Keep Our Eyes on Real American Interests

The United States finds itself once again dragged into the violent muck of Lebanon, caught between radical Shiites who do not differentiate between American and Israeli interests and Israelis who are all too willing to do so.

The death of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins--if indeed his terrorist captors did execute him in the last few days--had its origins in a parochial fight, a sideshow of the larger Lebanese sideshow. Since the mid-1970s, Israel has used its own forces and a client militia called the South Lebanese Army to control a small portion of Lebanese territory immediately north of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Shiite groups and radical Palestinians opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s peace initiative have cooperated in launching attacks against Israeli forces and their clients within this “security zone.” Some Israeli troops have been captured in these skirmishes. In abducting Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Shiite leader, Israel hoped to work a trade for its prisoners.

For Israel, involvement in Lebanon is a vital interest. Israeli leaders are interested in protecting their northern border, retrieving their prisoners and keeping their hand in the bloody mess of Lebanese politics. They will pursue that interest regardless of American positions and American interests.

And what are our interests there? Clearly nothing vital for American security is involved in southern Lebanon. It is a footnote to the larger tragedy of Lebanon, which is itself a brutal but essentially minor theater in terms of American interests in the Middle East. Washington needs to keep its energies focused on what is vital to America’s security: the free flow of oil at bearable prices, which involves the security of the Persian Gulf region; a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, and the encouragement of experiments in Egypt and elsewhere seeking to accommodate moderate Islamic sentiments in domestic politics without succumbing to radical and anti-Western elements.

The fate of hostages in Lebanon, as cruel and inhuman as their confinement is, must not be allowed to consume our foreign-policy energies in the region. The natural desire to seek immediate revenge for the callous murder of Higgins can only be counterproductive. The thugs who perpetrated that crime are no doubt in hiding. A military response would lead to the deaths not only of innocent Lebanese caught up in their country’s carnage, but quite possibly of more American servicemen. It would needlessly identify the United States with Israel’s specific interests in south Lebanon. It would also add fuel to the Iranian regime’s most potent propaganda charge against us in the region: that the United States is inherently anti-Islamic, and always on the side of those who oppose Muslims.

For both humanitarian and domestic political reasons, the hostages cannot be abandoned. We cannot deal directly with those who hold them, for we have no assets in Lebanon to either trade or use against them. Yet we have many assets, economic and political, that we can use in our dealings with the two countries that have some influence over these groups: Syriaand Iran. A replay of the “arms for hostages” deal? No. But both of those states want access to the economies of the industrialized world and need to deal with the Western powers on political issues of great importance to them. We need to put our European and Japanese allies on notice, in the strongest possible terms, that we expect good-faith efforts from Damascus and Tehran to solve the hostage problem before we return to business as usual.

As for those directly responsible for Higgins’ death, we need to take the long view. The best way to see justice done to them is to rebuild our intelligence and covert capabilities in the Middle East, battered by domestic scandal in the 1970s and physical decimation in Lebanon in the ‘80s. This will take time, measured in years and perhaps decades, and thus not satisfy posturing congressmen and media-anointed instant experts on terrorism. It needs to be done in secret, with its successes hidden from the public that most wants to know of them. Yet this is the best and least politically costly way to see to it that those guilty of this crime spend no more restful nights for the remainder of their miserable lives.

Finally, let us call a halt to the media circus surrounding the central figure in this drama. Higgins gave the last, full measure of devotion to his country. He should be mourned in the quiet dignity that is the tradition of the American Republic and its military, something that has been too often forgotten in recent years.