The United States should let Isr ael
run its Own Wars!
August 23, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Reading the excerpt from the DEBKAfile report, included in this Blog, reminded me of something that has always been a source
of irritation to me. I have, while in the National Security Agency, watched the U.S. monitor every military move Israel was making in daily maneuvers in the 1967 war, and send messages to them when they did not like what they were doing. I have always believed we should keep our noses out of the way Israel felt it should conduct its wars, and that we have done more harm than good by our interference.
Knowing what I know from past experience in Israeli and U.S. directed campaigns, I believe the following excerpt from DEBKAfile to be an accurate assessment of what we contributed to the current mess in the Lebanese conflict.
This is not intended to be an open criticism of the Bush administration or Republican congress, because the Democratic handling of the situation would have been a thousand times worse. I do not like to be a critic of anything unless I have what I believe to be a better solution. In the Middle East situation I do not believe there is a solution available by the genius of man, in that only God has the answer to a mess that mankind has degenerated by its own intrinsic self serving nature. I long ago relegated myself to watching and waiting for Jesus to return to straighten out this mess at his Second Advent, which will be the culminating battle of Armageddon.
No one can know for sure when the three and one-half year war begins that terminates with this final great battle of Armageddon, and mankind has speculated for centuries when the war would begin. My speculation, guesstimate, estimate, or whatever you want to call it, is that the most likely period of time in which the war will suddenly begin, with a lightning Jihad strike from the north against Israel, is at some point in time between 2008 and 2012.
While we wait and watch for Jesus, I would recommend that we let the nation of Israel conduct its own wars as it sees fit, while we fulfill the role of acting as a block to keep Russia and China from attacking them.
Begin Excerpt from DEBKAfile Report
Some Lebanon War Riddles Solved and Their Relevance to Moves on Syria in Jerusalem Explained
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 22, 2006, 7:11 PM (GMT+02:00)
A DEBKAfile investigation has uncovered some facts that would help explain some of the mishaps.
The knife-edge threat that caught the Israeli army unprepared was welcomed in Washington. Our sources close to the Bush administration have learned that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice embraced the opening for an Israeli offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon. Vice President Dick Cheney also favored an Israeli air strike but worried about the lack of an Israeli plan for a parallel ground offensive. One of his aides later expressed the view that Olmert and Halutz had been cautioned that air offensives unaccompanied by ground assaults never achieved strategic goals, as the Americans discovered after bombing Baghdad at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
But the Israeli prime minister and chief of staff insisted that the air force was able to inflict a shock defeat on Hizballah and produce a fast and cheap victory.
US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was leery about any Israeli military offensive against Hizballah, fearing complications for the US army in Iraq at the peak of a surging sectarian civil war.
But Olmert talked Rice into asking President George W. Bush to back the air offensive. The US president acceded – only laying down two basic conditions: Israel must confine itself to an air campaign; before embarking on a ground offensive, a further American go-ahead would be required. The second was a promise to spare Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and only go for Hizballah’s positions and installations.
The conditions when relayed by the secretary of state were accepted
by the prime minister. The first explains why Israel’ s ground force
s were held ready in bases for three long weeks rather than being sent into battle – up until the last stage. By then, the air force offensive had proved a long way short of fast and cheap; worse, it had been ineffectual.
The second condition accounts for another of the war’s enigmas: Israeli forces were not allowed to destroy buildings known to be occupied by Hizballah teams firing anti-tank rockets because it would have meant destroying Lebanese infrastructure.
This brought Israeli forces into extreme danger; they were forced to come back again and again to repeat cleansing operations in villages and towns close to the Israeli border, such as Maroun a-Ras, Bint Jubeil and Atia a-Chaab.
This exposed them to Hizballah’s attrition tactics at the cost of painful casualties.
Only in the third week of the war, when the Bush administration saw the Israeli air force had failed to bring Hizballah to collapse, and the campaign would have to be salvaged in a hurry, did Rice give the green light for ground troops to go in en masse to try and finish off the Shiite terrorist group. Then too, an American stipulation was imposed: Israel troops must not reach the Litani River.
The Israel army did embark on a tardy wide-scale push to the LItani River and as far as Nabatia and Arnoun, but was soon cut short in its tracks.
American spy satellites spotted the advance and Olmert was cautioned by Washington to hold his horses.
This last disastrous order released the welter of conflicting, incomprehensible orders which stirred up the entire chain of command – from the heads of the IDF’s Northern command down to the officers in the field.
Operational orders designed to meet tactical combat situations were scrapped in mid-execution and new directives tumbled down the chute from above. Soldiers later complained that in one day, they were jerked into unreasoned actions by four to six contrary instructions.
None of the commanders at any level could explain what was going on because none were party to the backroom decision-making at the prime minister’s office. According to our sources, Olmert kept his exchanges with Condoleezza close to his chest and members of his cabinet and high army command firmly out of the process. The prime minister even kept the chief of staff out of the picture and did not explain why he was called on to chop and change tactics in the heat of war.
Olmert’s absolute compliance with Rice’s directives without fully comprehending their military import threw Israel’ s entire war campaign into di
sorder.
Because of the muddle, supply trucks could not locate units and had to leave them without food and water, the subject
of one of the bitterest complaints.
This botched sequence of decisions and their consequences also ties in with the fishing expedition in Damascus subsequently embarked on by senior Israeli ministers.
It appears that Condoleezza Rice was not exactly happy with the way the war turned out, nor with the failure of diplomacy to bring Lebanon’s hostilities to a satisfactory conclusion or even to deploy an effective multinational force to stabilize South Lebanon. She therefore decided to explore the chances of luring Bashar Assad away from the Iranian fold.
This is a tentative idea which has not ripened into a policy – much less gained a White House go-ahead. But as soon as word was leaked to Jerusalem, several Israeli ministers jumped aboard – Peretz first, followed by Livni, who there and then created a Syrian Project Desk at the foreign ministry, the education minister, Yuli Tamir and finally, on Monday, Dichter.
These ministers know that the Olmert government stands on shaky legs against the spreading wave of popular disaffection over its management of the Lebanon war, its cost and its outcome. The clamor for a state inquiry is the least of the public’s demands. For government members who are caught between a fragile truce in Lebanon and a tenuous government, any distraction – even a reckless feeler towards a declared enemy – may look attractive.
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