https://foreverwars.ghost.io/r/2d28ff07?m=b656041a-c61a-4a6b-910d-7d396ec2db1f
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| The Battle of Alexander at Issus by Albrecht Altdorfer, 1529 | |
It's been a simply horrific past 72 hours in Gaza, as Israel besieges hospitals and the latest round of U.S.-Iranian escalation unfolds. Edited by Sam Thielman THE PENTAGON DISCLOSED MONDAY MORNING that five U.S. servicemembers who died on Friday, in what was described as a training mission in the "Eastern Mediterranean," were with the Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), AKA the Night Stalkers. You might remember the Night Stalkers as the unit that flew previously-unknown stealth Black Hawks to Abbottabad so SEAL Team Six could kill Osama bin Laden in 2011. After my Nov. 2 piece about U.S. special operators in Israel, it seems likelier than not they were there for a hostage-rescue scenario, although I should be clear I don't have specific confirmation for that. Even without specific confirmation, it seems pretty well understood that the SOAR elements were present as a consequence of the Israeli war on Gaza. The Times story accompanying the death notice alludes to the spec-ops deployment to Cyprus, near where the five Night Stalkers died, as part of what is said to be a midair-refueling exercise, as occurring "in case they are needed to help evacuate American citizens from the region." The Army's Special Operations Command (USASOC) sent out an appropriately solemn press release on Monday releasing the names of the dead. One of the things that struck me about it was how the commanding general, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, described them as having come from "rare patriotic families with deep military service ties that span multiple generations and formations." That reflects a real transition in American society, the result of a variety of material factors and the creation of the "all-volunteer military" in the 1970s. Military service ever since has filtered into a smaller segment of the population, including making it the family tradition to which Braga alludes. That is bound to have profound consequences for America that we will probably understand more clearly in retrospect, as they accumulate. For now I just think of the void these five leave in the lives of their loved ones. Rest in peace to Chief Warrant Officer 3 Stephen R. Dwyer, who was 38; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shane M. Barnes, who was 34; Staff Sgt. Tanner W. Grone, who was 26; Sgt. Andrew P. Southard, who was 27; and Sgt. Cade M. Wolfe, who was 24. According to USASOC, both the warrant officers, Dwyer and Barnes, and Sgt. Grone were highly decorated veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and "numerous no-notice deployments and exercises world-wide in support of national security objectives," which is to say the shadow wars of the War on Terror. Southard was a decorated Afghanistan veteran as well. Wolfe only enlisted in 2018 but had a Global War on Terror service medal. These five Night Stalkers weren't part of a combat mission in Gaza. There may never be a U.S. hostage rescue mission in Gaza. But the circumstances of their death surely connect them to the broader Israeli war on Gaza. It was Hamas that took Americans hostage, prompting the consideration of U.S. special operations "contingencies" for rescue; and Israel's pre-Oct. 7 stranglehold on Gaza, part of its general project of maintaining exclusive sovereignty between the river and the sea, was what Hamas sought to puncture by taking some 240 Israelis and others hostage. As with the lives of thousands of Palestinians, perhaps these soldiers would not have lost their lives had there been a negotiated ceasefire and hostage release, since in such a world, they wouldn't have needed to conduct the midair refueling that went wrong and took their lives. But that isn't the world we live in. We live instead in a world where Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu proved intransigent over a ceasefire-for-hostages deal, and where President Biden exerts no pressure on him to act otherwise, despite innumerable points of American leverage. And so we live in a world in which over 11,000 Palestinians, including 4,600 children, and now five elite U.S. soldiers, are dead, as are, of this writing, 44 Israeli soldiers. If we continue to live in that world, these numbers will only rise. Every moment spent in such a world is a choice made by Netanyahu and Biden. Up next after the paywall: our escalation watch, and more. Subscribe to FOREVER WARS for more journalism like this. ESCALATION WATCH. The provocation/response cycle is getting compressed. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that it had taken its third airstrike on Iranian/proxy positions in eastern Syria since the Gaza war began – the first one was Oct. 26, and the second was Wednesday. This time, they hit not only a weapons depot but a safe house for fighters, and this strike inflicted casualties on the Iranian coalition for what is, as far as we know, the first time. At each step since the first U.S. strike, the Pentagon has declared its desire not to escalate. The Iranians inevitably respond, because of all the dynamics that FOREVER WARS has been describing. Now the U.S. is expanding its targeting packages—and, accordingly, killing combatants, whether intended or not. There is no clear picture of where this ends. This time, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explicitly kept open the prospect of future strikes, rather than underscoring how he'd like this past one to be the end. That is what we call an escalatory spiral, regardless of whether the U.S. prefers to believe that escalation is exclusively an Iranian responsibility. The longer the war in Gaza continues, the greater the pressures on all involved to continue up the spiral. THIS WAS ABOUT AS HORRIFIC A WEEKEND as I have words to describe. Israel besieged hospitals in Gaza. There was an IDF tank outside the Rantisi Children's Hospital. The largest hospitals in Gaza, al-Shifa and al-Quds, have shut down. Babies are dead and dying because of this. I'm so old I remember when (false) stories of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies in their incubators sparked popular anger for the First Gulf War. As of Sunday, there were something like 2300 people inside al-Shifa, including 650 patients. The IDF justifies the siege as necessary for combatting Hamas infrastructure malevolently co-located within civilian infrastructure. Notice, however, that Israel faces no pressure to explain what the tactical or operational impact is on Hamas in getting the hospitals to shut down. Surely if Israel believes what it's saying—if governments and journalists in the West believe Israel believes what it's saying—then Israel should be able to explain how its campaign plan to destroy Hamas runs through destroying Gaza's healthcare infrastructure. Victory surely must be around the corner now that the preemies are dying, and what a victory it will be. Instead, it is impossible to avoid recognizing that Israel is making northern Gaza unlivable for Palestinians. It does so while prompting a nightmarish exodus, on foot, to the south, even while Israel conducts airstrikes on the allegedly safe locations in southern Gaza. Anyone reasonably familiar with the 1948 Nakba will immediately reference it when seeing Palestinians leave scenes of Israeli carnage with their belongings strapped to their back. I saw a video in which a mother hauled her two young children in their carseats by pulling the carseat straps over her shoulders. Something like 70 percent of Gazans are displaced. Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist, described joining "Gaza’s Trail of Tears" for The Intercept. The former Shin Bet director and current minister Avi Dichter said on TV this weekend that this ends with "Gaza Nakba 2023." And perhaps not just there: IDF raids and settler terrorism in the West Bank have killed 185 people since Oct. 7, part of something like 376 killed just this year. Brown University's Omer Bartov, as sober and rigorous a scholar of genocide as exists, contends that we are witnessing an ethnic cleansing that can easily tip into a genocide. And that was his assessment before this weekend. FOR WHATEVER IT'S WORTH, the Pentagon says there are no deployments to Gaza or Israel—the person I spoke to must be speaking about general-purpose forces, since the Pentagon has already confirmed the presence of U.S. special operations forces in Israel—after I asked about this video, broadcast on al-Jazeera, in which a Palestinian man in Gaza claims to have spoken in English with a soldier in a U.S. combat uniform. AND FOR ALL OUR HANDWRINGING on Thursday about privacy and Section 702, Dell Cameron at WIRED reports that the Senate plans on tucking a straight-reauthorization into the next continuing resolution meant to avoid a government shutdown. It looks like Ron Wyden and them may have their thunder stolen—unless they can put sufficient pressure on the White House and Senate Democratic leadership to see that a straight 702 reauthorization can doom the continuing resolution in the House. For more on this, check out the next episode of The New Abnormal podcast for The Daily Beast, which I recorded with Andy Levy on Monday morning. |
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