Revolt Against Terrorism

In addition to our pursuit of veterans’ entitlements, there were two other issues which were of concern to the delegates at the Convention—Iraq and Israel/Hezbollah. Surprisingly, the similarities between them provided us with messages which we might not be willing to accept.

Both uncovered a very embarrassing and a very pronounced deficiency in operations. Each showed not only the inadequacy but the disastrous result of and the inefficient turf-ridden operations of intelligence information—or, really, the lack and misguided reporting thereof.

The Israelis who were always supposed to have the crème of intelligence ability were found to be deeply wanting in the knowledge of the intensive training of Hezbollah—the store of weapons in their control—the depth, width and length of their bunkers and tunnels and their coordinated abilities in attack and defense.

American intelligence was dysfunctional, not coordinated and lacking in real time information on which to base the Iraqi conflict. WMD and other rationalizations ended up being without merit, and the strategies were found to be wanting. It was as though the lessons learned in Viet Nam of the guerilla approach to battle had to be relearned.

Both placed their troops in harm’s way. What, if anything was learned other than we made some very serious mistakes. We learned to enhance our intelligence methods, and the US sought to consolidate the retrieval and analysis of information in a single coordinating department of government which is still not operational or turf-cleansed.

The Israeli/Hezbollah war has been equated with the Spanish Civil War, with Israel being the United States and Hezbollah being Iran and the Islamic fundamentalists. If that is the equation, then we ain’t hardly in an irreparable position. We were made aware of our failures in intelligence. We were made aware of a failure in the training of our troops to battle in the streets rather than on the battlefields. The enemy was embedded into the civilian community with street bombs and suicide bombers available to kill without distinction as to whom the victim would be. The civilians with whom they were embedded were either so frightened and lived in fear rather than cleaning them out of their environment or were willing combatants.

We followed a moral approach called “avoid collateral damage even when it allows for death and injury to your troops.” The enemy had no such restrictions. It is OK for Sunni to bomb Shiite mosques, and we called it a civil war to sanitize the death and destruction within the Muslim communities. Hezbollah shot rockets into Israeli communities killing and injuring civilians [Israeli Jew and Israeli Arab], and that was OK since they were only playing catch up.

Remember World War II—now there was a good war—we were fighting to control and to eliminate totalitarianism [read terrorist] and bring democracy back to the world. We did that by massive bombing of Tokyo, London, Dresden, murdering thousands of civilians. It wasn’t called collateral damage then, and it didn’t place restraints on plans and strategies to win the war. This time, the Israelis dropped leaflets on the civilian populations, allowing the civilians to leave, together with the enemy leaders—that really puts constraints on defeating an enemy.

I don’t know the solutions, or how to fight a clean war—I really don’t think that such an approach exists. The civilians who allow the enemy to live, store weaponry and troops within their communities are, for all intents, accessories of and to the enemy and should be so advised. And, then, let the conflict begin and be directed toward victory.

Intelligence is vital, but being intelligent is of equal importance. Victims will always remain victims as long as they attempt to play goody two shoes in a game which requires death as a main ingredient to success.