It's been clear for some time that US Grand Strategy in the Middle East is collapsing. The failure of the current policy due to duplicity, corruption and outright incompetence on the part of US-led operations has threatened our long-term strategic objectives in that region, and strategic planners have been scrambling for some time to try to regroup and formulate an alternate policy for the Middle East.
The chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan have removed two checks on Iranian influence in the region, and so there's been worry among Sunni states -- and the West -- of a "Shi'a revival". Moreover, Israel's conflict with Hizbollah in Southern Lebanon last year really shook up the neo-cons in the administration. The emergence of Hizbollah as a populist movement in Lebanon is seen by the US as an arm of Iranian influence and a threat to US-Israeli hegemony over the region, and as such the neo-cons mean to nip this in the bud to the extent that they can.
I know what you're all thinking: US bases in Lebanon... haven't we been down that road before?
And, of course, we have. I'll let Tom Friedman take us back in time:
The Marines' tragic experience as peacekeepers in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984 is still a little-understood chapter in American military history. Everyone seems to want to forget it - from the Reagan Administration to the American people to many marines themselves. No wonder. The marines were sent by diplomats to support a government in a country that had no center. In the end, the marines inevitably became another faction and another militia, albeit a well-intentioned one. The tragic death of 220 marines in a suicide car-bomb attack on their Beirut headquarters was the highest single-day loss of life for the corps since Iwo Jima in 1945. Last month Lebanon still seemed to be punishing marines, as witnessed by the kidnapping by a pro-Iranian terrorist organization of Lieut. Col. William R. Higgins, who was serving in southern Lebanon with a United Nations truce-monitoring group.
While the desire to forget such episodes is understandable, it is also unfortunate - not only for history's sake but, more important, for the lessons they hold for future American foreign- and defense-policy making. [...]
This book [being reviewed in the NYT] answers all the major questions about the marines' presence in Beirut - all the major questions except one that is beyond its scope. That question, written by some anonymous marine-poet on the doorpost of his bunker near Beirut Airport, is: ''They sent us to Beirut to be targets who could not shoot. Friends will die into an early grave. Was there any reason for what they gave?''(NYT)
It's not often I agree with Tom Friedman about anything at all, but that middle paragraph in bold shows that he does in fact have some wisdom in that big, thick head of his -- or at least he did when he wrote that back in 1988. Our current leaders, however, are delusional and have zero understanding of history- as Rove famously said in Ron Suskind's article, they make their own reality. Couldn't agree more.
So I was shocked when I read this item last week on Democracy Now:
Report: U.S. Wants to Build Military Bases in Lebanon
In other news from the Middle East, the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir has revealed the U.S. wants to expand its ties to the Lebanese military by building a string of military bases inside Lebanon. According to the report the U.S. wants to build three military bases, use two Lebanese naval bases near Tripoli and build three new radar stations. A senior Pentagon official admitted last week the U.S. wants to develop what he called a strategic partnership with the Lebanese army. Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the situation in Lebanon on Sunday.
* Dick Cheney: "Through bribery and intimidation, Syria and its agents are attempting to prevent the democratic majority in Lebanon from electing a truly independent president. Lebanon has the right to conduct the upcoming elections free of any foreign interference. The United States will work, with free Lebanon's other friends and allies to preserve Lebanon's hard won independence, and to defeat the forces of extremism and terror, that threaten not only that region, but U.S. countries across the wider region."
I did a bit more digging and found this, over at Counterpunch:
As residents of Bibnin Akkar, less than two miles from the site of the proposed US base and the Lebanese daily newspaper Aldiyar speculate, construction of a US airbase on the grounds of the largely abandoned airbase at Klieaat in northern Lebanon may begin late this year. To make the project more palpable, it is being promoted as a 'US/NATO' base that will serve as the headquarters of a NATO rapid deployment force, helicopter squadrons, and Special Forces units.
The base will provide training for the Lebanese army and security forces fighting Salafi, Islamist fundamentalists and other needs.
The Pentagon and NATO HQ in Belgium have given the project which, will sit along the Lebanese-Syrian border, using this vast area "as a base for fast intervention troops", a name. It is to be called The Lebanese Army and Security training centre". (Link)
GlobalResearch.ca has an Iranian PressTV video(WMV) about this here.
Now, it's worth pointing out that early this year, Sy Hersh reported that the US was funding, through Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Sunni militia groups "with ties to al Qaeda" to operate in Lebanon. This is in response to growing concerns about the resurgence of the Shi'a people in the Middle East following the toppling of Saddam's Iraq, an action which clearly removed a check on Iran's influence. Now, al Qaeda is said to be one of the reasons why we supposedly need to have troops on the ground in Lebanon. See? We fund al Qaeda in Lebanon covertly, and then use al Qaeda as an excuse to go in... pretty smart eh? Think of the US military as a bull and al Qaeda as the matador's cape.
Here's Hersh on DN describing how we're funding the very extremists we're supposedly need to be fighting in Lebanon:
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support the Lebanese government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.
Hezbollah has been on the State Department's terrorist list since 1997. The organization has been implicated in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut that killed two hundred and forty-one military men. It has also been accused of complicity in the kidnapping of Americans, including the C.I.A. station chief in Lebanon, who died in captivity, and a Marine colonel serving on a U.N. peacekeeping mission, who was killed. (Nasrallah has denied that the group was involved in these incidents.) Nasrallah is seen by many as a staunch terrorist, who has said that he regards Israel as a state that has no right to exist. Many in the Arab world, however, especially Shiites, view him as a resistance leader who withstood Israel in last summer's thirty-three-day war, and Siniora as a weak politician who relies on America's support but was unable to persuade President Bush to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (Photographs of Siniora kissing Condoleezza Rice on the cheek when she visited during the war were prominently displayed during street protests in Beirut.)
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion dollars in aid since last summer. A donors' conference in Paris, in January, which the U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. "We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we're spreading the money around as much as we can," the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," he said. "In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don't have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don't like. It's a very high-risk venture."
American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting "to hijack the state," but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. "Salafis are sick and hateful, and I'm very much against the idea of flirting with them," he said. "They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly."
And, here's Hersh talking rather frankly about what he wrote in the article excerpted above:
Now, lets look at the geostrategic impact that US military bases would have in the immediate region.
Jordan is a friendly govt to the US. The US has troops in Iraq and Turkey. This means that bases in Lebanon would (almost) completely encircle Syria with American(and allied) military hardware. What are the Syrians to think about these plans? I have no deep love for Assad, but I don't think sending troops into Damascus is likely to do anything constructive.
Now, in the 80s we lost 200+ marines after Hizbollah attacked a US military base in Lebanon. Clearly attacks like this are not just possible, but can be expected if the US tries to re-establish boots on the ground. Some basic but important questions:
If Hizbollah attacks US troops, what is the US response?
What is the Israeli response?
What is the US response vis-a-vis Iran, who supplies funds to Hizbollah?
What is the US response vis-a-vis Syria, the thoroughfare by which logistical support and weapons are sent to Hizbollah?
Clearly this is a powder keg that could easily explode, especially with the neocon armchair Napoleons in command.
This is a failure of a strategy, drawn up by lunatics to try to maintain American presence in the region in the face of growing instability in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one which can only backfire on US strategic and political ambitions. This needs to be stopped- it can only lead to wider war and unforeseen political repercussions via the law of unintended consequences. Hizbollah has become a powerful political party in Lebanon - what happens if they get voted into power in spite of US support for Siniora's party? This would seem the most likely outcome of all this.
Meanwhile, I've heard nothing about this from the MSM, or Congress, or anyone really. This seems like a policy that needs to be exposed early before its allowed to be implemented. Let's not further compound our troubles in the Middle East.
(Also see Kidneystones' important diary: Former Envoy Breaks Silence To Blast Bush Over Turkey and Iran about another major foreign policy blunder that's unfolding at the moment)