Making A Point, War Style
Tigerhawk has a commentary about the recently reported raid on Syria (about which I know little). Look at how he thinks about this strike.
That said, the Israeli raid had nothing to do with reprisal. Its purpose was to interdict and communicate. Military action is its own idiom, especially when accompanied by leaks from the unleaky and silence from the places that usually erupt in indignation and rage.
Yes, Israel has demonstrated that it can penetrate Syrian, and therefore Iranian, air defenses. If the mullahs were confused on that point, perhaps because the military in any authoritarian system is prone to optimism, they are no longer. That is a handy bit of information for the mullahs to have. Let’s hope they put it to good use.
Second, the Turks have sent a message. How is it that a Kuwaiti paper reported the involvement of the Turks? That news was not broken by an investigative journalist, it was leaked. Turkey, or at least its virulently anti-Islamist military, wanted Syria and Iran to know that it will not stand by passively while they assemble arsenals of the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Finally — and this is the really loud message — the Arab world, taken as a whole, has responded with… silence. No other Arab government complained about the raid, forcing Syria to take its protest to the United Nations alone. No mobs poured into the famous “Arab street,” no flags were burned, no cars torched, and no “rage boys” screamed into television cameras. The message to Syria and Iran could not have been more clear: The Arabs are far more worried about Iran and its satellites than they are about Israel.
As they should be.
What I find interesting about this method of analysis is that it puts a reported kinetic attack–blowing stuff up–in a context of a broader spectrum of warfare. When the Israelis hit Osirak back in the day it actually accelerated Saddam’s nuclear program…but that wasn’t the entire point of the strike.
And a strike is not a campaign. Strikes are done for different reasons sometimes, and that factors into an analysis of what’s going on.
2 Responses to “Making A Point, War Style”
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September 17th, 2007 at 2:39 am
Just like we accelerated Iran’s when we invaded Iraq….
September 17th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Nah, not ‘just like’. The reason IZ’s program got accelerated was the way Saddam hid everything and figured out new ways to do things after the attack.
Iran’s program accelerated with the change in leadership and shortcuts from the Russians and most importantly DPRK/AQ Khan trade in nuclear stuff. The entire region now realizes that the US is feckless when negotiating with a madman with a nuke (cf. DPRK) an there is prestige to be gained by owning one (cf. Pakistan), and the US vacillation in foreign policy worries the erstwhile allies. So I wouldn’t argue the US accelerated the IR program, but instead point out that the weak and vacillating policies of the US reprioritized acquisition of nuclear weapons by many states to include Iran.
Weakness is provocative. Hardware capability without capability of will is weakness. Most of the time we get into a war involves the other side deciding they can take us on.
We live in interesting times, eh?