Going It Alone

Israel is in the most uncomfortable position it has inhabited since the get-go. No country, certainly not Iran, is nearly as isolated today as the Jewish state.

Even during the Fifties when Eisenhower followed a policy of "even handedness," there was a strong American guarantee that Israel would not be overrun by its perpetually hostile neighbors. The Eisenhower Archives are filled with memos and telexes to this effect--even during the days of the Great Presidential Temper Tantrum also known as the Suez War of 1956.

Thanks to the policies of President Obama (who bodes well to take permanent possession of the Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" trophy) it is Israel and not Iran which now stands alone, surrounded by hostiles and facing existential threat. The cringing approach of appeasement has brought, as any realpolitiker would have projected, failure as its reward.

The latest round of UN Security Council sanctions will not convert the mullahs of Tehran to peace, love, and flower power. The sanctions, once promised by SecState Clinton to be "crippling" are hardly an annoyance to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps given that entity's vast experience and skill in avoiding previous sanctions.

As everyone who is oriented in time and place would have known months ago, Iran's protectors, Russia and China, would place their interests ahead of any sort of international consensus. One can be thankful that Iranian Orator-in-Chief, Ahmedinejad, so insulted Moscow that Putin, Medvedev, and company actually put the sale of S-300 air defense missiles on hold. Had it not been for Ahmedinejad's capacious mouth, the sanction regime imposed by the latest Security Council vote would have permitted the sale and delivery to go through.

Iran has allies. This reality was shown in harsh relief as Iran, Turkey, and Russia sat down for a confab regarding regional security just this week.

Such a meeting does little to support President Obama's insistence that Iran is more "isolated" following the sanction vote. Nor does the White House's opposition to efforts in Congress to impose unilateral American sanctions on companies trading in refined petroleum products to Iran support the oft repeated administration notion that the UN sanctions would provide a basis for stronger measures by the US and EU countries.

The reason pumped by the Oval crowd is that Doing Something Real on the part of Congress would carry with it the probability of annoying "allies." Well, fer sure, dude, that is to be expected, France and Germany as well as Russia and China are feathering their own businesses with beaucoup trade with Iran. Both Sarkozy and Merkel are quite willing to talk the talk but refrain from making companies walk the walk. And, golly, these fine folk shouldn't be put in a bind simply because Congress is more worried about an Iranian nuclear capability than is either France or Germany--or Mr Obama.

It is hard to decide whether Mr Obama knows he is lying or is so filled with the miasma of ideology that he really, really believes what he has been saying regarding either Iran or Israel. Suffice it to write that not even the previous Monument to Naivete, peanut farmer turned governor of a small state morphed to the presidency, Jimmy Carter, was as out-to-lunch in Mideast policy than the Nice Young Man From Chicago.

The focus on the artifact of the Great Humanitarian Aid Flotilla To The Starving Millions Of Gaza has become a very dangerous preoccupation not only for the US and other seemingly civilized states but, most of all, for Israel. Thanks to the melding of the utter brainlessness of so many of the "elites" of Europe and the US with the administration's policies of "outreach" to the Muslims of the world, the government of Israel has been forced to divert its efforts from dealing with the existential threat represented by emergent Iran to the sideshow of why IDF commandos were so bold as to kill people who were trying to kill them.

While the government of Israel made a blunder in the precise tactics of interdicting the Great Humanitarian Aid Flotilla, the ground truths remain unchanged. The flotilla was a deliberate provocation orchestrated and conducted with the assistance of the Erdogan regime; the Miza Marmara had on board a number of martyrdom seeking jihadists who offered cold arm resistance to the fast roping commandos. End of story.

Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu and his inner cabinet, the Septet (also either the Seven Samurai or the Seven Dwarfs depending on your point of view and the choices they make) are wrestling with damage control and new means of placating Obama over the Gaza Strip blockade rather than the very important subject of how to deal with Iran before it is an hour too late. Iran along with its allies, Syria and Turkey, and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, seeks the total obliteration of Israel as currently constituted. That is a ground truth impossible to ignore or rebut.

While Mr Obama is apparently quite comfortable with the idea of a Mahdi Bomb, regardless of rhetoric to the contrary, the state and government of Israel cannot afford such a detached, laid back attitude. While it will be quite some time before Iranian technicians can miniaturize a nuclear charge so as to make it deliverable by one of its medium or intermediate range ballistic missiles, it will take very little time to build a bomb which would fit comfortably in a truck.

(Feeling depressed, Ahmad, anxious, tired of this life? Think martyrdom. Particularly if you can drive a truck.)

Think of it this way, Ahmad, you don't even have to cross the Israeli border. Just get to a checkpoint on the Lebanese border--or the Gaza border after our Western tools have opened the Strip to our ships--and let the sucker go. A twenty kiloton ground pounder will kill a whole bunch of Jews--particularly if Allah wills the winds to blow in the correct direction. Come on, Ahmad, that little push of the clicker will make you a hero orders of magnitude greater than the guys who flew into the Twin Towers. Way to go, fellihin!

By the most conservative estimate the Iranians are only a pair of years from having a workable truck transportable nuclear weapon or two. Letting one or both rip on Israel would be a mighty blow against the "Zionist entity" particularly if followed by ground attacks from all those nice neighbors known as "frontline states." The ground attacks won't even have to be conducted by heavy and well coordinated forces if the government and people of Israel are not prepared for the initial shock.

In a world filled with "get-or-get-got" situations, the one faced by Israel is the most compelling. To "get" implies the willingness to be held responsible for starting the equivalent of a full scale war at a time when the global economy would be an inevitable collateral casualty. To wait until being "get-got" and then retaliate means the political will to absorb a large number of Israeli casualties must exist.

The time to make decisions between "getting" and surviving "getting got" is short. The time to make the necessary preparations in both political will and material capacities for either option is not much longer. Every minute wasted on damage control over the flotilla mess is time wasted.

For this the Obama administration must and will take great responsibility when historians of the future consider this period. Cringing, hand-wringing, bowing to Muslims has been bootless. Turning Uncle Sam's back to Israel is much, much worse.

Quoting Bugs Bunny, "What A Maroon!"

With admitted difficulty, the Geek has chosen three entities deserving the Bugs Bunny Memorial "Maroon" prize today. They are, in no particular order, professors of international law who have no clue what sort of neighborhood the Mideast really is, hand-wringing pundits who still insist on comparing Afghanistan with the American war in Vietnam (now that the 104 month of combat has come in the Land Of Deadly Hills), and, a surprise here, the Tea Party Movement.

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.

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter The UN

The UN has once more failed. In both the Security Council and the Human Rights Council member states have forsworn a course of disinterested commitment to the peace and stability of the global political order or the common rights of all humanity. Rather both entities fell into the possession of demonic passions, passions of pure ideology far surpassing what occurred in the same venue during the most glacial days of the Cold War.

The hatred was palpable in the words of supposedly mature, rational, reasonable representatives of what, by consensus if nothing else, are presumed to be governments capable of playing a responsible role in world affairs. The thundering denunciations of Israel following its legal if arguably quite unwise act of self-defense were based on no knowledge of what transpired before or during the commando raid on the Marmara.

At least the Security Council admitted ignorance. The resolution specifically acknowledged that it and its members had no independent information regarding what happened. The resolution and the vote depended completely upon media reports or quite possibly false and malicious gossip from partisan sources. The reality that the Security Council acted without knowing is borne out by the wording of the resolution condemning Israel in which it was alleged that ten "passengers" on board the Marmara had been killed. While that number had currency in the media, it was wrong as the later figure of nine demonstrates.

None of this bothered the worthies of the Security Council currently with Turkey in the chair. It was with a whoop and a hollar that the resolution went through. In double quick order and to its permanent disgrace and loss of credibility, the Security Council in essence legitimized the intentionally provocative action of Turkey in facilitating the movement of the "aid flotilla" knowing, even hoping, that the Israelis would stop the maritime parade and some good Muslims would attain the martyrdom they were seeking.

The haste of the Security Council's lynching of Israel stands in very sharp contrast to the apparent indifference within the body's membership to the act of aggression committed by North Korea in the Cheonan Incident. Even though weeks have passed, an international investigation undertaken by a credible group including at least one neutral nation, and the finger of culpability firmly pointed at North Korea, the Security Council is in no hurry to render a judgement not even a mild censure directed at Pyongyang.

Given the contrast between the Security Council's action on Israel and inaction on North Korea, it is hard to see how the Council can claim any legitimacy as an arbiter and enforcer of international norms of governmental conduct. This is not to imply that the Council would have been in the right to ignore the Marmara Affair as it has the Cheonan Incident but rather to argue that once the impartial investigation has occurred in either of these unfortunate matters, then it is proper for the Council to condemn or offer condolences. But, unless and until the facts of the matter are known in sufficient detail to meet some form of the "rational person" test, the Council should sit down and shut up.

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) can never sit down and shut up. Neither can it ever be bothered with finding real, honest-to-gosh, objective facts as opposed to convenient artifacts and anti-facts which meet a particular political (or, to err on the side of accuracy, political-religious) need or desire.

While the rhetoric in the Security Council was rather restrained, polite, civilized even, the oratory over in the HRC was over the top. Epithets were hurled at machinegun speed. These included "piracy," "act of aggression," "brutal massacre," and "war crime." The fast roping Israeli commandos were also held to have committed an act of "terrorism," a "crime against humanity," and a set of "murderous attacks."

The Festival of Insults provided the context for the passage of a Pakistani resolution introduced on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and Sudan on behalf of the Arab League. Irony permeates this scene as it does most of what the HRC undertakes. In this case it is furnished by the reality that both the OIC and the Arab League are comprised in the main of states which routinely, systematically, and violently abridge most of the human rights they have committed themselves to upholding in assorted international undertakings.

Not that this sort of logical and ethical disconnect bothers the majority of the states comprising the HRC. As has been the case before, Israel was convicted instantly. Following conviction, the HRC called for a "fact finding" mission which would serve to justify the speedy conviction.

In the past four years, the HRC (and its predecessor) held thirteen special sessions. Of these, ten dealt with country specific issues. Of the ten, six focused on Israel. This is in keeping with another critical index of HRC priorities. The HRC (again including its immediate predecessor) passed fifty-nine country specific resolutions. Twenty-nine of these--that's right, half--named Israel as the target.

It is easy to recall that the HRC was responsible for the Goldstone Panel and its report. The travesty of fact embodied in this report demonstrates in one (admittedly difficult and painful to read) batch of cynical distortions the reality of the politicization of the HRC. Now the HRC is bound and determined to usher "Infamous Prejudice II" into existence despite the presence of the supposedly moderating influence of the US.

President Obama reversed the policy of his predecessor and the US rejoined the HRC. The president as well as Secretary of State Clinton and any number of others in the Obama foreign policy "team" have declared the HRC to be "flawed." This designation is on a par with calling the RMS Titanic "unsinkable."

The party line at Foggy Bottom and within the magic circle of the Oval Office is the US can work effectively from the inside to reform the "flawed" HRC. If the action taken by the body regarding the Marmara Affair is any indication--and it most assuredly is--the Obama administration and the president himself have given birth to one more policy failure. The failure of the US to influence in any way the immoderate, prejudicial, dare one write, "antisemitic," resolution shows clearly that the Obama foreign policy is not only bootless but that the US lacks any real diplomatic clout--even in the lesser venue of the HRC.

In a sorry, painful way the lack of real influence in the HRC simply is a shadow of the diminished capacity of the US in the far more critical arena of the Security Council. Perhaps the issue of a resolution of condemnation and sorrow was not considered worth the use of the big gun of a Security Council veto, but the obvious unwillingness of the Obama "team" to use the veto reinforced the already prevalent perception of American weakness of political will.

Not even in the dismal days of Jimmy Carter was the US so widely seen as lacking the intestinal fortitude necessary to exercise influence in the Security Council. The hemorrhaging of American diplomatic influence has little to do with the presumed hatred engendered around the world by the actions and policies of the Bush/Cheney administration as has been alleged to the point of nausea by apologists for the Obama administration.

Rather the loss of that most precious of international commodities--influence--is the direct and immediate result of the Obama policies of appeasement, accommodation, political correctness, and "outreach." None of these have been seen by adverse states as indicative of a creative new approach to foreign relations on the part of the US. Rather, all have been understood as signs of weakness, irresolution, loss of faith in ourselves.

The administration and its media flacks are attempting to rationalize the Obama stance as one of mediation, of counselling of the relationship maintenance sort seeking to restore good relations between two key allies--Turkey and Israel. Not only is this an exercise in squaring the circle, it is arguably doomed to fail simply because Turkey has changed course over the past three years.

The emergence of AKP to power brought politicians rooted in political Islam to power. Not surprisingly the Erdogan government has tilted increasingly to the East, to using its Islamic commonalities not only to creep closer to Iran but to become an ever more leading power within the successor states of the old Ottoman Empire.

Turkey sees no particular advantage to its pursuit of its national interest by keeping allied with either Israel or the US. Erdogan and many others in Turkey today see the future of their country deeply rooted in the past. They see Turkey as once more becoming the seat of the "caliphate."

Reality has slapped the Obama face. Perhaps even this slow learner president can overcome his disinterest in foreign affairs, his mental inertia, and his fixation on outdated ideologies and recognize that Turkey is not an American ally--and will not become one again in the near to mid-term.

While he is at it, perhaps it is possible, at least in principle, for Mr Obama to wake up to the fact that the US is playing a very weak hand in the UN. As a result, thinking the unthinkable becomes attractive. Do we really, really need to be a member of and chief financial backer of a dysfunctional institution in which our influence is nil?

Or, paradoxic as it seems, might we not gain both influence and freedom of action by leaving the UN to stew in its own increasingly anti-West, anti-democratic juices?

Well, it's a thought.

Turkey Has To Share The Blame

The ever more Islamist leaning AKP government in Turkey is also growing out of control hysterical over the Israeli commando assault on the Turkish flagged passenger ship Marmara. At the same time Ankara overlooks a ground truth, a very unpleasant ground truth.

Turkey must share responsibility for the chain of events which culminated in the deaths of nine passengers on the Marmara. While the Turks are going ballistic (as is shown by their Foreign Minister equating the actions of the fast roping commandos with the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11), they cheerfully ignore the fact that they facilitated the spurious and unnecessary "humanitarian effort" funded in large measure by a Turkish charity, IHH, whose linkage with assorted Muslim terror practicing entities is so well known it has even been documented by a Danish research group.

Not only did the government of Turkey (GOT) facilitate the "aid" convoy and well understand the past involvement of IHH with al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others, it also refused to cooperate with Israel in diverting the flotilla to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The government of Israel (GOI) committed itself to funneling the materials from the convoy to Gaza through its land crossing points. The deal was seconded by Egypt.

Ankara nixed that ever so sane and practical alternative. It must be inferred from this decision that GOT hoped for and expected an armed and violent encounter between militants on board the Marmara and the IDF.

There is a very good reason for the Turks to entertain both the hope and the expectation. The reason is, of course, Iran. The increasingly cozy relationship between the Iranian and Turkish governments was made manifest in the role played by Turkey in the last minute deal whereby the Iranians finally accepted the six month stale proposal by the US and others of the P5+1 to stash 1200 kilos of low enriched uranium in exchange for twenty percent enriched fuel rods.

The rejection of that arrangement, which was compelled by simple reality, has been embraced by GOT as being one more outrageous attack by the US and others upon the Muslim world. Since the deal would not get through the UNSC and sanctions of an appropriately spineless sort would, Ankara had a strong motive to move the Iranian issue down the Security Council's "to-do" list.

The Israeli enforcement of its quite legal blockade of the hostile quasi-state in the Gaza Strip provided the perfect opportunity to move the Iranian sanction question down the priority list at the Security Council by one notch or more, perhaps many more. Ably assisted by the useful idiots of the West, Turkey can make one demarche after another in an ongoing campaign to stall the sanctions.

The willingness to back this play extends far beyond the elites of Western Europe and the Islamophiles of the world generally. It extends, for example, to Beijing. The Trolls of the Forbidden City were quick, very quick to condemn the Israelis. They were as fast and harsh in their criticism of Israel as they have been slow and soft in their disapprobation of North Korea in the Choenan Incident.

It is not illegitimate to posit that the Chinese will capitalize on the partially real, partially artificial revulsion that any Israeli act of self-defense seems to bring in order to preclude or at least weaken even more any sanctions which might emerge from the Security Council. Even the Russians may join this effort. While the Kremlin is not at all pleased with the Iranian obstinacy and understand the arts and crafts of both making atomic weapons and practicing diplomacy of delay, neither are Medvedev, Putin, and company eager to be seen as dancing to a tune called by the Imperialist Camp. (Oops! Bad Geek. Cold War over, Russians friends now. He meant to write, "the US, UK, France, and Germany.")

Neither are the lads of GOT overly perturbed at the fraying of its diplomatic ties with either the US or NATO. Turkey has never been a good fit in NATO as numerous times of friction over the past half century have shown. Nor is Ankara particularly enthralled with the US given the past tendency of American administrations to practice a "tilt" (in Henry Kissinger's term) toward Greece whenever the two historic enemies disagree over something (think Cyprus.)

The GOT has taken a clear eyed (to use one of Mr Obama's favorite phrases of late) at the calculus of forces in the Mideast and Northwest Asian regions and made a choice. Ankara has opted for Tehran over Washington not only due to Muslim sentiments but, far more compellingly, because Iran is the stronger horse. From the perspective of Ankara, the sun has set on the US--and the West generally--while it is rising in the East, and in Iran more specifically.

Turkey has proclaimed itself to be a victim of Israeli "aggression" and even in one particularly egregious fit of hyperbole, "genocide." Its ForMin has demanded "solidarity" between Turkey and both Washington and NATO. It will not get the degree of "solidarity" apparently required. There can be little doubt but Ankara will seek to capitalize on this lack of all-for-one response from both the US and NATO.

GOT will become more and more obstructionist in the UN and other fora. Unless and until the Obama administration jumps clearly to the desires of Ankara, there will be no use seeking Turkish collaboration on any matter whether the nuclearization of Iran or the expanding of the arsenals of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Of course there is a possibility that the Obama administration will undertake "an agonizing reappraisal" (to use John Foster Dulles famed formulation) of American relations with both Israel and Turkey. The combination of President Obama's "Muslim outreach" program and his evident personal distaste for Israel might combine to move US policy in the direction of accommodating Turkish desires. The American support for an international investigation of the factors leading up to the deaths on the Marmara indicates this potential is not slight.

There is one upside to the Security Council's demand for an international investigation, provided such is not a replay of the infamous Goldstone Panel. Any inquiry which makes the slightest pretense of being "objective" and "transparent" as required by American declaratory policy would show the degree of culpability adhering to GOT.

The issue of Ankara's role in the Great Humanitarian Convoy would also be a litmus of any report's accuracy and objectivity. If Turkey is conspicuous by its absence in the roster of malefactors, the report would be simply Goldstone II: Prejudiced Infamy, the Sequel.

Ready! Aim! Shoot Yourself In The Foot!

Sometimes the ability of the government of Israel (GOI) to blunder is nothing less than mind blowing. The deadly confrontation between "peace activists" and the commandos of the Israeli navy is one of those times. To put the matter short, sharp, and accurate, it was a needless, counterproductive blunder which a responsible government never would have contemplated, let alone authorized.

The drama unfolded almost as slowly and compelling in its foreboding as the long, slow, majestically threatening progress of the Royal Navy to the Falkland Islands almost thirty years ago. To a person of a classical bent, the coming of the clash between boatloads of pro-Palestinian propagandists, assorted I-hate-Israel-and-Jews types, and general malcontents and the naval forces of Israel unrolled with the inevitability of Nemesis confronting the hubris laden protagonist in an Athenian tragedy.

The Turkish sponsored maritime cavalcade of unneeded "relief" and "humanitarian" supplies accompanied by terrorists, terrorist apologists, and terror tourists was intended to put GOI on the spot. An uncomfortable, no-way-to-spell-winner sort of spot. The hugely publicized international flotilla departing from points as far removed as Ireland, Algeria, and Turkey was simply bait waved in a most attractive way before GOI. The hope and prayer of the organizers of this exercise in fraudulent humanitarianism was that GOI would take the bait--preferably in the most visible and bloody way possible.

Given the resources available to GOI, there can be no doubt but the information concerning the motives and goals of the flotilla folks was available. Given the vast experience GOI has collected regarding hostile provocations, there can be no doubt but GOI understood what was at stake if the navy was sent in to block the boats and their passengers from reaching Gaza.

There must have been both information and understanding within GOI and the IDF that among the passengers there would be individuals prepared for violence. Eager to go violent should the opportunity present itself.

GOI should have known that blood would flow if Israeli forces boarded any of the vessels, particularly either of the two largest, most passenger packed ones. If ordered in, the commandos would have been entering a red ant nest. At least some of the ants would bite.

The constant warnings issued multiple times per day the past week by GOI were seen by the oncoming "activists" not as a reason to be cowed, but as one of an emboldening nature. The warnings were correctly read as signifying the Israelis would enter one or more ships violently. Those who were primed to respond violently were fully prepared, stoked up, and good to go.

In the wake of the operation, GOI has protested that its troops were met with steel bars, knives, and, at least some firearms. The GOI and IDF spokesmen have stated that their threatened troops used "crowd dispersal methods, including live fire."

Duh!

How drearily predictable. Troops abseil from helicopters in hours of darkness. Troops are met with immediate low scale violence, clubs and knives rather than automatic weapons and RPGs. Troops respond in self-defense. "Activists" die. Outrage erupts from Tehran to Europe. Israel gets big, very black eye in global media and the hordes of politicians and opinion molders for whom Israel has become the blackest of black hats.

Hamas wins. Hezbollah wins. Even the hapless Palestinian Authority wins. On the margins, Iran wins; Syria wins: Islamists everywhere win.

Wow! GOI made one shrewd move here. Right on the heels of being branded by 188 countries as a sort of nuclear brigand, Israel now looks as if it has once more adopted the role of Goliath while the role of poor, little, ole David goes to the minions of Hamas and their external supporters.

Game, set, and match to the bad guys.

One has to wonder what sort of mental pathology infected the presumably mature, intelligent, and responsible members of GOI and the senior ranks of the IDF. Did they really, really believe that so much lethal hardware would be smuggled into Gaza among the air conditioners, aspirin, generators, and one-size-fits-all burkas as to present a threat to Israel?

Of course there were warlike stores on board the humanitarian fleet. Even if weapons were conspicuous in their absence, the cement and other building supplies would more likely go to the construction of bunkers for Hamas' security forces than for civilians displaced during Cast Lead.

Or, did the Deep Thinkers and Grand Strategists of GOI really, really convince themselves that Israel would suffer such a blow to its credibility should the "activists" make it to Gaza as to so embolden Hamas and other Islamist jihadist groups as to be the equivalent of a major defeat in the battle for public opinion throughout the world? Is the current situation somehow preferable? Is it more in keeping with the national and strategic interests of Israel that GOI and the IDF be portrayed as a collection of blood drenched thugs interchangeable in all respects with the Waffen SS?

An unfortunate ground truth is that public opinion in Europe and even the US has shifted slowly but with increasing speed away from Israel and to the Palestinians. The shift commenced during the First Intifada when TV cameras gave fine images of Palestinian kids confronting M-16 toting IDF personnel. The shots of the IDF shooting real bullets or Shin Bet operatives conducting beatings moved opinion to the side of the Palestinians.

There is an even more unfortunate ground truth acting in tandem with that of opinion shift. In recent decades the image and not the substance, the appearance rather than the reality is the critical factor in war and diplomacy as it is in domestic politics.

The realities of the First or Second Intifadas matter nothing as compared to the images conveyed, the perceptions manipulated by these images, and the actions forced on governments by the collective impact of the perceptions. GOI must be aware of this as its members must know perfectly well the imperatives contained in the twin ground truths mentioned.

Even if the collective memory of GOI is too short to recall the two Intifadas, it must comprehend the impact of Operation Cast Lead. The compelling justifications for this legitimate act of self-defense including the supine reaction of the UN to repeated GOI requests for action count as nothing against the images and perceptions captured, manipulated by forces quite hostile to Israel.

Regardless of its military or political successes, Operation Cast Lead was a disaster for Israel in the most critical venue, that of public perception and opinion. The same calculus applies to the IDF descent upon the "humanitarian flotilla."

The reality that those on board landed the first blow or fired the first shot does not matter in the slightest. Nor does it matter in the least that the commandos fired in self-defense or to rescue comrades captured by the "activists."

All that matters is the existence of ten, or fourteen, or sixteen corpses. The cadavers of those "activists" unfortunate enough to be in the impact zone are the symbols of victory. Victory for Hamas and its ideological ilk.

The sorrow and pity in this latest defeat for Israeli interests is found in its quite unnecessary nature. Unlike Operation Cast Lead, there is and can be no compelling justification (unless an atomic bomb, or, less impossible, a flask of anthrax is found on board one of the ships) for the assault and its predictable results.

As the sequelae of this defeat are played out in the weeks and months to come, GOI must keep in mind the reason for any and all negative effects. Any gangrene which sets in for the national and strategic interests of Israel will be the result of a self-inflicted wound.