Unfortunately, I can hardly be called impartial when it comes to Israel, so dont judge my response on the whole as being such. Just a disclaimer before I start.
My best answer in all of this is politics, especially the love affair between the left and the terrorists.
Both Israel and the US have more than their fair share of population who espouse leftist views that complicates the conflict and in some cases, literally cause defeats after we have won decisive victories.
I cant help but believe some of this is by design and cooperative partnerships between the left and the terrorists ( definition: Al Qaeda, Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PA) which cause enough political confusion that it translates down to the troops on the ground. The ground zero for this movement can be seen in the Islamic presence in Academia and the campuses of this country.
Until both Israel and the US are free of this complication, we are seemingly doomed to be perpetually befuddled in our policies and weakened in our foreign presence. This will encourage more problems on the ground.
We cant lose the war, but some of our population cannot be satisfied with us winning it. Its the strangest paradox in history.
"We cant lose the war, but some of our population cannot be satisfied with us winning it. Its the strangest paradox
in history."
Get ready for the next "government".
I think part of the answer "why" is because fighting this war nation-state by nation-state is "winnable" (Afghanistan-Iraq-Libya-Syria(?)-Iran(?)-North Korea(?) ).
Fighting an all-out war against Islam/"Islamism"/"jihadism" is not winnable.
A decades or centuries-long war of apocalyptic attrition is the best case scenario.
In that scenario, millions of Americans will die in coming years/decades and tens of millions of our adversaries (most on both sides being entirely innocent civilians - - the war on terror would become the ultimate war *of* terror).
Worst case scenario is sudden escalation to mutual annihilation sometime in the near to mid-term (once WMD capabilities become widespread and reach a "saturation point") with hundreds of millions dying on both sides and the survivors taking generations to rebuild civilization.
We are different from Israel in that we have the relative power to shape the regional and global battlefield. They do not (except at the margins). In their game, they have to play the hand they are dealt. In our game, we are the dealer.
Israel could have never forced Libya to disarm. We did. Our strategy is more sophisticated and calibrated because we are playing this out on multiple battlefields. Their strategy is also nuanced. Even though they struck Syria for the first time in decades last October, they struck and empty camp. And this time, they didn't use the IAF where there would be definite collateral damage in a bombing, but they targeted an individual. If Syria and Israel get into full scale conventional war (and the pressure is now high on Syria to escalate this - - we will soon see whether this was a brilliant move on the part of Israel or strategic idiocy based on whether this escalates and how far) , then this becomes mankind's first WMD regional/world war. No one wants that, especially Syria or Israel because they would both be ground zero.
There is still a chance Syria may be ready to go the Libya route. It is slim, but who thought Moammar would straighten up and fly right?
If we have to do this the hard way, then we will. But the cost will be horrendous here at home and abroad. The Cold War was won because we were ready to go down the hard road of nuclear war if necessary, but no one in their right mind would deny that it would have been idiocy to actually desire that outcome. No one would have "won". But we could not let the "terror" of that possibility force us to flinch, we had to be ready to fight an unthinkable and unwinnable war to bring the Cold War global conflict to an end.
We have to be ready to go down the hard road (and turn away from the siren songs of the same leftists who wanted unilateral freezes/disarmament/surrender in the latter stages of the Cold War). But we have to resist the urge to "cut to the chase" and begin what some saw/see as the inevitable global clash that had better be fought sooner rather than later.
The Cold War could have ended in 1962. Our nuclear superiority at the time of the Cuban missile crisis was still unchallenged as the Soviets did not close the missile gap until the late 1970s. But while we would have "won" from the standpoint of military strategy (we could have survived as a functioning nation but they would not), it would have been a pyhhric victory as our losses in a 1962 nuclear exchange would still have definitely been in the millions if not tens of millions.
It was far better that we were patient and won a relatively bloodless victory rather than seeing global conflict, the clash of Cold War civilizations, as inevitable. Reagan saw that as he was ready to press the "pedal to the metal" (unprecedented peacetime military buildup; "evil empire" speech"; SDI; doctrine of rollback rather than containment), but his strategy was nuanced and sophisticated enough so that when that resolve began to produce results (internal debates within the USSR; signs of their system fracturing; openness to negotiated end to global hostilities on terms favorable to us), he began to negotiate peace from a position of strength (Nixon tried to do this with Brezhnev in the early 70s; but detente was an expression of American weakness (Vietnam and Watergate) rather than strength as it was under Reagan.
I am not saying we can *ever* have a peaceful outcome or negotiate with terrorists.
They are undeterrable and cannot be negotiated with, only destroyed. But the "terrorists" are not the enemy. The nation-states that sponsor them are because without them they cannot survive just as fire cannot burn without oxygen.
Yogi Berra once said something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "wherever you happen to be, there you are". Terrorists may appear to be "stateless", but it is an illusion. They have to plan, train, fund, publicize and organize. They cannot do that from Mars. They have to be somewhere on this planet.
The Bush Doctrine is the *only* (and I mean *only*) way to win this war. The axis of evil is the center of gravity. And like the Cold War, the fewer of the coming wars that go "hot" the better.
It would be best to win the war and at the same time, in the end, still have a world worth the saving and not some apocalyptic wasteland that has been ravaged over the coming decades of new Dark Ages that, unlike the Cold War, would result from the undeterrable, martyrdom-seeking madness of a merciless, unrestrained, insane Crusade/Holy War/Jihad of genetic weapons and repeated acts of urban nuclear terrorism. A "scorched earth policy" when it comes to WMD jihad will result in a scorched Earth for all of us.
Reagan won the Cold War. I take my script from him. Be fully prepared to kill and destroy your enemy, not only with expressions of sincere intent, but of overwhelming capability, *but*, once he shows he is ready to deal - - embrace him. And if we take down enough of these states that support terrorism, there will literally be nowhere left for terrorists to hide.
If you take the six nations in the first sentence and add Cuba (and Castro is on his last legs), you have the seven state-sponsors of terrorism as defined by our State Dep pre-9/11.
Take away the states and you cripple and even neutralize the terrorists they sponsor. Whether by "regime change" (Afghanistan and Iraq) or by the "regime changing" (Libya), we are methodically advancing in a campaign to destroy global terrorism. We can do this the easy way (a regime voluntarily disarming and changing its ways), or the hard way (changing a regime by forcible disarmament).
Either way, we will do it. But always leave the door open for the wayward to come in from the cold.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/482329.html
Last update - 12:58 27/09/2004
Hamas: Arab state may have helped Israel with assassination
By Amos Harel, Yoav Stern, and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents, and news agencies
(snip)
DAMASCUS - Hamas said on Monday an Arab country might have helped Israel assassinate one of its leaders in Damascus, an act it called "treason."
Senior Hamas official Iz a Din al-Sheikh Khalil was killed by a car bomb in the Syrian capital on Sunday.
"We were not convinced initially, this would be treason for an Arab security apparatus to be involved in this," Hamas Lebanon head Osama Hamdan said of a report in the Al-Hayat daily.
The Arabic daily said an Arab country had given the Israeli spy agency Mossad information about the movements and habits of Hamas leaders abroad.
"Now, because of what happened yesterday or through other information, there are indications that this may be case," he said.
A spokesman in Gaza for Hamas said Sunday the killing was "a cowardly crime by the Zionist Mossad."