Posted on 08/18/2006 5:02:03 AM PDT by Clive
Has Germany said why it pulled back its offer to send troops?
When that begins to happen, we should get the hell out of the UN and kick them out of the Country. Then use the facilities to house NATO.
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.