Suzanne:

I'll ask you the same thing I asked Laura (and to which she complied).

Do you think you could bold or italicize the topic of your post, put that in caps and offset it with a colon?

It makes it much easier to find the beginning and ends of posts when we're looking for the right one to read comments in.

It's also SOP for Kevin. Look at the previous post and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks much,

Bob

Ms. Nossel:

Please ignore Thomas1; the rest of us try to. He does seem to have issues with women being treated equal to men.

Suzanne:

I agree with you that it's doubtless going to be "all of the above." My read is that Hezbollah isn't going to pull anything tremendously aggressive against Israel until southern Lebanon is rebuilt and the people have recovered from the trauma.

My gut says to give it at least two years ...

Thomas:

Nobody's paying attention to your attempts at thread sabotage. I'll simply note that it's most ungracious to Kevin's guests, and you really ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But since that's the general idea, I suppose I'm wasting everybody's time noting it.

*sigh*

Do *yourself* a favor, Thomas. Get help.

Bob

Why is it that "the US cannot shouder this mission"?

I mean besides the fact that this administration could never grasp the concept of "peacekeeping"- everyone in this country was bitching about the French when they proposed sending 200 engineers- why the hell is it their problem to solve?

pdq:

Because the French promised something like that number when they broke the deadlock with the US and forged a ceasefire resolution.

The scuttlebutt I've heard is that the French diplomats got ahead of their generals -- who insisted on firm chain-of-command lines and rules of engagement. That's been hammered out now, so Chirac is essentially keeping his original promise.

It was only a problem in the sense that France looked for a while like it was going back on its word.

Bob

pdq:

Also because the US military is simply overstretched atm with its committment to Iraq.

Bob

Can we address the concept that Israel will be bombing and invading Lebanon again and just why a country would want to put their troops there when they know this will happen?

Thanks, Suzanne, for some very fine commentary.

The right of the peacekeeping forces to shoot in self-defense will come in handy if and when the day arrives in which Israel or the US takes out important pieces of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure through aerial bombardment. You can be sure that in that scenario, Hizb Allah will be ordered to use every weapon in its possession in retaliation.

I have to think that events on the ground had something to do with France's trepidation. Maybe an assurance that Israel will stop conducting commando raids behind enemy lines got them back in the game.

Dear Ms. Nossel: I agree with your analysis. How amazing is it that the Italians and French, the two natuions Americans most deride as unwarlike, are leading a mission we wouldn't touvh with a barge pole?

R.L.:

The entire idea of a robust peacekeeping force is to *prevent* that from happening again.

Bob

"It was only a problem in the sense that France looked for a while like it was going back on its word."

Bob,

Or had suckered the US into agreeing to a ceasefire resolution. Anyway, all's well that ends well (gr).

JohnFH:

There is no evidence that Iran radio-controls Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's growing into a myth about the Lebanese war, and it needs to be swatted down hard.

Bob

Could the reluctance of EU countries to get involved be they don't trust Bush to back them up and put the brakes on the Israelis if their actions threaten the EU troops? Would you trust Bush if you were the French?

The UN force will restore the situation back to the status quo, the status quo that Israel and Condoleezza Rice found so "unacceptable" just a few weeks ago.

Look, no serious Israeli really thinks the UN force is going to do anything to disarm Hezbollah. Nor do they think the Lebanese Army will do anything. Why on earth would either force want to fight Israel's war for it?

Israelis know that Hezbollah won the war. Hezbollah lost nothing. (it's unclear if they even lost the BODY COUNT..if so, it wasn't by much, which is truly shocking for a guerilla army!) They can still fire their missiles. Remember, they never needed to do this very often anyway. Do you really think the Italian Army is going to do anything if Hezbollah attacks Haifa with another rocket? They'd be idiots. And even more so the Lebanese Army.

Hezbollah will not disarm because it is not in Hezbollah's domestic political interest to disarm. As our own president knows very well, nothing beats rattling a sabre to bring in the votes. But in order to do that, you must actually have a) a sabre, and b) something to rattle it at. Israel's idiotic actions and the resultant cease-fire have not reduced a) but they have greatly increased b).

That's democracy, suckers.

The article states that the UN forces will not actively disarm Hezbollah:

According to the report in "Le Monde," the rules of engagement do not call on UNIFIL to actively pursue the militia's disarmament. Instead, the force would be allowed to use force if needed to disarm Hizballah guerrillas that they come across in the course of their day-to-day duties.

Given the robust reception Hezbollah gave the Israeli army, given the need the European forces have to avoid even the appearance of neocolonialism, and given the presence of significant Muslim populations within their own borders, it would behoove the UN forces to tread lightly.

As for world opinion, Hezbollah already is doing quite well with the segments thereof which it cares about.

Does Suzanne really think that France is dumb enough to want to "disarm" Hezbollah? Armies that believe themselves victorious NEVER disarm. Losers disarm. Hezbollah did not lose the war, therefore they will not disarm. Hezbollah feels that in the current Middle East climate (not just Israel but Iraq as well) weapons are going to be needed more than ever. And Hezbollah knows that time is on its side---look at the Shia birth rate.

If the US Army can't disarm recently-created and relatively-poorly armed Shi'ite militias who are ostensible allies of the US-backed government in Iraq, there is no fucking way that French peacekeepers and shitty Lebanese soldiers will disarm the most effective guerrilla group of the last twenty years.

No fucking way. The idea that people take this seriously is mind-boggling to me.

Of course, it doesn't matter. Israel can live with a katyusha ever three years, just as it has for the past decade. Remember, 6 Israeli deaths from 2000 to the beginning of the recent conflict.

Any attempt to disarm Hezbollah to "prove a point" will result in far more bloodshed than that.

Thinker--

Exactly, it isn't even in the charter. Even the old UNIFIL could fire back at Hezbollah members it "came into contact with", thus "disarming" them. This just means that the French and Italians can chase attackers into the briar bush instead of just hunkering down when they are attacked.

As to why Hezbollah would ever attack the UN force, no one can say. Hezbollah would attack ISRAEL, not the UN force. And the UN force would NOT stop this from occurring, unless they were total morons.

Israel has attacked U.N. troops many many times! They wont care if its a robust force! What's anybody going to do to them? Harsh phonecalls? Israel will do what they want when they want to do it! Is the US going to stop them?

this is a positive step

on a scale of -10 to +10, it is about a +1. We'll have to wait and see whether it gets to +2 and beyond. I am doubtful that the U.N. will do something that matters.

While Hezbollah rearms, so will Israel rearm. In the next go-round, both sides will be more powerful.

republicrat--
For whom is it a "+1"? For Republican party pollsters in the US? Israelis see this in quite a different light.

The Israeli Army suffers its most humiliating defeat in years, showing incredible incompetance in both the intellegence and operational aspects of the conflict. Hezbollah is not disarmed, but is instead the hero of the entire nation, and still controls almost every inch of territory that it did before the war. Don't you understand: Hezbollah WON the war, and the result is the status quo that Israel said was "unacceptable". If you accept something that you previously said was unacceptable, you have lost, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig.

The Israeli voters know it. And so do the Lebanese voters.

R.L.-
I'm baffled too at the assumption that it will be Hezbollah who breaks the cease-fire. What are UN troops authorized to do against IDF forces they may "encounter in their day-to-day work" within the "sovereign" nation of Lebanon?

R.L.:

Or so Israel thinks.

Perhaps they'll learn a lesson the next time.

One can always hope.

Bob

There ya go kokblok, now ya got the experience you needed so you can write that essay your 8th grade teacher is gonna ask you for in a couple of weeks. You know, the one about what you did on your summer vacation.

You can write about posting to blogs as if you were a real adult.

Ya know, she might even give you a B+ if you really work at it.

"...the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion...but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Lebanon got mauled in this war because a UN force put there a few years ago didn't disarm Hezbollah nor did they prevent Hezbollah from acquiring thousands of missiles.

Now we have another UN force that will not disarm Hezbollah nor prevent its re-arming.

Here we go again. Ugh!

>Can we address the concept that Israel will be >bombing and invading Lebanon again and just why a >country would want to put their troops there when >they know this will happen?

Good point R.L. What Suzanne - and many other US commentators - also seem to overlook is that Europeans are understandably reluctant to put their butts on the line in defense of a US and Israeli Greater Israel policy. Blair for one is clearly fed up that the US has done sweet FA to push the roadmap. Europeans are less than ecstatic at having constantly to clear up the mess made by current US policy makers.

"Also because the US military is simply overstretched atm with its committment to Iraq."

And because the U.S. is no longer seen as "impartial" (and yes, I know that it never really was, but at least the facade used to be there), and because U.S. troops, unless we went in with real force, would just be sitting ducks.

My guess is that at least 90% of the readers of this blog had to look up the word "opprobrium"

Now we have another UN force that will not disarm Hezbollah nor prevent its re-arming.

Even the IDF couldn't do that, and nobody else on the planet has nearly as much incentive.

The US also can't go because there's a wee bit of bad blood between the US military and Hezbollah

Why is it that "the US cannot shouder this mission"?

"Also because the US military is simply overstretched atm with its committment to Iraq."

Realistically, without a massive expansion in numbers (which might well require a draft), the US armed forces as they stand at present can only seriously screw up one Middle Eastern country at a time.
Let me explain: http://www.slate.com/id/2102860

The 1990s military was based on a "two-quagmire" standard, with enough troops and supporting elements to get bogged down in two hopeless, brutal conflicts at the same time.
But during the 1990s, the military was downsized significantly, and the Bush administration shifted the baseline to "lose-flounder-lose", in which the military, in theory, could lose rapidly in one conflict (such as Somalia) while flailing around aimlessly in another, before shifting forces to the second conflict in order to lose decisively.
Today's strategy follows the "1-4-2-1" model outlined in the National Military Strategy in May 2004, thus:
1) Fail to protect the United States;
4) Maintain forces sufficient to antagonise allies and rape and kill the occasional civilian in four regions - Europe, Northeast Asia, Southwest Asia and the Middle East;
2) Maintain the capability to significantly increase levels of aimless brutality and incompetence in two of these regions simultaneously;
1) Maintain capability to completely demolish a functioning country, turning it into a swamp of ethnic hatred, crime and terrorism, in one of the two conflicts.

I hope that's clear.

My guess is yes to all of the above.

Sure, because you mention nothing about Israel getting off occupied land.

Posted by: daCascadian on August 25, 2006 at 1:16 AM | PERMALINK

Non-Westerners in India will never forget the organized violence that General Dyer applied in Amritsar. The New Statesman in 1940 noted: "Will the historians of the future have to record that it was not the Nazis but the British ruling class which destroyed the British Empire?"

Neocon genocidal bullshit.

I see neonazi Thomas1 is letting his white sheet and burning cross shine through on this thread.

You are going straight to hell, old man, unless you see the error of your sinful ways.....

answers to questions
simple ask and answer
faq for business and finance

If there is to be (effectively) a DMZ between the two countries, patrolled by international troops, shouldn't half of it come from Israeli territory, and half from Lebanon?

That said, this is a positive step: the U.S. cannot shoulder this mission - we badly needed others to come to the fore and lead, and it appears they now will.

For who is this a "positive step"? Israel (and the US, indirectly) is being bailed out by international forces - instead of Israel attempting to occupy southern Lebanon, as it does in Palestinian West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, Israel outsources the occupation to the blue helmets.

Israel's occupations seek to have it both ways - it should either take all the territory it won in 1967 and 1973, and administer it as a proper government - ensuring civil rights for the inhabitants, taking responsibility for law and order, etc - or, it should LEAVE, and allow the populations to rule themselves. Under occupation, Israel does not give civil and voting rights to the inhabitants, and takes measures to ensure its "security" that would not be acceptable if the territory (and subjects) were Israeli, nor if it were a foreign, neighboring country.

But the acceptance of this "frame", the legitimacy of Israel's occupation, on this (TNR-lite) site is not surprising at all.

daCascadian--

Oooh, that was a brilliant post there, calling me an eighth grader! You're really the most pathetic type of character there is: mocking people for posting to blogs while you yourself are sifting carefully through the damned comments thread, just waiting to get your little nip in.

Actually you're even more pathetic, because you actually attach a stock quotation to the end of your post as though it is some kind of argument. And a Sammy Huntington quote at that. Little Sammy Huntington, king of the eighth-grade international relations book club. Why not go all the way and just slap some pithy Clausewitz quote on your post? Or some Orwell?

Thomas:

What's wrong with defending Iran?

Bob

This is disgraceful. After three years of genocide in Darfur there has never been any action by the UN, the US, the EU, or anyone else. Hundreds of thousands raped or killed, millions expelled from their homes, by one of the most vicious regimes in the world. An Islamic fascist regime, and the worst of its kind, worse than Iran, worse than Syria, worse than Saddam.

But when it comes to protecting Israel from a tiny pseudo-state, thousands of troops appear out of nowhere.

tyronen:

While I wouldn't use the term "Islamic fascist" to describe any state -- I do agree with you that Somalia is about the worst of the worst. It is a Taliban-like theocracy.

Not that, umm, the Islamic regime in the Sudan is much better. Actually, come to think of it -- it's probably objectively worse than Somalia.

But where, indeed, are the blue helmets?

Bob

You know, this may have been another Frence gambit.

Knowing other nations would not step forth to put together a sound force without impetus, they scaled back their support of the mission until other nations anted up more than they would have otherwise.

Then they cover their initial bet after holding, and sweep the pot (The Italian force, etc) into the UN mission.

Cagey. One will never know.

PS, the official language of UN/NATO communications is French, so it's not unusual for them to have leadership positions.

Holbrooke is a guy with a ton of credibility. When he says that diplomacy has to be backed up by a credible threat of force, he obviously means it: he recommended military action twice in the Balkans during the 90s. At the same time, when he says it should be a last resort, he obviously means that too: he devoted uncounted thousands of hours to serious, toughminded diplomacy during the same period. Some of it worked and some of it didn't, but his dedication to the cause is hardly questionable.And despite his continued unwillingness to flatly face the reality that we can't afford to stay in Iraq any longer, he had by far the better of the argument when the subject turned to Iran. Diplomacy is not, he reminded Kristol, in and of itself a sign of weakness. Of course we should be willing to talk directly to Syria and Ir