A "Warren Christopher" Peace Would Be Bad for Israel
By Erick Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Tom Bevan pointed out this column from former British Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith about Israel. I agree with Tom that it really is a must read and contains lots of good points, including this:
The ‘world community’ asks Israel to act proportionately but what will ‘world community leaders’ do in order to protect Israel if it does act in a way that Annan, Chirac and Putin think appropriate? Not, of course, that these leaders act proportionately in defence of their own interests. Putin almost bombed Grozny back to the stone age when Chechnya wanted independence. Chirac ignored world opinion when France tested nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. Annan turned a blind eye to the corruption of the oil-for-food programme – corruption that contributed to the loss of thousands of lives every month in Saddam’s Iraq. The best clue to understanding how the world will protect Israel in the next few years is to reflect on recent history. The best thing the world community does is talk. Disproportionate talking is in fact the only thing it does but jaw-jaw has not stopped the suicide bomb or missile attacks on Israel. After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in accordance with UN resolutions the world community promised to disband Hezbollah and protect the northern territories of Israel from shelling. It didn’t. The promise never evolved into action. $100m has been sunk into the UN’s interim force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in every year of the last six but Hezbollah has only grown stronger. The only newsworthy story generated by UNIFIL was a recent financial scam.
This reminds me of the talk I heard this morning on Fox News. Apparently, during the Clinton Administration, Warren Christopher flew back and forth across the Atlantic to negotiate "peace." I had not realized "peace" was actually accomplished -- though I suppose if your definition of "peace" is that Israel stops defending itself and instead allows itself to get gunned down, then yes, peace was accomplished.
The left seems to think the Bush administration needs to accomplish a peace like Warren Christopher was able to pull off. Well, I would just remind you all that the fighting did stop between Hezbollah and Israel after Christopher worked his magic. The fighting stopped long enough for Hezbollah to rebuild from the slaughter Israel inflicted on it. And now that it has rebuilt and rearmed to a greater extent than was possible in the nineties, we'd be foolish to think Hezbollah will want peace again until Israel has hurt it significantly. Then it would only want a Warren Christopher style peace --- a peace which involves Israel not shooting so Hezbollah has time enough to rebuild and rearm again.
A Warren Christopher peace would be bad for Israel and good for terrorists. It is not a peace we can afford.
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appear to be Christopher. I heard two nobodies on FNC debating this, and the Dem guy said something like, "Clinton Secretary of State Warren Christopher was faced with a similar situation in 1996. Instead of taking the Bush approach of doing nothing, he met with the different leaders and negotiated a peace settlement."
The talking point for the month appears to be to waft lovingly about how great the Clinton foreign policy was, like they're doing with Christopher now and Kerry tried to do with Bolton re North Korea last week. Alas, I'm shocked that in six years Bush has been able to screw up the world peace that Clinton had arranged.
Isreal has NOT engaged in a proportionate response. If Isreal had engaged in a proportionate response, killing the same percentage of Arab armies as were killed rockets and missles would have been launches at multiple locations in Beruit, Syria, and Iran. These munitions would not have been limited to military targets, and the dead would be measured in the thousands instead of the hundreds.
World leaders especially should not be permitted to assign meanings to words which are contrary to their dictionary definitions or other common usage.
I started to make a diary about this subject, but found I didn't have much more to add than this:
On Wednesday, July 12, Hezbollah conducted a raid into Israeli territory, killing several Israeli Defense Force soldiers and abducting two. The goal of the mission was to capture soldiers to be used as bargaining chips in a prisoner exchange.
And now the United Nations, the international media, and Hezbollah are united in their view that there should be a cease fire and prisoner exchange. They all seem to agree: Hezbollah was right to take the hostages. For that is the message that would be sent to Hezbollah and all other terrorist groups: take hostages, and the U.N. will come to your aid if any Ant Bullies appear.