John Kerry’s bold plan to win the war on terror was to call a meeting with France and to discuss how we can win the war on terror without fighting it in the first place.
We now have evidence of what happens when you rely on the international community to solve sovereign problems.
Israel retaliated against the invasion of her sovereign territory, the murder of her soldiers, as well as their capture, by waging a war against the aggressors. The terms of victory were plain: complete disarmament and disbanding of Hizbollah. It was a pretty straightforward fight.
Israel, when left on her on, could probably have done the job relatively quickly and relatively harmlessly. After all, despite initial reports to the contrary, they were waging a fairly clean war, even by modern standards.
Granted, Israel didn’t expect Hizbollah to have anti-tank rockets and to have the training that they did. Still, Israel was making some serious work of Hizbollah with a 10-1 kill ratio and the land under their control by way of aerial siege.
However, the international community decided it had seen enough. Perhaps they could do a better job of accomplishing those goals, with a lot less blood. France led the charge to broker a ceasefire so that they could send troops to the area to stop the fighting, hopefully disarm Hizbollah, and keep Israel from fighting a war that would tax her. In the end, they succeeded. That is, they succeeded in getting a deal.
Today, when the nations met to discuss how many troops to dedicate to the task, France decided it would only send a nominal contingency of engineers and officers. How in the world France is going to disarm Hizbollah with officers and engineers I don’t know. Perhaps their mere presence is enough to send the terrorists running in fear. (NOT!)
But this is the story of the UN and the internation community. Wherever they set their hand to effect peace, we get more bloodshed than before. Remember why Israel had left Lebanon in the first place? UN resolution 1559, which required both Israel and Hizbollah to leave. What is going to be different about the next resolution? No matter how obediently Israel obeys, those who thwart UN resolutions pay no price, and even gain the support of the UN it seems.
We cannot rely on the UN to fight our wars anymore than Israel can. If Israel wants security, they have to buy it with their own bullets and blood, because the French certainly aren’t willing to shed a tear for them. The same goes for us. When push comes to shove, we had better be willing to shove no matter how loudly France protests.
