From Ray Close, via Larry Johnson.
Dear Friends:
It became very clear during the Bush-Blair press conference on Friday
morning, 28 July, that the American and British “formula” to resolve
the Lebanon crisis rests on a hallucinatory expectation that several
critically important developments can and will take place successfully
between now and the time early next week when the U.N. Security
Council is scheduled to meet and discuss the situation.
It is totally unrealistic to expect that any one of these goals will
be achieved in the next few days — and with each passing day it
appears more and more unrealistic to expect that they can ever be
achieved. Indeed, it was very difficult to believe that a Prime
Minister of Great Britain and a President of the United States of
America could put on such a pathetic display of confusion and delusion
before the whole world, as they did in their press conference today.
This is what would need to happen before the US-UK formula was given
serious consideration by any of the various parties involved:
1. The IDF would have to start making very substantial and very
visible progress in degrading the fighting capability of the Hizballah
army — to the point where U.N. member nations being asked to
contribute soldiers to an international force could be persuaded that,
after a ceasefire, the Lebanese army could defeat and disarm the
remnants of Hizballah with only minimum direct support from the
international contingent.
2. Hizballah would have to show convincing signs that it was
realistically accepting the probability of defeat by the armed forces
of Israel, and would have to display a sincere willingness to enter
into a ceasefire followed by negotiations — the declared objective
of which would very obviously be the disarming and dissolution of
Hizballah’s own armed forces.
3. Condoleeza Rice, in the meantime, would have to accomplish the
following objectives in her weekend visit to Lebanon and Israel:
(a) She would have to persuade the leaders of Hizballah
(presumably through some hostile intermediary like Nabih Berri) that
Hizballah should enter in good faith into a ceasefire and stop firing
missiles into Israel — even though they would know perfectly well
that the purpose of such a ceasefire would be to give their
adversaries time complete the preparations for Hizballah’s defeat and
destruction.(b) Condi would then have to obtain a clear and reliable commitment
from the Government of Lebanon that as soon as a ceasefire was in
place, the Lebanese army would move into southern Lebanon to finish
the job of disarming and dismantling the Hizballah militia, and then
be ready to take over full responsibility for the security and
stability of that whole region (with help from a heterogenous
international force.)(c) Condi would then have to persuade a bitterly divided and
fractious Israeli cabinet and general public that Israel should
publicly admit its failure to defeat Hizballah alone, withdraw its
forces from their hard-won gains in Lebanon, and entrust Israel’s
future security to a tenuous coalition of international forces drawn
from countries that have publicly condemned Israel for its previous
actions.(d) Finally, Condi (or perhaps John Bolton?) would then have to
obtain reliable commitments from a number of countries to contribute
units to a “robust” international force that would have to be prepared
and authorized to enter into lethal combat with residual elements of
Hizballah, in cooperation with the Lebanese army, knowing that there
would still be a strong possibility of continued fighting against a
well-armed and very competent underground insurgency for an indefinite
period in the future.
It is simply unimaginable that this combination of difficult
challenges could all be achieved successfully by the pitifully weak
and incompetent team of diplomats available to the U.S. and U.K.
governments at this time.
— Ray Close
………………………………
Ray Close is a former CIA analyst in the Near East division and a
member of the steering group for Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity; his recent posts here are “Truth
in Simplicity,” “From
Rasha in Beirut,” “U.S.
Policy in Lebanon,” and HUMINT
in History.”
