the right way to fight terrorism
by Stefan Koski
Published: February 21, 2008
The Israelis nicknamed him “Mr. Terror.” For twenty-five years and long before most Americans knew anything about a man named Osama bin Laden, Imad Mughinyah was on the top of Israeli and American terrorist hit lists (complete with a $25,000,000 reward offer from the U.S. for information leading to his capture). As commander of Hezbollah’s military branch, he helped lead the resistance against the invasion of Lebanon in the summer war of 2006 and acted as the go-between for the militant group and Iran. Working in underground operations, he was so mysterious that no one had seen a current photo of him in decades; even now many photos of him running in newspapers and on the web are simply listed as “undated.”
On Wednesday, February 13, 2008, he was blown to pieces by a car bomb in Damascus.
Bush - and more importantly, Bush’s successor - should be taking notes on this example of how to fight terrorism. The plan to assassinate Mughinyah was so well executed that no one knows who did it. Some rumors are circulating that it was the CIA, though it’s unlikely. A few news sources are floating a theory that it was carried out by the security services of Arab states, possibly with assistance from the Jordanians. Most, including Hezbollah, point the finger squarely at the Israeli Intelligence Service, Mossad.
It’s hard to say whether the Bush Administration has either been too perplexed or too delusional about how to fight terrorism abroad. Six years after invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban they still haven’t captured or killed Osama bin Laden. Now five years into the Iraq War, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and an occupation force of well over 100,000 troops, U.S. forces are still fighting against Al Qaeda in Iraq, a terrorist group that didn’t even exist there prior to the U.S. invasion.
The Israelis, the most likely culprits in the assassination, do know how to deal with terrorists. When Hezbollah started launching rockets into Israeli territory they tried to use conventional warfare to destroy the group. While air strikes took out the rocket launching pads, it became clear after 34 days of the conflict that using a substantial ground force to dismantle Hezbollah was not going to work. They called it off.
They didn’t need to become bogged down for half a decade trying to route out insurgents to figure out their strategy wasn’t working. No one accused the Israelis of “cutting and running.” When the Winograd Commission came out listing all the failures of the war, the Israeli government took them into consideration instead of politely ignoring them the way the Bush Administration did with the Iraq Study Group.
Then they changed gears. They patiently, quietly and surreptitiously infiltrated Hezbollah and gathered information. When the opportunity arose they took out Mughinyah, and they didn’t have to invade Syria in order to do it.
With this one assassination, Israel (or whoever) has arguably done more to fight terrorism than the U.S. has in five years of fighting in Iraq. Mughinyah was the mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks around the world, maintaining contacts with sleeper cells and directing their operations in attacks against the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983 and the Israeli Embassy and an Israeli community center in Argentina in the 1990’s. He also was allegedly behind the kidnappings that sparked the 2006 war in Lebanon. Clandestine operations under his command were so secretive that in many instances Mughinyah was the only one with an intimate knowledge of them. Much of that knowledge has died with him. Hezbollah has lost a key man, one who had close ties to the Iranians (Ayatullah Ali Khamenei himself spoke highly of him upon hearing of his death) and who, unlike Nasrallah, was militarily savvy.
Danny Yatom, Israel’s Labor MK, is quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying, “Whoever can take him out can take out anyone in Hezbollah.”
If only the Bush Administration could claim to be so well coordinated and efficient.
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