By Peter Mansoor
In the wake of the shocking invasion of southern Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas.
“We are fighting a cruel enemy, worse than ISIS,” Netanyahu proclaimed four days after the invasion, comparing Hamas with the Islamic State group, which was largely defeated by U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish forces in 2017.
On that same day, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant went further, stating, “We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth. It will cease to exist.” They were strong words, issued in the wake of the horrific terrorist attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and culminated in the kidnapping of more than 150 people, including several Americans.
And in a telling comparison, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan compared the attack with the toppling of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon in 2001, declaring, “This is Israel’s 9/11.”
As a scholar of military history, I believe the comparison is interesting and revealing. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaida on the United States, President George W. Bush made a similar expansive pledge, declaring, “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
The U.S. response to 9/11 included the American invasion of Afghanistan in league with the Afghan United Front, the so-called Northern Alliance. The immediate goals were to force the Taliban from power and destroy al-Qaida. Very little thought or resources were put into what happened after those goals were attained. In his 2010 memoir, “Decision Points,” former President Bush recalled a meeting of the war cabinet in late September 2001, when he asked the assemblage, “‘So who’s going to run the country (Afghanistan)?’ There was silence.”
Wars that are based on revenge can be effective in punishing an enemy, but they can also create a power vacuum that sparks a long, deadly conflict that fails to deliver sustainable stability. That’s what happened in Afghanistan, and that is what could happen in Gaza.
A war of weak results
The U.S. invasion toppled the Taliban from power by the end of 2001, but the war did not end. An interim administration headed by Hamid Karzai took power as an Afghan council of leaders, called a loya jirga, fashioned a new constitution for the country.
Nongovernmental and international relief organizations began to deliver humanitarian aid and reconstruction support, but their efforts were uncoordinated. U.S. trainers began creating a new Afghan National Army, but lack of funding, insufficient volunteers and inadequate facilities hampered the effort.
The period between 2002 and 2006 was the best opportunity to create a resilient Afghan state with enough security forces to hold its own against a resurgent Taliban. Because of a lack of focus, inadequate resources and poor strategy, however, the United States and its allies squandered that opportunity.
As a result, the Taliban was able to reconstitute its forces and return to the fight. As the insurgency gained momentum, the United States and its NATO allies increased their troop levels, but they could not overcome the weakness of the Kabul government and the lack of adequate numbers of trained Afghan security forces.
Despite a surge of forces to Afghanistan during the first two years of the Obama administration and the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban remained undefeated. As Western forces largely departed the country by the end of 2014, Afghan forces took the lead in security operations, but their numbers and competence proved insufficient to stem the Taliban tide.
Negotiations between the United States and the Taliban went nowhere, as Taliban leaders realized they could seize by force what they could not gain at the bargaining table. The Taliban entry into Kabul in August 2021 merely put an exclamation point on a campaign the United States had lost many years before.
A goal that’s hard to achieve
As Israel pursues its response to the Hamas attack, the Israeli government would be well advised to remember the past two decades of often indecisive warfare conducted by both the United States and Israel against insurgent and terrorist groups.
The invasion of Afghanistan ultimately failed because U.S. policymakers did not think through the end state of the campaign as they exacted revenge for the 9/11 attacks. An Israeli invasion of Gaza could well lead to an indecisive quagmire if the political goal is not considered ahead of time.
Israel has invaded Gaza twice, in 2009 and 2014, but quickly withdrew its ground forces once Israeli leaders calculated they had reestablished deterrence. This strategy – called by Israeli leaders “mowing the grass,” with periodic punitive strikes against Hamas – has proven to be a failure. The newly declared goal of destroying Hamas as a military force is far more difficult than that.
As four U.S. presidential administrations discovered in Afghanistan, creating stability in the aftermath of conflict is far more difficult than toppling a weak regime in the first place.
The only successful conflict against a terrorist group in the past two decades, against the Islamic State group between 2014 and 2017, ended with both Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq reduced to rubble and thousands of men, women and children consigned to detention camps.
Israel has the capacity to level Gaza and round up segments of the population, but that may not be wise. Doing so might serve the immediate impulse of exacting revenge on its enemies, but Israel would likely receive massive international condemnation from creating a desert in Gaza and calling it peace, and thus forgo the moral high ground it claims in the wake of the Hamas attacks.
Peter Mansoor is Professor of History, General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Chair in Military History at The Ohio State University.
ASF says
Revenge is a poor strategy but cutting off the head of the snake is sometimes necessary.
Cutting off th ehads of infants, setting living beings on fire and keeping literally hundreds of hostages to use as bargaining chips is not a tolerable situation is any way, shape or form.
Fernando Melendez says
We need to pray so that this War ends 🙏
R.S. says
Actually, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe is at fault here: It/she/he has given a piece of real estate to a group of his choosing for a second time, according to ancient records. And as happened the first few times when IT/SHE/HE has promised a land, the indigenous peoples there are Supremely ordered to disappear at the hand of the ones who are at the receiving end of the promised real estate. So, the ancient Canaanites and the often maligned Amalekites have gone to ethnic cleansing; the contemporary Palestinians are probably to follow soon. Perhaps that is the real purpose of this entire thing, I wonder.
humanitarian says
so isnt Israel commiting terrorist acts as well ? not all of the 2 million people in Gaza are hamas or support hamas. Bombing civilians trying to flee isnt terroristic? Making up stories about babies to further amplify hate against your enemy isnt terror? Starving people is a war crime.
Denali says
Just so we are all clear here, what would you call the blind carpet bombing of European cities during WWII? And when we get done with that topic we can talk about Hanoi.
R.S. says
This is ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism; it has nothing to do with cutting off any snake’s head. The cutting off of infants’ heads was not a correct story; the White House has already recalled that one. Reminds me of the story told of the infants taken out of their cribs by Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait. That, too, turned out to be a planted story.
humanitarian says
mass murder
JimboXYZ says
Revenge is one spin on it, how about the actual truth, Israel is fighting a war that was heaped upon them ? An act of war is a declaration of war, that’s not revenge, it’s a self defense by the victims to give the terrorists the fight they instigated & they were after from the inception of their actions. Of course Hamas wants this over, they know what is coming for them. Hamas is going to be as surgically extracted as the cancer that they are in the Gaza. There has to be accountability & responsibility for “achieving their targets”. No nation would be expected to accept an extortion of living a life that way, why should Israel be expected to allow Hamas or anything else terrorism to randomly “achieve their targets” like that. the attacks were not military drills like training & practice to be played out like a Super Bowl football game for any attacks that are the real game that counts. Innocents lost their lives in that attack, Hamas doesn’t get the luxury of attacking and willing to truce for cease fire, retaliation is not revenge in war. Hamas leadership will end up like Saddam Hussein & Bin Laden when that opportunity presents itself as the possibility, that’s really the only solution for this. They have others that will step up if they aren’t casualties of war in the process of getting to current Hamas leadership. And nobody will miss them of the 8+ billion on the planet Earth.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-official-says-group-is-open-discussions-over-truce-with-israel-2023-10-09/
ASF says
The US has CONFIRMED the fact of babies heads being decapitated aas well as other atrocities, like human beings being set on fire and whole families being slaughtered in front of each other. There are even videos playing over the news of Hamas militants shooting dogs that are trying to flee .
The Palesitnian population rate has steadily risen since 1948. If Israel is trying to commit “ehtnic cleansing”, they are really really bad at it.
If you are truly concerned about the lives of the Palestinian populace (we sure know you are not concerned about the lives of their neighbors in Israel), then try telling Hamas to stop exploiting Palestinian civilians as Human Shields, “Pallywood” props and their De Facto terorirst army. You might also try to convince the Palesitnian militancy to stop shooting off their (Iranian supplied) rockets from the most crowded Palestinian population centers they can find. Let us know how it goes!
R.S. says
Curious. You seem to argue that in some way visible and documented atrocities done by a very low-budget military are in some way “wronger” than invisible, undocumented, and denied atrocities inflicted by a high-budget military with all kinds of sophisticated hardware that our tax dollar is paying for. Or do you think that of the more than 4000 Palestinian deaths, all were clinically and painlessly killed? Do you suggest that white phospherous hurts less than being burned alive? Do you suppose that living under constant pressure of an occupation in an open-air prison may have had to do with people going bonkers and engaging in cruelty from pent up frustrations? What about all the atrocities being committed in the occupied West Bank as we speak? Doesn’t count? I would never attempt to excuse what Hamas perpetrated; but I also think that proportionality and a just peace is part of a morally justifiable war effort. And what the Israeli government is doing is in no way proportional or ethically justifiable, particularly because the two-state solution was never sincerely part of Israeli negotiations–ever. Perhaps the region might find peace if people were to lose their religions all around. Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion, too.
James says
Your comment reminds me of an old story.
Did you ever hear the one about the Rabbi and the motorcycle club?
There was once a a motorcycle club made up mostly of Jewish motorcycle enthusiasts who went to a local Rabbi to ask for his blessings. Looking at the group, he thought “meh, what could go wrong.” And so he granted their request, blessing them and they went on their way.
A few months later he happened upon them, they had grown in membership and were calling themselves “The Kosher Kats.” He thought it rather appropriate, since he did notice that all the members were now Jewish, a fact that did worry him somewhat, but he thought all seemed well, and it was after all, all in good fun.
A few months go by and the Rabbi again came across the group. They were apparently under new leadership now (even though the Rabbi hadn’t even noticed that they had one before). They seemed quite different from the innocuous group he had encountered in the past.
As he walked by them he noticed something that sent waves of fright throughout his very being. He noticed that they had changed their name once again, going now by the club name of “The Chosen.”
It was then that he finally realized (as with so many things in life) that this once fun loving, inclusive, welcoming group, founded on a common interest in motorcycling had taken a terrible turn somewhere and was heading down a dangerous road… both for themselves and everyone else.
He thought…
“What’s next? One percenter patches!?!”
And so, children, to make a long story short, the Rabbi disbanded the group and you now know why there are no Jewish motorcycle gangs.
Just a story… nothing more.