Response & Diplomacy
16 July 2006Two refrains echo repeatedly in the news today. The first is the “failure of diplomacy.” The clear implication is, if only the Bush administration had a clue when it comes to diplomacy the Middle East wouldn’t be in a war today. Senator Chris Dodd was busy slamming the Bush administration for its failure of diplomacy and disparaging our “go it alone strategy.” Dodd, of course, missed the multilateral approach to North Korea and Iran but that is for another post.
Dodd seems not to grasp what is required to have effective diplomacy, that is a rational negotiating partner. I’d like to hear someone argue that Islamic terrorists or the leaders of Islamic regimes are rational in any sense we can understand. Surely no one seriously believes that Hezbollah is acting in a rational way at the moment. Israel, after all, clearly out guns the rest of the Middle East combined. If it comes to an all out, winner take all, war, Israel is the clear winner. No rational person thinks otherwise. Yet Hezbollah marches ahead.
At some level you might excuse Hezbollah’s miscalculation considering how Israel has capitulated in the past, but in the past Israel was usually pressured into capitulating by the west. It should be noted, however, that every time Israel has been in a shooting war with her neighbors in the Middle East, Israel has won, usually with the acquisition of land to add insult to injury.
But how can anyone call rational the desire to exterminate the nation of Israel? The reality is that those pulling the strings in the Muslim Middle East are either Islamic fascists or naked opportunists or both. You might be able to negotiate with an opportunist but not a fanatic. And any negotiation with an opportunist must be made knowing that he will turn on you at the first opportunity. Indeed, we’ve seen this repeatedly over the last few decades. And that is the problem Israel faces now and leads to the second refrain.
The second refrain echoing today is the need for Israel to use a “measured response.” Measured here seems to mean ineffective. Considering all that Israel has been through and all that Israel has done to have peace it is difficult for me to see how Israel could respond any differently. Any negotiated peace will be strictly temporary. From Israel’s point of view, the only rational approach is to annihilate the enemy’s capacity to shoot at them. Anything else accomplishes little. I am hard pressed to see a role for diplomacy here.
Regimes like those in Iran and Syria have said they will never rest until Israel is destroyed. It seems to me that the only effective response to this line of thinking is to militarily remove the capacity of these regimes to carry out their objectives. I do not see a role for diplomacy and the only measure Israel should use now is the measure of victory of her enemies.
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