This is another follow-up to my “Fight To Win” post.
Jed Babbin concludes his post at RealClearPolitics with this:
- From America’s and Israel’s actions, a clear message was sent to the state sponsors of terrorism: neither the United States nor its allies are at all serious about defeating and disarming terrorists. The scope of victories the West can achieve over terrorists is defined by the limits of what the Arab League will insist upon in the UN. All the West’s military might is powerless against a highly motivated, well-funded and well-trained adversary who refuses to stand and fight on the conventional battlefield. The only reason this is true is because we are too irresolute to match the enemy’s determination to win. We—and the Israelis—choose to not apply the force we have in a manner that will achieve the effect we say we desire.
Babbin writes that “neither the United States nor its allies are at all serious about defeating and disarming terrorists. The scope of victories the West can achieve over terrorists is defined by the limits of what the Arab League will insist upon in the UN.”
That’s absurd. The United States is committed to changing to political reality in the Middle East, which, in theory, is the only way to defeat a ‘mass movement’ of grass roots religious extremism. The gains of the Cedar Revolution had to be preserved, and that is what drove our policy. The worst outcome would have been a dissolution of Lebanon’s democracy and a return of the politics of the AK-47. That would have put Syria and Hezbollah right at the front of the power line, for as far into the future as one can see.
The Arab League will be called upon to support our line at the UN vis-a-vis Iran. Perhaps Babbin knows a world where diplomacy does not entail at least a modicum of quid pro quo, but it’s not the one we’re living in.
Marc,
I put up a post-mortem of the Israel-Lebanon war at my blog, if you are interested.
http://theinformationprocessor.blogspot.com
So far, so good, I think.
Aristides—I’m taking a look.
he’s right. we need to get more serious about isolating the illegal state of israel and eliminating their lobby in the US. we need to let those people know we won’t back down from a fight with evil.