Hamas’ Rockets are No “Peashooters”

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

Watching Death Day and Night So Close By…

By Steve Clemons Washington Note

All those who continue to approach this tragic conflict, which emanates from an array of past soft failed policies implemented by the U.S., the EU, and their Middle East allies, with olive branches in their hands and a new “credible peace negotiation process” wishfully hoping that once they lay this conflict on their Procrustean bed of peace they will put this conflict to sleep for ever after, are like “certain octogenarians who hurl themselves at women to whom they are no longer capable of doing any serious danger”, to quote Marcel Proust.

Clemons who is an expert fisherman who finds and fishes aggressors from the depths of the ocean has found the aggressor of Gaza being Ehud Barak the Defense Minister of Israel who, according to Clemons, is “itching to manage a war.” So to Clemons the threat to more than half a million Israelis who live and work in the proximate range of Quassam rockets is merely an Israeli ‘itch’.

Another one on TWN, not an octogenarian but in one’s robust youthful prime, sails through the Clashing Rocks of the Bosporus without his dove and the help of Orpheus’s music  and without his Medea, unlike Jason, on erroneous routes in search of the Golden Fleece of peace in the Middle East. Dan Kervick, in his well-crafted narrative but badly-crafted strategic thinking, argues that it’s an error to think that by killing few bad actors and destroying their organizations one could resolve the problem, as those who have been killed will be replaced by other “Hamases”.

On this issue, he is unwilling–for understandable reasons who loathes to concede, that despite the heavy price, Iraq has been a tremendous success of the Bush-Cheney administration– to learn the lessons of the Surge in Iraq and the irrefutable evidence as presented by Bob Woodward in his new book, that it was the clandestine operations of Special Forces that killed al-Qaeda and al-Sadrist operatives in Iraq that has brought the country on the threshold of democracy. Where are the signs that those leaders of the insurgency in Iraq that have been killed are to be replaced by others? Haven’t they who escaped the deadly American grip all run to Afghanistan and Pakistan? Providing the Iraq government and its Western allies are vigilant and are prepared to take severe measures at the first signs of an al-Qaeda or al-Sadrist resurgence in the country there will be no renascence of a new insurgency in Iraq.

As for Kervick’s smart Alec comment that Israel is shooting at Palestinian “pea-shooters”, one can only say that he makes a farce out of a great danger. Hamas acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fazr-3 missiles that could reach nuclear warheads at Dimona. Are these “pea-shooters”?

More seriously, Brzezinski says that the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to rise to a level of strategic, forward-looking maturity to solve this problem and therefore the burden must fall on others such as the US and Europe and their Arab allies. I would agree with this proposition but with one important rider. The burden must be extended beyond its diplomatic purview. They must put troops on the ground. They must place an international garrison of troops in areas of Palestine where recalcitrant elements of Hamas and other terrorist organizations operate and continue to launch their rockets into Israel not as peace-keepers but as peace-enforcers, with the mandate that this international garrison will operate as an occupying power with the use of its military armaments that are related to such a status against Palestinian militants.

This is the hard way to peace and to the establishment of a Palestinian state and not in the misguided search for diplomatic Golden Fleeces of Peace.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

THE WAR CANNOT BE WON IF ITS COMMANDERS ARE HOSTAGES TO POLITICS

Dear readers of the Global Journal 

 I’m republishing this proposal sent to President Bush as Washington politicians were  attempting in the mid stages of the Surge to micro-manage the war.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The following was written on April 11, 2004 and was sent to President Bush on the same date. It’s republished now, as the Bush administration is forging a new strategy for Iraq that hopefully will be victorious against the murderous insurgents.

Dear Mr. President,

The present armed insurgency, threatening to become a general insurgency against your forces in Iraq, unless its momentum is promptly nipped in the bud, of Shiites and Sunnis against the Coalition, threatens to put off balance your whole strategic project for Iraq and the Middle East in general, which would have tremendously negative effects on the war against global terror. Needless to say therefore, the stakes are infinitely high.

At the present moment these fanatic thugs are fighting your forces under the misperception that they have the “upper hand” in this confrontation. It is for this reason therefore, that any conciliatory move your Authority in Iraq will be making toward the insurgents will be perceived by them to be a sign of weakness by your side. A current example of this is the ceasefire in Fallujah, that Paul Bremer was probably compelled to declare as a result of pressures put upon him by some members of the Interim Governing Council (IGC). This was done to presumably give the opportunity to diplomatic palaver to resolve some of the issues that are contested between, in my judgement, irreconcilable opponents. These talks are bound to fail, as you will confront the hardened positions of these fanatics, which arise from their false belief that they will be bargaining from a strong position, that will be totally incompatible with your military plans against the insurgents, and therefore will be rejected by your side.

It is neither surprising nor unreasonable, that some members of the IGC have condemned your military actions in Fallujah and have opted for negotiations with the insurgents. What is unreasonable however, about the stand of the IGC – which apparently does not have political and military strategists among its members – is the futility, except as a public relations stunt of doubtful value, of these negotiations on the core issues between the belligerents, and the loss of valuable time that could be expended instead by your military commanders in putting, urgently and immediately, a stop to the momentum of the insurgency that threatens to engulf the whole country.

Paul Bremer therefore, has the responsibility to awaken these members of the IGC from their somnambulistic illusions, and spell out to them the high stakes involved, which can only be resolved by the use of major military force by the Coalition. However, despite these negative aspects of the ceasefire in Fallujah, it can be used positively by enabling women and children to evacuate the town, hence saving them from becoming collateral casualties from a future attack by your forces.

The paradigm of Vietnam has shown conclusively that your brave commanders and troops could not win a war that was politically restrained, as to the appropriate kind of weapons used against their enemies, by the hands of “micro-politicians”. In any major critical military engagement, military considerations should have the upper hand over political considerations. Certainly, the overwhelming military response of your forces against the insurgents will have local and international repercussions and will spark a “wildfire” of protests against your Administration. But despite this, the priority of the military over the political must not be modified and must prevail. It is the price that statesmanship must pay.

Moreover, what is of the utmost importance in this conflict is to inflict such a deadly blow on the insurgents in selected towns of Iraq, from which they will never be able to recover. It is not enough to capture or kill them in small numbers, but to do so in the largest number possible. Their capture or killing en masse, will have a powerful psychological effect upon other insurgents in other towns, and will irreparably breakdown their morale and their fighting spirit. To achieve this goal, you Mr. President, as Commander-in- Chief, must direct your commanders on the ground to use the weapons that would inflict this devastating blow on the insurgents. That means that incendiary bombs, and the “daisies cutter” be used as a last resort against the insurgents, whose total defeat is so pivotal to your historic project in Iraq and to the war against global terror.

Sure enough, as I said above, there will be multiple political repercussions on a world scale. But one has to be reminded that wars are won or lost by military actions not by political repercussions. It is a terrible situation to be in for a Commander-in-Chief, but the question for free, open, and civilized societies, is to be or not to be. It is by such tragic and historic burdens that your leadership and Tony Blair’s are weighed with presently. But the mantle of statesmanship falls on Churchillian shoulders.

Your turn now…

ARMENIAN RESOLUTION:DEMOCRATS COMMIT THEIR OWN GENOCIDE

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Only someone with the chutzpah of intellectual arrogance and a parvenu to boot in realpolitik and foreign affairs could be behind such a remarkably doltish resolution that puts an arrow through the heart of a much needed ally, such as Turkey, at a time when the US is engaged in war in the Middle East.

The Democrats with this resolution, from Lantos to Pelosi and Reid, have shown themselves to be immaculate political tyros in the affairs of foreign policy and war. They have committed by the passing of this resolution their own genocide. The “genocide” of the alliance with Turkey, which is so vital to America’s foreign policy interests in the Middle East, and to the protection of US troops in Iraq whose major part of supplies for fighting the war come through Turkey.

By the passing of this totally irresponsible resolution the Democrats have cancelled themselves out from governing the country at this critical time when America confronts and fights a mortal foe. And the Lantos’ resolution will go down in the annals of American politics as the great caricature that it’s in statecraft. In their manic run to force Bush to withdraw from Iraq, they have stabbed in the back the sons and daughters of America who are fighting and winning the war under their superb commander David Petraeus, to achieve their treacherous and despicable ends.