The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
Sunday, August 20, 2006

Blame Game Starting for Lebanon Treaty Failure

Captain Ed points us to the duplicity of Kofi Annan and Lebanese PM Siniora in attempting to blame Israel for the abrogation of a days-old treaty which Hezbollah never intended to honor and has openly defied. The report of an Israeli incursion into the Bakaa Valley to thwart a Syrian arms shipment to re-arm Hezbollah only serves to punctuate the fact that rather than disarm, Damascus and Tehran have already begun to re-arm the "illegal" militia. So..have Condi Rice and our President (and the Israelis) now finally learned their lesson about going to the UN for a meaningful settlement for any dispute whatsoever? This organization, for all of its good intentions, is a corrupt-to-the-core dinosaur. Its leadership and several members of the Security Council (France and Russia among them) have all had his pockets lined by Saddam to the tune of millions. Annan is little more than a corrupted Islamist hack. It is time to try something else.

Here is the first part of the good Captain's post; you can and should read the whole thing here (personally I think he should be promoted to Admiral):

The war peace in Lebanon keeps getting stranger. Fuad Siniora and Kofi Annan seem intent on standing themselves on their heads rhetorically to ensure that they can blame Israel when Lebanon and Hezbollah violate the terms of the cease-fire. Although Lebanon has rejected the key component of UN Security Council 1701 -- the disarming of Hezbollah -- Annan made sure that he blamed Israel for violating the agreement to which Lebanon agreed:

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced Saturday night that the raid in Baalbek constitutes a violation of the UN cease-fire resolution that went into effect on Monday.

A statement issued by Annan's spokesman said that the UN chief spoke with both Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Olmert about the fighting. "The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities," it said.

"All such violations of Security Council Resolution 1701 endanger the fragile calm that was reached after much negotiation," said the statement, issued by spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

That agreement died when the Siniora government and the UN itself refused to enforce the provisions of the agreement. Paragraph 3 explicitly calls for the implementation of UNSCR 1559, which demanded in 2004 the disarming of Hezbollah and all other militias. Paragraph 3 of 1559 states very clearly that the UNSC "Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias[.]" Lebanon refuses to comply, and the UN refuses to enforce it. That means that the agreement died hours after its supposed implementation.

Israel is now free to act in its own self-interest. So far they have chosen to withdraw while the Lebanese Army deploys to the south -- because that is what they wanted all along. If they determine that it is in their best interest to launch offensive operations, they will not have violated 1701 any more than Lebanon and the UN have already done. Siniora's cowardice and Annan's duplicity have done the damage already.

DiscerningTexan, 8/20/2006 10:58:00 AM |