The Israel Non-Sequitur

The foreign policy non-sequitur of the week seems to be believing that Israel would not have been attacked by Hezbollah if the United States hadn’t deposed Saddam Husein. Sheldon Whitehouse more or less says this directly to John E. Mulligan and Scott MacKay in today's Projo...

Whitehouse said that the Bush administration's failed policies in Iraq have created some of the problems in the Middle East and made it more difficult for the U.S. to spearhead a peace process in the volatile region. What he called the Bush administration's "disasterous strategy and decision to invade Iraq has cast a pall across the entire Mideast."

I don't see the connection. If Saddam Husein was still in power, Syria would probably still be overtly occupying Lebanon, Arab Sunni and Shiite radicals would feel better about cooperating with one another than they do at the moment, and Hezbollah would have even a freer reign in Lebanon than it does now. Hezbollah’s tactical postion against Israel would be much stronger.

The only way that you reach the conclusion that Hezbollah wouldn’t be launching rocket attacks and kidnapping soldiers across the Israeli border from its stronger tactical position in a Saddam-is-still-in-power universe is if you believe that not just actions, but intentions of states and militias are essentially reactions to the United States. In other words, believing that Hezbollah wouldn’t attack Israel if the United States was more quietist in tolerating dictatorships and violence requires believing that a more passive American policy could cause Hezbollah to change its very reason for being.

The key operating assumption is that the goal of destroying Israel and spreading violent revolution shouldn't be treated as innate to an organization like Hezbollah or the current regime in Iran, because violent goals are only created as a reaction to the actions of the United States. This assumption is a restatement of blaming-America-first.