Weapons of the Week #12: Nihilistic Regional Murder Spree

The cult of the offensive meets the October Surprise. Plus: Why is Amos Hochstein? How is Mira Resnick? Where is Hady Amr? Who is Maher Bitar? And links roundup.

The title of this post sounds like something you might find in the underground press of the later New Left, perhaps as an accurate but febrile description of Richard Nixon’s “incursions” into various corners of Southeast Asia. But the quote is recent - it’s from yesterday, September 30 - and it comes from inside the house, i.e. the US government. Via Huffington Post’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed:

“Everyone internally is just shocked at the across-the-board weakness” given U.S. sway over Israel, a career U.S. official working on Middle East policy told HuffPost. The official said Washington is permitting “a nihilistic regional murder spree.”

Of course, one man’s nihilistic regional murder spree is another man’s beautiful ruin. Despite the usual official noises about “working tirelessly on a ceasefire,” it is now clear that Biden’s envoy Amos Hochstein encouraged the Israelis to widen the war. Hochstein was born in Israel, and served in the IDF, but don’t let that deceive you. He is no longer an Israeli citizen, plus “Lebanon has a special place in his heart.” What does Lebanon mean to Hochstein? “I fell in love with Lebanon,” he told the New York Times. “I’m attracted to the tragedy of Lebanon.” Below you can see Hochstein, looking every bit like an extra from White Lotus Season 3, at the Roman ruins of Baalbek, no doubt muttering fragments of Ozymandias to himself the way that Boris Johnson used to recite Kipling on state visits to Burma.

“a photo provided by the U.S. State Department” to the New York Times

At the time of the NYT puff piece in July, Hochstein’s ability to sightsee at Baalbek— “in an area well known as a stronghold of Hezbollah”—was presented as evidence of his access to the militia. Access to Hezbollah leaders is no longer such an asset now that Hochstein has greenlit an Israeli war against Lebanon. As with the Israeli assassination of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh, the assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has been explicitly presented as the replacement of diplomacy by lethal force. In this case, one Israeli official told NBC, “Israel took the decision to assassinate Nasrallah after concluding he would not accept any diplomatic solution to end the fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border that was not tied to an end to the war in Gaza.” Remember a few days ago when the Biden administration position was not just that there should be a ceasefire, but that Netanyahu had basically agreed to one? Cue familiar cycle of leaks about how “frustrated” the White House is. But, amid the frustration, signs of relief, even exhilaration. For example, State Department spox Matthew Miller—bastard offspring of Goebbels and Eddie Munster—could finally tell the press what he’s known all along: “We've never wanted to see a diplomatic resolution with Hamas.”

What will happen to the beautiful ruins? Careful readers of the mainstream Western press will have already noticed that areas—buildings, blocks, neighborhoods, cities, regions, perhaps the whole country of Lebanon—described as “Hezbollah strongholds” magically become acceptable targets for death from above, including dozens and dozens of those 2,000 pound US-made bombs which the Biden administration explicitly recognizes cannot be used “precisely” in dense urban areas.

It is therefore no surprise that the ruins at Baalbek are being shaken by Israeli bombs. In keeping with his keen sense of the tragic and the beautiful, perhaps Hochstein can pull a Henry Stimson and politely ask the Israelis to spare enemy strongholds which also happen to be UNESCO World Heritage sites.

As I noted above, the title of this week’s post comes to us via HuffPo’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who has distinguished himself over the last year as one of the few US journalists bothering to try to answer important questions like: Who is making decisions about US foreign policy? What are they thinking? Does anyone disagree? Another recent story by Ahmed that should have received more attention concerns Mira Resnick, who was quietly appointed in late August as Blinken’s new undersecretary focusing on Israel/Palestine and the Arabian peninsula. Readers of this blog will be interested to know that Resnick’s previous position was head of the State Department’s Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers, where she oversaw tens of billions of dollars in arms transfers annually. I discuss Resnick’s appointment is one data point in my latest over at New Left Review’s blog Sidecar (available in Spanish, possibly machine-translated, here). The piece concerns Kamala Harris and the war, and specifically whether Biden’s abdication makes any difference. I reach a dismal conclusion:

Based on everything we know, it makes sense to take the word of the anonymous Harris staffer who said ‘I don’t think that there’s going to be any sort of significant change from where this administration is’. Whatever cosmetic shifts occur should be interpreted in light of comments by Tom Nides, vice chair of Blackstone and former ambassador to Israel, reportedly now under consideration ‘for a senior national security role’. According to Nides, Harris is ‘the only hope we have . . . of turning the kids that are under 30 years old back in support of the state of Israel’. The people closest to Harris have a range of ideas about what supporting Israel means, but the boundaries of the debate are limited by a basic consensus.

This consensus is visible in the recent appointment of a new Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs, Mira Resnick. Resnick has longstanding ties to AIPAC and is ‘well known and respected in the Israeli national security and foreign policy establishment’. Most recently, she has distinguished herself by working behind the scenes to overcome congressional concerns about arms transfer to Israel. Resnick’s hawkish profile is especially stark when you consider that her predecessor, Andrew Miller, resigned over the administration’s approach to Gaza. Annelle Sheline, another State Department official who quit in protest, said that Miller ‘did his best to try to push back on the administration’s determination to facilitate genocide. Whereas DAS Resnick will eagerly support it’. The appointment was warmly welcomed by the AIPAC-aligned Democratic Majority for Israel, but also by Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the ostensibly liberal Zionist group J Street. A disturbing equilibrium, which no force currently visible within US domestic politics seems capable of disturbing.

Obviously, I hope to be wrong about this, and you should read the whole piece at Sidecar to see if you think my reasoning is valid. I have to say that the most recent events have not forced me to rethink anything.

Israel is only one piece of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Resnick is obviously passionate about “our unshakable commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge,” which she sees as a matter of law, policy, and “moral obligation.” But she also oversaw plenty of arms transfers to other countries, including “the sale of F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates.” Back in 2017, Ilan Goldenberg, currently serving as the Harris campaign’s Jewish liason (that’s their term), organized an AIPAC-funded trip to the UAE for top Democrats (including Michele Flournoy, a onetime aspiring Defense Secretary whose military-industrial conflicts of interest were too much even for the Biden administration to swallow in the end).

Just this last week, Biden (or whoever) designated the UAE as a “Major Defense Partner,” a designation it shares only with India.