Note, however, that this former government official is - ironically - committing the same mistake that the Bush Administration did.
Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Ba’athist regime in Iraq were different entities. Only one of them planned and executed the 9/11 attacks. We were attacked by Al Qaeda, and then proceeded to also attack the Taliban and Iraq.
Israel’s only announced objective is to destroy Hamas. They’re not planning on attacking the folks who supported Hamas (the Taliban analog, maybe Iran in this situation). They’re not planning on attacking some unrelated government just because they also are evildoers (the Iraq analog, maybe Hizbollah here). Which is why the analogy to Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t hold. They’re doing what the U.S. should have done, in hindsight, after 9/11 - limiting their objective to the destruction of the group that actually committed the attacks.
They’re not making pronouncements about who will govern after in Gaza, because unlike the U.S. they do not (foolishly) believe that you can use military power to remake the governing body of an area into whatever idealized liberal western democracy you want it to be. They have no illusions that what comes after Hamas will be a government that is an ally of Israel, which is what the U.S. tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their goal is to destroy Hamas. Whether they are successful, at least that is a goal that is within the realm of an achievable military objective.
This. And to add: it is especially difficult to nation build a population into a liberal democracy, idealized or not, when that population doesn’t believe in those basic tenets to begin with. These peoples do not believe in “human rights” at all in the same way that Western countries now do. Rights are held by the Almighty (and His tenets observed), not bestowed on mortals. This is a fundamentally different world view and one that the U.S. has constantly ignored or simply failed to learn in its efforts to nation build.
They sure are killing a lot of civilians in the process of eradicating Hamas. How many were killed in one neighborhood, to kill one Hamas guy? The process that made enemies of the Taliban, and increased Taliban recruiting, will be operating in Gaza.
True. But again, your analogy is ignoring the difference between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Killing lots of civilians in the effort to eliminate Al Qaeda didn’t increase membership or participation in Al Qaeda in the long term. We were able to basically destroy Al Qaeda as an entity capable of conducting any meaningful operations. There are still folks out there who use the AQ “brand,” but nearly all the people who had the experience and resources and connections to actually do anything meaningful have been neutralized.
Israel’s goal in Gaza isn’t to “solve” the longstanding conflicts in the region. If those conflicts are even solvable, they won’t be solved by a military action - and Israelis aren’t fools. They know that.
Their goal is to destroy Hamas. They are going to pursue that goal, even if it means that a large (even larger?) proportion of the population in Gaza hates (hates even more?) Israel because of their actions. Hamas has shown itself to be too capable and effective to be allowed to continue to exist. They cannot be allowed to become the “Founding Fathers” of a new Palestinian state, so eliminating them is a precursor to any longer term solution. If that results in a renewed level of hostility among the Palestinian population towards Israel, it’s still probably the right move for Israel.
Other than the Northern Ireland scenario, I’m trying to think of another situation which got two warring entities together in peace without simply destroying one side or the other. WWI, WWII. Vietnam. Europeans vs native Americans. Australians vs aboriginal peoples. Canadians vs indigenous.
Maybe it has worked that two formerly hated peoples sat down and agreed “Hey, this is stupid”, but other than the one mentioned I can’t think of another. Can you? (I’m sure there must be, somewhere in human history, but none come to mind.)
The one that leaps to mind is the rapproachment between the English and French following the French Revolutionary Wars. England and France had been at war with each other off and on for about a millennium, from the Norman Conquest into the early 1800’s. Eventually they got tired of it.
Was not AQ largely replaced by ISIS, just as the PLO terrorists were replaced by Hamas? Seems that trying to solve a problem by killing people, creates plenty more enemies, even if the name changes.
No. Two completely different organizations, formed independently, and operating in different spheres with different targets (though with the overlap of shared Islamic fundamentalism through violent means). After AQ’s enormous “success” in the 9/11 attacks, ISIS latched onto their brand for a while. But both organizations had existed and operated for decades before even that weak linkage. So no - ISIS didn’t “replace” Al Qaeda, they just seized the opportunity that the U.S. created in Iraq (not Afghanistan) in removing Hussein as a regional check on other actors.
Killing lots of Al Qaeda people worked - it destroyed Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities. Killing lots of ISIS people worked - it destroyed their operational capabilities. Destroying the operational capabilities of an enemy organization is a concrete and realizable military goal, and one that can be achieved through combat. That’s the problem Israel is trying to solve. Solving the vastly larger problem of peace in the Middle East is not a military objective, and Israel is being very intelligent by not saying that that’s the problem they’re trying to solve.