The Blue Lobster
4. Israel’s “allies” have always proven to be fickle and unreliable, whether we are considering Eisenhower’s self-admitted mistake in intervening in the 1956 Egyptian campaign or France’s betrayal of Israel or the UNIFIL forces in Lebanon permitting Hezbollah to re-arm in violation of UN Resolution 1701 or President Obama’s current agenda to render Israel increasingly defenseless against its terrorist enemies. Israel cannot depend on the good faith or treaty obligations of its allies whatever its geographical dimensions.
5. The phrase “perpetual occupation” is a misnomer and an oft-repeated blue lobster mantra. Israel withdrew from its buffer zone in South Lebanon and was rewarded with an Iranian-supplied missile armada trained on its cities. Israel withdrew from Gaza and reaped thousands of Hamas rockets falling on its civilian centers. The Palestinian Authority controls almost the entirety of the West Bank. There is no “occupation” in the present acceptation of the term, but mainly “facts on the ground” entailing some scattered hamlets in the Shomron, the inevitable population growth in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and the necessary security apparatus to prevent the infiltration of suicide bombers.
Friedman’s conclusion is, in consequence, largely untenable. The reason Israel did comparatively poorly in its post-1967 wars has little or nothing to do with its expanded boundaries or the supposed onset of macromania. Rather we must look to the inescapable human frailties of over-confidence and complacency, the conviction that past successes augur future victories, which leads to the subliminal assumption of invincibility. The prelude to the 1973 or “Yom Kippur War,” in which Israel was effectively asleep at the wheel, is an illustration of this predictable weakness and lapse of judgment. The somewhat disheveled condition of the army during the 2006 Summer War is another such instance. Yet another enfeebling element is — or was — the pervasive feeling of weariness after two generations of unrelenting conflict, expressed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his infamous “we are tired of winning” speech.
No less significant, programmatic left-wing defeatism and utopian irreality in the press and the academy plainly had a role to play in arranging for the country’s more recent miseries. The deterioration in the quality of the Israeli leadership is also a salient factor in the country’s suffering — a Barak who fled Lebanon in the night, a Sharon who went back on his word in disengaging from Gaza, an Olmert and a Livni ready to give up the store to their Palestinian “peace partners.” Blue lobsters all, these leaders-in-name-only were all willing to comply with their so-called “allies” and to recede, as per Friedman and others, to smaller, less defensible or protected borders. In doing so, they brought only various forms of burden and distress to their people.
Clearly, the extension of Israel’s border is completely irrelevant to its malaise, notwithstanding what our “experts” seem to think. What we are remarking here is not responsible tradecraft but a kind of mental aberration at work. More and more, we are led and lectured to by people who are prone to delusions of self-importance coupled with magical thinking, the belief that an ideological slogan, noble intentions, an unsupported theory or a wave of the negotiating wand can accomplish results that only humility, insight, practical acumen, and a dedication to long-haul survival can yield. All Western nations have succumbed to this deformity of thought, but tiny Israel in its territorial corset is most in jeopardy.
Unfortunately, the blue lobsters of the political and ideological domain tend to proliferate and reproduce with abandon. They swim not only in the waters off Prince Edward Island but in all the oceans of the world. Armored against the lessons of reality and convinced of their uniqueness, they glitter in the media and international forums, oblivious to their natal incongruity. Whether we are considering public intellectuals like Friedman, whose numbers are legion, or political authorities who have allowed themselves to be swayed by fantasies of sophistication, they are not so much genetic anomalies as intellectual misfits, political incompetents and, what is most disheartening, a pod of eccentrics who threaten to become the norm.
“Just as Stalin and Mao were not really “crazy,” as popular wisdom had it, and therefore could be engaged by Roosevelt and Nixon respectively, so Ahmadinejad is to be regarded as more of a rhetorical windbag than a man of action or a man of his word, and can be successfully approached by President Obama with a view to furthering their mutual interests.”
You know what’s so pathetic about a statement like that? It just goes against everything you generally read about recent history. Sure, treat Ahmadinejad as a”rhetorical windbag.” That is exactly the same thing people said about Hitler in the 1930s. “Oh don’t worry about Hitler. His speeches about German world conquest and the extermination of the Jews are just exagerations. He doesn’t REALLY mean any of it.” Well, we all saw how well THAT turned out, right?
And Stalin was just a good wartime leader, right? He would never try to destroy the same people who helped him defeat the Nazis, correct? Well, I guess that whole Cold War thing never happened then.
And then there’s Mao. You really, really, want more “friends” like Mao??? He was using the United States just as the United States was using him, as a weapon against the Soviety Union. But Mao was never an “ally” of the United States and certainly didn’t trust us. If he had to, Mao would have turned on the United States whenever it was politically advantageous to him, as it was during the war in Vietnam and the Korean War.
When, oh WHEN, are we going to start to believe the threats that crazy dictators make? That’s why they are CRAZY. You have to be a little nuts if you keep saying that you’re going to “Wipe Israel off the map,” as Ahmadinejad keeps on saying, or that his sole goal in life is to bring back the Caliphate. Why don’t we EVER take these people seriously?
It’s because the truth is too hard. Deep down, we DO believe them. It’s just that nobody wants to get stuck with the job of doing anything about it. That would take time, money, and possibly some lives to stop a madman like Ahmadinejad. Then again, you either address a problem in its infancy, or you let it go and end up with something like World War II. The choice really is up to the free world to do something about madmen like this. But does the West have the will to do it? I’m not sure that it does anymore.
A poet completely deconstructs and destroys the opinions of the man who Bill O’Reilly (no genius himself) looks to for guidance on strategic issues. Friedman’s article is so clueless it could have been written by the Daily Kos.
Friedman overlooks one obvious issue. Iran, like most authoritarian regimes, needs an enemy. Corrupt, brutal and ineffective regimes need someone else to blame for their failures. It’s why I suspect most Arab governments don’t really want to get rid of Israel. Food prices going up — it’s the Joooooos. Your son “disappeared” — it’s the Jooooos.
The Iranian regime might actually be nutty enough to want to get rid of Israel, but they’ll never partner with the US (ignoring the morality of us partnering with such a government) because they need the Great Satan to rally the people around them. Even though that strategy is beginning to fall apart.
Over a decade ago, before Stratfor became a paid-subscription site, it often made sense.
No longer.
Nothing sadder than a pundit who gets too big for his britches and thinks he understands more than he does.
What we are remarking here is not responsible tradecraft but a kind of mental aberration at work….
Well stated, indeed. Behold, ye, the effete infantile Fantasyland. I blame
atomic energy, global warming, Sarah Palin, Men, Head Start, hunger, capitalism, wealth, ecological overshoot…cell phones.“…so Ahmadinejad is to be regarded as more of a rhetorical windbag than a man of action or a man of his word, and can be successfully approached by President Obama with a view to furthering their mutual interests.”
Agree with Libertyship 46 above…however, there is no reason why the USA should not make use of the Shia/Sunni hatred for one another. I’d love to see another Iran/Iraq type war, which we may be treated to via the lovely Arab Spring (which locution brings to mind Mel Brooks’ (Springtime For Hitler and Germany…).
I think WWIII is raging. Israel is a front, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan…all fronts in the same war. We will bankrupt ourselves. And like Roosevelt did in the 1940′s, waiting until Stalin and Hitler exhausted one another, China will play both ends against the middle, keep out of it militarily, and in the end inherit what’s left of the world.
Jewish assimilation process that had begun in 19 th century and had finished with Holocaust, can be called permanent spiritual disarmament.Mr Friedman acts in this paradigm of not only spiritual but military disarmament for Israel.This is the voice of the discredited doctrine of the past.
I am always interested in what Friedman has to say. I certainly don’t agree with him all the time. I would agree with David Solway in his criticisms but the best idea is to be sceptical. Friedman thinks he is dealing with a “political science”. What he leaves out is the general nuttiness that pervades our era. It’s a big deficiency especially as it applies to the Middle East, or Europe or China and so on.
From what I read here, George Friedman sounds like a clueless crackpot!
Terry Gain and Mr. Ikar:
You two have stumbled across a truth pile. Bill O’Reilly and George Friedman are clueless crackpots who think they are much smarter than they in fact are, but you must give them credit where due.
They are both world class self-promoters whose life’s work is to herd clueless sheep, and they do it very successfully, sometimes to the extent of indirectly electing senators and selecting presidential candidates.
If there’s a point, I suppose it’s beware of outrageous bloviators.
Why pick on the poor blue lobsters?
They really are not nearly as common as the opinions that are being attacked. I certainly disagree that intuitive opinions have any place in this argument. Stalin, Moa and Hitler were not as crazy as some in the current WH administration. Cold and vicious certainly but irrational? Not as much as Jimmy Carter or the current Senate Majority. The Republican establishment does not appear to be playing with a full deck of 52 either.
There is lots of money in the destruction of Israel right now from energy producing nations and even more money in keeping the production of energy off shore out of the reach of Henry Waxman or Harry Reid. Every step has a biological logic to it that involves not being willing to exterminate parasites.
Identify the parasites which you are willing to exterminate and we will talk about reconfiguring the world situation.