War in the middle east

Here is a useful device for anyone seeking to clear-headedly assess foreign policy matters: switch around the identities of the players so that one is not biased by the identities of the parties. On many occasions, one does not even need to look to hypotheticals, because history will provide minimal pair cases for you. But for this technique to work you don't need real facts, just a set of facts, true or not, that someone believes and wants to argue from.

Today we look at a situation with the following elements:

1. Country A and Country B are neighbors with a history. They are not peacefully inclined toward one another, but we start the scenario at a juncture of relative peace.

2. Country A is the home to a group of people who are utterly and violently opposed to the regime of Country B. Among these people are some who claim land within Country B for themselves, and others who are in solidarity with those aspirations.

3. These people in Country A do not run Country A but they hold seats in its highest legislative body and are a potent political force. Many people in Country A think they're crazy, but when you consider what it would take to neutralize them as a political force, few in government have the will to stand up to them, and it's not uncommon that the executive overtly favors them.

4. These people launch small attacks on Country B. Nothing huge, because they're not really a significant military force, but people in Country B can sometimes expect their territory to be violated, particularly from the air, and people in Country B have been killed as a result of these attacks. (The number of actual attackers is small, but their base of support is broad.)

5. Country A does almost nothing to stop it. It continues to provide safe haven, while people move through its streets with signs lauding the attackers, hold parades for their most violent leaders, even as they are denounced around the world as terrorists. (But in defense of Country A, it's frankly a disaster and its government has shown almost complete inability to help its own people in the event of a serious crisis.)

6. Country B practices restraint, lodges formal protests. It has taken defensive military action in the past over these violations, but it seems they will continue until the terrorists and their supporters that want to completely eliminate B's government are dealt with decisively. Country B has a legitimate right to defend itself, of course. How far may it legitimately go to eliminate the threat of the people sheltered by Country A?

Given what's in the news these days, one might guess that country A is Lebanon, Country B is Israel, and the people operating unmolested from Lebanese territory are Hizbollah. The mainstream press accounts the facts above, and generally asserts that Israel may pulverize South Lebanon until Hizbollah either surrenders or is obliterated.

An alternative scenario has A as the United States, B as Cuba, and violent anti-Castro groups operating mainly out of Miami, but also out of New Jersey and some other places, in the Hizbollah role. One should not forget that some of these exile groups were identified by the U.S. government as domestic terrorists (when they bombed and assassinated political opponents in Miami), that they are blamed for thousands of Cuban deaths, and that their bloodiest representatives, like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles are given pardons or asylum by the federal govermnment and openly feted in Miami.

There are differences, but they do not generally favor the U.S. Unlike Lebanon, which was invaded, the U.S. has never been attacked by Cuba but itself launched an abortive invasion of Cuba, using its exile army. And the support for the Cuban exiles, including massive amounts of money, plus training, weapons, and intelligence, is tracable to the U.S. government, not some outside meddling state like Syria or Iran. These differences make average Americans more culpible in the deaths of innocent Cubans than average Lebanese are in the deaths of Israelis.

So by the logic of the media majority, Israel supporters and most of Congress, it should be legitimate for Cuba to seek to wipe out the terrorist exile groups and their supporters by mercilessly bombing Miami and Trenton. If Israel is right in all that it's doing, then Cuba should be free to destroy American bridges and hospitals first, target U.N. and Red Cross facilities, and, having rendered the civilian population incapable of medical aid or escape, rain down illegal phosphorous munitions. Once a few major U.S. cities have been turned into massive graveyards by the aerial assault, the ground troops would be expected to come in and round up the remaining anti-Castro terrorists and sympathizers.

There are two logical positions. Either:

(1) one determines that Cuba would be justified in committing massive violence to eliminate the bed of opposition it faces from its exiles in the U.S., or

(2) one determines that Israel has, at very least, gone to far in its effort to curb Hizbollah.

I choose the second.