Why Israel has failed: the harsh reality
Here’s a good rundown of just how Israel lost the lastest conflict in Lebanon:
- Hezbollah was still alive and kicking when the ceasefire came
- Hezbollah successfully manipulated the media through fake pictures and fradulent death tolls. See “Green Helmet guy” for more explanation.
- Hezbollah will win the Lebanese people’s hearts back by rebuilding Beruit and southern Lebanon (much to the chagrin of impoverished Iranians, who will be funding the renovation).
Israel is solidly to blame for item #1, they should have hit Hezbollah hard when they had the chance. Now that the UN ceasefire is in effect, Hezbollah can regroup, rearm, and talk of victory. Item #2 saddens me, because it demonstrates the complicity the American and global media had in Hezbollah’s victory. The media outlets were duped like ignorant pawns, falling all over themselves to run deliberately staged pictures. The falsification was so obvious at one point that basic Photoshop artifacts were visible in AP wire photos; only the collective screaming of the conservative blogosphere caused some retractions. But the damage had been done, Hezbollah had won the war of the media. Item #3 speaks to more international impotency. Iran and Syria fund and therefore control Hezbollah, and now those regimes will win even more hearts and minds by providing the only thing that counts for bombed-out Lebanese civilians: food, water and shelter. Looks like we’ll have a fresh new generation of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters who were galvanized for Allah in 2006, when after a Zionist blitzkrieg, Hezbollah provided for them. Just great.
And this ceasefire? It’s a joke; France will only send troops after Hezbollah disarms, which appears as likely as a diet for Michael Moore. So Hezbollah will again be allowed to go on existing thanks wholly to an unenforcable resolution dreamt up by ivory tower UN plutocrats. It’s not hard to predict that the fighting will resume maybe in a month, maybe in a year.
Ceasefires don’t create peace, wars do. After all, the Middle East has seen more ceasefires and more violence than any region over the last couple decades. And what do we have to show for it? A few of us are wise enough to realize this is just another “peace in our time” Chaimberlain-style appeasement pact which at best delays the inevitable.
Update: France is starting to show her true colors. They’re not going to send the troops they were so quick to volunteer a few weeks ago:
France is considering providing only a symbolic force for the United Nations contingent in Lebanon, and not the thousands of troops UN officials had hoped, Le Monde newspaper said on Thursday.
Pussies.
terrorism, UN, France, ceasefire, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Iran
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On a quasi side note the Daily Show DID poke fun out of Reuters for the doctored photos.
Did he rake Reuters over the coals for it? Do you have the clip? I’m thinking he didn’t rib them too badly, and I seriously doubt he flipped the switch into somber mode (as he does with items he cares more about).
But I would liek to see the clip if you have it.
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml?start=17
I think it is called ministry of truth. I’m 100% sure, but if not I’ll look again.
“Ceasefires don’t create peace, wars do.”
That’s a pretty loaded statement. Should we then start wars all over the place, if they bring peace? You haven’t backed this up at all except to say the middle east has had a number of ceasefires with no peace. I’ll use your same logic right back at you, it has had a number of wars with no lasting peace either. If you are going to make such loaded comments think twice about the logic behind them.
Obviously I wasn’t claiming that simply starting wars willy nilly all over the globe is a viable solution to creating lasting peace. Perhaps I should say that, in order to create a lasting peace, wars are far, far more effective than ceasefires.
America’s civil war created lasting peace within our nation that has lasted to this day. World War I would have perhaps done the trick had the victors not loaded Germany up with so much debt. World War 2 defeated rabidly expansionist regimes in Italy, Germany, and Japan.
You can see for yourself what the ceasefire deal has purchased in southern Lebanon. The UN is too weak to force France into sending the remaining 14,800 troops it promised, all the while Syria and Iran are rearming Hezbollah. It’s well known that Islamic militants use ceasefires as a period of rearmament and rest before launching new attacks.
War is hell, and brings the end of many lives. However, it is the lesser of two evils when confronted with regimes that promote terrorism and global jihad. Europe and much of America have forgotten how it obtained peace and prosperity in the first place, and it wasn’t with ceasefires.