Since Israel stopped the IHH "aid flotilla," the MSM both here and abroad have run to the Rolodex files seeking appropriate comment from genuine, bottled in bond, professors of international law, particularly those who assert a special competence in the laws governing blockades and maritime operations. The comments given in appropriately solemn words and in all probability accompanied by grave looks of disapproval universally condemn the Jewish state for both the action against the "aid flotilla" specifically and the blockade of the Gaza Strip generally.
In almost all cases the learned professors give Hamas a pass on all its actions by averring the terrorist entity is not a government. Many of the questioned professors use this reasoning to brand the Israeli blockade as "illegal," as the object of the blockade is not a legal government and Gaza is, perforce, not a "state."
Wow! Ain't the legal mind wonderful! All it takes to (literally) get away with acts of aggression, murder, kidnapping, and generally antisocial behavior in the international arena is to be a "non-state actor." What a concept! By this rationale Israel has no real right of self-defense since Hamas is not a real deal government.
Of course, ever since Hamas shot its way into power three years ago it has been acting as if it constituted a genuine government. It behaves as if it was a government, doing such governmental things as waging (undeclared) war, issuing passports, spending beyond its means, procuring weapons, executing evil doers. All the usual governmental attributes, don't you agree?
The duck test applies. Hamas passes it. Whether the professors like it or not, Hamas is a government and the Gaza strip is the state it governs. The blockade is rational and, by any rational standard, legal.
The maritime aspect of the blockade has been answered, at least in history. Distant blockades have been recognized internationally ever since Great Britain invoked the radical new doctrine under the pressures of real life during World War I. The employment of unrestricted submarine warfare against Imperial Japan by the US was executed under the color of being a distant blockade. No one seemed to mind--other than the Japanese.
Later, President Kennedy employed a distant blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He called it by a different name, but the use of the US Navy was in all respects identical to the use by Israel of its naval forces in its blockade of Gaza. Had the Soviets tested the American political will as the Turks did the Israeli, the results would have been much the same but on a far vaster scale.
Perhaps the learned members of the legal professorate simply are not aware of the Kennedy blockade or they have been baffled by the unusual terminology the Man From Camelot employed. In any event the precedent is there, and not even a full half-century old.
Attention pundits! The war we are waging in Afghanistan in no way mirrors the debacle we created for ourselves in Vietnam. Other than length of combat operations, there is only one similarity between the two. In Vietnam we used the wrong doctrine (theory of victory) for the totality of the war; in Afghanistan that sorry condition has ended with the appointment of General McChrystal to command and the promulgation of of his operational concepts.
The differences are far more striking. The single most important distinction between the war in Vietnam and that in Afghanistan--at least for Americans who are naturally aversive to battle losses--is the very low body count. Only recently has the total butcher's bill hit the one thousand level. It must be remembered that there were weeks, that's right, weeks, when the US lost a thousand or more KIA or DOW.
Another important difference between the two interventionary wars is the reality that in Afghanistan unlike Vietnam we have not sought a change of government every time the local panjandrum perturbed us. We have been willing to fly with Karzai no matter how irritating he can be. That was not the case in Vietnam with results which crippled fatally the development of an effective central government and South Vietnamese political will.
A third distinction between Vietnam and Afghanistan is that during the former war the US and its client South Vietnamese forces rarely had the initiative, and even when we did possess that most critical of battlefield commodities, we did not use it well. Over the past several months it is clear that the US and its allies do have the initiative in Afghanistan as measured by a critical indicator--who initiates contact.
While Taliban and al-Qaeda can still pull off PR spectaculars, the quotidian realities show the US, ISAF, and Afghan National Force hold the initiative. With the advent of more UAVs and the development of real time links to forces on the ground, even the most dreaded threat, the greatest causer of casualties, the roadside bomb, has been all but neutralized.
The road in Afghanistan remains long. It is still a winding one. But, there is no realistic probability it will end in a frank American defeat. And, remember pundits one and all, the minimum necessary strategic goal for the US and its allies is that of "not-losing."
The final, and surprising, Maroon Award winner is the Tea Party Movement. For all their laudable goals, putting the central government on a fiscal diet, ramming the DC monster back into the Constitutional Box, the Tea Partiers seem to believe the US is an island onto itself, disconnected from the rest of the world. A perusal of all the major Tea Party websites, a list too long to provide links to, shows no mention of foreign and national security policy worthy of the name.
Where there is any noting that the US inhabits a globe filled with other countries, some of which are quite hostile to us, it consists of (A) glittering generalities which might have emerged from the quick, facile lips of President Obama, or (B) the same sort of ever-so-muscular tough talk of the Cheney/Rumsfeld years. Get a grip, people!
The reality is the American defense budget has to be constrained as Eisenhower warned a half century ago. Today, his prescient words are more apropos than when he delivered them in his Farewell Address. At the same time the threats to our national interests and security are growing almost by the hour and certainly by the year.
The "international community" is a comforting fiction for the ever-so-sophisticated folks of the domestic hoi oligoi. The dysfunctional nature of international institutions including but not limited to the UN and its subordinate entities is self-evident. American diplomatic influence has whithered with the rapidity of a puddle in the hot sun of the Sonoran Desert. To put it bluntly, we aren't heard when we speak softly (or even loudly) because we lack the stick of self-confidence, faith in ourselves, our institutions.
It is that faith which counts for more than armed strength since absent faith and confidence in what we stand for, what limits we place on the behavior of other states, there is no reason for any to believe we will put our military in harm's way. States which have been pliable or simply inconsequential have taken advantage of our loss of faith to exert their own bounding belief in themselves to thwart the US at most if not every turn.
The Tea Party Movement may have properly read the mood of Americans buffeted by unemployment, economic uncertainty, sourness with the capacity and competence of the central government to do anything beneficial and effective, but it and We the People alike can never forget that we live in a complex world with enemies. Like Phil Esterhazy used to caution at the opening of every episode of Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there."
Words to heed. Words to survive by.
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