America has just seen the man in the mirror.
After 34 days of warfare, the Israeli military ceased fire against Hezbollah units based in Lebanon.
The battle originally began with Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. The next day, Israel retaliated by bombing Beirut's airport, and Hezbollah fired back on northern Israel. This was quickly followed by a full-scale Israeli ground invasion, a sad throwback to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. By the end of this mess, more than 100 Israeli soldiers and 700 Lebanese civilians have been killed. And Israel has nothing to show for it.
Hezbollah is still alive and remains in Lebanon, its membership most likely bolstered with new recruits now that another generation of Lebanese youth has experienced violence at the hands of the Israeli military. Israel once again finds itself in a tenuous truce with its neighbors and, rather than being safer, is probably in more danger than it was two months ago.
Sound familiar?
Israel's latest, ineffective campaign is a miniaturized version of America's own war on terror, specifically the lethargic dramas that are painfully unfolding in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only difference is that Israel has, at least, the wisdom to step off its violent path, whereas the Bush administration has stubbornly refused to change its course of war. During three years of war in Iraq, all that seems to have been accomplished is the death of thousands on both sides and the rise of terrorism and partisan warfare in the Middle East.
During five years of war in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai's government is but a shell, the Taliban is making a comeback, the country is producing more opium than ever, and Osama bin Laden is still at large. Long after al-Qaida was said to be weakened and on the run, its members remain in Afghanistan and are caching weapons there, according to USA Today.
In other words, America has little if anything to show for its two-front war.
Except fewer Americans.
Despite the similarities, many in the U.S. government - including President Bush - witnessed the recent clash in Lebanon as if they were watching a strange phenomenon that could only come out of the Middle East. In actuality, they were looking at their own reflections.
In exactly the same manner as the United States, Israel not only invaded a sovereign nation in order to chase down a borderless movement but also made the exact same mistake - trying to fight guerillas with tanks, artillery and fighter jets. Consequently, they achieved similar results as the U.S. military recently has: nothing but smashed buildings, dead civilians and enraged militants.
Eventually, a few in the president's cabinet must have realized the futility of the Israeli campaign and, hence, the recent lackluster efforts to bring the mess to an end by appealing to the United Nations. But, strangely, that didn't cause any kind of self-reflection; it didn't make anyone in Washington wake up to the equal futility of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The United States saw how Israel ignored a basic, vital concept: Terror isn't an army that can be beaten on the field - it's a method. But the U.S. government failed to learn the lesson. Both nations seem unable to understand that terrorism is less like a Panzer division and more like a gang of brutal vandals that is entrenched in any urban environment. It's the way of terrorism that must be addressed. We cannot continue to use the conventional tools of war to attack nations that terrorists happen to live in. In the same way that destroying a particular hood of a local gang won't eliminate urban violence, an air raid on a civilian village won't eliminate suicide bombers.
All a show of conventional military force will ever do is beget more violence and inspire more civilians to join the ranks of the terrorists.
Neither Israel nor the United States will make a real dent against terrorism until these truths become their mantra. The two nations need to ignore their bloated arsenals for once, sit down, familiarize themselves with the enemy, and admit that both nations have played a role in increasing the global terrorist threat.
Many times Americans ask what an event halfway around the world has to do with them. In the case of last month's Israel-Lebanon war, the answer is clear: The battle is relevant because it is a reflection of our behavior.
Unfortunately, this had all the eye-opening effectiveness of a dog looking at itself in the mirror. Instead of seeing it for what it really is, we have only mistaken our reflection for another dog.
-Veronica Rollin is a political science junior.
-This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec. Send e-mail to letters@thedailyaztec.com. Anonymous letters will not be printed - include your full name, major and year in school.
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