What is Left When You Leave a War Unfinished
I’m in the process of reading two books, 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East and The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City. I’m about half way through the latter, two thirds done with the former. Both are fascinating books providing me with new information and new insights into the Arab/Israeli War - and War it is, and it has been ongoing since the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948. And it will go on until the war ends. Unstated by either author so far, but clear to me is that the reason we’re still engaged over the issue of Israel, Jerusalem and the threat of radical Islam is because we’ve never allowed the Arab/Israeli war to be fought to a conclusion.
In 1967, one of the pre-battle acts was Irael’s internal debate over whether or not they could go to war without approval from the western powers, especially the United States and whether these same powers would allow Israel to go all out. Neither issue was settled - at the start of the battle, all concerned were laboring under various misconceptions over the position of everyone else involved. And, as we all know, the world community came to the rescue of a completely defeated Arab coalition after a mere six days of battle in 1967 - a completely defeated Arab coalition, but a coalition which was spared having to surrender and accept peace terms from the victor. Just a few more days of military action, and the war would really have been over with Israeli forces in Cairo, Damascus and Amman and able to force a peace as the price for withdrawing not from properly Israeli territories in the West Bank and Gaza, but from the heartland of the enemy coalition.
In The Fight for Jerusalem, the author details, among other things, the way Moslem have desecrated non-Moslem holy sites under their control but more central has been the Moslem campaign to deny a historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Aided by western academics with a vested interest in denying the truth of the Bible, some radical Moslems have been attempting to convince the world that David and Solomon never had a capitol city in Jerusalem, and that the Temple never existed on the Temple Mount. All of this is in service of the Moslem desire to have the entirey of the Old City of Jerusalem in their hands in any future peace deal. Ultimately, the reason we’ve got a Palestinian Authority which has, among other things, permitted the desecration of the Tomb of Joseph and the Church of the Nativity and which is making an attempt at forcing the Jews of Israel to give up their historic and religious capitol city is because of the unfinished war of 1967 - failure to force an end to the war and a peace deal 40 years ago has left us in the quandry of a continuing war, and yet another attempt by the defeated to reverse their overwhelming, and justly deserved, defeat. There is a lesson to be learned here.
Over at Captain’s Quarters, Captain Ed takes note of former Clinton Administration official Richard Holbrooke’s hand wringing over the deteriorating situation in Kosovo. You remember Kosovo, don’t you? The one unqualified triumph of the Clinton Administration? The template for American intervention? The proof that GW’s program is wrong? Well, it seems that things are falling apart a bit in Kosovo with a renewed threat of war - with the Serbs unwilling to surrender forever their claim to this historic piece of Serb territory and the Europeans unable to force a settlement. Naturally, Holbrooke figures this is all President Bush’s fault - you know, in a post-9/11 world, our highest priority should have been Kosovo, right? The real fault of this, however, is that the war against Serbia over Kosovo wasn’t finished.
Bill Clinton’s purpose, as far as I can determine, in the Kosovo War was to do something - but there wasn’t a clear idea of what was to be done; meaning, there wasn’t any clear idea of what result was desired from the war. I recall from that war that Clinton’s statement announcing the commencement of hostilities had some absurd references to two world wars starting in the Balkans…of course, only one did, and if Clinton really thought that the conflict over Kosovo was going to lead to World War III, then he is either an idiot or, more likely, that he just figured the American people would buy one more whopper from him. (As an aside, I’d like to find that speech, but I wasn’t able to find it in the archives over at the Clinton Foundation; I can find just about everything but what I exactly heard over the radio that day while driving in my car). Be all that as it may, there was no clearly defined goal other than a nebulous lack of war on the agenda - and so we bombed and bombed and bombed and, eventually, the Serbs got tired of it and called it quits…except, of course, that they didn’t. They did want very much for the bombing to stop, and it did stop - but there was no signed peace agreement where Serbia surrendered sovereignty over Kosovo…their claim to it, thus, was - and is - very much alive. And now there’s a Serbian government willing to press for Kosovo, backed by a Russia willing to throw its weight around behind the Serbs. The war of 1999 over Kosovo isn’t over.
Once peace is broken, the only way to restore it is to bring a war to a conclusion - a hard-and-fast decision which is inescapable and inarguable. When Lee surrendered, that ended the Civil War - Southerns could argue all they want that we won it unfairly, but regardless of how we did it, it was done; there was no arguing over the facts of defeat for the South. When Jodel surrendered for Germany in 1945, there was also no question about it - even the most died-in-the-wool Nazi couldn’t say other than that Germany was utterly crushed. Both of these defeats led to peace - even though plenty of people on the losing side didn’t like the result of it and wished it had come out differently and even, at times, nursed some hopes of a re-match at a latter date. Regardless - the wars were over. Peace had been established because a conclusion had been reached. In Kosovo, no such decision was reached…Serbia was forced out, but no agreement was made about the finality of it all. That would have taken ground forces and a march on Belgrade and the eventual dictation of peace terms to the Serbs. They wouldn’t have liked it, but they would have had to accept it. Of course, that would have required the United States to lose some lives - and while Bill Clinton was desperate to avert WW III, he wasn’t so desperate that he was willing to risk high casualties, and the possibility of lower public opinion ratings.
But what does he care? His loyalists in the Democratic party and the MSM will forever call Kosovo an unqualified success - and he doesn’t have to ever deal with it again. But in this small lesson in Kosovo we see illustrated the larger lesson of the Arab/Israeli war - that a war will go on until it is finished. And this lesson we must lay to heart as we carry on in the War on Terrorism. We can’t just “end” it - it has to be fought out. One side has to win, the other side has to lose - and the winning and losing must be of such an unmistakable character that even the most ardent Islamo-fascist will have to admit his side lost. It is either fight this war, now, to a conclusion or just allow it to go on, perhaps to flare up heavily at a time and place where America is ill-prepared to engage in major hostilities. The enemy is patient - he doesn’t want peace; he wants victory. And he’s sure he’ll attain it simply because he knows he’ll keep fighting to the end - and he’s convinced that we won’t.
Think about that, as the debates over the war go forward.
45 comments November 25th, 2007
