The Middle East - a volcano "in heat" and ready to blow?

As I have been writing matters are heating up and like a volcano "in heat" are ready to blow? (See 1 and 2 below.)

I have met Rosner and he is well versed in American politics. He sees the "win vs defeat" debate coming to a head and discusses the implications for Israel and the region. I have maintained all along Obama's greatest vulnerability is his naive view of what can be accomplished with talking to terrorists bent on dying in pursuit of a cause that is unacceptable unless we are ready to declare defeat. You may recall I reviewed Norman Podhoretz' and John Bolton's latest books in earlier memos.(See 3 below.)

Herb Keinon makes a good point - Barak must contain the shelling and regain some semblance of order or his chances of becoming PM are doomed. While Israel is attacked they are always being counseled by others on "disproportionality." My response would be that of Bill Clinton's - you do what you gotta do!

A flare up in the Middle East right now, in my humble opinion, when viewed strictly through a "political prism" favors McCain versus Obama and highlights the latter's lack of military experience and immaturity in matters relating to the strategic war against terrorists. (See 4 below.)

Michael Hirsh suggests the looming "war vs talk" debate between Obama and McCain reflects divisions within the Pentagon. (see 5 below.)

Dick


1) US warships move into E. Mediterranean in case Gaza escalation spills over into Lebanon

Egypt’s intelligence minister Omar Suleiman canceled his visit to Israel because of estimates in Cairo that hectic preparations current in Israel and the Gaza Strip augur a steep escalation of cross-border violence.

Officials in Cairo expect Israel redouble its air bombardment and armored raids against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas to intensify and broaden the scope of its missile and rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages.

Both sides are convinced that a further ratcheting-up of the war will generate indirect truce talks through a third party.

The US has meanwhile posted naval and marine vessels opposite the shores of Israel and Lebanon in case the fighting spreads to a second front. US and Israeli military sources remain skeptical of the chances that prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak will secure a ceasefire. The Gaza conflagration is more likely, they believe, to stir Hizballah to ignite a fresh assault from South Lebanon.

These sources point to four significant developments to watch for:

1. Hizballah is adamant about avenging the death of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh by border strikes against Israel and terrorist attacks inside the country. This Iranian front group is also committed to helping Hamas. The end of the 40 days of mourning for Mughniyeh on March 22-23 is anxiously awaited.

2. Israel is braced for this eventuality and in mid-preparation for its army to turn the tables on a Hizballah assault and carry the war into Lebanon.

US intelligence sources note that last week, the IDF deployed Patriot missile defense batteries around Haifa in case Hizballah unleashes a rocket offensive on the North as in 2005.

Our sources also report that local authorities and private security firms responsible for public safety in northern Israel were instructed to inspect bomb shelters and ascertain they were ready for use by March 10.

3. The quarrel between Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian president Bashar Assad, which is nearing boiling point, threatens to be fought out in Lebanon, their main bone of contention. Both are sending quantities of arms and ammo to the Lebanese militias under their respective wings.

4. This week, Abdullah persuaded Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s Abdullah to boycott the forthcoming Arab League summit in Damascus. Assad is unlikely to take this slap in the face lying down. There are indications he is ready to stir up Palestinian terrorist groups for attacks on Saudi, American and Israeli interests in the region.

Standing close by for immediate action off the troubled Mediterranean shores of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza is the USS Cole guided missile destroyer opposite Lebanon. It was joined Monday by the USS Nassau amphibious warship and its strike group of six vessels carrying 2,800 marines, flight crews and sailors. US naval sources report that a third group will join them shortly.

The Nassau is accompanied by the amphibious transport dock ship USS Nashville , the guided missile destroyers USS Ross and USS Bulkeley and the fast nuclear strike submarine USS Albany SSN 753.

While cruising off the Lebanese coast, this formidable US naval force is close enough to the shores of Israel and Gaza to respond to developing emergencies.

2) Israeli leaders approach mediators for a ceasefire with Hamas



Sources say Hamas would claim it had came out ahead of this round after the Israeli Air Force and army failed to stop its two-day barrage of 105 missiles and rockets.

Ashkelon, brought firmly into the Palestinian rocket cycle Wednesday, Feb. 27, was hit by a dozen Grad (Katyusha) rockets Thursday, injuring three people and sending 55 to hospital in a state of shock. The damage to the town of more than 120,000 was extensive. Thursday night, defense minister Barak finally approved the Red Color alert system which gives victims seconds to run for shelter from an incoming Qassam missile or rocket.

Our military sources report that some 20 Israeli air strikes over the Gaza Strip against Palestinian missile teams and Hamas command centers, which left 14 dead, including four children, there was no perceptible easing off on the missile fire, especially against Ashkelon.

Those sources add that, despite the defense minister’s assurances that effective military to terminate the missile and rocket attacks was coming soon, no immediate preparations are in sight for a large-scale military action in the Gaza Strip. Members of the Olmert government have been focusing on leaning hard on Hamas to accept a truce by targeted air strikes aimed at reducing the volume of missile fire. This strategy failed for lack of ground action. The more frequent the air raids, the heavier the missile barrages and the broader the scope of their targets. Hamas topped Wednesday’s score of 50 missiles and rockets by shooting more than 60 Thursday – most aimed at Ashkelon and Sderot.

Israeli officers reported signs that the Palestinian terrorists were planning to expand their offensive Friday and over the weekend; their Katyushas may now be aimed at the southern districts of Ashdod, north of Ashkelon.

3) When McCain and Obama face off, Israel may find itself in the eye of the storm
By Shmuel Rosner

The Republican contender is counting on the American voters' hatred for anything that reeks of defeat.

Republican contender John McCain's campaign team is preparing files with incriminating information about Democratic candidate Barack Obama. McCain's advisers are eagerly looking forward to the great debate between these two candidates. They believe McCain's agenda, while perhaps less rosy, is more convincing than Obama's. Israel may find itself in the eye of the storm, for McCain's people have no intention of backpedaling from their claim that Obama's policy endangers Israel. This will not be easy for Jerusalem, whose diplomats will have to maneuver carefully in a political minefield. Obama will now have to decide whether to use the endorsement he got Thursday from former secretary of state James Baker against McCain, the way Robert Malley and Zbigniew Brzezinski were used against Obama regarding Israel.

McCain is counting on the American voters' hatred for anything that reeks of defeat. "I will not surrender," he said on Wednesday in a campaign rally.

In other words, the other candidate is going to offer to surrender in Iraq. I offer victory. Iraq will be the focus of the candidates' debate, which will also cover a number of foreign policy differences - from Iran to Cuba, Venezuela to Pakistan.

It will also be an interesting test for the American voter. A clash between the loathing many feel toward the war in Iraq and the part of the American ethos that seeks victory. The power of the "winner" factor versus the fear of becoming a "loser."

If McCain could only persuade the voters that such a victory were still possible, if he could ignite the spark of hope, perhaps he would, in turn, sway public opinion. That would be a fascinating development as well as an insult of sorts to President Bush, who failed in his own efforts to win over the public.

But McCain will offer not only the hope of victory but a rational argument for the need not to withdraw. "If we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base, they'd be taking a country and I'm not going to allow that to happen," he said. "I will not surrender to Al-Qaida."

At a debate last Tuesday, Obama and Clinton were asked about this possibility: "If this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and Al-Qaida resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?" asked moderator Tim Russert.

It was a question neither Clinton nor Obama felt comfortable with. "I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests," Obama replied. McCain's people filed that answer as well. They believe their candidate has a much better answer - the U.S. will not leave before ensuring stability, therefore it won't have to return.

Obama responded at a campaign gathering of his own two days ago: "I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as Al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

These exchanges are seen in Washington as a prelude to the real election show. Hillary Clinton is becoming increasingly less relevant as the McCain-Obama battle captures most of the attention. Obama and Hillary have one more round, next Tuesday, before she will have to concede defeat - unless she manages to surprise everyone yet again.

In any case, McCain's political future depends on a military rather than a political figure - General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, who is due to submit his report on the progress to stabilize Iraq in Washington this April.

The Democrats, asked to explain the American troops' success in reducing the violence level in Iraq, have repeatedly said the army is winning, but the political process is stuck, so that the military reinforcement Bush initiated and McCain pushed for was unnecessary.

But McCain argues that the political process is progressing as well. The Iraqi parliament has managed to surprise even him and pass important legislation. In any case, Obama, who wants to withdraw, will have to prove otherwise. Obama has an answer: the fear of imminent withdrawal finally got the Iraqis moving. If McCain is elected, thus ensuring an American presence in Iraq for generations, will bring the opposite results. It will calm the Iraqis and roll back the political progress.

4) Analysis: When the country feels vulnerable, the gov't acts
By HERB KEINON

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will return from Japan on Friday to a country feeling increasingly insecure and vulnerable as a result of the Kassam and Grad barrages that have now squarely placed Ashkelon inside the daily rocket attack equation.

And in this small country, when the nation feels insecure and vulnerable, the government often has little choice but to act.

The country felt insecure and vulnerable after the suicide bombings of 2001 and 2002, and the government okayed Operation Defensive Shield, as well as the construction of the security barrier.

The country felt insecure and vulnerable following the wave of kidnappings in the summer of 2006 that included the attempted kidnapping of two girls north of Jerusalem, the kidnapping and murder of Eliahu Asheri, the kidnapping of Gilad Schalit and then two weeks later of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

As a result, the government acted and launched a war against Hizbullah.

A return now of that sense of insecurity following the attacks on Ashkelon, and no longer "only" on Sderot and neighboring kibbutzim, will make restraint more difficult for Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. More so, in fact, for Barak than Olmert.

Olmert, in meetings with his senior ministers, is likely to take a more "measured" approach, still stinging from public criticism following the Second Lebanon War that he acted impulsively and without proper planning or consultations.

He will not want to repeat the same mistakes.

Also, Olmert - more than Barak - is hearing US and European officials calling for Israel not to "overreact" and not to launch a "disproportionate" reprisal.

With US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice due here on Tuesday, he will not want to greet her with a mini-war raging in the Gaza Strip.

But Barak, who is in a very precarious political position, is carrying different baggage. In the final analysis, the goal of the political comeback he launched last year was not to serve as defense minister under Olmert, but rather to sit again one day soon in the prime minister's chair.

One of his hopes in taking the Defense Ministry portfolio was that it would enable him to prove himself and thereby win the next election.

The polls, however, are showing that things are not necessarily going as planned, and he continues to lag far behind Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu. His time to prove himself is now, and he must be concerned that the public will ask how they are benefiting from having him in the Defense Ministry if Hamas can fire with impunity on Sderot and Ashkelon.

Barak knows that every day that passes in this situation sets his political ambitions back, and that if he ever again wants to be prime minister, he will need to provide the residents of the South with a sense of security.

One thing he is unlikely to do is play into Hamas's hands and initiate a large-scale ground invasion to reoccupy Gaza. While there is a need to secure the border between Egypt and Gaza, and while he may penetrate into Gaza in order to send a message and more effectively strike out at Hamas's infrastructure and institutions, there is little enthusiasm in either the defense establishment or the Prime Minister's Office about going in to reoccupy Gaza.

Indeed, a decision by the government to reoccupy Gaza would be tantamount to admitting that disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was a bad mistake and miscalculation, something neither Kadima nor Labor has ever done, nor something they will likely do with the possibility of elections looming in the not-too-distant future.

Ironically, the party at this moment most eager to see the IDF march back into Gaza is Fatah, which would like nothing more than for Israel to do its dirty work: smash Hamas and then hand Gaza to Fatah on a silver platter.

The Israeli public, however, will have little stomach for losing the lives of its soldiers in order to deliver Gaza to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

This too is a political consideration that will weigh on Barak's mind when deciding exactly what tactics, short of an all-out invasion and reoccupation, will bring a modicum of normality back to the South.

5) Proxy War
By Michael Hirsh

The spat between John McCain and Barack Obama over Iraq reflects tensions within the military itself.


Many in the commentariat pounced on Wednesday's sharp exchange over Iraq between John McCain and Barack Obama as a preview of the general election debate, should the Illinois senator get the Democratic nomination. But the dustup between the two leading candidates also gave us a glimpse into the growing divide within the U.S. military over how to split resources between Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, the presidential campaign this year could also become a Pentagon proxy war, with Sen. McCain largely taking the side of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Obama more representing the interests of the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, who opposed the Bush-Petraeus "surge" and has openly worried about an Army that's "out of balance."

McCain and Obama fired at each other from two separate events Wednesday. Campaigning in Texas, McCain mocked Obama for suggesting that he would send troops back into Iraq "if Al Qaeda is forming a base there," as debate moderator Tim Russert put it. The Arizona Republican, assuming his already patented posture of the steady statesman correcting the bumbling upstart, said, "I have some news for Sen. Obama. Al Qaeda is in Iraq."

Hearing those remarks while stumping in Ohio, Obama was plainly intent on showing that he will brook no such treatment. "I have some news for John McCain," he shot back, "and that is that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade … They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11, and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

As ammunition for their candidate's position, Obama's campaign is pointing to comments by Casey and other generals. A senior Obama adviser argued to me Thursday that his candidate, contrary to misunderstanding the challenge, is using a "wider lens" than McCain. "We don't have the luxury in this dangerous world to look solely at Iraq, and keep doubling down there," he said. "You've got to match strategy to resources."

The grim truth is that Al Qaeda is still flourishing in both Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight, and the Pentagon currently does not have sufficient troops to deal with both crises. Even President Bush appeared to acknowledge the clash of priorities at a White House news conference Thursday morning. Asked about Obama's comment on Iraq, Bush remarked that Al Qaeda had been securing a base in Iraq for four years. But the president declined an opportunity to join McCain in directly criticizing or mocking Obama, and said, "One of the challenges we face is denying Al Qaeda a safe haven anywhere."

As Army Secretary Pete Geren summed it up before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, "Today we are an army long at war, in our seventh year in Afghanistan; next month, March, will be five years in Iraq. This is the third-longest war in American history, behind the Revolutionary War and the Vietnam War. And it is the longest war we've ever fought with an all-volunteer force." Both Geren and Casey said the army is badly stretched.

The debate between McCain and Obama—with Sen. Hillary Clinton on the sidelines for now—reflects serious behind-the-scenes tensions inside the military. In part because of the terrible strains on an army that has pushed its overseas deployments from the standard 12 months to a brutally long 15 months, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and senior Pentagon officials like Casey have been pressing to continue the drawdown in Iraq beyond the July cutoff date. That's when, under current plans, the United States will "pause" with 140,000 troops remaining there. (Petraeus announced last fall that he would withdraw five out of 20 Army brigades by July, reducing the U.S. presence from about 170,000 troops.)

But the Pentagon brass is also aware that the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan appear to be losing ground to the resurgent Taliban/Al Qaeda forces there—or at best holding them to a stalemate. That all but guarantees the extremists a "safe haven" from which to attack U.S. interests around the world. A senior U.S. official, in remarks this week, said NATO was now in an "existential" crisis over Afghanistan and that he hoped the French, of all people, would pull Washington out of the crisis with additional deployments. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hesitating over such a move, and U.S. commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say they need more troops now. In addition, Afghanistan may be descending into a political crisis that is almost as serious as Iraq's; President Hamid Karzai is weaker than ever, confined to Kabul, and increasingly resentful of Western interference.

Obama says that if elected he would deploy an additional two brigades to Afghanistan. Sen. Joe Biden, a former Democratic contender who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—and also a potential secretary of state in an Obama or Clinton administration—told reporters this week that on a recent visit to Afghanistan he was informed by the U.S. commander of the international force there that he needed another two brigades, or about 10,000 U.S. troops, to take back Helmand and other provinces now controlled by the Taliban. "But he said, 'But I can't get 10,000 troops'," Biden said. Casey told the Armed Services Committee he hasn't even examined whether keeping 15 brigades in Iraq and adding two to Afghanistan is feasible.

Dan Senor, the former spokesman for the U.S. occupation in Iraq who now talks with various Republican candidates, including McCain, says McCain has to take the Obama critique seriously and move beyond mocking his younger, less experienced adversary. "McCain does have to walk through this," Senor told me. "He has to frame the debate to say that no matter how bad Afghanistan gets, if Iraq goes nothing else matters. A failed state in Iraq at this point is a far greater threat to American security interests around the world and of far greater urgency than pre-empting a possible failed state again in Afghanistan. That's the reality." Perhaps it is, or maybe it isn't. If McCain and Obama are nominated, it's a point that is certainly going to be debated until the fall.