Road Runner cartoons, for anyone who grew up under a rock, depict a never-ending battle between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Coyote using his ever more elaborate and diabolical Acme explosives. Yet for all his wiliness — a word that reasonably describes Israel’s operation — the coyote always fails. No matter how ingenious the Acme product, the Road Runner always eludes, zipping by, around, and under, always with a cheerful, Beep, Beep!
Sound familiar?
The Coyote in this metaphor isn’t just Israel. It also applies to the United States since 9/11. On the U.S. side, critics used to use the “Whac-A-Mole” image to refer to the war on terror: one al Qaeda “lieutenant” killed while another popped up. And the synergy goes even deeper. The very paradigm of a “war on terrorism” was borrowed from Israel’s security practices. The country’s approach to counter-terrorism was portrayed by Washington as something to be marveled at, with the Dick Cheneys of the world wanting the U.S. to emulate their ruthlessness.
More than two decades later, Washington has shelled out untold billions of dollars and ruined thousands of American lives, god only knows how many foreigner lives, and look where it’s gotten us. Bin Laden is dead, but al Qaeda has proliferated beyond the Middle East, ISIS has re-emerged, Iranian-backed militias persist, Pakistani-based international terrorism flourishes, and the Coyote’s old foes Hamas and Hezbollah are as resilient as ever. That’s a lot of Acme products later.
All the media hyperbole about the exploding pagers obscures the continuity between this latest caper and the never-ending warring we’ve been engaged in since 9/11. There’s no reason to think this latest Israel salvo against Hezbollah will be any different. The Hezbollah leaders who were killed will be replaced by the next generation. These younger Lebanese have spent their entire lives at war with Israel and are likely to be angrier and more hardline. That portends worse security for Israel, not better, especially in the long-term. Acme rakes in the dough, always, but can Israel say that it is any safer than before? Can the Israeli national security luminaries say that it is on a path to enduring security? I highly doubt it.