Is Iraq America's Lebanon?

[Abcdxxxx]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

Why not? It does in fact state that "In Lebanon the Israelis, like the Americans in Iraq, plunged into a vacuum — or more precisely into a maelstrom of political and religious rivalries." It doesn't ignore the civil conflict entirely, and you need to explain the relevance of that argument, anyway. That only begs for more comparisons to Vietnam, in my opinion.

As of last year. Iraq wasn't a nation acting on it's civil turmoils. Even hatred towards Iran had subsided. Israel didn't need to "plunge" it's way in to find it's place amongst the pre-existing rivalries, it was already there, and already in control of land that was formerly Syria - so by deault of it's existance, was involved in Lebanon before it invaded. Meanwhile, the US isn't even on the same continent as Iraq. The war in Lebanon was full scale and spiralling out of control before Israel was asked to go in to stop it, or as many argue, add fuel on the fire. The US was acting in a supposedly preventative measure, and not as peace keepers which was Israel's supposed intent. Military action during a time of civil war doesn't automatically equate a Vietnam situation..in the case of Lebanon, the quagmire (sp?) already existed, and involved Israel before they turned on their tanks. In the case of Iraq, the infighting was being suppressed until the various factions seized on an opportunity to take advantage of the US presence, and lack of strong rulership.

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

Why did an on-going civil war negate negotiating capabilities with the Shia, whereas it didn't effect negotiations with what the article refers to as "Christian elites"?

The Christians asked Israel for help, while the Shiite Muslims refused to even acknowledge their existance let alone negotiate. The closest the Shiite's would come was playing telephone with the Jordanians or the US. Negotiations work both ways, and at the time, the Christians were being massacred right and left and were in greater need of help against Shiite agressors. US Embassys were being bombed by Muslim groups, not Christians.

I think the article clearly states that Iran and Syria were instigating the problem. And as for the Syrian occupation, where's the relevance to the analogy? Does Iraq need to be occupied by Syria for the comparison to work? What exactly is your point here, that people let Syria off the hook? You're right, they do....and?

My point is that the strongest thing holding this analogy together is Syria's relevance to both situations. Otherwise they're pretty individual events. You're right, the article did mention Israel remained for another 18 years, but what I intended to say was that they had already been a presence at the Lebanese border for over two decades.

Except that you couldn't, because the crux of the article was to draw away from the Vietnam comparisons, which are more of a political statement than a genuine, comparative analysis, and to look at a more relevant comparison, which I think you described as viable above. The terrain is the same, the regional dynamic is the same, the religious vigor is the same, and so on and so on.

Lebanon was it's own freakish situation which I don't believe has any relevance to Iraq beyond the involvement of Syria, and location on the map. As I stated before, you could take any of our complex military actions in the last 30 years and make the same arguments about terrain, and regional dynamic. I see this more as a comparison being made by someone with a simplistic view of the Shiite community, who wanted to relate the only other incident he could find where a percieved Western army found conflict with the Shiite underground. The dynamic is entirely different. In a Lebanon analogy who is playing the US role in the conflict? Who plays the UN's role? What about the Brits? Is Iran playing the Syria role, or is Syria playing the Syria role? Is the idealogy behind Shiite resistance even the same thing now as it was during the Lebanon conflict? Finally, US has entirely different motivation in Iraq then Israel did. So what's the comparison?