UN pleads for troops

WASHINGTON - Lebanon's government took control of the nation's south for the first time in a quarter of a century yesterday as a senior UN official pressed the international community for quick commitments of troops to a Middle East peacekeeping force, warning a delay could lead to renewed bloodshed between Israel and Hezbollah.

At a meeting in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown pressed ambassadors from dozens of countries to tell the world body "in the next few days at most" how many soldiers they would contribute and when, after France sent plans into disarray by offering only a token number of troops.

"We must convert promises into firm commitments and commitments into rapid deployments on the ground. Every moment we delay is a moment of risk that the fighting could re-erupt," Mr. Malloch Brown told the closed-door meeting, according to a text of his remarks.

To date, only France has formally pledged to contribute, and its commitment of 200 troops will put barely a dent in the 15,000-strong force envisioned in last week's UN Security Council resolution ending the month-long war.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan made a last-ditch call to French President Jacques Chirac yesterday in the hope of convincing a key architect of the resolution to stay the course and commit as many as 4,000 soldiers, as had been expected.

The call from Mr. Annan came as ambassadors from 49 countries gathered at UN headquarters to begin assembling the international force. The UN wants an initial force of at least 3,500 soldiers on the ground in Lebanon within the next two weeks to supplement and support the 15,000 Lebanese soldiers who have started deploying in the border area.

Mr. Chirac did commit his country to commanding the UN mission in Lebanon but he would only double the 200 troops currently operating in Lebanon under the UN banner. France is concerned at what it has called the "fuzzy" nature of the mandate.

"The mission, the rules of engagement and the resources for this force must be precise," Mr. Chirac told Mr. Annan, according to a statement released by the French government.

In the span of just a couple years, under the tutelage of her State Department "expert" (Nicholas Burns, former senior foreign policy advisor to John Fng Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and now Condi's Deputy Secretary for Political Affairs) Condi has learned to speak in the double-speak of foggy bottom.

You can re-read everything she said with the understanding that the agreement is all diplomatic expectation with no actual signed committments by anyone to achieve anything, other than for Israel to quit demolishing Hezbolla; and without consequences on Lebanon, by the UN when nothing gets achieved and six months from now and beyond, the "status quo ante" is the same as before this "agreement".

On the other hand, I hate to admit it, but this was one situation where both Israel and the U.S. failed to see the real war that Iran and Hezbolla would wage.

That war was not Hezbolla's war from the Kaytusha rockets. That war was not a war where Hezbolla had any expectations of militarily succeeding against Israel, in the end. That war was 100% about generating a provocation that was so provocative that Israel's natural response would require massive devastation around Lebanon, with the intent and purpose, of Hezbolla and Iran, to create the media storm over Israel's response, and use public outcry over that response, generated by the media, to raise the credibility of Hezbolla in Lebanon.

That war, the media war Hezbolla and Iran hoped for, could have been defeated. It would have required an immediate massive ground campaign, and greater loss of IDF lives, with air support only for that ground campaign - leaving Lebanon largely undamaged outside of the area in southern Lebanon where Hezbolla was operating. The infrastructure all around Lebanon, by which Syria and Iran supplied Hezbolla (which Israel's air raids attacked), but outside of Hezbolla's area in the south would have been inconsequential once Hezbolla's bases in the south were eliminated, on the ground.

Israel would have been left with more allies in Lebanon and with possession of land by which she could give back on implementation of aggreement by the Lebanese reign in Hezbolla's militia. Under those conditions, those Lebanese less willing to support Hezbolla would not have had the public sentiment hurdle of the war's damage to overcome, in order to succeed in getting those hurdles installed by the Lebanese government.

Where is our State Department in all of this, from the perspective of what happened and what they did not anticipate? This latest fiasco, just as with the "elections" in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, under Condi our foreign policy is all about grand (and good) ideas, no ideas of how to achieve them and completely reactive to events, with no proactive abilities whatsoever. Anticpate nothing, plan for nothing, and wait and see what people do. Our State Department "plan" is to have no plan and no plans for implementation of that "no plan". It is as much in the clouds as is Associate Justice Breyer's idea of our Constitution.

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