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The tyranny of the weak
'We have to understand the origin of the terms we throw around," says Joel Fishman, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and adjunct fellow at the University of Calgary's Center for Military and Strategic Studies. One such phrase, says Fishman - the author of a 2003 paper titled: "Ten Years Since Oslo: The PLO's 'People's War' Strategy and Israel's Inadequate Response" - is "two-state solution." Another is "peace camp." The former, he says, was adopted by the PLO in the early 1970s, after Yasser Arafat went to North Vietnam to consult with political officers on how to combat his international reputation as a terrorist. The latter was a Soviet term invented during the Cold War to make a distinction between the "good" socialists and "evil" capitalists. What such catch-phrases have in common, explains Fishman, 64, is their use as political tools to achieve military aims - something that has characterized many asymmetrical battlefields. Using the Vietnam War as an example of a weaker power's political victory over a stronger one, he shows the way in which the Palestinians have used it as a model for their own struggle against Israel. "The Vietnamese did not really win that war on the ground," Fishman points out. "They won it in the United States," with the help of the American Left. Rest at the link Posted by: gromgoru 2007-07-12 |
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