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Sunday, August 13, 2006Every time I hear about a ceasefire in the Middle East, I start biting my nails and hoping Israel really has gotten things finished up. But so far, I keep getting reminded to keep my cool. Witness the latest - Lebanon's postponed cabinet meeting about defanging, er, disarming Hezbollah.This CQ post gets at a lot of the underlying issues and a mighty battle about the meaning of the whole general mishmash is fought in the comments. When you get all done, though, the only thing that really matters is actions. I may be proved wrong on this, but from where I'm sitting, Hezbollah says they won't stop shooting till Israel's gone and Israel now has a resolution that says they can continue defensive operations as long as Hezbollah's shooting. Where does that put us? Israel has an implied hunting license in effect until Lebanon contains Hezbollah. Which means either the fighting continues or Hezbollah has to submit to the Lebanese government. Some cry that they will pretend to do so, but not really do so. It's still a weakening in Hezbollah's stature, though. Right now, you've got to hand it to Olmert, Bush and Rice. It's not like Israel is invested in perpetual war - that's the ideology of the enemy. What we've gotten then, is a ceasefire with teeth - sharp pointy teeth to bite Hezbollah and its supporters in the ass. While Bush equates Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, Rice negotiates for a ceasefire. What's that mean? Nothing, unless you believe in ceasefires. Like the run-up to Iraq, the US is playing along on the diplomacy front. But what we're looking at, truthfully, is not an attempt to avert or end war. What we're looking at is an attempt to form an international consensus that peace will come if only our enemies can bring themselves to accept terms that are totally unacceptable to their continued power. A few years back, Saddam was given the choice of proving he lacked WMD - thus losing his regional stature - or going to war. He decided war was safer than facing his own people and surrounding countries if they had a clearer idea of how big a threat he really was. Now, the diplomatic game is being played again, and cleverly. All the world sees Israel being forced into a ceasefire, but what's really happening is Israel is being given a green light to act because the ceasefire terms are that they'll stop when their objective is met - Hezbollah is defanged - while the other party, Lebanon, can only get its ceasefire if Israel's true enemy, Hezbollah, is made to submit. I squawked a great deal in the run-up to the Iraq war, about the time we wasted on diplomacy. But in retrospect, the Bush-Rice team did a great job, not because of the way they negotiated, but because of the way they set negotiations up to collapse unless they were in their interest. Now Israel's cabinet is in the same position - the Bush-Rice team got France behind it in an agreement that is less about what happens when it's implemented than about what happens if it can't be. 
posted by gbarto at 2:47 PM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
