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Avi Davis is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles.
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By Avi Davis
July 25, 2006
As Hezbollah and Israel launch into the bloodiest confrontation between Israeli and Arab forces in twenty five years, an anniversary is passing whose remembrance should provide a spark of clarity to the unfolding drama in the Middle East. Seventy years ago this month, Spain, a country wracked for nearly a century by blistering economic, political and social tensions, erupted in a civil war.
That war became the vector in which the competing political ideologies of the 20th century would finally come face to face. Not only did the three year Spanish Civil War become the prologue to history's deadliest conflagration; it became the first significant proxy war in modern history and has much to teach us about the current struggle.
In February 1936 the Popular Front, a dysfunctional coalition of communists, socialists and farmers narrowly won a hotly contested election against the national conservatives. Within weeks the Popular Front confronted and then sought to intimidate leading traditional elements in Spanish society -- monarchists, clergy, aristocrats and important military commanders with assassinations, imprisonments and confiscations. By July 1936 the Nationalists had had enough and responded by seizing garrisons throughout Spain, launching a military struggle between Republicans and Nationalists. The ensuing war resulted in over 1,000,000 deaths and the seizure of power by General Francisco Franco --plunging Spain into thirty-six years of fascist dictatorship.
Franco's victory was made possible by the vast military and logistical assistance he received from Germany and Italy, two fascist governments eager to use the war as a testing ground for new weaponry and for an anticipated confrontation with Britain and France. The USSR weighed in on the side of the Republicans , with Stalin feeding the conflict with arms and personnel, then withdrawing his support when he had milked the cause for all its propagandistic value. Despite the obvious stakes, Britain, France and the United States played very limited roles in the conflict and gave only tepid support to the Republicans.
Unfortunately this was not a war that anyone could characterize as a clear choice between good and evil. Both sides were riven by deadly internecine rivalries and both committed horrific atrocities against their own people.
But at stake was the prospect of a major fascist victory and the ultimate failure of the Western democracies to aid or support the Republican cause, provided fascism with not just a foothold on the Iberian Peninsula, but a moral victory which opened a path towards the fascist domination of Europe and North Africa two years later.
The proxy war being fought in the Middle East today bears some resemblance to that forgotten conflict. Hezbollah, the proxy of Iran and Syria, is being used by those nations to test Western resolve and to showcase the power of new, sophisticated weaponry. Israel stands athwart the Islamo-fascist ambitions of these countries, representing the struggle for the preservation of liberal democracy and the geopolitical interests of the United States and other countries committed to the war on terror.
While Israel is not the United States' proxy, it has become a significant ally in a vital theater of that war.
That being said, the United States and its western allies must appreciate that anything short of a permanent crippling of Hezbollah's capacity for war, could result in a moral victory that will embolden the terrorist organization rather than deter it. A ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah depleted but militarily intact or one that leaves open the possibility of its rearmament will encourage terrorist organizations in the justified belief that short term military defeats can translate into long term political gains.
But even worse than such an outcome would be the residual feeling that the United States, frozen by fear of spreading the morass of its Iraqi engagement into other countries, prevailed upon its ally to surrender valuable tactical or strategic advantages in order to achieve a false calm in the West.
With this in mind the United States and its allies should not repeat the mistakes of the western democracies in Spain. They should not only continue vigorous diplomatic support for the prosecution of the Lebanese campaign but also offer unremitting military pressure where Israel needs it most -- and that is on Iraq's Syrian border.
A show of force against Hezbollah's chief patron -- reconnaissance missions over Damascus, armored divisions stationed on significant border crossings and U.S. troop deployments to Western Syria, will deliver a message to President Asad that he will not be able to ignore: Israel and the United States are now not only diplomatically coordinated but militarily synchronized in an effort to convince its adversaries that the latest proxy war will not result in anything but a total and indisputable victory over Islamo- fascism.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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