Has The West Learned Nothing From the Overreaction to 9/11?
The branding of the Hamas October 7 invasion as “Israel’s 9/11” was a dark presentiment of doings to come.
The branding of the Hamas October 7 invasion as “Israel’s 9/11” was the tip-off. A dark presentiment of doings to come. And although President Biden warned Israel, our stalwart ally in the region, to avoid the “mistakes” America made after September 11, Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be ambling, wrathfully, into a trap of immense and unforeseeable consequences. Has the West learned nothing from the stupidity of George W Bush, the hubris of the vulcans, and the curse of imperial overreach? Apparently not.
Question — What, exactly, would a “victory” in the ground invasion of Gaza look like? Enquiring minds worried about the possibility of World War Three kinda want to know. Does Bibi Netanyahu’s government have a plan with an actual exit strategy? Or is the strategy of the Gaza invasion punishment, pure and simple? Because after September 11, Bush the Younger — over-achieving; under-focused — launched America into “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in naught else but abject defeat and the loss of trillions of dollars.
Biden, whose pullout of Afghanistan is now a part of his Presidential legacy, understands the consequences of overreaction; does Bibi? What is President Biden doing to spare Israel, the Palestinian people — and the region — another two decades of sanguinary turmoil, the loss of countless lives and the radicalization of the next generation? From Spencer Ackerman at The Nation:
Over the past week, the Biden administration has made a greater show of concern for Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. But this concern has been long on rhetoric and short on material help. Biden brokered access for trucks delivering food, medicine, and other aid to Gazans through the Rafah Crossing—just nowhere near the amount necessary to sustain the lives of 2.3 million people who must dodge a relentless barrage of air strikes (for instance, Israel said on Tuesday that it had struck Gaza 400 times in just 24 hours). Pentagon officials spoke Monday about offering Israel “best practices for mitigating civilian harm,” as if America’s recent experiences of urban counterinsurgency were not reasons to avoid the enterprise altogether.
Or, for that matter, as if Israel were interested in those lessons. “The emphasis,” according to a widely quoted statement from the Israel Defense Forces on October 10, “is on damage, not precision.”
Swell and lovely. Only — that sort of sounds like collective punishment, which is war-criming, prohibited by Common Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and Article 6 of the Additional Protocol II. Just saying. Another Question — How will the Global South — the rest of the world — view Biden, as a result of this tight embrace of a strategy of “maximum damage” to Gaza? Will this unravel all the good work his administration has done rebuilding America’s image across Africa? The speed in which Putin invited members of Hamas to Moscow suggests that Russia and probably China see Biden’s embrace of Israel as a strategic misstep, one that serves their anti-democratic purposes, once that could accelerate the demise of democratic influence geopolitically.
How will “The West” — and, ancillary to that, Democracy itself — look like, contrasted against the alternative vision offered by China, Russia and Iran? Hugging the right-wing populist and semi-authoritarian Bibi Netanyahu, when viewed in this somber light, is not in retrospect a good look internationally. That having been said, it is perfectly understandable, considering that Biden was born at the time that the Holocaust was happening, how he came to that position, however geopolitically unwise.
Clearly President Biden has thought the matter through and felt it in his heart. But it is a profound political risk that could conceivably fracture his progressive coalition even as we head into the Presidential election season. Still, it is impossible, after the hug, after the American Rescue Act as well as the muscular environmentalism and infrastructure spending in the American Jobs Act to conclude anything other than Biden’s boldness as a leader. We cannot fail to note that George W Bush was “bold” to the point of outright foolishness.
Spencer Ackerman’s article, which I have been thinking quite a bit about, in the Nation begins with an almost heartbreaking litany of possibilities. It presents an alternative timeline of what could have been — alas, alas — if Bush the Younger had been the head of Major League baseball rather than the leader of the free world with a strong economy. We would not, for example, have had the forever wars. Iran would not have so much influence in Iraq. America’s “blood and treasure” would not have evaporated into the sand. And tens of thousands of people in the Middle East and central Asia would still be among the living. I ask again, have we learned nothing from our overreaction to the attacks of September 11?
Of the voices, growing louder (on campuses and in world capitals), that are beginning to view Hamas’s October 7 actions as ones of “liberation” rather than terrorism, I wrote last week:
This is a harrowing sentiment. And yet it is a view gaining traction in the Global South — the majority of the world — and those voices of protest will continue to grow in number and volume should Netanyahu continue his operations in Gaza with a hammer and not a scalpel. A scalpel is used in restrained, precision cuts while a sledgehammer is an instrument of demolition. This is also precisely what Hamas wants Netanyahu to do — to overreact. To eschew the scalpel. For that is how the trap — turning global opinion decidedly, definitively against Israel — is sprung. But for Netanyahu, who has spent his entire professional career being a hammer, Character is probably destiny.
Lets hope not. Israel actually has a solid history of utilizing the scalpel with precision in military operations. One of Israel’s most agile commando operations — a genre of warfare in which they specialize —was against my own home country, Uganda, during my childhood. Or, more accurately, against Idi Amin, who, like many autocrat thugs then and now, lust after expanding their field of operations into the Middle East.
In 1976 an Airbus A300 carrying 248 passengers operated by Air France between the cities of Tel Aviv and Paris was hijacked during a stopover in Athens and diverted into Ugandan airspace.
A Yoni Netanyahu memorial website describes the events as thus:
The terrorists demanded the release from jail of over fifty of their colleagues, most of whom were behind bars in Israel, a few in other countries. The deadline for their release was set for Thursday afternoon. Israel was warned that if by that date the jailed terrorists were not released, the hostages would be killed.
Prime Minister Rabin made the executive decision at that point to negotiate in earnest for the release of Jewish hostages. While the preliminaries were happening, however, the release of the non-Jewish hostages provided a treasure trove of information regarding the logistics of the Entebbe airport. “Such information was crucial for planning any rescue, and so the military option had acquired momentum,” the memorial site continues. “By evening, Yoni received the formal order to start planning and preparing the Unit for a possible raid on Entebbe.”
The rest is history. Yoni and a young then-Colonel named Ehud Barak sat in on the planning meeting for the raid. Ultimately, 100 Jewish commandos with plans for the old Entebbe airport landed during the night in Kampala. They then drove to Entebbe in Land Rovers and Mercedes — official government vehicles in most of East Africa at the time.
On July 4, 1976, Yonathan Netanyahu, Prime Minister Netanyahu's elder brother, led “Operation Thunderbolt,” freeing in the process 102 Jewish hostages held at Entebbe airport in Kampala by the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," a Syria-based terrorist group and something called the "Red Army Faction,” a West German radical group. Yoni Netanyahu, who led the raid, was also the only Israeli casualty in the operation. My late father, who patriotically represented Uganda — and decidedly not Amin — in the foreign ministry, was the Ambassador at the United Nations at the time.
The commandos were outnumbered by Amin’s thugs, but the Land Rovers and Mercedes led to delayed opening fire by the military, offering the Israeli commandos a slight advantage. In the end, five soldiers were wounded, one — Yoni — was killed. Three hostages died while 102 were rescued. All of the hijackers were killed, as were 45 members of Uganda’s military and eleven of Uganda's Russian-made MiG-17s and MiG-21s were put out of commission. Amin, infamously, was still on the phone “negotiating” as the operation began. Prime Minister Rabin hung up the phone on Amin, mid-negotiation, once Operation Thuinderbolt began.
This is not to say that an operation against Hamas, probably backed by Iran, would go as swimmingly. Amin was a little fish with an overblown military record trying to play in a Red Sea filled with Moray eels. Iran is an infinitely larger danger now, thanks to Bush the Younger’s foolhardy Iraq War. As it plays its role offstage, denying its involvement, it has proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah; 100,000 soldiers, possibly 100,000 missiles), Yemen, as well as Persia itself, which has the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East. So it stands to reason that containing the war in Gaza to a specified Hamas-removal operation with a “scalpel-like” precision is much preferable to the “sledgehammer” approach, which, in real time, turns world opinion against Israel (even more than it already has been). But all of that notwithstanding, can Biden — who, with rue, has learned the lessons of the West’s overreaction to acts of terror?
If indeed Character, as Heraclitus reminds us, is Destiny, then Bibi will do as he has done all his life and eschew the scalpel. And his legacy, already tarnished, will pay the price. And Biden, who in the riskiest of political moves, hewed so close to his regional ally, will as well.
George Santayana, whom we have already forgotten, once said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it … ”
“The Telegraph’s story begins in 1855 when it rolled off the presses and boldly declared itself “the largest, best, and cheapest newspaper in the world.” One hundred sixty-eight years later, The Telegraph holds none of those distinctions. But it might as well, judging by the murderers’ row of media barons that have been identified as prospective suitors. There’s Rupert Murdoch, perhaps keen on one last conquest, whose interest has been reported as if he isn’t imminently stepping down as the executive chairman of News Corp. There’s Lord Rothermere, scion of the legendary Harmsworth dynasty, who has been consolidating influence since taking Daily Mail and General Trust private two years ago. There’s Mathias Döpfner, the charismatic Axel Springer boss, who now has a second chance at acquiring a landmark English-language newspaper after losing out on The Financial Times in 2015.” (Joe Pompeo/VF)
“How antisemitism and anti-Zionism intersect is at bottom the reason for, among other things, the disputes roiling American campuses and the surge in reported antisemitic incidents. But Jewish people everywhere represent a complete cross-section of humanity, from the most secular to the most ultra-orthodox in religious beliefs, from the disgraceful Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, Jonas Salk and Albert Einstein and in Israel from founder David Ben-Gurion to Bibi Netanyahu surrounded by bigots in lofty roles.” (Peter Osnos/Platform)
“If it weren’t for the war in Israel and the election of an abortion absolutist and lesser-known election denier as Speaker of the House alongside a handful of other breaking news events in the last six weeks, the United Auto Workers strike with the three major auto companies would have been one of the biggest news story in the country. After the strike began on September 15, the union staggered the walkouts at different facilities at different times in order to keep the companies guessing and to escalate when additional pressure was needed, rather than have all 150,000 members who work at the three companies walk out at once. Altogether, about 34,000 workers at nine auto factories and 38 parts warehouses in over 20 states walked off the job. It marked the first time in the union’s history that it went on strike at all three companies simultaneously.” (Peter Dreier/TPM)
“Friends say the trial and media attention ended his engagement to a woman who worked at a well-known restaurant and events space in Hackensack, the Stony Hill Inn, which he frequented. (Senator Robert Menendez) soon bounced back, however, and began dating Nadine Tabourian Arslanian, a tall blonde divorcée with a décolletage-first fashion sense. Thirteen years younger than the senator, Arslanian was a fun-loving fixture on the Hudson County singles scene. Menendez, who had a reputation for being something of a ladies’ man, had been divorced since 2005, but friends seemed to think he finally had found his match. Their lives quickly became intertwined. At her urging, he repeatedly, and in the end successfully, pushed through a Senate resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide (her family is from Armenia). She influenced him in other ways, too, introducing him to an old friend, the Egyptian businessman and halal-meat mogul Wael ‘Will’ Hana, who, according to a federal indictment handed down last month against the couple, allegedly did the bidding of the Egyptian military government. According to that indictment, Hana sought and received favors from his high-powered new friend, who happened to be the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and gave the couple gifts — money, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz — in return.” (Nina Burleigh/NYMag)