Take a look at this load of crapola from the Washington Post:
The Lebanon war was damaging for Israel, the United States and, most of all, Lebanon itself. But it may have taught everyone a lesson that will be immensely important to the future of the Middle East: The solutions to the big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.
Oh really? A political solution that calls for Israel to give up everything they have gained and to allow Hezbollah off scott free with their weapons is David Ignatius idea of a political solution.
Al Brown at Newsbusters takes it one step further in regards to Mr. Ignatius article:
The "lesson" Ignatius talks about should have been learned in 1938, when Neville Chamberlain surrendered Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain was trying to use the familiar paradigm of diplomacy to deal with something he didn't understand – a true monster. And Hitler was a piker in the monster business compared to Hezbollah and the other Islamic fascist groups. Even the Waffen SS didn't strap explosives to themselves and jump into English schoolbuses. And let's not forget that Hitler came to power through legal democratic means, as have Hezbollah and Hamas.
I don't buy Mr. Ignatius analysis of this cease fire one bit and neither do the Israeli's:
The IDF will have to resume operations in Lebanon if the expanded United Nations force being assembled does not fulfill its obligation to dismantle Hizbullah, an official in the Prime Minister's Office warned on Tuesday.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah reportedly reached a deal allowing Hizbullah to keep its weapons but refrain from exhibiting them in public. Israeli officials called the arrangement a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which passed over the weekend and was approved on Sunday by the cabinet.
"The resolution is clear that Hizbullah needs to be removed from the border area, embargoed and dismantled," the official said. "If the resolution is not implemented, we will have to take action to prevent the rearming of Hizbullah. I don't think backtracking will serve any useful purpose. There has to be pressure on Hizbullah to disarm or there will have to be another round."
This cease fire will not last, as I along with many others have been saying. It's a cease fire brokered by the UN which has no teeth, which is just so typical of anything coming out of the UN. They cannot force Hezbollah and Lebanon to abide by their resolutions so what good are they? I mean really? They couldn't do a damn thing about Saddam and they can't do a damn thing about Lebanon.
I mean look at what the French are saying:
Gen Pellegrini, who commanded UN and later Nato peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo and Mostar in Bosnia between 1995 and 1996, and is thought likely to stay on in his current role, said on Monday that he wanted reinforcements "as soon as possible" and warned that the situation in the Middle East remained fragile. Even one "stray act" could sabotage the cease-fire between Israel and Hizbollah, he said.
In an interview published in Le Monde on Tuesday, he cautioned, however, that it would take a year to bring the number of men to 15,000. "In the short term, our priority is to give a hand to the Lebanese army," he said.
You get that? A friggin year! Holy crap man….what is the use of this organization again? A year to get 15,000 troops in theater….un-freakin-believable.
But wait, you haven't seen anything yet:
In an interview with Haaretz, Major General Alain Pellegrini urged the Lebanese authorities to take responsibility for the disarmament of Hezbollah in the area close to the Lebanon-Israel border, saying that the responsibility for such a move lies primarily with them.
Yup, not only will it take a year to get 15,000 UN troops into Lebanon to make sure both sides abide by the cease fire, but now they are saying that Lebanon needs to disarm Hezbollah….the UN won't.
Ed Morrissey states it a bit more eloquently:
None of us who follow the UN and Kofi Annan experienced any sort of surprise when he demurred from actually enforcing a Security Council resolution. His insistence that the UN has no real interest in the question of Hezbollah disarmament may seem shocking, since the Security Council has now twice demanded it, but it comes as a piece to the record of UN peacekeeping under his regime, first as the head of peacekeeping and now as Secretary-General. UN forces sent to keep "peace" have almost without exception fled from terrorists and genocidists, only standing firm when under NATO or US/UK command.
Someone please tell me again what use the UN is?
It's time for Isreal to start the offensive once again, and this time finish it….by taking the fight directly to Syria:
The political and military circumstances surrounding the cessation of the fighting in Lebanon have left Hizbullah shaken but still a force to be reckoned with in Lebanon and a proxy for Syria and Iran.
This inevitably means that Israel needs to prepare for another round. The IDF must learn and digest the military lessons of this campaign, and it needs to prepare, doctrinally and technologically, to better deal with military challenges such as short-range Katyushas and anti-tank missiles. The IDF's reserve units need serious upgrading, and more money needs to be diverted to the defense budget.
Above all, strategic rethinking is necessary.
SUBDUING SYRIA is the key to managing the Lebanese crisis, to rolling back Hizbullah, and to weakening Iran and its radical Islamist influence in the Middle East. In order to attain victory in the next military engagement, Israel should target Damascus.
Syria allows supplies for Hizbullah to pass into Lebanon from its territory and provides the channel for Iran to do likewise. Syria's use of Hizbullah as a means of bleeding Israel has gone unpunished for too long.
That being the case, the strategic address for dealing with Hizbullah and for restoring lost deterrence remains Damascus. Only military pressure on the regime of Bashar Assad can deny Hizbullah military capabilities and signal Israel's readiness and ability to respond tenaciously.
Turkey did this in 1998 when they forced Syria to stop supporting the terrorist Kurds in that country. Israel must do the same thing. If not, then this will simple be another round and round battle. Cease fire here, hostilities there, and nothing will be solved. Until support for Hezbollah is extinguished Isreal will not be safe.
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Don’t know if I’m the last guy on the net to see this (a friend sent it to me) but read it and put it in the context of Israel’s issues with the lack of support from the UN & the world (and what will be with Iran and Syria)…
A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package.
“What food might this contain?” The mouse wondered -he was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.
Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning.
“There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a
mousetrap in the house!” The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me.I cannot be bothered by it
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very
sorry, Mr.Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.”
The mouse turned to the cow and said “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!”
The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.”
So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.
That very night a sound was heard throughout the house — like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.
The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught.
The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital, and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.
But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.
The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.
So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember — when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk.
Everybody rightly figures that Israel must restart the offensive given the fact that Hezballah has no intention of abiding by the UN agreement. Yes, they should and they must, but will they? Does this apparently increasingly PC group have the courage and the will necessary to fight for their very existence? If so, Israel should not have stopped the attack for the sake of this phony, UN sponsored time-out for the re-arming of Hezballah in the first place. I have the sick feeling that conservative bloggers and other rational people everywhere will be stunned over the next several days by the total lack of interest Israel will have in defending itself. Israels powers-that-be will exhibit no pride, no outrage at being taken advantage of, no stomach for fighting even in self-defense. And our collective jaws will be quite sore from repeatedly hitting the floor. I hope I’m wrong.