I'm getting more disillusioned with Dubya all the time.
I fear he is becoming a Republican equivalent of Clinton!
(I know I'll be slamed for this, but what can I say???)
So they want UN troops on territories managed by free nations like Israel, but not on the axis of evil nations. It used to be the UN was used to fight dictatorships like North Korea. Now we use them to destroy ourselves and the credibility of democracies. Kuddos for new grounds in stupidity.
How can we pretend to arabs that we can have jurisdition 3000 miles away there when we deny Israel jurisdiction 10 miles away? We are setting ourselves up for a global revolution against US forces stationed abroad. It's over, we fell in the trap of giving ammo to those aiming to unite against what they will term a "unipolar imperialist America".
U.S. Troops Needed in Mid. East, Say Experts
U.S. Troops Needed in Mid. East, Say Experts
Dave Eberhart, NewsMaxLooking to free-up more combat troops for the War on Terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress just a month ago that he would like to slash the U.S. commitment to the Multinational Forces and Observers (MFO) that patrols the Egypt-Israel border from about 900 American troops to less than 30. Since the accelerated Israeli-Palestinian turmoil, however, no more has been heard on the proposed reduction.
Tuesday, Apr. 2, 2002
Furthermore, Gen. Anthony Zinni, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, has been telling Congress and anyone else who will listen that any eventual cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority must be monitored by an international peacekeeping force -- supplemented by what Zinni has reportedly described as "a very limited number” of U.S. troops.
It is unclear at this point if any of those proposed U.S. peacekeeping troops would be drawn from the cadre already in the Sinai as part of the MFO.
Recently, Egyptian political commentator Gehad Auda said that Arab concern over the American pro-Israeli stance in the now stalled mediation counter-indicates any withdrawal of U.S. troops from border duties in the Sinai. "That would give a dramatic and bad signal…the United States is not committed to peace,” Auda argued.
Egypt, which blames Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the current turmoil, has resisted efforts to reduce the American presence in the Sinai, maintaining that having international forces on the border promotes stability in troubled times. Conversely, Israel has signaled no difficulty with a U.S. withdrawal.
The MFO was set up by Egypt, Israel and the US to monitor the 1978 Camp David peace accord. The force patrols the Sinai, a triangle of desert, which Egypt lost to Israel in the 1967 war and regained via a U.S.-brokered peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Israel withdrew from the Sinai three years after the treaty with Egypt. The MFO, which flies a distinctive orange flag, was then fielded to ensure the peace.
11 Nation Force
The American contingent to the MFO presently accounts for about half of the total 1,836 soldiers, sailors, pilots and other uniformed members of the 11-nation Multinational Force and Observers.
However, The Washington Times reported recently that the Army School of Advanced Military Studies’ plan for enforcing a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord would require about 20,000 armed troops scattered throughout Israel and any Palestinian state. Among the troops duties would be to make sure Palestinian terror suspects were detained and were not quietly released afterward.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., recently said he would consider U.S. troops as peacekeepers in the Middle East -- after a lasting cease-fire was established. "In that context, yes, and with European forces as well,” said Biden.
Those "European” forces described by Biden, however, might well be peacekeepers from such unlikely nations as Fiji and Colombia, which presently contribute the largest contingents to the Sinai’s MFO -- after the United States.
Fiji has traditionally been very Gung-ho about its role in the Sinai, perennially winning many of the competitive field events held as part of joint military exercises.
Last month in Budapest, General Janos Isaszegi, All Army Command Post Commander, bid farewell with great ceremony to a group of Hungarian army and police officers, departing to serve a one-year term with the MFO in the Sinai. The group of 12 soldiers and 6 police officers joined the Hungarian contingent of 41 members on duty along the Egyptian-Israeli border.
Sharing the Burden
The U.S., Egypt and Israel provide the lion’s share of the Sinai force’s $51 million annual budget -- sharing the burden equally. Japan, Germany and Switzerland also contribute.
Last month Vice President Dick Cheney visited with U.S. troops of the MFO as he toured the Middle East. Despite the stated intentions of the secretary of defense to emasculate the U.S. detachment, Chaney declared, "This region is both the site of many conflicts and one of the critical centers of American interest - economic, military and political.”
Rumsfeld told Congress that much of the present U.S. MFO contingent duties, consisting of patrols, manning checkpoints and reconnaissance, "can be done by others with our help and encouragement.”
In commenting about the Egyptian reluctance to let the Americans depart the MFO, John Hirsch, vice president of the New York-based International Peace Academy and a former adviser to U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia, said, "I sort of understand the Egyptian concern, but I personally believe that more and more of the burden rests on the countries involved.”
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