A foolish quest in Hezbollahland

A Lebanese Hezbollah militant speaks to students on a "Jihadist tour" in the area of Iqlim al-Touffah in southern Lebanon earlier this month. (AFP photo/STR)

Two news items on Hezbollah caught my eye in the past few days, showing why lucidity about the party can sometimes be a luxury.

The first is a report informing us that John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, recently told a conference in Washington that the United States sought to strengthen “moderates” within Hezbollah.

“There are certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us [in] what they’re doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements,” Brennan declared.

The second is an AFP news story reporting that around 500 St. Joseph University students were offered a field trip in the South by Hezbollah last weekend. The students were shown around by party guides, taken to the scenes of battles past and future, and even given an oral examination about Hezbollah lore (Who was the first Hezbollah martyr? What Israeli airport did Hassan Nasrallah promise to bomb in a new war? That sort of thing).

One guide, Muhammad Taleb, explained the purpose of the visit this way: “We want to familiarize young people with the achievements of the Resistance and show them how unjust the Israeli occupation was and how glorious the liberation by the Islamic Resistance.”

A bouquet of quotes helps us capture the mood that day. “It is overwhelming to be here. You feel invincible, and you feel ready to sacrifice yourself for your country,” declared Rim, a pharmaceutical studies student. Lama, a business major, admitted, “They have won me over. I learned a lot of interesting things about the south and Hezbollah’s weapons. It’s cool.” A French student added, “This is surreal, it’s like Disneyland. I never expected to see this.”

Perhaps John Brennan should take the tour as well. After all, if Hezbollah can recreate Disneyland, there must be grounds for cultural understanding between the party and the United States.

I’m reminded of a story told to me once by a remarkable gentleman, now deceased, a refugee from Germany who later moved to the United States. It may have been in the 1960s that he decided to bring his mother to visit. They went to the American Embassy in London to apply for a visa. The employee asked the mother three questions: “Have you ever been arrested?” She replied no. “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” This was standard fare during the Cold War, so she again said no. He then looked at his sheet and asked – this of a woman in her late 70s – “Are you a prostitute?” She turned to her son and inquired, “Hans, is this young man serious?”

There is indeed a mulish formalism to the thinking of some Americans that makes you wonder if they are serious. For Brennan the world possibly really is divided into “extremists” and “moderates,” and if an organization or country appears uncompromising, then that must simply be because the moderates haven’t yet been discovered.

But what a self-centered way of looking at politics, since it assesses the actions of others entirely from the perspective of the interpreter. Brennan assumes that Hezbollah’s thinking, rhetoric, conceptual universe and so on, is perfectly comprehensible within American categories, his categories, which is just another way of saying that the party is not as serious about its own ideas as we assume.

A few years ago, the British government came out with an equally amusing sleight of hand, when it opened a dialogue with what it referred to as Hezbollah’s political wing, which it differentiated from the party’s military wing. This was rank hypocrisy, of course. The British knew enough about Hezbollah to realize that it is a highly centralized organization, in fact a Leninist organization in many ways, so that all the loose references to “wings” were just excuses to talk to party officials without being accused by the United States of chatting up what Washington officially labels a “terrorist organization.”

But Brennan’s proposal doesn’t even have the saving grace of cynicism. When asked how he proposed to reach the moderates, the presidential advisor offered no answer. That’s because his scheme is thoroughly idiotic. One thing about Hezbollah, its militants generally believe what they say, and when they say that Washington is their enemy, they mean that too. The party’s structure and worldview leave no room for “moderates” or “extremists.” What they allow are debates over tactics, but within well-defined strategic parameters, usually set by Iran, of which opposition to America and Israel is essential.

That lesson the St. Joseph University students understood instinctively. You might wonder, justifiably, how young people sent to an institution of higher learning where humanistic values are taught could so readily fall for Hezbollah’s catechism of violence and self-sacrifice. But at least they were not on an illusory quest for “moderates.” Their trip was about guns and war and death, and even if it was cool, they knew it was about guns and war and death.