Whose war is this?

Today the New York Times reported that the U.S. is rushing shipments of missiles to Israel to support the aerial attack on Lebanon. (Evidently the Israelis are running short) As I read this article it occurred to me that one way to understand this conflict is as a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S arms and finances the Jews and Iran arms and finances the Muslims. That way only the Israelis and Lebanese get to die and have their infrastructure destroyed while the Americans and Iranians can sit peacefully at home and watch. One wonders why the Israelis and Lebanese don’t say “Wait a minute, if you guys want to have a war, fight it yourselves”. Perhaps they love war so much that they would do it anyway without any help from the U.S. and Iran, but after a while they would be reduced fighting with swords. It could be different looking eye to eye with your enemy rather than dropping bombs or shooting missiles at people that you can not see. They could still kill each other, but they would be a lot less efficient at it. It’s possible that the Israelis may tire of fighting this war. My impression is that the Israelis are a lot like Americans when it comes to war. They are pretty tolerant of casualties on the other side, but a lot less tolerant of their own casualties. There was a large anti war rally in Tel Aviv today led by Israeli Arabs and left wing Jews. The unique thing about this rally was that it was not only anti-war, but also anti-American. The anti-American and anti-Bush slogans were reminiscent of the rallies in Arab capitals. “We will not die, we will not kill in the service of the United States.” (For more on this click here) Maybe the Israelis are beginning to realize that the U.S may not always have their best interests at heart. Is the U.S. saying “Go fight Hezbollah; we’re right behind you all the way”? If the Israelis back out before the “job is done”, maybe the U.S. needs a plan B. The U.S. could arm and finance the Lebanese Christians and Druze to fight Hezbollah. The U.S. has a history of proxy wars in recent years and the results have not been all that good. In the 90’s in Bosnia the U.S. armed the Christians and the Iranians armed and supported the Muslims. The result was that a lot of people died to reach today’s marginal state. In the 80’s the U.S. fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In that case it was our Afghanis versus your Afghanis and the result was a failed state where only the Taliban, the war lords and Usama Bin Laden were happy. With Iraq at the top of the list of potential failed states in the region, the continued destruction in Lebanon and the possibility of a civil war will make what remains of Lebanon a prime candidate for the list. The only person who will be happy with that state of affairs will be Usama Bin Laden who will take advantage of the chaos to advance his war against the west and modernity.


Israel
Middle East