Nidra Poller writes from Paris for Jihad Watch on peace in our time:
Advocates of an immediate cease fire did not prevail at the recent Rome Conference convened to discuss the current crisis and if possible agree on a common position. As bluntly stated by two disappointed journalists: “World powers failed to reach agreement…on when to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militiamen in Lebanon [sic], bowing to American pressure to give Israel more time to bomb.” Sciolino and Cooper inadvertently admit that the cease fire camp is focused primarily, or realistically, on curbing Israel’s right to pursue its military operation in Lebanon, without really addressing the problem of Hizballah attacks against Israeli civilians. For good reason. Hizballah is not operating within the framework of so-called international law. What’s more, an honest description of the conflict precludes the ceasefire approach and demolishes its humanitarian underpinnings.In the real world Hizballah launched a widespread, unprovoked, premeditated attack against Israel. Astute observers worldwide recognize this offensive as the opening battle of Iran’s war against the infidels, in the larger context of global jihad. Israel is striking back with considerable determination, making progress while discovering the full extent of the challenge in terms of Hizballah weapons caches, underground tunnels, trained combatants, sophisticated communications and tactics. Disproportionate for some, inadequate for others, the ongoing Israeli military campaign is undeniably vigorous and skillful.
By what logic would one interfere at this point, impose a ceasefire, and replace courageous IDF soldiers with any combination of multinational troops known or imaginable? The idea is so preposterous that it unravels as it is articulated. One day a NY Times editorial suggests that the French would be the backbone of the force because of their close ties with Lebanon, forgetting to add a word or two about France’s ill-concealed antipathy for Israel. But it doesn’t even matter. Because the French have made it clear that they are not marching in until and unless the political problems are solved and the battlefield is pacified and, even then, they will only take marching orders from the UN. Maybe you have to live in France to understand that this is their way of saying “non.” As for suggesting that the French first prove their mettle by disarming the punk jihadis in the banlieue or curbing the appetite for car burning, it’s too easy. Just as it is too easy to tally UN failures in the region, on that very border, and anywhere else in the world where scrupulous authority backed up by military force is required. The death of four UN soldiers on the eve of the Rome conference was immediately transformed into stones to throw at Israel. Kofi Annan, whose quite recent words of praise for Hassan Nasrallah coupled with their photo op are circulating in the blogosphere, cast the first stone. And the howling crowd joined in without stopping to think exactly how this incident supported their ceasefire cause. It doesn’t. It illustrates the impossibility not to mention the utter inadvisability of an expanded UN force on the border. Israeli soldiers are kidnapped and subject to conditions of detainment that chill the blood. Israeli soldiers are dying in combat in Lebanon, courageously fighting to protect Israeli civilians and Israel’s very existence. Israeli civilians are killed in their homes, on their streets, in their workplaces. Four UN soldiers--still passively observing as Hizballah fighters fiercely defend the military installations they constructed under the UN’s watchful eye—are killed and the UN immediately accuses Israel of deliberately targeting them.Would it be any different in the case of an expanded, beefed up international intervention force? Or would that force serve as the avant-garde of the human shield now composed of the Lebanese population?
Measured against the existential danger facing Israel and, concomitantly, the rest of the free world, the vague notion of a multinational force is shockingly frivolous. Its advocates skirt every concrete problem, beginning with the disarmament of Hizballah, and introduce preposterous notions such as inviting Syria to participate because it has the only Arab army that could handle those tough Hizballah fighters. The force would be under French commandment, but the French won’t go anywhere near the region until it has been pacified. The force would operate under UN mandate, prevent cross-border attacks, pave the way for deployment of the Lebanese army on the troubled frontier as specified in UN Resolution 1559…but only if the warring parties agree in advance. As for the underlying issues, a close look reveals that the ceasefire is based essentially on satisfying Hizballah demands for massive liberation of Lebanese prisoners and evacuation of the Sheba’a Farms, thereby justifying the unprovoked July 12th attack.
In short, the ceasefire crowd is promising peace in our time.
French participation in any military operation is highly problematical. French participation in the ceasefire movement is total and, on the domestic scene, exhilarating. Public approval ratings for Chirac-Villepin are up by more than 10%. The media are at a fever pitch of anti-Zionist hysteria. Anticipating victory in Rome, they announced a stunning turnaround in US policy, claiming that Condoleeza Rice came away from her meeting with Fuad Sionora finally convinced of the need for an “urgent ceasefire.” That story vanished the next day, when the American Secretary of State reiterated her government’s opposition to hasty interruption of combat. Undaunted by the facts, the media hammer away, invent new stories, convinced that victory—in the form of cowardly surrender—is just around the corner.It won’t work this time. The resolve of determined nations—Israel, the US, Great Britain, Canada, and certain Arab countries among others—is too strong, the evil designs of Iran via Hizballah are too clear, the stakes are too high to allow good old international opinion to come to the rescue of jihadis who attack boldly, promise hellfire and damnation, and then squeak for help as soon as they start losing.
The failure of the Rome Conference to impose that kind of international opinion is in fact a success for a new, post-UN era in international relations. No multinational force is going to combat Hizballah and deliver a sharp blow to apocalyptic Iranian projects, and no jumble of nations can formulate coherent policy on life and death matters. All the humanitarian hype will not hide the fact that this is war, in war you take sides, and you fight to win. It is true of the jihadis, it is true of those who fight them. You can’t be both at the same time.
Superbly stated.
Unfortunately, too many peple do not wish to face this reality.
Yes, but this is just the first battle in a long ongoing war aimed at exhausting the loser.
It will be interesting to follow the war of words that will ensue in the next months. The two fronts in this war: the terrorist front and the defender's front - these two fronts are very clearly identifiable and no amount of lying and threats by the islamic world will change this.
"By their deeds shall you know them."
I have a good deed for us: when the dust is settled, I would say we have between 12,000-13,000 good reasons to punish Syria and Iran for having started this crap in the first place. Perhaps it is time to bring the war to the terrorists instead of waiting for them to come to us. I mean - in Syria and Iran.
My biggest “nightmare” is that those aging Boeing aircraft that took Iranian telemetry experts to the North Korean Taepodong-2 missile launching sites may have taken back to Iran one or more of the several nuclear devices that North Korea has assembled during the past two years. In which case, Iran could assemble crude devices and either plant or secret them into Syria, Lebanon and hence into Israel for possible detonation thus springing a second ‘Holocaust.’
VERY GOOD ARTICLE THAT BACKS UP ROBERTS COMMENT
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=12002
The logic behind the clamor that Israel is engaged in a “disproportionate response” to Hezbollah rocket attacks is to me a UFO [unidentified fiendish onslaught – against Israel], and in this editorial insight, I will tell you why. But first may I ask: What is meant by “proportionate response” that the illogical misguided want when Hezbollah-Hamas terrorists attack with all the weapons in their command and kill Israeli soldiers and civilians?
Does this mean that Israelis kill more civilians than Hezbollah-Hamas’ murders of Israeli civilians hence disproportionate? If so, so what? Does it mean that killing civilians is okay if the number killed in both sides is the same, equal or proportionate? This deviates from the issue whether killing innocent civilians is acceptable or contemptible. Ignoring this issue in this oblivious chameleon manner is as contemptible as it is condemnable. This is on top of insulting our intelligence.
If anyone could name me a country that won a war with a “proportionate response” to the enemy’s use of force at their own disposal, I suggest we burn down the world’s archives and all the libraries in the world as public nuisance for their failure to provide us information to that effect.
Compare Germany’s civilian death toll to ours in WWII: Germany has 1.84 civilian deaths, ours 407,300. Together with the combined civilian-killing power of the Allies, 36.1 percent of the entire Japanese population was wiped out -- both civilian and military. [1] We dropped our atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed and maimed about two-thirds of the total civilian population.
Note carefully, that in WWII, Japan was using conventional bombs – include human-burning bombs if you may -- and we were using nukes killing innocent Japanese civilians with such a hellish matter-melting force and radiation fallouts – was that not, according to Kofi Annan of the U.N., the Russians, the French, the Arab militants supporting Hezbollah and their not too bright satellites around the world who are stumping their feet heavily on Israel’s toe, a terrible military ”disproportionate response”? But no Russian, French and Islamic Arab complaints of “disproportionate response” or any similar complaints that came from hell for killing Japanese civilians in that most horrific way, were ever heard and justified when nukes were used disproportionately in response to the Japanese invasion killing and maiming millions of innocent civilians in Asia with such indescribable atrocities which Islam terrorists the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah are trying to match up in savagery by torturing, killing civilians and our captured soldiers with their female victims’ breasts cut off and male genitalia mutilated and hanged over the bridge to capture world attention.
More whining American Lefwags [Liberal enemy from within Al Gore standard], Russians and French grumblers crazed economically by their dollar interest in the Middle East, would have died had we not ended WWII using the nuke -- a “disproportionate response” to the aggression of Axis Power conspirators in WWII which they themselves had started. Estimated one million Americans would have died more in addition to our rising casualties, including Lefwags that would have died, had Japan been invaded to end the war instead of using the nukes.
Let’s visualize this mentally like how in his infinite wisdom Confucius would do to make the ordinary mind understand clearly: Militarily, Israel is a tiger, and Hezbollah-Hamas is a mouse. The stupid mouse bloodied the nose of the tiger.
Do we expect the tiger to poke gently, repeat, “gently”, the mouse’s snout to draw the same proportionate amount of blood? I would like to see what measurement was used by those grumblers of equity in the use of force in war to see to it that the blood drawn [casualties] was equal and proportionate, unless we are living in a world that had turned into a mental asylum specifically ordained for the likes of Hitler, Saddam Hussein, the murderous Mullahs of Iran and Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists and their subalterns in the art of mass murder, that are now attacking Israel.
In this conflict, it is Hezbollah and Hamas that are violating Article One of the Hague Convention, re, Geneva Convention. Under this international covenant, the parties to the conflict are prohibited to “… direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.” [See Note 2.]
Who is doing this dastardly act? We will be damned if the world does not know this killing tactic of terrorists. Anti-Semitism bigots should clean their eyeglass to be able to see well that it is not Israel that is guilty of war crimes on the issue of civilian collateral damage under international law in this particular Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas war, just as we are not guilty in the conscience of man when we dropped the nukes that devastated the enemy, in our defense against an aggression that holds no value of human lives. The irony in using the nukes is: It is the taking of scores of enemy lives in a single strike to prevent once and for all the enemy from taking more and more innocent lives from our side.
Observe this one report from out of so many similar reports, [3] with an open mind:
“Artillery rockets by Hezbollah were fired at civilian targets throughout the conflict, landing in all major cities of northern Israel including Haifa, Nazareth, Tiberias, Nahariya, Safed, Afula[90] Kiryat Shmona, and Karmiel, and numerous small agricultural villages.[51][91] [47][92][51][93] Rockets also landed and resulted in casualties in the Arab village Mghar [7] and in the mixed city of Nazareth, where two children were killed [8].” This killing of civilians is not just by intermittent inadvertence [accidental] but deliberate “throughout the conflict…”. Nor this is just happening once – it has been happening since Jihad was declared many years back.
Churchill1938:
We're living in a different age now, in which what the U.S. did to win World War II is no longer considered acceptable by many of our elites and young people.
We're living in an age of globally televised war, in which the damage we inflict on the enemy population is instantly transmitted right back to our living rooms in real time. That didn't happen in World War II. American families didn't get to see what was happening to German and Japanese families under our bombs, until after we had won the war. Back then, the enemy was faceless--"Japs" or "Krauts." The newsreels showed the bombing raids but not the aftermath. Now, thanks to television, American families get to see the other side's civilians as human beings like ourselves--cute little children with families who mourn their deaths. That is making it much harder to sustain the will to take actions that will get some of those civilians killed, even accidentally.
Most elites, college professors, and the students they teach, think the U.S. should not have used the atomic bomb on Japan. And when I've asked them whether we should have just continued to use conventional bombs on Japanese cities instead, again they said no. So what do they think we should have done? Once Japan was militarily defeated, the U.S. should have negotiated a cease-fire with Japan.
It's a new era.
In describing the attitudes of the elites (college professors, etc.), Steven L. wrote: "Once Japan was militarily defeated, the U.S. should have negotiated a cease-fire with Japan."
If we had followed that course, the West would still be fighting a vengeful, resurgent Japanese empire today. More vicious wars and more suffering across the globe would have been the result.
It is not sufficient to defeat the enemy militarily. They must be defeated ideologically. That is what the atomic bombs did, among other things. The bombs finally convinced the fanatical Japanese that their divine destiny was a false one.
In the present day, we must convince the Islamic world that their divine Mohammedan destiny is also false. Of all people, college professors are the ones who should be totally engaged in this ideological struggle against the clear fascist enemy of all mankind--Islam. Instead, these professors work for the defeat of the West, the only real protector and incubator of intellectual freedom anywhere.
Unless we in the West can defeat Islam using ideas--the natural domain of college professors--then the defeat will have to be inflicted with massive violence, including, eventually, more nuclear attacks (and the first nuclear shot won't be from the West this time).
Our academic elites are not standing on the high moral ground. Far from it. They are nothing less than traitors to civilization itself. They will be the pig-headed, irresponsible fathers of massive human suffering beyond anything that history has recorded thus far.
Once again Konservatives are betrayed by Konservative politicians and demigogic leaders..
Seems that Bush/Rice et al are all wrapped up in worry about what the Arab/Muslim world thinks, and have reversed their position and are now negotiating a cease fire agreement with the UN (one which will be, most assuredly, disadvantageous to Israel).
I think Israel should take the Sudan Somali Kosovo Indonesia Iranian Hizballah attitude towards UN resolutions and ceasefires.. ignore them.
In fact question for Rice and Bush, this leftwing liberal wants to know "Why do you care what the Muslim/Arab world thinks, they don't care what you or I think?" Have an answer for that? Oops I keep forgetting that Br'er Bush and Br'er Abdullah and family are best of friends and supporters. Didn't the Bin Ladens finance your earliest business enterprises like Arbusto Oil? Why yes they did.
Don't your oil buddies operate and make their money off muslim oil? Doesn't Boeing, McDonnel Douglas, Raytheon, GM, GE make a lot of money selling arms, munitions, planes, armored carriers, not to mention cars and goodies to Muslims? Why yes they do.
Is that why you are so "sensitive" to the muslims? Besides the fact that there are 8 million of them in the U.S. holding us hostage, enthralled and in fear.
What do you mean Hizbullah's attack was unprovoked? Israel's very existence is a standing provocation to those guys.