If early returns hold up and the March 14 coalition emerges victorious in Lebanese parliamentary elections, sending a resounding defeat to Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, then one of the most important “unsung heroes” in the vote will have been… Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden’s surprise visit to Beirut on May 22 was not just gutsy. By reminding Lebanese voters that Washington will review financial assistance and other aspects of our relations with Lebanon depending on the outcome of the election, Biden played Middle East hardball. Lebanese voters—especially the critical swing Christian voters—seem to have gotten the message. They cast their ballots in droves for candidates opposed to the Hezbollah-backed alliance and, in so doing, appear to have turned the tide in the election. (Of course, those voters had ample reason to say “enough” to Hezbollah and its Aounist allies, but Biden may have pushed them over the top.)

Biden’s Lebanon foray is a salutary reminder for the Obama administration in its overall engagement with the Middle East. Elsewhere in the region, the administration seems to be directing a policy devoid of sticks (except toward Israel’s settlement policy, which is another story altogether). The President’s Cairo address to the world’s Muslims, for example, included not a single hint of “negative incentive”; while he eloquently made the case for religious freedom, democracy, women’s rights, and peaceful nuclear energy, there were no suggestions of negative repercussions for any country that rejects the President’s entreaties. After the polite applause is forgotten, the result is likely to be indifference on the part of most Arab and Muslim leaders (except, again, on settlement policy).

In Lebanon, Biden’s timely reminder to locals of what they might lose by cutting deals with radicals and extremists suggests that Chicago politics is alive and well in the Middle East. The Chicagoan in the White House should pay attention.

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Lindsey O’Rourke’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, “Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb,” is an interesting attempt to describe some of the issues surrounding the use of female suicide bombers in Iraq and elsewhere. As she points out, many of the groups that have utilized suicide terrorism have employed female suicide bombers. As such, her attempt to study the issue seriously is welcome and could significantly contribute to scholarship in this area.

Unfortunately, her piece contains a few misconceptions about suicide terrorism and the existing literature that deserve clarification. As someone also interested in questions surrounding suicide terrorism, I offer these comments in the spirit of helping build our knowledge in that area.

First, she states that “we are told” female suicide bombers are driven by “despair, mental illness, religiously mandated subordination to men, frustration with sexual inequality and a host of other factors related specifically to their gender.” At least in the literature on suicide terrorism, this does not seem to be the case. Robert Pape’s work on suicide terrorism, which she approvingly cites, does not come from this perspective. Neither does work by Mia Bloom, Bruce Hoffman, Assaf Moghadam, Ami Pedahzur, Marc Sageman, and others. So, while I agree with her argument that “feminine” motivations do not seem to be driving female suicide bombers and female suicide bombers have similar motivations to men, most other scholars of suicide terrorism agree as well.

Second, it is unclear whether her goal is to de-emphasize the “female” element of female suicide bombers or to argue they do deserve independent consideration. As many argue, she states that “there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers,” something true for male attackers as well. If there is no demographic profile and the motivations of female suicide bombers are similar to male suicide bombers, why do they deserve study as a separate category? Her answer is that female suicide bombers are used more frequently for a specific type of missions—assassinations—because they have an easier time getting close to hard targets due to cultural and societal norms about treating and handling women. This is a very interesting and an important finding, if true, for it points out a shortcoming in security screening procedures around the globe. However, that means we should not necessarily study female suicide bombers as an independent category, but as part of the larger category of suicide bombings designed to assassinate leaders.

Third, her focus on occupation as the cause of suicide terrorism is misplaced. Whether the feeling of occupation is accurate or not in the eyes of the West, perceptions of occupation likely play a powerful role in influencing the propensity for groups to engage in violent resistance. However, occupation is less likely to impact the choice of a particular tactic within the decision to engage in violent resistance. While Pape has shown that many of the groups that adopt suicide terrorism perceive themselves as occupied, many other groups that perceive themselves as occupied have not chosen to adopt suicide terrorism.

In fact, it makes more sense to think about suicide terrorism as a special case of a military innovation, one strongly influenced by diffusion dynamics. The extensive direct and indirect linkages between groups that have adopted suicide terrorism suggest that the probability of suicide terrorism is not an entirely independent choice, but one influenced by the knowledge and skills that groups gain from direct and vicarious learning. Moreover, we have to study both those groups and people that adopt suicide tactics and those that do not in order to gain the full picture. As Scott Ashworth et al. recently pointed out in the American Political Science Review, studying just the universe of suicide terror groups or female suicide attackers selects on the dependent variable, making it hard to draw causal inferences from whatever correlations might exist. Things that are similar within the universe of suicide terror groups or the universe of female attackers might also be true of non-adopters as well, meaning those similarities do not actually predict behavior.

A more fruitful way to study the issue is to compare the groups that have adopted suicide terrorism and group members that have become suicide bombers with those that have not. Comparing adopters like Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Tamil Tigers with non-adopters like the Provisional IRA and ETA, the Basque terrorist group, reveals the critical importance of organizational dynamics in driving adoption or non-adoption. Since, as O’Rourke points out, demographic profiling of potential suicide attackers does not seem promising, it makes more sense to evaluate group characteristics and focus on what makes adoption more or less likely.

Regardless of potential issues with her academic analysis, however, her policy prescription to improve screening of women at “key security checkpoints” is sensible. While I disagree that “occupation” is a primary cause of suicide attacks—as described above, it influences the probability that a group will adopt terrorism, not the choice of suicide tactics—hopefully ideas like the “Daughters of Iraq” can be more than a stopgap in the effort to decrease the number of suicide attacks against American and Iraqi forces, as well as ordinary Iraqis. I applaud O’Rourke’s attention to this important topic, and hope to see more analysis of this kind in the future.

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A lot of people have asked me lately about U.S. funding of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). The current interest in U.S. assistance to the LAF comes as little surprise: Congress is currently reviewing the FY09 budget, which is said to include a significant aid package for the LAF.

From 2005 to 2008, the U.S. Government provided over $1 billion to Lebanon, including nearly $380 million in assistance to the LAF. During this time, Washington’s generosity toward the LAF made Lebanon the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign military assistance per capita, after Israel.

Several recent developments have sparked the debate about this previously uncontroversial U.S. assistance provided to the military of the only pro-West, democratically elected Arab government. First, as a result of Hezbollah’s May 2008 blitz on Beirut, the Shiite militia cum terrorist organization has rejoined the Lebanese government, with important de jure powers (i.e., the blocking third in the parliament). Questions are also being raised about the utility of funding the LAF, particularly following the organization’s actions—or inactions—this past May. Essentially, the LAF was missing in action. At a minimum, the army did not protect national institutions; some accuse the LAF of colluding with Hezbollah in the raid.

At the same time, statements made by March 14th ruling coalition leaders in July regarding Samir Kuntar have eroded some of their government’s appeal. In particular, in the run-up to the impending prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel, several top leaders of March 14th have indicated that they will join Hezbollah at the hero’s welcome for Kuntar—the terrorist best known for crushing the skull of a four-year-old Israeli girl in 1979. In the process, March 14th has seemingly blessed Hezbollah’s continued possession of weapons.

The debate regarding U.S. support for the LAF has been fueled by a contentious and factually inaccurate op-ed in the New York Times written by Nicholas Noe in mid-June. In his article, “A Fair Fight for the Lebanese Army,” Noe claimed that Israel was preventing the LAF from acquiring the type of armaments—advanced anti-tank weapons, armed attack helos, and intelligence gathering equipment—it requires.

Because the Bush Administration caved to Israeli demands, Noe claims, “the army was left without the equipment that would have enabled it to be a more forceful mediator in the street battles involving Hezbollah and its rivals” in May. Noe likewise claims,

this lack of equipment also contributed to the military’s inability last summer to quickly roust a group of [Fatah al-Islam] Islamist militants from a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Finally, Noe argues that if the LAF receives this kind of advanced equipment in future, it will help Lebanon to solve the problem of Hezbollah’s weapons:

Give the Lebanese an army able to meet the perceived threats emanating from Israel (primarily involving water, territory and a possible future expulsion of Palestinians to Lebanon), and then, Hezbollah has said, its independent weaponry can be tackled.

No doubt, the Times received a flood of critical letters about Noe’s article. Not surprisingly, it did not run any. Nevertheless, I still think it’s worth debunking some of the more egregious inaccuracies and bad thinking in Noe’s piece.

Prima facie, Noe’s article neglects to even mention the deep divisions in the LAF that are the primary constraint on the long-term prospects for making the military an effective national institution. Yet despite these limitations, Washington has fully backed the LAF. Indeed, contrary to Noe’s assertion, the United States expedited the shipment of over 40 C-130 transport planes brimming with military materiel to Beirut immediately after the outbreak of fighting in Nahr el Bared. This was no mean feat. It required a lot of creative thinking—the United States used an ACSA mechanism to dispatch the weapons and ammo quickly—and a real effort to cut through standard timelines and procedures.

The materiel provided by the United States was what was required for the operation and what could be absorbed by the LAF. Shipments at the time included over 10 million rounds of all types of ammunition, as well as—according to the State Department—”the same front-line weapons that the U.S. military troops are currently using, including assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper weapons systems, anti-tank weapons, and the most modern urban warfare bunker weapons.” This and subsequent assistance has not been subject to Israeli veto, but rather is based on a careful assessment of LAF operational requirements carried out by the United States and France.

Moreover, Noe falsely claims that the United States blocked the transfer of rockets to be employed by UAE-donated Gazelle attack helicopters, and that, “As a result, soldiers were forced to drop shells from the helicopters by hand, destroying much of [Nahr el Bared].” What actually happened was that the LAF ingeniously retrofitted their U.S.-made Bell UH-I “Huey” helicopters—with Washington’s blessing—with hydraulic systems to drop their own retooled bombs targeting Fatah al-Islam terrorists. Here is how it was done (click on thumbnails for images):

So Noe gets it wrong on the helos and the arms transfers. His assessment that, once the LAF is “able to meet the perceived threats emanating from Israel,” Hezbollah’s weapons “can be tackled,” also strains credulity. Hezbollah has an ever-expanding list of prerequisites for disarmament, ranging from the liberation of Jerusalem to the end of Lebanese government corruption. Noe’s supposition that Hezbollah’s weapons will be on the table when the LAF is better armed is more wishful thinking than reality.

No doubt, Israel has some concerns about the LAF. Based on the LAF’s apparent collusion with Hezbollah in the firing of the Chinese-made Iranian-provided C-802 land-to-sea missile—which hit and almost sank an Israeli SAAR 5-class warship during the summer 2006 war—these concerns are well founded. But the fear that the LAF would somehow transfer U.S.-made weapons to the Shiite militia is likely not at the top of the Israelis’ list. First, the LAF has a very good record in this regard; and second, Hezbollah has received an arsenal from Moscow, Syria, and Iran that is so highly advanced, that it need not covet LAF stocks.

In the coming weeks, Washington may choose to modify its aid package to the LAF. If this occurs, it will be because of Hezbollah’s recent political and military gains, not Israeli complaints. By blaming Israel for a weak LAF, Noe is essentially repeating Hezbollah’s justification for retaining its army and arsenal.

It is in Washington’s long-term interest to see the LAF develop into a strong national institution. But it’s important to understand that the strength of this institution does not primarily rely on its capabilities, but rather on its will to take on difficult missions on orders from the democratically-elected government of Lebanon. No amount of U.S. military assistance will change this current dynamic.

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Thirty years ago, in his magnificent book on Perception and Misperception, Robert Jervis argued that people’s views are self-reinforcing. Once we believe something to be the case, we further develop an array of arguments to discount those pesky doubts that we may harbor and to fully convince ourselves that our initial position is indeed correct. Opponents of military action against Iran thus tend to be believe that its negative consequences will be broad and severe, whereas those who believe that action may be necessary, if not preferable, tend to believe that the costs are far more limited. Of course, we may all be wrong.

But before I offer my own assessment of costs, here is the good news. As I recently wrote in the Jerusalem Post, Iran is highly vulnerable to external pressure and we may never have to reach the stage of military action, if the West gets its act together. What is needed is a comprehensive policy of heavy sanctions, combined with a big diplomatic carrot.

To this end, I believe the United States should seek to fully engage Iran and offer a “grand bargain,” an array of incentives, in exchange for the nuclear program. Those who take a hard line on Iran should be especially supportive of a policy of engagement. Only if the United States exhausts all diplomatic possibilities, does it stand to gain support for major economic sanctions, let alone future military action. Iran will probably reject the offer, as it has all others, but we will only know if the option is pursued, and it is a vital way station on the road to stronger measures. Talking to Iran does not have to imply acquiescence or appeasement; it would only be a “Munich” if so conducted.

However, the United States and the West should engage from a position of strength, by imposing stringent sanctions now, such as heightened restrictions on trade credits, international banking transactions and investments in Iran. Moreover, Iran imports 40 percent of its refined gasoline products. If the West banned these sales, its economy could be brought to its knees. Oil exports make up 80 percent of Iran’s state budget. Were imports of Iranian oil banned, its economy would be brought to a standstill. Iran’s automobile industry is domestically produced, except for engines. Cut sales of engines and its economy would be greatly weakened. Should these and other measures fail, or sufficient international cooperation not be forthcoming, the United States could unilaterally impose a naval embargo on Iran, which would have the combined affect of most of these measures and then some.

Only if this, too, failed, would there be a need to consider direct military action, primarily an aerial operation, with little or no ground forces. (I believe that any such action need not be nearly as broad as some have suggested. The number of critical nodes is small.)

Those who vociferously oppose and fear the use of force against Iran anticipate “disastrous” consequences (The New York Times) or a regional conflagration (IAEA chief ElBaradie). Military action will incur costs for the United States, but far from being “disastrous,” or even heavy, I believe they will probably be limited. We should not engage in unwarranted and self-deterring risk aversion, or forget who wields the incalculably greater “stick.” Iran certainly will not.

What would be Iran’s likely response? There is little doubt that Iran will respond to a direct attack, or a blockade, but its options, heated rhetoric notwithstanding, are actually limited. What can it do in the Gulf? Attack American ships, block the Gulf? It might deliver a pinprick for the sake of appearances at home, but beyond that, the risks of escalation and the costs to Iran’s economy are too great. Iran is extremist, but not irrational. It knows perfectly well that any serious moves against U.S. forces, or an attack on Saudi oil wells, would result in a massive American retaliation. Does Iran want to invite an American attack on its oil installations as well? The nuclear sites are not enough? Who truly wields escalation dominance? Yes, oil prices will further skyrocket and Iran could add to the crisis by cutting output. But anything beyond limited temporary measures would be tantamount to Iran’s cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Iran may very well cause the United States greater difficulty in Iraq, and increased terror can be expected against U.S. and Western targets there. It is highly unlikely, however, that Iran would be willing to go beyond limited actions and risk direct military escalation—not when the United States has 150,000 soldiers on its doorstep. What some view as 150,000 American targets, look far more like a strike force to Tehran. Unlike the insurgency in Iraq, in this case we are talking about missions of the kind that the U.S. military has already been proven to be trained and equipped for. Moreover, U.S. preparations can greatly reduce, though not eliminate, the dangers of Iran’s potential responses, on all levels.

Iran is far more likely to respond against Israel, indeed, to open up with everything it, Hezbollah and Hamas have: large scale terror, rocket attacks blanketing Israel, ballistic missiles. Israel may pay a heavy price, and there is a significant danger of confrontation with Hezbollah, Hamas and, conceivably, Syria. It is a price Israel should be willing to pay.

Finally, there will undoubtedly be a strong public reaction in the Muslim world, though Arab regimes will be quietly relieved to be free of a nuclear Iran and will presumably be able to contain popular fury. If the United States plays out the diplomatic route first, international reaction will be muted.

Of course, even a fully “successful” strike would only destroy the known program. Iran, having largely mastered the technology, might be able to reconstitute it. A two-year reprieve may not be worth even the limited costs outlined above. But five years probably would be.

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Be sure to read the speech given on Monday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Association of American Universities in Washington.

Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have been involved in two prolonged counter-insurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are low-tech conflicts in which anthropological skills and language training are often more important than high-tech weapons systems.

But as David Ucko pointed out in the most recent Orbis, a quick study of defense spending priorities reveals that large, expensive weapons systems better suited for a future conventional war with China continue to soak up more funds than training and equipment tailored for the counter-insurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. Department of Defense anthropologist Montgomery McFate is fond of pointing out that the amount of money spent by the Pentagon on social science research annually is equal to just two and a half F-22 fighter-interceptors—a weapons system Gates complains has yet to fly a single mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, while soldiers on the ground remain in dire need of better language skills and cultural training to help navigate the population-centric battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates also understands the Department of Defense needs the help of America’s academy to develop these language skills, regional expertise, and cultural knowledge. As such, he went before the Association of American Universities on Monday prepared to be humble, self-depreciating, and charming in his effort to woo an academic community whose members often have an uneasy relationship with the uniformed military services.

Inevitably, the speech turned to the Human Terrain Teams in use in Iraq and Afghanistan which have provoked a furious reaction from an anthropological community still scarred by Project Camelot and other Cold War misadventures. McFate herself has been relentlessly targeted by the self-appointed mandarins of the anthropological community who have threatened to blacklist any anthropologist who dares work for the Pentagon. Gates addressed the subject with typical good humor:

At times, the lexicon we come up with for new programs appears almost designed to induce maximum paranoia. In that vein, “Human Terrain Teams” follows in the proud tradition of initiatives like:
• The Office of Special Plans;
• TALON Reporting System; and
• Total Information Awareness.
In reality, there is a long history of cooperation—as well as controversy—between the U.S. government and anthropology. Understanding the traditions, motivations, and languages of other parts of the world has not always been a strong suit of the United States. It was a problem during the Cold War, and remains a problem.

It is hard to imagine Donald Rumsfeld giving such a speech, but perhaps that is unfair. Gates, as the former president of Texas A&M University, is uniquely prepared to address the grievances and grudges of academia while at the same time making it clear that America needs the help of its regional studies experts and language scholars to help it carry out operations abroad in a way that best protects the lives and welfare of the innocents. He was right to extend an “olive branch” (as one headline put it) to academia. It remains to be seen whether or not he and the nation’s uniformed services gain a reciprocal response.

Another round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is certainly likely, but I don’t consider it inevitable, particularly in the short term. There are several reasons for this.

The first is that we have to understand the importance of Hezbollah in Iranian strategy at present. The party is not there to get caught up in repeated conflicts with Israel, let alone a new Lebanese civil war. It is mainly there to act as an Iranian deterrent against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and more generally as a valuable lever in the Levant to use against Israel and the United States. In that context, war poses risks. With every conflict, the party loses some of its deterrence capability; at the same time, a conflict may impose unbearable human costs on the Shiite community, in such a way that Hezbollah’s ability to fight is further eroded. (Indeed, we are already in that situation today.) And, any new war will have deeply negative repercussions on Hezbollah’s domestic position, as a majority of Lebanese and Lebanese political forces reject the idea of again entering into a devastating war with Israel.

Add to that the time factor. Hezbollah is probably not yet ready to fight a war with Israel today, despite what Hasan Nasrallah has said in public recently. Shiites are deeply anxious about a new conflict a mere two years after the summer 2006 war; Hezbollah’s defensive infrastructure north of the Litani River appears to be incomplete; and the party cannot guarantee geographical continuity between south Lebanon and the southern and northern Bekaa Valley, though this is not essential for it to fight. These are all reasons why Hezbollah has to be careful in how it retaliates for the assassination of Imad Mughniyah. Provoking a major Israeli offensive is almost certainly not something Nasrallah wants to do today.

As for Nasrallah’s claim that the next war will involve an Israeli ground offensive, that’s not necessarily true. Israel has the potential to once again primarily employ air power to wreak the destruction it did in 2006—but also in 1993 and 1996—provoking a massive exodus of Shiite civilians and bombing infrastructure targets. This gruesome policy would create a humanitarian catastrophe that would mainly affect Hezbollah, and the party would find it difficult to respond in such a way that it could impose a balance of terror on Israel. Meanwhile, Lebanese anger with the party would have only heightened, further undercutting its support in society.

What about Israel? There may be a rationale for striking against Hezbollah before it’s too late. However, the Israeli priority today appears to be less Lebanon than Iran and its nuclear capacity. Lebanon is a sideshow—an important one, but a sideshow nonetheless. Paradoxically, Hezbollah’s reluctance to launch a war might encourage Israel to avert a conflict too. Why? Because both sides would calculate in terms of costs and benefits. Israel knows that it would be very difficult to score a knockout blow against Hezbollah in Lebanon. It does not want to risk getting caught up in a wider regional war via Lebanon. And a new Lebanon war would only make it more difficult to strike against Iran.

Given such uncertainty, each side is more likely to focus on its fundamental aims: Israel, on neutralizing Iran’s nuclear capacity; Hezbollah on partly deterring an Israeli attack against Iran. That means both may well try to avoid an unmanageable escalation in Lebanon.

Still, the most likely cause of war remains miscalculation. Here the risks are higher. Too devastating a Hezbollah response to the Mughniyah killing might provoke a fierce response from Israel. Conversely, another assassination of a Hezbollah official could prompt Hezbollah to react in increasingly less calculating ways, making a clash more probable. Even an Israeli offensive against Gaza may force Hezbollah to take steps in southern Lebanon to back its brethren in Hamas, and this may widen the conflict with Israel.

Then again, Hezbollah would have to calculate whether this might lead to a repeat of 2006, which also followed a Hamas raid in Gaza, the net result of which was to Hezbollah’s considerable disadvantage—all claims to a “divine victory” notwithstanding.

As Hezbollah’s official funeral of Imad Mughniyah unfolded today—Hezbollah’s leader eulogizied him over a coffin decked in Hezbollah’s flag—it is useful to recall the party’s denial of his very existence over all these many years. Mention of his name to Hezbollah officials would draw a blank stare or blanket denial. “Hezbollah professes no knowledge of the man,” the New York Times reported in 2002. A journalist who interviewed a top Hezbollah official and parliamentary deputy, Abdullah Kassir, once asked him if he knew Mughniyah. “Kassir flashed a blistering look and responded curtly, ‘I have no answer.’”

Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, followed a double tack: he would defend “freedom fighter” Mughniyah, but not acknowledge him. “The American accusations against Mughnieh are mere accusations,” he was quoted as saying. “Can they provide evidence to condemn Imad Mughnieh? They launch accusations as if they are given facts.” But when pressed, Nasrallah “refused to reveal whether Mughnieh has a role in Hizbullah.” Of course.

Another American academic wrote this precious paragraph in her book on Hezbollah:

For its part, Hezbollah has consistently denied the existence of any relationship with Mughniyeh, direct or indirect. As a matter of record, from the time of the party’s inception, all Hezbollah officials have emphatically denied ever knowing a person by the name of Imad Mughniyeh. The apparent avoidance of this issue is clear in an answer to a recent question about the party’s relationship with Mughniyeh. The response of a Hezbollah senior official was that Mughniyeh had never held a position in their organization, and was, in Deputy Secretary General Naim al-Qassim’s words, ‘only a name’.

The same author then spends a few embarrassing pages agonizing over this question: “Was Mughniyeh a member of Hezbollah?”

Now that Nasrallah’s eulogy has placed Mughniyah officially in the pantheon of Hezbollah’s greatest martyrs (with Abbas al-Musawi and Raghib Harb), this question looks absurd. That it ever arose is a testament to the discipline of Hezbollah in sticking to lies that serve its interests. One of its paramount interests is concealing from scrutiny that apparatus of terror that Mughniyah spent his life building. Hiding the clandestine branch protects it from Hezbollah’s enemies, and makes it easier to sell the movement to useful idiots in the West, who insist that the movement hasn’t done any terror in years, and maybe never did any at all. They produce statements of such mind-boggling gullibility that one can easily imagine Mughniyah chuckling to himself on reading them. The “literature” is rife with claims that Mughniyah didn’t really belong to Hezbollah, or he answered to Iran, or he had his own agenda—anything to dissociate his terrorist acts from the party.

The truth is (and always has been) a simple one. Hezbollah is many things, but it has always included within it a clandestine terrorist branch, and it probably always will. Indeed, Nasrallah’s threat in his eulogy—to commence an “open war” with Israel outside the Israel-Lebanon theater—alludes to the “global reach” that Mughniyah helped to build.

If Hezbollah were absolutely determined to distance itself from the terror tag, it wouldn’t have accorded an official send-off to a most-wanted terrorist. Nor would its leader have stood over his coffin and threatened “open war.” Assassinations of terrorists can boomerang, and so might this one. But it’s already had the one merit of exposing the core of Hezbollah that lies deep beneath the schools, the hospitals, and all the other gimmicks the party uses to get support and pass in polite company. On page one of the International Herald Tribune today, there are photographs of the aftermath of the Beirut bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks (1983), the hijacked TWA Flight 847 (1985), and the ruins of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia (1996). That’s Hezbollah too, and that was Imad Mughniyah—and they were one.

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Imad Mughniyah is dead, killed in Damascus by a car bomb at the age of 45. Mughniyah was believed to have been Hezbollah’s chief of military operations, and his assassination marks the first time a major figure in the movement has been killed since secretary-general Abbas Musawi in 1992—an assassination which brought the current secretary-general, Hasan Nasrallah, to power.

For many, Mughniyah was a reviled figure, wanted by both Israel and the United States for his alleged role in numerous attacks on American and Israeli targets—including the truck-bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992. (Formally, the FBI most-wanted him for his role in the 1985 hijacking of an American airliner to Beirut and the murder of a U.S. Navy diver on board.) For researchers such as myself, Mughniyah was of great interest because he represented a constant figure in Hezbollah throughout its evolution from an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia in the 1980s to a nationalist insurgent group in the 1990s and finally to its current incarnation as the most powerful political party in Lebanon—both in terms of weapons and popular support.

The timing of the assassination, from the perspective of Lebanese of all political stripes, could not have been worse. Tomorrow, after all, is the anniversary of the assassination of a great figure on the other side of Lebanon’s current political divide, former prime minister Rafik Hariri. One hopes that calm heads will prevail and that any ostentatious rallies in Hariri’s honor are postponed. At last year’s mass rally, ugly sectarian chants broke out, and surely given Beirut’s current tension, such chants could easily devolve into open violence.

This past week, Lebanon’s leaders once again irresponsibly postponed the election of a new president. So the assassination of Imad Mughniyah has taken place within a political environment that is, still, on a razor’s edge. If this year’s assassination and the memory of another lead Lebanon down a short path to civil war, Lebanon’s sectarian leaders will have only themselves to blame.

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Today, as Eliyahu Winograd presented his final report in Jerusalem on Israel’s performance during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, I sat in London, having coffee with one of the U.S. Army’s smartest counterinsurgency experts. The two of us were discussing what lessons we, as American military professionals and analysts, should draw from those 33 days of war. To be sure, there are many. As I have written previously for this blog, both sides—Israel and Hezbollah—deserve careful study.

But in the end, one of the lessons of the 2006 war was that tactics—and correcting tactical mistakes—only get you so far. The 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel started with a disastrous strategic miscalculation by Hasan Nasrallah—that Israel would respond in a measured, limited fashion to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers across the Blue Line—and was followed up by a series of catastrophic failures of leadership in Israel that led to so much suffering for both the Israeli and Lebanese populations.

Military exertions, as the Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz recognized, are only means employed toward political ends. Sometimes the military’s organization and performance can be solid, but if the policy toward which it is being employed is flawed, the result will be disastrous nonetheless. In the aftermath of Napoleon’s victories, Clausewitz asked: “But is it true that the real shock was military rather than political?… Was the disaster due to the effect of policy on war, or was the policy itself at fault?”

In the 2006 war, the IDF was asked to accomplish strategic aims that were unrealistic and hastily considered by decision-makers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Watching the war unfold from Cairo in 2006, I knew the minute Israeli strategic decision-makers assured a nervous Israeli populace that the IDF would destroy Hezbollah, rescue the hostages, and end rocket attacks on northern Israel, the job of the IDF had become next to impossible. Hezbollah had only to deny Israel one of its goals to be considered a victor in some circles. In the end, they denied the IDF all three.

To be sure, the IDF was not well prepared for this most recent war. Between 2000 and 2006, the IDF had grown complacent in its operations in the West Bank and Gaza and was unprepared for combat in southern Lebanon. But I wonder whether even the U.S. Army’s XVIIIth Airborne Corps would have been able to destroy Hezbollah within the month-long period given to the IDF.

The failures of the IDF in the 2006 war are known, and new IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has already corrected most of them. The unrealistic objectives civilian policymakers set for the IDF in the first few days of the war, however, are less recognized. From statements issued today, the final Winograd report seems to have gone easier on Ehud Olmert and Gen. Dan Halutz than had previous drafts. It seems more likely, in fact, that Hasan Nasrallah and Hezbollah—already crowing about the report from Beirut—have learned the lesson from their strategic error better than the Israeli political establishment has learned theirs.

The IDF will learn its lessons, as it always seems to do. I wonder, though, whether the political leadership in Jerusalem will be able to resist getting mired in such a disastrous conflict again.

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If there is but one article readers of this blog should take the time to read in the next few days, it is most certainly Matt Matthews’s interview with Israeli general Shimon Naveh on the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. Since I wrote my study of Hezbollah’s performance during the 2006 war, almost immediately following the conflict, I have been deeply impressed by the efforts taken by the U.S. military to learn from the IDF’s successes and failures, even as lessons learned stream in from the U.S. military’s own conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This coming week, for example, the U.S. Army War College will host an event on the 2006 war and the new media that should be excellent. Matt Matthews, meanwhile, is hard at work on what is sure to be an instructive study of the war for the U.S. Army.

But first, Gen. Naveh. Aside from his refreshingly nuanced view of Hezbollah and some choice remarks for his fellow officers—he calls the then-chief of staff Gen. Dan Halutz “an idiot”—and says one brigade commander should have been executed for cowardice—Gen. Naveh indicts the whole IDF for not being prepared to fight the kind of war they found themselves fighting in July 2006:

Basically I think that the IDF was totally unprepared for this kind of operation, both conceptually, operationally and tactically—mainly conceptually and practically. The point is that the IDF fell in love with what it was doing with the Palestinians. In fact, it became addictive. When you fight a war against a rival who’s by all means inferior to you, you may lose a guy here or there, but you’re in total control. It’s nice. You can pretend that you fight the war and yet it’s not really a dangerous war. This kind of thing served as an instrument corrupting the IDF.

Herein lie important lessons for U.S. policy-makers and military professionals. Some will say the lesson in Israel’s 2006 war is that the U.S. military can go “soft” by spending too much time on counterinsurgency in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, forgetting the kind of combined arms skills that come in handy in major combat operations. This would seem to be the opinion of the current Commandant of the Marine Corps, among others. Counterinsurgency theorists would say this is ridiculous. John Nagl describes counterinsurgency as “graduate-level warfare,” and it follows that just as a PhD candidate in mathematics would not forget how to solve basic algebra equations, it is unlikely a junior officer in the U.S. Army will necessarily forget basic infantry battle drills while sipping tea with sheiks in Anbar Province. (And besides, until the U.S. military truly learns counterinsurgency, it is unlikely to “overlearn” counterinsurgency.)

It is true, though, that much of the blame for the IDF’s poor performance in the 2006 war must fall upon the IDF’s officer corps (and Israeli politicians for slashing the IDF’s training budget). Complacency is the enemy of any good military, and it certainly seems as if the IDF grew too accustomed to the kind of missions they performed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories after the 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon. In the same way, the U.S. military officer corps in Iraq and Afghanistan is perhaps the most combat-proven officer corps in our nation’s history. But operational commanders must work hard to ensure that the overall culture within the officer corps is not overrun by complacency. This is their job, as officers, commanders, and custodians of the nation’s military.

I believe the way in which the U.S. Army and Marine Corps rotate between Iraq and Afghanistan works against complacency. Having fought and led combat units in both environments, I can attest that the differing physical and cultural environments force officers to remain intellectually flexible and alert. That’s just one of the reasons why the Marine Corps’s proposal to make Afghanistan a solely Marine mission is such a bad one.

At the same time, the job of being a U.S. Army or Marine Corps officer just got, incredibly, even tougher. Not only must Marine Corps and Army units be proficient in counterinsurgency operations—the most likely combat environment for present and future conflicts—they must also be prepared to execute combined arms efforts as part of major combat operations along the lines of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and destruction of Iraq’s army. As difficult as this may be, I do not feel this is an unreasonable expectation of our officer corps. It is, after all, what the nation requires.