Italy Weighs the Risks of Leading UN Mission

With 8,600 soldiers deployed in 28 security and peacekeeping operations around the world, Italy will have a wealth of experience to call upon, should it be asked to lead a United Nations mission in Lebanon.But the closer that Italy's centre-left government gets to committing itself in Lebanon, the more opposition politicians – and some army generals, too – are warning that it may be a step fraught with dangerous consequences.

The concerns centre on whether Italian troops will find themselves caught between Israeli forces, Lebanese civilians and armed Hizbollah militiamen who will continue to be resupplied from Syria."If we were to be allowed to disarm Hizbollah, then I would be the first to say yes to the mission, but as things stand we risk placing our troops in the middle without even being allowed to slap anyone," said Francesco Storace, an opposition politician and former government minister.

"If we were to be allowed to disarm Hizbollah, then I would be the first to say yes to the mission, but as things stand we risk placing our troops in the middle without even being allowed to slap anyone,"

If the so-called peacekeepers aren't allowed to disarm Hizbollah what's the point of them being there? Everyone who hasn't been unconscious or visiting the moon for the last couple of months knows that it was the Hizzies who started the hostilities, and it will be the Hizzies who will restart the fighting as soon as they regroup and rearm with Syrian and Iranian supplied weapons.

All it would take to have peace in the middle east is for the Islamics to stop attacking Israel with suicide bombers, kidnappings, rockets, and mortars. But it's not politically correct to say that, and anyway the worthless anti-Semitic and anti-American UN parasites wouldn't say it even if it was PC.

IMHO Italy would be smart to keep it's people out of that mess. An Israeli spokesman recently said Hizbollah will be eliminated as a threat if it attacks Israel again, which of course it will. If I were an Italian soldier I wouldn't want to get in the Israelis' way when that elimination process begins.

They'd rather have their troops under French command?????

Mussolini's poorly equipped and led WWII army didn't perform much better than the French army did in that war. Maybe France and Italy could make history by jointly surrendering to both sides of the Lebanon conflict at the same time.

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