In Episode 17 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour I was back at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. This time, I spoke about Lebanon with my colleague and friend David Wurmser. During the Bush administration, Wurmser, served as senior advisor to the Middle East to then vice president Dick Cheney and was a participant in some of the most important debates about the nature and form of the U.S. strategy for fighting terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In our discussion, we focused on Lebanon, working backwards to 2000 understand the implications of last week’s Hezbollah missile strike on Israel. We discussed how two discussed how Lebanon was transformed from the banking capital of the Middle East into a terror state and a template jihadist doctrine against Israel and the US after the 2000 withdrawal. The 2006 war was also a strategic watershed and both Israel and the U.S. drew the wrong lessons from the events of that summer. Failure to understand Lebanon had dire implications on the U.S. war in Iraq and on Israel’s operations vis-a-vis Hezbollah and Hamas. It also stands behind the U.S. failure to contend with Iran.-- More...
