Daniel Pipes presents his peace plan
In contrast to the defeatist 'peace plans' of some members of Israel's government, Professor Dan Pipes has a much simpler strategy: Win baby, win. My peace plan is simple: Israel defeats its enemies.Read the whole thing. But don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.
Victory uniquely creates circumstances conducive to peace. Wars end, the historical record confirms, when one side concedes defeat and the other wins. This makes intuitive sense, for so long as both sides aspire to achieve their ambitions, fighting continues or it potentially can resume.
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Victory means imposing one's will on the enemy, compelling him to abandon his war goals. Germans, forced to surrender in World War I, retained the goal of dominating Europe and a few years later looked to Hitler to achieve this goal. Signed pieces of paper matter only if one side has cried "Uncle": The Vietnam War ostensibly concluded through diplomacy in 1973 but both sides continued to seek their war aims until the North won ultimate victory in 1975.
Willpower is the key: shooting down planes, destroying tanks, exhausting munitions, making soldiers flee, and seizing land are not decisive in themselves but must be accompanied by a psychological collapse. North Korea's loss in 1953, Saddam Hussein's in 1991, and the Iraqi Sunni loss in 2003 did not translate into despair. Conversely, the French gave up in Algeria in 1962, despite out-manning and out-gunning their foes, as did the Americans in Vietnam in 1975 and the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989. The Cold War ended without a fatality. In all these cases, the losers maintained large arsenals, armies, and functioning economies. But they ran out of will.
Likewise, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved only when one side gives up.
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Ironically, Israelis over time responded to the incessant assault on their country by losing sight of the need to win. The right developed schemes to finesse victory, the center experimented with appeasement and unilateralism, and the left wallowed in guilt and self-recrimination. Exceedingly few Israelis understand the unfinished business of victory, of crushing the enemy's will and getting him to accept the permanence of the Jewish state.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:17 PM
3 Comments:
Carl - Israel's government is filled with cowards and people who are defeated - exhausted mentally and psychologically. They know only the language of surrender. So is it any surprise that the US government could before the end of the year, impose a plan on Israel that would effectively end its existence as a sovereign nation? And what if any thing would Israel's leaders do to counter it? They can't even bring themselves to defend Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Daniel Pipes is right, defeating the Arabs is the only real way to make peace with them but Israel has no will to defeat its enemies, let alone preserve its existence. Iran in the end may not have to use the nuclear bomb at all if the Jews meekly surrender their own country to the world.
The writing is on the wall.
Hi Carl.
Good plan!
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
George S. Patton
What Dr. Pipes wrote is logical. I'm sure no expert on this but when did the "Palestinians" ever act dispassionately and logically in their ultimate best interests?
I still like Abba Eban's remark that, "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Basically, nothing's changed since Eban said that back in the '60's. I can still remember as a kid, watching Foreign Minister Eban addressing the UN Security Council after the Six Day War. Wow, there was an extremely intelligent, erudite man!
Agreeing with Pipes, the Palis are roughly analogous to the post-WW 1 Germans in having their own, "We weren't/aren't really defeated" mythology. Logically following then in Pipes' argument is for an inarguably decisive outcome after the next war, as ended WW 2. Following at that point then is the Palis adopting reason and seeking peace, having finally exhausted all other alternatives.
But wasn't the Six Day War itself a WW2 type decisive ending?
Seems to me that if we're going on historical analogies, what's the likely outcome for the foreseeable future is a continued Cold War-like belligerency/armed truce. Israel's enemies haven't yet exhausted all their non-rational, non-self-destructive alternatives. They haven't yet 'missed all their opportunities'.
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