Center for a New American Security

Yesterday, I went to see Waltz with Bashir. It was, as expected, pretty amazing. The entire audience stayed in their seats at the end to watch the credits. I myself had trouble, in church later, not thinking about the film. It was that haunting. (The film, that is.)

Lebanese and Palestinian viewers (and others), however, might be disappointed by how "Israeli-centric" the film's portrayal of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre was. The Israeli film-maker had every right to tell the story from personal and Israeli perspectives. But at the very end, when the Palestinian woman is screaming "wayn al-'arab?!" (a pretty damning lament -- where are the Arabs?) they didn't even bother to include subtitles, so I have no idea how many in the audience knew what she was screaming or knew it had nothing to do with the Israelis.

The reason I mention this is that if you happen to have seen and enjoyed the film and are looking for a companion piece, check out the Lebanese-German film Massaker, which is a series of interviews with some of the Phalangist gunmen who actually carried out the killings. It is powerful stuff. I saw it several years ago, in 2005, in Beirut.

For the rest of you, check out the second installment of Tom Ricks' The Gamble in today's Washington Post. Also note the online discussion that will take place today, at noon, between Tom and Steve Biddle.

David Kilcullen, Petraeus's counterinsurgency adviser, concluded that just as the Iraqis had stared at the possibility of full-blown civil war that year but ultimately turned away, so, too, had the American public considered a leap into the unknown -- and stopped short.

"America," he said, "has taken a deep breath, looked into the abyss of pulling out and decided, 'Let's not do it yet.'"

My old mentor Timur Bey sent me an article in which he was quoted. What a peach of a quote this is:

All armies are by nature ill-prepared for unconventional wars. During the Israeli occupation of Lebanon (1982-2000) Hizbullah often attacked the Israeli army on Sundays when supplies were brought in and soldiers came back from leave. "Armies need to work more like an Amtrack train (known for its irregularity) and less like a Swiss train when fighting guerrillas," says Göksel.

From Ha'aretz:

In addition to infantry, armor and intelligence units, the Israel Defense Forces has also deployed eight Eland antelope to further secure Israel's tense northern border against Hezbollah. The antelope have been stationed in the zone between the security fence and the international border to clear problematic foliage that distorts views of the Lebanese side and within which Hezbollah guerillas could hide. The animals, each weighing in at over 500 kilograms, are known for their sharp incisors and fondness for eating vegetation. Hailing from eastern Africa, the animals were first brought to Israel more than 30 years ago as part of a project to raise them at local zoos before sending them to Europe.

(Thanks, Ben.)

Update: Hey, in all seriousness, Ha'aretz ran a solid political blow-by-blow of Gaza and a quickie military analysis of the campaign from Issacharoff and Harel on Friday. Both are worth your time.

Yeah, so it completely escaped me that Beirut's Daily Star, an English-language newspaper far more widely read in the West than in Lebanon, has been shuttered. Apparently they forgot to pay their bills. For years. (This will not come as news to anyone who has ever worked at this newspaper.) A friend of mine who works there said the goons showed up one day last week, threw everyone out, and pad-locked the doors.

I was having lunch yesterday with a noted defense intellectual and retired military officer who was, among other things, giving me some hilarious career advice for when I finish my PhD. ("If I worked in the Pentagon," he told me, "I would be naked with a rifle on the roof within a week." I probably would be as well. Ah, well...) The conversation turned to Gaza, though, and he asked me what I thought.

I first said that Hizballah -- a group I know a hell of a lot more about than Hamas -- excels along three lines of operation: combat operations, information operations, and the provision of social services to the population. Hamas, it appears, is not nearly as sophisticated in any of those three lines of operation despite being almost exactly as old, as an organization, as Hizballah was in 2006.

That said, the parallel I keep drawing is not between Hizballah in 2006 and Hamas in 2009 but rather between Gaza in 2009 and southern Lebanon in both 1993 and 1996. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of Operation Accountability (1993) and Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996), let me just say this: In 1993, Israel conducted an air- and artillery-based campaign which displaced over 100,000 Lebanese and destroyed around 6,000 homes in southern Lebanon. That's about how many homes have been destroyed in Gaza. Immediately following the operation, though, UN observers in southern Lebanon began to see something they had never observed before: Jihad al-Bina, Hizballah's construction arm. For the first time, Jihad al-Bina had a major presence in the area and in fact rebuilt many of the home that had been destroyed in the fighting.

One of the Israeli goals in 1993 was to create a rift between Hizballah and the population in the naive hopes the population would "crack down" on the guerrillas in their midst. The way in which Hizballah was able to distribute aid and reconstruction services following the operation, though, ensured Israel would not be able to do that. Hamas, like Hizballah, has an interest in similarly helping the population. But unlike Hizballah, they have serious competition. Both Fatah and international aid organizations will also be attempting to help the people of Gaza. Understand that in the same way in which Hizballah does not like aid programs taking place in southern Lebanon without at least their tacit -- and public -- approval, Hamas does not want competitors in this arena either. This explains some of the fighting which has taken place between Hamas and Fatah in the past few days.

In the aftermath of the war, Fatah and Hamas are already fighting over who will distribute humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Hamas is preventing Fatah activists from playing a role in the rebuilding of Gaza, and recently hijacked 12 trucks full of aid donated by the Jordanian government, meant for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

So this is the fight to watch next. Pay close attention to who rebuilds Gaza -- and how Hamas will seek to get credit for every bit of aid that is delivered to the people. That fight will help determine the long-term strategic effects of this latest spasm of violence.

Three to four rockets have landed in northern Israel, fired from southern Lebanon:

JERUSALEM — Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.

The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

So far there has been no claim of responsibility. A spokeswoman for the militant group Hezbollah, which triggered a war with Israel in 2006 by firing rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon, said an investigation was underway. “We are still looking for information about it,” she said.

For once, I am inclined to believe a Hizballah spokesperson. (Although this particular spokeswoman is most certainly "Madam No" herself, quite possibly the worst spokesperson in the history of spokespersons. Or speaking.)

a) I honestly do not believe that Hizballah has an interest in sparking an Israeli counter-attack (just yet) through an action of their own.

b) If this was Hizballah, I would think it would be a little more spectacular than three to four rockets.

c) This has happened before. Some rogue Palestinian group or Sunni group will manage to launch a few rockets into Israel. Hizballah will get a case of the red ass because, hey, resistance along the Blue Line is their territory -- and theirs alone. And as long as the Israelis play it cool, no one else gets hurt.

So be cool.

Update: This is not being cool. Two rockets is NOT the realization of the "Iranian threat." Hizballah launched upwards of 240 rockets a day during 2006. That is the Iranian threat. So too are any rockets capable of striking the population centers around Tel Aviv. But two rockets? Seriously? You don't even know who fired them, Ha'aretz writer dude.

On a day when fighting re-erupts in Gaza, I am kicking myself more than usual for not seeing this movie when I had the chance at its premier in London last month. I'm sure it will be in DC, though. It looks amazing.

As regular readers know, I have used this blog to think about deterrence and coercion in southern Lebanon over the past few months. This weekend, I have the weekly "The Big Idea" column in The National.

... the harshest blow to Israel was the widespread perception that Hizbollah had fought the mighty IDF to a standstill: as the late Ha’aretz defence correspondent Ze’ev Schiff lamented to me a few months after the war, “We have lost our deterrence capability.”

But this may have been one of many false assumptions about the results of 2006. It was said, for example, that the fighting would set Lebanon back a decade. But this summer’s tourist season was the best in memory, and despite the global economic crisis, the banking sector remains strong. As I have travelled around both southern Lebanon and the Dahiyeh in the past few months, I have been struck by the speed and skill with which Hizbollah and external donors – not just Iran but also the countries of the Gulf and the West – have rebuilt areas that appeared devastated beyond repair. Lebanon – and Hizbollah’s constituents – now have as much to lose in 2008 as they did in 2006.

In this light – and reflecting upon the belligerent words coming from Tel Aviv – Schiff may have been mistaken. Some of my Lebanese friends have dismissed the words of Eisenkot as “dangerous” and “stupid”. But I am not sure they are either.

In 2006 Israel brought a horrific amount of air and artillery power to bear on Lebanon, and few north of the Blue Line believe they would hesitate to do so again. Hizbollah’s July 2006 cross-border kidnapping raid was a serious mistake that had devastating consequences for the people of Lebanon. If the words of Eisenkot have effectively communicated that another such provocation will bring even harsher retribution, then Israel’s deterrent capability remains intact – so long as it doesn’t have to be put to use.

Deterrence, as the legendary American defence analyst John Collins reminds us, is a strategy for peace – not for war. The principles of deterrence are different from those of war. Whereas surprise and security are paramount in war, deterrence often hinges on publicising one’s capabilities and leading the enemy to believe you’re crazy enough to use them to the full effect.

[Read it all here.] [Also, Nir has a piece on PMCs in the same issue.]

Check out this article in the Atlantic on the investigation into the Hariri murder. I know we have a lot of Lebanon-watchers here on the blog, and I'm sure they will note the lack of any interviews with pro-March 8th politicians and spokespersons. But this article is worth looking at if only for my friend Kate's great photo essay accompanying the article. (Kate dropped out of college at 19 and moved to Chechnya. Yeah, she's that brand of amazing.)

[The story of my run-in with the drunken editor of Newsweekhas been deleted.]

Charlie awoke to find this email from The Namesake this morning (it seems he's forgotten how to lovingly write in the 3rd person since leaving the world famous blog):Charlie,

I was flipping through the archives here in Beirut this morning and came across this absolute gem by Robert Fisk. I'm sure the blog's readership will love it.

"ARIEL SHARON has done it again. ... Israel's new Prime Minister is accusing the Iranians of transferring new long-range missiles to Lebanon - capable, so he claims, of hitting the centre of Israel - and accusing Syria of using Lebanon's airports to transfer these fantasy missiles. It's important to use the word fantasy. In the hundreds of miles I travel across Lebanon every month, I have yet to see a long-range missile, let alone a transporter. Satellite pictures would easily identify such a rocket and Beirut airport is these days so hide-bound with security that you couldn't move a rifle through its terminal."
- Robert Fisk, The Independent (London), 30 March 2001.

Well! If Robert Fisk says they don't exist, they don't exist. Right? Because the odds of one of the world's most secretive guerrilla organizations being able to hide an advanced weapons system from Robert Fisk and his trusty driver Abed are approximately 0.00/1,000. You have no secrets that you can hide from Robert Fisk, Hassan Nasrallah, so don't even bother trying. He knows where you are right this very minute, in fact, and is coming to interview you this evening after he drives his obligatory hundred miles around the Bekaa Valley. (You're in Zahle today, right? Having ice cream? Fisk knew that. He also knows you summer in Ehden. No one else would have guessed that, but Fisk did.)

That 600mm Zelzal-2 (max. range 210km*) Hizballah tried to launch in 2006, by the way, must have been a special fantasy Zelzal-2. That was probably also a fantasy F-15 that the IAF claimed destroyed said fantasy Zelzal-2 in July 2006 and a fantasy Iranian official who admitted in August 2006 to supplying Hizballah with such fantasy weaponry.

*Or, for those of you who can't do the metric conversion, "capable of hitting the center of Israel."