I've been reading more about how the attacks on Lebanon are hitting infrastructure, even gas stations, to reduce mobility within the country. This is extremely short sighted on Israel's part, and it should be smarter than this. I understand that the idea is to reduce the mobility of the terrorists who have the hostage soldiers, but Israel is a longtime player in the anti-terrorist game, and should know better. The examples of Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq are unequivocal - failed states breed terror.
If Lebanon is left without infrastructure, and without the means to obtain a prosperous economy and pluralist polity (which it seemed slowly to be moving to with the Cedar revolution), then Israel will have a failed state right on its border. Aside from the human catastrophe of making Lebanon miserable again, this is worse than having an authoritarian tyranny like Syria for a neighbour. A strongman can be controlled. There can be detente with dictators. There is no detente with the wild west, and there is no controlling a wasteland.
If Iraq isn't evidence enough of that, I don't know what is.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Ruined countries breed terror
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2 comments:
Actually, there is a very interesting essay dealing with this issue (though not Lebanon specifically):
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2006/07/arab-mind-and-cost-of-war-in.html
That is a pretty good essay. One could make the case that Lebanon was a country in a hybrid form - half tribal (in the south), half autocracy. It seems the autocracy was on the cusp of its third phase - democracy, when the tribal element decided to drag everyone back into the past...
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