masters. Feeling besieged and finding regular rocket attacks
on its northern cities unacceptable, the Israeli war machine strikes
back and strikes hard, laying waste to Beirut and its environs, undoing
so much of what was built up over the last decade. And we get to see
the pictures of families being killed as they attempt to flee, along
with Israeli families huddled in shelters with frightening rocket alarms
bellowing across the city.
The Lebanese, too, have this imposed war to deal with, as they are caught
between two players, Israel and Hizbullah. As before, Lebanon becomes
a deadly playing ground for regional politics. Dominated by Syria, Lebanon
has only recently started to emerge (but ever so slowly) from the grip
of Damascus. And then this; Hizbullah opens up a front with the Jewish
state and all hell breaks loose. The war is imposed on them, only they
bear the brunt of all it: destroyed homes, rocket-hit buildings, roads
deeply pockmarked with missile strikes. It is an obscenity to watch Lebanon
being strangled this way, totally at the mercy of the Israelis, Hizbullah, the Syrians
and the Iranians.
Not that the United States is much help. The American government seems
curiously blasé about stopping the violence, preferring to allow the
Israelis time to thrash the rag doll that is Lebanon in its formidable
mouth for a while longer. Not even the evacuation of American citizens
seems to be a major priority, and those that have been spirited out of
the war zone (as of this writing) have actually been told they need to
reimburse the U.S. government.
How long the hostilities will be allowed to continue is anyone's guess,
but all signs point to when the White House deems Lebanon has been beaten
up enough. Or when it becomes obvious that Hizbullah might have bitten
off more than it can chew. Or when the Iranians feel their point has
been made. If the latter is true on any level, then the rules of the
messy game in the Middle East might have to be rewritten. Iran stands
as a country wanting to pursue a nuclear agenda: its support of Hizbullah
and (unproven) collusion in this latest adventure will be the death knell
for that country's bogus claim of wanting nuclear power for only research.
After all, let's go back to the unasked question of from where Hizbullah
is getting these longer-range rockets. If it's indeed Iran, who
is
argue that the Islamic Republic (Islamic entity?) wouldn't find it unreasonable
to ship a larger, deadlier arsenal to its proxies in southern Lebanon and
set the north of Israel on fire?
Examined from that perspective, Iran is far more dangerous than Syria,
which might be the reason why the Saudis offered a very pointed criticism
of Hizbullah rather than towing the standard "it's all Israel's fault" line that is a mantra in the Arab world. And it might explain why all of the
sudden, an article in the New York Times states that Iraqi Sunnis are
not so eager for the Americans to leave after all. In a country that
is demographically Shia, the very prospect of Iran dominating their country
is much more unpalatable than a bunch of American infidel soldiers.
This imposed war affects more than just a few players in the Middle East.
This fight between Israel and Hizbullah is much more precipitous than
perhaps anyone has realized.
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