Condi, stay home

WorldNet Daily ^ | July 19, 2006 | Jerome Corsi

[conservativecorner]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should stay home if her mission is to go to the Middle East in an attempt to tell Israel to stop the war against Hezbollah.

President Bush's message that Israel should use "restraint" in dealing with Hezbollah is equally off the mark. In his first term, President Bush understood the use of pre-emptive war as a necessary national security strategy designed to deal effectively with terrorists. Would President Bush refrain from going to war if Hezbollah sleeper cells launched a terrorist attack in the United States?

Hezbollah committed an act of war when terrorists crossed the Lebanon border into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers. Truthfully, Hezbollah has been launching rockets into northern Israel killing civilians for years. Israel understands that the recent step-up in Hezbollah violence against Israel was in direct response to orders issued by Iran to divert attention at the recent G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg away from Iran's decision to continue enriching uranium.

Israel understands that Hezbollah is conducting a proxy war on behalf of Iran. The mullahs created Hezbollah and even today Tehran funds Hezbollah to the tune of $250 million a year. If the world succeeds in calling Israel off, then terrorists throughout the world will be emboldened. Israel is now in a vice where enemies on all sides are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza and Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

At this moment, with Israel just about to launch a ground incursion into southern Lebanon, Hezbollah itself is at an existential moment. Israel has the power not only to disarm Hezbollah, but to destroy Hezbollah as a political movement within Lebanon.

Hezbollah's prestige in the terrorist world comes from the 1983 suicide bombing attack on the American Marines barracks in Beirut. The result: President Reagan decided to withdraw all U.S. troops from Lebanon. Then, in 2001, Hezbollah boasted that it defeated Israel by forcing Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Right now, Hezbollah is viewed as the only terrorist force in the world that has defeated both the United States and Israel, a feat even Iran itself cannot claim.

Israel is at the first stages of going for a fundamental and historic strategic realignment of power in the Middle East. Hezbollah disarmed would become a Lebanese minority political party that at best could command some 20 to 25 percent of the popular vote. Moreover, a defeat for Hezbollah would be a serious defeat for Iran. Tehran hopes desperately that the world community will step in to restrain Israel before Israel scores a knockout punch on Hezbollah.

This time Israel is playing for keeps. With Iran pursuing nuclear weapons and Ahmadinejad openly proclaiming that Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the earth, Israel knows that war with Iran is inevitable, probably sooner rather than later. Removing Hezbollah as an armed terrorist organization would remove a major weapon from the Iranian arsenal.

Even if the war expands to Syria and then to Iran, Israel would rather take both countries on now, before Iran has the short time yet needed to produce deliverable nuclear weapons of their own making.

The United States can exert strong-arm pressure on Israel, but to do so would be to our detriment. By attacking Hezbollah with a determination to destroy Hezbollah as an armed terrorist organization, Israel truly is doing the dirty work for the United States.

If President Bush is truly serious about waging a successful war on terrorism, the administration must be instructed to give Israel enough time to do the job. No one doubts that the Israeli military has the needed skill and force to get the job done. All that is needed now is the political will in Washington to stay the course and back Israel, our only true ally in the region.

If we waver now, Israel will only fear doubly that the coming showdown with Iran may be one Israel will have to face alone. The Bush administration should do everything necessary right now to avoid putting this fear into Israel. The more Israel feels isolated today, the more resolved the Israeli government will become that Israel alone must defend Israel, regardless what anyone, including President Bush, thinks or says.

[EagleUSA]

Personally, I don't see much to be accomoplished in the region.
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Hopefully Israel will say "go home" to Condi. The fragile "democracy" in Lebanon needs support and they need to throw Hezbollah out of their country. It is too bad the situation there has been perpetuated for 40 years, and the sooner the terrorist governments of Syria and Iran are brought down, the sooner the radicalism can be put under control. Get out the popcorn -- the key piece on the chess board is Iran.

OK free world, your move.

[SJackson]

Hopefully Israel will say "go home" to Condi. The fragile "democracy" in Lebanon needs support and they need to throw Hezbollah out of their country.

Israel can't. And you're right about Lebanon, they need to find the will, perhaps desire, to disarm Hezbollah.

[ASA Vet]

And you're right about Lebanon, they need to find the will, perhaps desire, to disarm Hezbollah.

The Lebanon government and people are missing an opportunity.
They should get on board with Israel, assist them, and be grateful for their help in getting rid of Hezbollah.
Israel would probably even assist Lebanon in creating an actual army to secure the mutual border,
but only if Lebanon sincerely wants to become a real independent non-hostile nation.

[ANGGAPO]

How do you put pressure on Iran and Syria when we are going in three different directions? The President wants one policy, the Democrats want something different and wimps and whiners want to bury there heads in the sand and hope it all goes away. This is the right prescription for defeat.

[auto power]

....it's Israel's war, let them fight it...

[Tokra]

Children in Islam are programmed to hate anyone not Islamic from the beginning. Those seeds are firmly planted, then nurtured religiously until they grow up to be suicide bombers.

Not much different from the Hitler Youth - but we didn't try to kill all the kids in Germany in WWII. If we had - we would have not been not much different from the Nazis.

Don't get me wrong - I think the Muslim religion needs to be eradicated. I just don't like to see America specificaly targeting children.

[AdvisorB]

The leftist anti-American press and RAT politicians want to send the 21st century equivalent of the guy on the left, to see the 21st century equivalent of the guy on the right. And we all know what happens in the end because of this appeasement, right?

[onedoug]

We should be hitting Iran as well. Some war on terror.

[Paperdoll]

>I just don't like to see America specifically targeting children.<

Nor do I. I just stated an unhappy fact that these children are programmed to be WDMs. Hitler Youth were not brainwashed from birth. I don't think we are trying to kill Islamic children, nor do I advocate doing so. I am saying that we are in a war like no other in memory, and that it is tragic that the enemy uses their children as they do.