The war in Lebanon should not have surprised anyone. For many years, Hizbullah, which is funded, equipped and ideologically supported by Iran and Syria, has made it crystal clear that its goal is to conquer Israel, expel its Jewish inhabitants, and place the entire land under Islamic rule.
Hizbullah engages in terrorism – the deliberate targeting of Jewish civilians and others – to achieve its goals. In the past month Hizbullah rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, deliberately maiming and killing innocent Israeli civilians. Hizbullah uses Lebanese civilians as human shields when it places its rockets in civilian areas, and is therefore responsible for many Lebanese casualties. Nonetheless, the European Union refuses to describe Hizbullah as a terrorist organization.
The Islamic terrorism represented by Hizbullah and others will one day threaten the entire world. Islamic fanatics have already engaged in terrorist acts in the U.S., England, Spain, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Argentina, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries. Israel should be applauded for fighting international terrorism and using its military forces in Lebanon to confront the terrorist infrastructure after Hizbullah launched a military attack across the Lebanese-Israeli border on July 12.
Instead, Israel was criticized by a number of countries in the European Union that seek to make it difficult for the Israeli army to degrade or eliminate Hizbullah. You can count on the French government to try to deliver Israel into the hands of its enemies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair deserves enormous credit for standing with the U.S. against those in and out of his government who have opposed his willingness to fight international terrorism and his support for the right of Israel to defend itself against Hizbullah.
I have no doubt, however, that if it were not for the support of the United States, led by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, many European states would have been even more active in trying to snatch victory from the hands of the Israel Defense Forces.
The position of the United States has been clear from the start of hostilities: a sustainable ceasefire. For Lebanon, all agree that a “sustainable ceasefire” means a return of control of the entire country to the elected Lebanese government. The Lebanese army is not strong enough to exercise such control and disarm Hizbullah. It will need the military forces of NATO or other friendly countries to assist it.
It was disingenuous for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the butcher of Grozny and the Chechen Republic, and others to talk of a “disproportionate response” on the part of Israel. Even with the onslaught of Israeli troops sent into southern Lebanon, Israel’s response has been clearly inadequate to the danger it faces. Although made progress, it was unable to destroy all of Hizbullah’s bases and rockets so as to remove them as future threats.
Israel’s decision not to use major combat infantry in addition to its air force early on was, in hindsight, a serious error, even if its intent was to minimize casualties to both Israeli military forces and Lebanese civilians. It appears that Hizbullah will emerge from this exchange of hostilities degraded militarily in its ability to wage terrorist attacks against Israel, but not destroyed. Politically, it will be strengthened, simply by having withstood Israeli efforts to totally obliterate it.
Arab leadership will seek to convince the “Arab street” that Israel’s army was defeated by Hizbullah. Rational people, however, will look at the damage inflicted by Israel in southern Lebanon and Beirut and know that Lebanon paid a heavy price for Hizbullah’s military misadventure.
In an effort to limit Israel’s victory, the Arab League sought to have the proposed Security Council resolution order Israel to vacate southern Lebanon before Hizbullah is disarmed and the Lebanese army and a multinational force is placed there as required by UN Resolution 1559. Israel would be unable to protect its population from a renewal of Hizbullah’s rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns if it quit Lebanon before both Lebanon’s army and a UN-mandated military force are in place to keep the peace and disarm Hizbullah.
According to The New York Times, President Bush made the U.S. position clear: “Speaking to reporters from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., President Bush called for the resolution’s speedy adoption, but made clear that the main sticking point – Lebanese insistence that the draft be altered to require Israel to withdraw troops immediately – was nonnegotiable.”