Omri Ceren
There are entire books to be written about why media outlets – as opposed to identifying what’s going on in photographs – have taken to filling their captions with brazenly false anti-Israel disinformation. Journalistic institutions have ossified, with a hard left partisan mentality developing at the top and fewer resources to go around at the bottom. In Lebanon career editors alternate between happily serving as Hezbollah shills and penning 140-character schoolgirl missives to American-murdering arch-terrorists. Meanwhile native stringers produce copy parroting the party line of their Hezbollah neighbors, relatives, friends, and oft-times employers.
But all that might get in the way of outlining the mind-blowing incoherence of our security assistance to the teetering Arab governments in Beirut and Ramallah. We’re giving out weapons to inevitably enemy regimes, and we’re doing it even as those weapons are already being turned against our allies. Here, for instance, are two pictures of LAF soldiers who were on the ground for last week’s cross-border ambush of the IDF. The guns they’re holding are M16′s. Or, as the rifles are better known in the context of Lebanese security assistance, “American-made M16′s:”
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Of course, as Foreign Policy gamely notes, you can never be sure. There’s at least a chance that these rifles are M16 knockoffs made by China, Iran, or Pakistan. Security assistance apologists – then – wouldn’t have to explain why we’re supplying the LAF with the specific weapons that they’re using to incite regional conflict. They’d only have to explain why we’re supplying the LAF with cutting-edge weapons while the Lebanese use different weapons – acquired either from our rising hegemonic rivals or from intransigent nuclear rogues – to incite regional conflict.
Now these M113 APC’s, the ones the LAF used to back their ambush?
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Those definitely came from us [PDF]:
Prior to the 2006 Lebanon War, there were no Army personnel manning the Southern border with Israel, leaving Hizbulah to create its own security zones. With the end of hostilities and the establishment of UNSCR 1701,71 the Lebanese Army, in concert with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), deployed 15,000 troops in force to the South for the first time 30 years. The Army has poorly developed logistics, support and maintenance capabilities, though there has been some progress toward the mechanization of the Army with substantial deliveries from the U.S. of surplus M113 Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs)… There was strong support for the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, and in the aftermath of the 2006 war and continued instability through 2008, the Army has enjoyed strong popular support and has seized the momentum to play a more active role in carrying out security operations.
Actually we don’t always justify pouring weapons into Lebanon on the basis of this “take control of the south” argument. Sometimes we do – the premise and promise being that we’re buttressing nationalist institutions – but that reasoning worked a lot better before Hezbollah seized de jure control of the Lebanese political hierarchy and penetrated the LAF.
Lebanon’s diplomatic allies have since switched (back) to a slightly less sophisticated line of reasoning: “Hezbollah says they’re only armed because the LAF too weak to defend Lebanon, so if we visibly strengthen the LAF then Hezbollah will have to disarm.” That nonsense ignores – at a minimum – Hezbollah’s litany of other pretexts for militarization: ostensible Israeli occupation of the so-called Sheba Farms (a claim openly mocked even by State personnel in charge of sucking up to the Arab world), ostensible Israeli occupation of off-shore gas fields, and ostensible Israeli occupation of Israel.
But more broadly: you’d kind of have to be an idiot to be persuaded by this almost satirically precise sophistry. The entire thrust of Middle East geopolitics and history is going in one direction, but because Hezbollah sometimes makes off-handed gestures toward LAF readiness, that’s supposed to become the crux of our geopolitical strategizing? You’d also have to be a pretty shameless hack to trot this out for public consumption. It’s actually kind of insulting that US officials sometimes act as if we’re expected to believe it. And yet they do.
And – naturally – parallel arguments are also used to justify security assistance to the Palestinians. When Fatah and Hamas are at odds, the Palestinians Authority needs weapons and logistical training to counterbalance Iran’s regional proxies. When they’re close to rapprochement – which is this administration’s stated goal – PA security groups need resources so they can become independent institutions.
The upshot is that American-trained PA forces have, at the urging of their US mentors, been given billions in small arms alongside 25 helicopter-busting Russian BTR-80′s. Abbas long-ago insinuated that Fatah will eventually turn their guns and rifles against Israelis, but the APCs – they’re reserved for use against Hamas’s burgeoning helicopter fleet.
References:
* After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda [Mere Rhetoric]
* Journalism Expert: Hezbollah Established Total Media Control By Threatening, Attacking Reporters [Video] [Mere Rhetoric]
* Weekly TOCS, “Meeting Bias” at 7:30pm PDT, Obama-Bibi, Octavia Nasr, The B’Tselem Media Campaign, Etc. [Mere Rhetoric]
* Did Lebanon Use American Weapons To Attack Israel? [Mere Rhetoric]
* The Guns of August [Fromer / Tablet]
* Border skirmish raises questions about arming Lebanese troops (UPDATED) [Rogin / FP Cable]
* THE LEBANESE ARMED FORCES: Challenges and Opportunities in Post-Syria Lebanon [Nerguizian / CSIS]
* Lebanon Endorses Hezbollah Weapons Stockpile Despite Hezbollah Promises For A Near-Term War On Israel [Mere Rhetoric]
* State Department Ready To Pull Entirely Predictable Anti-Israel Bait And Switch On Har Dov [Mere Rhetoric]
* In Just Seven Short Paragraphs, Jimmy Carter Tells 2 Lies, Makes 2 Incoherent Arguments, Takes an Anti-Israel Stance that the State Department Mocks, and Just Generally Annoys the Hell Out of Us [Mere Rhetoric]
* Natural gas could lead to new Lebanon-Israel war [AP]
* Hezbollah: Actually, Israel Is Our Land Too [Mere Rhetoric]
* Obama: A Fatah-Hamas Unity Government Is The Best Of Both Worlds! [Mere Rhetoric]
* Abject Failure Keith Dayton Moves Goalposts To Justify US Security Assistance, Lets Abbas Try Again [Mere Rhetoric]
* Palestinians To Get 25 Cutting Edge, Helicopter-Busting APCs [Mere Rhetoric]
* Abbas: Good Chance We’ll Use Our US Security Assistance To Go Back To Killing Israelis [Mere Rhetoric]
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