Was Israel Listening?
A year ago Biden & Co begged Israel to avoid the same mistakes America did in the wake of 9/11.
“Israel must not make the same mistakes we made after 9/11,” were words either directly said or implied in various statements for weeks following 10/7 from President Biden, VP Harris, Secretary of Defense Austin, Secretary of State Blinken, and numerous American diplomats, politicians and retired General Officers. It was a disturbing revision of history in which the US was blinded by rage after Al Qaeda, at the hands of Osama Bin Laden, celebrated their successful attack on the United States and the West as a whole. It was perhaps a fair statement to be made by some, who voted as members of the American legislature to go to war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and dozens of other countries around the world. Perhaps it was a fair assessment as well from numerous officers and administrators who made a career out of failed policies in failed wars.
They were not wrong, and Israel listened - even though almost all of them would argue the opposite. The American campaign against the Taliban in October and November of 2001 was a massive success and took the Taliban from a national government to tiny pockets of defeated fighters cowering in caves. In 28 days, the coalition lead by the United States decimated the fourth largest army in the world, sending only a fraction of their conventional fighting forces to do it. An even smaller contingent of a similar coalition backed by massive airpower peeled back the Islamic State terror army a decade later, listed here only as an honorable mention.
Though the war has been executed with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the top, the IDF has largely retained battlefield command in their execution of the Gaza and now Lebanon Campaigns.
This is the sort of thing revised out of history, since what Biden & Co were really pushing were not to make the mistakes of a pair of “forever” wars that ended in catastrophe after the military stepped out of the way and granted the politicians the reins of the war. Though the war has been executed with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the top, the IDF has largely retained battlefield command in their execution of the Gaza and now Lebanon Campaigns. The American transition from the “combat” phase to the “day after” phase in both Iraq and Afghanistan were the flops to be avoided. Casualties soared as American military personnel were caught in a violent insurgency supporting a flailing and corrupt government unable to govern without foreign support.
It’s worth noting that Israel’s response to October 7th, made by the argument of many at the UN calling for Israeli restraint, is already a “forever war.” Various politicians will argue “this war” started in 1948, 1967, 1973, 1983, 2005, 2006 or perhaps later. Pick any you like, but the solution then to avoiding “forever war” is thus to end the war in this campaign rather than kicking the can down the road as the US did in 1991 and in 2009. Again, Israel listened: the American failure was the focus on what came next before the war had even been decided. Most politicians have stopped shouting about Israel’s need for a “day after” plan as a result of exhaustion - Israel doesn’t have one - and recognizes that it isn’t needed to kill terrorists.
Likewise, Israel has proven it understood the risks of insurgency, and the reliance on forcing insurgencies in the Terror Axis playbook. For the last 8 months Gaza has been as lawless as Baghdad was in April of 2003 - except the IDF did listen and hasn’t repeated the mistakes. Plenty of armchair generals have laid criticism to Israel’s seize and withdraw strategy; by keeping forces out of Gaza they deny Hamas the opportunity to conduct an insurgency. The IDF isn’t going to win hearts and minds in the Gaza Strip but local policing actions, school building and economic recovery missions are unnecessary. This benefits the “day after” plan because the problem in Afghanistan was always that Americans could create a secure village but doing so required American forces to permanently be stationed there to achieve the security. This isn’t to give points to Israel, they don’t have a “day after” plan, but the result of their unwillingness to provide the social services means that whoever will govern the day after must fill the void themselves and without support.
Israel won’t as a result have a say in how democratic the new government the day after will be, but that is irrelevant to Israelis. They’ll make peace with whoever wants to acknowledge their right to exist, and whoever is willing to be a peaceful neighbor. This of course is the sticking point for the commentators in the West - who argue that you cannot eradicate an ideology with warfare. Biden believes this because his administration yielded Afghanistan back to the very cowering cave survivors 20 years later, running on a platform that at least his war reformed the Taliban into a more moderate government than the one he voted as a Senator to eradicate. Unfortunately for him, the Taliban celebrated their three year victory anniversary by rolling back all reforms and returning to the very government they were in 2001, just with much better weapons and training from the Americans.
Like Naziism and Japanese Supremacy, Israel is reminding the West that the only way you dismantle a toxic ideology is to physically eradicate it. A majority of Palestinians now believe launching the October 7th attack was wrong, and with that Hamas’ popularity has cratered. In Lebanon Hezbollah is getting the blame from civilians packing their belongings into their cars and evacuating from the fighting. Polling indicates that where Israeli bombs don’t fall in the Arab world Hamas remains popular following their attack a year ago, but where those very same bombs fall, the blame is going to the people who started the war in the first place.
Ideologies cannot be defeated militarily, particularly in the internet age. Today in the wet forests of the northwestern United States there are rundown camps built around old trailer homes where Hitler’s ideology still reigns supreme. That doesn’t mean the Greatest Generation failed. Today Germany won’t even grant citizenship to applicants who have posted on social media anything remotely anti-Semitic, Holocaust denial, or supportive of the “Nazi idea.” Promotion of Nazi slogans earn jail time and in the process a scuffing up by the Polizei. No sovereign state today harbors the ideology and while anti-Semitism is once again rampant, and while anyone who disagrees with the Left is branded a “nazi” the truth is plain as day: Naziism was crushed through overwhelming military force.
The ideas may persist, and a few well-armed but overweight dreamers may imagine they will change the world through a violent means which requires peak physical effort and most importantly discipline. Yet that effort and discipline are being displayed on the battlefield by the Israeli Defense Forces against equally detestable ideologies. In Lebanon Hezbollah’s stock has fallen mightily, though the Western press corps works hard as ever to convince their readers otherwise.
Yet a militarily defeated Hamas that continues to face pressure will struggle to keep their thumb on the political arena - so long as outside governments don’t return them to power with deals like the Taliban got.
While Hamas has no real challenger to their throne, Hezbollah is different. Amal is the other major Shiite party in Lebanon, markedly different in that they don’t harbor genocidal intent against Jews. In Gaza one might hate Hamas but no one else will step into the power vacuum, in Beirut you can vote Amal. For reasons unknown, Western thinking is that government cannot form without outside intervention, despite the majority of Western governments establishing themselves. We might not want to believe this is our thought, but our actions for 70 years suggest otherwise. Yet a militarily defeated Hamas that continues to face pressure will struggle to keep their thumb on the political arena - so long as outside governments don’t return them to power with deals like the Taliban got.
Just like 2001, when the Taliban had lost Afghanistan in their absence local tribal leaders stepped up again. It may not have been a perfect central government of the people and by the people, it couldn’t then support a military let alone ambassadors and a chair at the UN - but it was all bowled over by the US installed “day after” implementation. The result was the resurgence of the Taliban and today they are recognized by more governments and are entering into treaties with the Russians. Many of the warlords who stepped in initially might have been the least ideal choice to American intentions, but at the time they knew that it was simply another 30-day campaign from the sky to reopen their executive opportunities to someone else.
That will be equally true in Gaza. Groups who rise to power who chose violence with Israel will seek the veto pen of the IDF. To some in the West this smacks Imperialism with a capital “I.” However Israel could care less what and how the future government of Palestine might choose to answer any issue of governance so long as that answer isn’t war with Israel. The real truth is that Israel has no desire to dictate to any of their neighbors how to live, as long as it’s agreeing that Israel should live in peace.
In the end, Israel listened keenly on the advice of American leaders about repeating our own mistakes. Perhaps some of this is simply clarity that comes with victory or death: a problem the West hasn’t faced since the 1940s. It is unlikely many in England would have elected Churchill had the Germans not begun visibly threatening their demise. Westerners prefer a world where swords are melted into farm tools, leaders who promise peace and comfort retain power longer than those who promise sacrifice and hardship. However just like Britons in 1940, Israelis have recognized that appeasement is the forever war. They got the message: “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”