Excerpts Of The Day: Told Ya So On A Peace Keeping Force In Lebanon

“Setting aside the fact that the UN is extremely hostile to Israel and has great difficulty raising large numbers of troops, as we’ve seen over and over again in the past, any UN force that doesn’t have the United States or Britain doing most of the heavy lifting isn’t capable of fighting its way out of a wet paper bag. Do we want a significant number of our troops in the middle of the fighting over there? No way. Does Britain? Despite having Tony Blair involved in this project, I seriously doubt that they’re willing to commit sending a few thousand troops into Lebanon indefinitely to try to ride herd on Hezbollah.

So, could the UN put enough quality troops on the ground to keep Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel? It’s highly doubtful. Even if they could, would the countries that supplied those troops be willing to hang in there after they lost soldiers in a terrorist attack? Again, highly doubtful. Heck, even if there were enough troops and they stuck in there, given the UN’s institutional bias against Israel, why would anyone think that they’d actually be willing to use force to stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis?” — John Hawkins, on July 17, 2006

“Support is building quickly for an international military force to be placed in southern Lebanon, but there remains a small problem: where will the troops come from?

The United States has ruled out its soldiers participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia which it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.

“All the politicians are saying, ‘Great, great’ to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground,” said one senior European official. “Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus.”

There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between themselves and the Israelis.” — The New York Times, July 24, 2006

You’ve just got to love that last line,

There are, “private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between themselves and the Israelis.”

What good is a peace keeping force that’s not actually willing to fight to keep the peace? Moreover, if Israel is willing to accept a NATO force in Lebanon to prevent a conflict and Hezbollah isn’t, what does that tell you about which party is the aggressor, which party wants the fighting to continue, and which party wants peace? If you have half a brain in your head, it tells you everything you need to know.

Share this!

Enjoy reading? Share it with your friends!