Be nice to Putin, we must caution Dubya and USA: Remember Adolf and Napoleon

If we’re not too engrossed in the ersatz furor over Bishops being "bribed", Oplan Trident diffused, and the joke that is JocJoc Bolante, we must by now have noticed that the world price of oil is rocketing about $75 per barrel.

This is mainly, if not entirely because the Israelis have been bombing Beirut, blockading Lebanon by sea, and warning the harassed Lebanese government to get rid of Hezbollah, their hated Islamic guerrilla foes (who’re now sending retaliatory rockets into Haifa) – or else. Or else the formidable IDF (Israeli Defence Force) will be rolling all over Lebanon.

The Israelis, already punishing the Palestinians in Gaza with F-16 strikes, cannonfire, and tank incursions – blasting away at everything for two weeks (because an Israeli soldier had been kidnapped by Islamic militants in a raid) – were even more furious when two Israeli soldiers were also kidnapped a few days ago by Hezbollah fighters who launched a swift attack from Southern Lebanon.

The IDF – which has already lost several other soldiers in the fighting – is on a vendetta. Bridges and roads, airport runways and other infrastructure in Beirut – just reconstructed after their own bloody and cruel civil war which began in 1976 and lasted a decade and a half – are being pulverized by Israeli jets and cannonfire.

I met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he hosted us for dinner in 1996 – he was then Mayor of Jerusalem, a laid-back, likable fellow with a quiet sense of humor but lacking the dynamism and charisma of most of Israel’s other gutsy leaders who had a warrior background, even that of his predecessor Teddy Kolleck.

The stroke which felled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was trying to seek peace despite his violent past, pushed mild Mr. Olmert to the fore. Now, perhaps without a colorful record of soldiering in contrast to those who preceded him, I hope Ehud isn’t trying by his pugnacious moves to establish his own warrior credentials.

I know where the Israelis are coming from. They’re fighting for their national survival. This was made manifestly clear to me when I had the good fortune to interview the late Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, one of the founding fathers of Israel (he had immigrated there from the strife of Europe, originally David Green of Poland).

I asked Ben-Gurion, who was briefly in residence in Tel Aviv – he used to live mostly in a Kibbutz – why the Israelis, with seven Arab armies invading them in 1946, armed only with primitive weapons, including improvised "armored" cars (their plates clumsily welded on), and small propeller aircraft for an "Air Force," had defeated those impressive armies.

"They wanted to push us into the sea," Ben Gurion – balding on top with his mane of shaggy white hair, looking every inch like an Old Testament prophet – shrugged. "And I can’t swim." So, he grinned, "We had to win."

An embattled Israeli nation still feels that way. The Palestinians, the Hamas, the Hezbollah, (financed by Iran) and hostile Arab countries, and particularly Iran itself today – want to wipe them out, eradicate them, drown them in the sea. Thus, having developed the strongest armed forces in the Middle East, bar none, the finest and most deadly jet air force, the most powerful tank units, the most formidable Infantry, Israeli lashed out in fury. Their foes are the suicide-bombers, the rocket-launchers, the hit-and-run Islamic jihad and other "terrorist" enemies.

But it is wrong to bully and punish an entire country, a sovereign state like Lebanon, for the incursions of the Hezbollah. They tried the same thing in 1982 when the Israelis under the generalship of Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon and rampaged to Beirut under an operation called "Peace for Galilee". Their Christian allies, a savage paramilitary called the Phalangists, were permitted by Sharon (then Israel’s Defence Chief) to massacre hundreds of Palestinian refugees in two camps, Sabra and Shatilla, with IDF soldiers guarding the perimeter. (Men, women and children were slain – the Palestinian Red Crescent claims as many as 2,000 people were actually killed).

Did this fierce incursion work? Peace never came to Galilee. Now, will the latest invasion and assault bring peace to Israel?

As one who’s been many times to Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and much of the Middle East – and one who admires the Israelis for their pluck and chutzpah – I see no peace but the sword, for many years to come. It’s the Biblical curse of Cain we’re sadly witnessing in the painful, tragic scenario of blood calling for the revenge of blood.

* * *

I’m glad that US President George W. Bush flew to Russia with his First Lady Laura, a couple of days before the G-8 summit began in St. Petersburg, with the other "captains and kings" i.e. Prime Ministers and Presidents, arriving later. This gave Dubya a chance to put his arm around Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and call him an "old friend."

He must stick to that script, and not get up again on his high horse and insist that all nations must get "democracy", just as they git religion. What Vice-President Dick "Shotgun" Cheney did a couple of months ago in Vilnius, Lithuania, a former Baltic satrapy of the old Soviet Union, was not just undiplomatic, it was provocative. Cheney had rightly grumbled that under Putin, Russia was not a democracy. Of course it is not. Putin took this "insult" in stride, but knowing his KGB background, he must have been seething inside. If he didn’t resent not being regarded as a democrat, he must have bridled at the effrontery of Mr. Cheney.

In any event, Mr. Bush – who says history will make the final judgment on what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq – must himself read some history. There are surely a few books lying around in the Crawford Ranch. And those history books tell him that it is disastrous to fight a war on two fronts.

Pertinent to this idea are two mighty leaders who decided to attack Russia, their armies having been so successful in the West. You know what happened to Napoleon Bonaparte, who did the other one who made the fatal step, Adolf Hitler, one better. Napoleon and his Grand Armee actually reached Moscow. But then, the Muscovites, most of whom had already evacuated their capital, burned the city down, their own homes included, to deny Napoleon and his shivering men shelter – and food.

The great Bonaparte tarried too long there, then began his great retreat across the ever-freezing, increasingly snowbound wastes of Russia. He lost most of his Grand Army, his horses and his precious cannon in the relentless snows. The Russians hymn their victory at the Battle of Borodino, but it was General Winter who really defeated – indeed crushed Napoleon.

Hitler repeated the same error when he launched "Operation Barbarossa." Not only did his superb legions, his S.S. Divisions, his Infantry and Artillery, his Panzers get swallowed up in the vast Soviet Union, but the counter-attack was so savage that the Soviets were finally swarming all over Berlin like wolves from the steppes and forests – and Fuehrer Adolf, his zany dream of a 1,000 year Reich in ashes, poisoned himself and Eva Braun in their bunker.

In sum, Mr. Bush and the US and their allies must remember that for more than half a century of the postwar "Cold War," the Soviet Union was the enemy which confronted them all over the planet. Ronald Reagan, taking on the challenge of what he called the "Evil Empire," bled the Soviets to the bone to keep up with America in the Gotterdammerung of that Superpower confrontation. The Soviet Empire crumbled – in fact, committed "suicide" under Mikhail Gorbachev – who was a great man but the Russian people never forgave him for dismantling and dismembering their Empire.

Now, Putin, the new Czar is applauded by them – for striving to rebuild it. That’s the long and short of it.

The "New" Russia a democracy? No way. However, that’s what is inborn in the Russian character – the Tartar mentality of being governed by a strong leader, and building a Tartar belt of defense composed of friendly, allied states in a concentric circle.

Mr. Bush, fighting a global war against terrorism, must not court a new Colder War with a non-democratic Putin. He must embrace him – even if sometimes he struts like Ivan the Terrible – and call him, with Academy-award winning play-acting – "My old friend."