Condi Rice in today’s Washington Post:
For the past month the United States has worked urgently to end the violence that Hezbollah and its sponsors have imposed on the people of Lebanon and Israel. At the same time, we have insisted that a truly effective cease-fire requires a decisive change from the status quo that produced this war. Last Friday we took an important step toward that goal with the unanimous passage of U.N. Resolution 1701. Now the difficult, critical task of implementation begins.
The Truth. Is this urgency?
With the world’s most perplexing problems weighing on him, President Bush has sought comic relief in a certain pig.
This is the wild game boar that German chef Olaf Micheel bagged for Bush and served Thursday evening at a barbecue in Trinwillershagen, a tiny town on the Baltic Sea where the boar chef also serves as second deputy mayor.
“I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig,” Bush said at a news conference earlier in the day punctuated with questions about spreading violence in the Middle East and an intensifying standoff with Iran over nuclear power.
This is the headline from the July 27 L.A. Times: Despite Impassioned Pleas, U.S., Britain Hold Out on Cease-Fire.
Rice:
The implementation of Resolution 1701 will not only benefit Lebanon and Israel; it also has important regional implications. Simply put: This is a victory for all who are committed to moderation and democracy in the Middle East — and a defeat for those who wish to undermine these principles with violence, particularly the governments of Syria and Iran.
A victory? That’s not how the Israelis see it.
Asked whether Israel won the war in Lebanon, 30% of respondents in the Dahaf poll said yes, 18% in the Teleseker poll and 44% in the Smith Research poll, which was taken on Sunday, two days before the other two polls.
The Arabs see it as a defeat for the United States, too.
Rice:
While the entire world has spent the past month working for peace, the Syrian and Iranian regimes have sought to prolong and intensify the war that Hezbollah started.
The Truth. July 25th:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for a cease-fire in Lebanon and criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East on Wednesday, saying Washington wants to “recarve the map” of the region with Israel’s help.
The Truth. July 25th:
Syria has called for a ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners and Israel’s withdrawal from occupied Arab lands in order to resolve the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Truth. July 25th, Condoleeza Rice Dismisses Calls For Immediate Ceasefire:
Condoleeza Rice: “If we have learned anything is that any peace would have to be based on enduring principals and not on temporary solutions. We will talk about how to get to an enduring a cessation of violence, how to deal with the significant humanitarian problems that are currently facing the people of Lebanon.”
Then there is, of course, the revelation, through Sy Hersh, that Hezbollah did not really start the hostilities at all, but merely provided the long awaited casus belli for hostilities to start.
Back to Rice:
The last time this happened, 10 years ago, the United States brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Syria. The game of diplomacy was played by others, over the heads of the Lebanese. Now Syria no longer occupies Lebanon, and the international community is helping the Lebanese government create the conditions of lasting peace — full independence, complete sovereignty, effective democracy and a weakened Hezbollah with fewer opportunities to rearm and regroup. Once implemented, this will be a strategic setback for the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
The countries tasked with upholding the shaky truce in Lebanon appeared unwilling on Tuesday to force the disarmament of Hezbollah, a development that has threatened to add delays to the assembly of a massive United Nations peacekeeping force and that could ultimately set off fresh conflict in the region.
France, the United States, the UN and Lebanon itself have all refused to accept responsibility for stripping the fighters of their weapons, despite a key element of the UN resolution that calls for the group to give up its firepower and vacate southern areas of Lebanon.
Rice:
Looking ahead, our most pressing challenge is to help the hundreds of thousands of displaced people within Lebanon to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. This reconstruction effort will be led by the government of Lebanon, but it will demand the generosity of the entire world.
For our part, the United States is helping to lead relief efforts for the people of Lebanon, and we will fully support them as they rebuild their country. As a first step, we have increased our immediate humanitarian assistance to $50 million. To secure the gains of peace, the Lebanese people must emerge from this conflict with more opportunities and greater prosperity.
As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah.
A major reason — in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill — is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.
Rice:
Already, we hear Hezbollah trying to claim victory. But others, in Lebanon and across the region, are asking themselves what Hezbollah’s extremism has really achieved: hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. Houses and infrastructure destroyed. Hundreds of innocent lives lost. The blame of the world for causing this war.
Does Condi Rice believe that the world is blaming Hizbollah for starting this war? Dream on. People can read The New Yorker.
Meanwhile, even before this lousy war got started:
In a 15-nation poll in June, more people in more countries considered the U.S. to be a greater danger to world peace than Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In another poll, 36 percent of Europeans identified the U.S. as the greatest threat to world stability.
Rice:
Innocent people in Lebanon, in Israel and across the Middle East have suffered long enough at the hands of extremists. It is time to overcome old patterns of violence and secure a just, lasting and comprehensive peace. This is our goal, and now we have laid out the steps to achieve it. Our policy is ambitious, yes, and difficult to achieve. But it is right. It is realistic. And ultimately, it is the only effective path to a more hopeful future.
Closer to the Truth:
Among the Israeli skeptics is Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, until May the research chief or Israeli military intelligence. “Nobody thinks the Lebanese government is up to” controlling Hezbollah, Kuperwasser said in an interview. “It could be a very short cease-fire.”
The message for the American people is that our government is hopelessly detached from reality. Hizbollah has been stregthened, not weakened. They will not be disarmed. The cease-fire will not hold. The Lebanese government is weaker than ever. The Israeli government is likely to fall. And all their grand plans for a New American Century lay in ruins.
And all they can offer up is meaningless spin that comes closest to the exact opposite of the truth.
