EXCERPT: The wars in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon are all inter-linked, as US abuses in Iraq provide a model for Israel's indiscriminate violence against civilians, and its breach of international humanitarian law. Israel is doing what the United States pioneered, when the world's superpower created conditions of international anarchy by destroying the checks and balances of the international system. The pro-Israeli ideologues in Washington are still driven by the fantasy that the entire Middle East can be restructured by military force to suit US and Israeli interests - and the President, worried about the looming mid-term elections in November, is too stubborn and too ignorant to call a halt to this madness.

Losing the Three-Front War

by Patrick Seale

Middle East Online, 3 August 2006

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=17172

In a word of wise advice to pig-headed political leaders, Denis Healey, a former British Defence Secretary, used to say, "When you're in a hole, stop digging!" The United States and Israel are in a deep and dangerous hole. They urgently need to stop digging before the hole swallows them up.

They are fighting, and losing, on three fronts - Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. It seems that this is not enough for the more insane and hysterical among them who are clamouring to extend the war to Syria and Iran, and to the whole of what they like to call the "Islamo-Fascist" world. Israel denies it is involved in the Iraq war. But, in fact, it is as much part of that conflict as the United States is now part of the wars in Lebanon and Palestine. Israel participated in the strategic planning for the Iraq War, which was designed to remove any threat to it from the east. Its neocon friends in Washington egged on America and fabricated the phoney intelligence which persuaded a gullible President that smashing Iraq was necessary for America's security.

Three years later, the United States is up to its neck in the Iraqi quagmire, squandering billions of dollars and losing men at the rate of about one a day, but without the good sense or the will to hoist itself out of the hole.

The wars in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon are all inter-linked, as US abuses in Iraq provide a model for Israel's indiscriminate violence against civilians, and its breach of international humanitarian law. Israel is doing what the United States pioneered, when the world's superpower created conditions of international anarchy by destroying the checks and balances of the international system.

The pro-Israeli ideologues in Washington are still driven by the fantasy that the entire Middle East can be restructured by military force to suit US and Israeli interests - and the President, worried about the looming mid-term elections in November, is too stubborn and too ignorant to call a halt to this madness.

The wars in Lebanon and Palestine are US-Israeli wars, pre-planned jointly and waged in close strategic coordination. The Israelis do the fighting while the United States provides the funding, the weapons, and the political and diplomatic cover: delaying a ceasefire to give Israel time to "finish the job."

But the wars are not going their way. In both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel might achieve some tactical gains - like this week's commando raid on Baalbek - but a strategic victory is almost certainly unattainable.

Hezbollah and Hamas are not conventional armies which can be wiped out on a battlefield, nor are they terrorist organisations with no claim to recognition or respect. They are national resistance movements deeply rooted in the local populations they represent, whose rights and lives they seek to defend against Israel's repeated aggressions.

In Lebanon, Israel's immediate aim appears to be to drive Hezbollah and the local civilian population out of a 30 kilometre-wide stretch in the hope that an international force will then step in to disarm Hezbollah and protect Israel from further rocket attacks. This is a pipedream.

Occupying south Lebanon will not protect Israeli forces from further guerrilla attacks - such as drove them out in 2000 - and no country will send troops to fight Hezbollah on Israel's behalf. As the French have made clear, an international force can be deployed only with the consent of all parties, Hezbollah included, and only when peace is restored.

In the meantime, the villages of south Lebanon are being devastated by intense bombardment, while their panic-stricken inhabitants flee north as best they can - those that have not been buried in the rubble of their homes.

The moral and political cost to Israel of this ethnic cleansing and state terrorism is exceedingly high. Israel's contempt for Arab life and the laws of war has eroded the legitimacy it managed to achieve in its brief 58 years of existence. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of outraged and radicalized Arabs are itching to attack it.

This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Israel's policy. By seeking to restore its dented deterrent capability by brutal means - by demanding the freedom to attack its enemies while denying them the freedom to hit back - leaves it increasingly vulnerable to asymmetrical warfare.

The wider US and Israeli aim of destroying Hezbollah and removing all trace of Syria or Iranian influence from Lebanon is an unattainable fantasy flying in the face of local realities. For historical, confessional and social reasons, because of a dense network of family and other ties, and because of shared strategic and security interests, Syria and Iran will always have far greater sway in Lebanon than Israel or the United States.

Whatever military surprises the next week or two may bring, it is already clear that hatred for Israel and disillusion with America will know no bounds, while Hezbollah will emerge stronger from the battle. By setting themselves impossible aims, Israel and the United States have guaranteed their own failure.

The United States is now at an important crossroads in its dealings with the Arab and Muslim world. Will it sink deeper into hostility or can it find the wisdom to correct its aim? There are experienced advisors in Washington who know what needs to be done - e.g., Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush senior, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser - but their voices are not heard in George W. Bush's White House.

Bush's Global War on Terrorism and his unconditional support for Israel have made him a host of enemies. No US President in modern times has been more reviled. The United States even seems incapable of disciplining its unruly Israeli protégé, as Secretary Rice learned to her cost this past week. She thought Israel's Prime Minister Olmert had promised her a 48-hour ceasefire, but Israel continued its bombardment unabashed. She told Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy premier, that a ceasefire could be obtained in days, and he contradicted her publicly saying Israel needed weeks.

Where then is America's global leadership? It has been flushed down the drain in what Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called a "culture of violence."

The choice facing President George W. Bush is stark. It is between continuing his backing for Israel's disastrous wars in Lebanon and Palestine - perhaps even extending the conflict to Iran and Syria - or calling a halt to such folly and asserting his leadership for peace.

This could be Bush's chance to rescue his presidency from failure. He must put America's great weight and his personal prestige behind a comprehensive regional settlement. It can be done and he has the time to do it. But to succeed, he will need to make a clean sweep of advisers who have put America in danger.

The problems of the region must be tackled frontally and together, because they are interlinked:

* The Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be resolved with the creation of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.

* The Israeli-Syrian conflict must be resolved with the return to Syria of the Golan.

* Lebanon must be rebuilt with a massive injection of aid and international guarantees for its future security.

* The United States must start a bilateral dialogue with Iran aimed at restoring diplomatic relations and recognising Iran's regional interests and security fears.

* Israel must give up its vain ambition to dominate the region militarily and should instead, safe within its 1967 borders, conclude peace treaties with the entire Arab world based on mutual respect and good neighbourliness.

Is this utopian vision the greatest pipedream of all? In the meantime the killing goes on, and everyone is a loser.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also ,Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.