Israel must not allow itself to become a proxy for anyone - by Vic Rosenthal

...Defeating Iran’s proxies is like cutting the heads off a Hydra. They will grow back unless the beast itself is neutralized. Israel’s deterrence should be focused on its real enemy, Iran. And if we are forced into war, Iran should be a primary strategic target from the start.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
09 October '17..

The other day I was reading an article by a South Korean writer, in which he expressed how unhappy his people were about being a battlefield for proxy wars. The Korean war from 1950-53 was a vicious conflict in which some 2.5 million civilians were killed, far more than even the highest estimates of military dead on both sides. It was a skirmish between the Soviet and American empires, but most of the dead and wounded were Korean. They died from starvation, from being caught in the crossfire, and from massacres carried out by both sides. Much of both North and South Korea was totally destroyed. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, changed hands four times. One can only imagine the conditions faced by its residents.

The Vietnam war was probably the longest of the cold-war proxy wars, counting from the French defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954 to the final withdrawal of US forces in 1975. Although estimates vary widely, several million civilians were killed in this war as well. The fact that the numbers of casualties, military and civilian, are comparable with those of the 3-year Korean war illustrates the ferocity of the Korean conflict.

The two sides aren’t morally equivalent. Although both sides committed atrocities and war crimes in Korea and Vietnam, I believe that the American narrative of defending at least the possibility of freedom in those places is more true than the Soviet one of opposing American imperialism and promoting self-determination of peoples.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

The Trouble with Proxy Wars

Michael J. Totten
michaeltotten.com
02 May '10

My friend and colleague Lee Smith, author of the terrific new book The Strong Horse, is having a civil but important argument with our mutual acquaintance and colleague Andrew Exum at the Center for a New American Security. I've agreed to publish Lee's response here, not because I want to pick on Andrew—whom I like personally and whose work I appreciate even when we don't agree with each other—but because Lee presents a compelling and cogent argument in favor of fighting the Syrian and Iranian governments instead of their proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. ....


Over at “Abu Muqawama,” Andrew Exum, whom Michael and I know from Beirut, has had some interesting things to say recently about my book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. Andrew, as some readers will know, is an analyst and researcher at the Washington DC-based think-tank, Center for a New American Security, where he contributed to formulating the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Andrew writes that I chose not to do a Q&A with him because I knew he “would not endorse the book whole-heartedly,” but the truth is that I wrote the book in the hopes of having many arguments over the issues I discuss in it. Accordingly, I wanted to use some of the issues Andrew raises with my book, and some of the differences I have with his position, to illuminate larger concerns regarding the US’s role in the region and the current state of US regional strategy.

In his critical appraisal of my book, Andrew writes that the strong horse is not a uniquely Arab phenomenon. I do not disagree with him. Indeed the strong horse is a feature common across cultures and historical periods. However, this is not the case in the contemporary United States where, as I write in my introduction, “we are among the very few people in history who have been able to live our daily lives free, relatively speaking, from violence and the fear of violence…[I]t is difficult for us to see that our form of political organization makes us not the norm but a privileged exception, the beneficiaries of a historical anomaly.” The point I was making is that it is not the Arabs who are the exception, but Americans. I had thought I had made that point clear enough, but perhaps the problem is that Andrew is just plain uncomfortable with the idea of the strong horse, especially insofar as it requires punishing one’s enemies and rewarding one’s friends.

For instance, Andrew writes of how he had once asked my opinion concerning what sort of advice he might give to US policymakers in the event they were to solicit his recommendations on Lebanon. I suggested he tell them that we should bomb Syrian targets, including the Presidential Palace in Damascus. To me, the prospect of the gilded, gaudy residence of a man responsible for so much death, suffering and repression in ruins was a cheery one indeed, a prospect that apparently left Andrew flummoxed.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.