Having driven almost 600 miles today, I am in little mood for a lot of blogging. So here are a few links I recommend:

1. Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald says the Israel-Hezbollah war must carry out to its logical conclusion.

The war in Lebanon must not end short of its logical conclusion. Its logical conclusion is not the successful use of human shields by Hezbollah to hamstring the Israeli Defense Forces. Its logical conclusion is the destruction of Hezbollah as a military and political force that will always remain a threat to peace and stability of the region.

I demur slightly in that I have maintained that Hezbollah cannot be destroyed by Israel as a political body in Lebanese polity, but I have said from the beginning that the destruction of Hezbollah’s capability to threaten Israel is absolutely necessary. Read the whole thing - Jules is one of the relatively few MSM writers who clearly sees the stakes in the broader picture.

2. John Little just started a blog for the Houston Chronicle. Good on yer, John! It’s called Chronicles of War.

3. Justin Hart has posted a video of WWIII: A 5-Minute Tutorial - connecting the dots.

4. Megan McArdle, guest blogging on Instapundit, has similar points to those I have made almost from the beginning:

WHATEVER YOUR VIEWS on the relative justness of the Israeli and Palestinian/Arab causes, I think it’s becoming clear that for Israel, the Lebanese campaign has been a disaster.

Read the whole thing, including the two links she includes. Let me note, though, that I have never said the Israeli campaign is a “disaster” for Israel, although it certainly has been for the people of Lebanon with the destruction of so much of the country’s infrastructure.

Right now Foxnews is reporting from Kiryat Shmona of massive Israeli artillery fire heading into Lebanon. Jennifer Griffin, on the scene, has said that the Israeli cabinet approved expanding the ground war only within the last hour (since 5 p.m. CDT). There are reports in Israel that the IDF is now fighting inside seven separate Hezbollah towns. Kiryat Shmona is also said to be receiving Hezbollah rocket fire, though not in near the volume of artillery that the IDF is sending out.

The reporters are speculating that the Olmert government is anticipating UNSC action on a cease fire, probably Thursday, and that before that happens it wants to maximize its gains on the ground. They speculate that the artillery fire is supporting new actions on the ground.

As I said two days ago, Israel’s troops must move faster than diplomats’ agendas.

As an endnote, I posted a basic artillery primer in 2003 for those who might be interested in some technical aspects of cannons, which the IDF is using a lot of.

Breaking: The US State Department has announced that Israel has agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial bombing in Lebanon. No word whether Hezbollah will respond in kind. Also, see update at end of post …

Mark Perry:

There is little question that, eighteen days after Israel’s ferocious military response to the abduction of two of its soldiers … the IDF has yet to show that it is capable of decisively defeating Hezbollah in open battle or significantly degrading Hezbollah’s military capacity. As a result, IDF senior officers have stridently argued that Hezbollah infrastructure strong points and marshalling stations not yet included in IAF strike packages because of their proximity to civilian concentrations be “put on the table.” …

Olmert and his defense minister hesitantly gave permission to expand the target list on Friday afternoon, I have been told. Included on the target list were Hezbollah command and control centers in Tyre and in the string of towns south and east of that city. Striking these sites, it was thought, would have a decisive political — and not just military — impact, by degrading Hezbollah’s missile capacity. Significantly bringing down the actual numbers of rockets launched against Israel would allow the U.S. and Israel to declare that the current operation was a success, thereby establishing the ground from which the U.S. could argue that the “terrorist threat” from Lebanon had been defeated. Bringing down the number of rocket strikes on Israel would also allow the IDF to claim a victory in its campaign — an absolute necessity given the current Israeli political environment.

Reports from the ground in Lebanon confirm that the IAF has expanded its target envelope, hitting sites that were considered off limits just 48 hours previously. Unfortunately, as nearly every military expert knows, precision weapons are not that precise — and a miscue of even ten meters can make a huge difference. This is what happened at Qana. Nor, it seems, do IDF officers take seriously the more graphic defense of IAF targeting, as justified because Hezbollah uses human shields. Israel also co-locates many of its basing operations in cities and amongst the civilian population — simply because of the ease of logistics operations that such co-locations necessitate. “The human shield argument just doesn’t wash and we know it,” an IDF commander says. “We don’t expect Hezbollah to deploy in the open with a sign that says ‘here we are.’”

The treaties and customs of war distinguish, however, between intentionally targeting noncombatants, as Hezbollah is doing with its rockets, and targeting military targets in civilian areas. For all the scorn the Left likes to heap upon the concept of collateral damage, the treaties of war take it seriously.

The Herald Sun of Australia has printed smuggled photos of Hezbollah weapons emplacements in urban areas.

The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.

Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.

A hard fact of the laws of war is that the presence of noncombatants near or even right next to legitimate targets does not place the targets off limits. Would the so-called international community be screaming as loud if a Hezbollah rocket destroyed a Haifa apartment building, killing 50 Israeli civilians? I don’t think so.

Endnote: Reader of my posts on the Hezbollah war, either posted here or at Winds of Change, know that I have been critical of Israel’s operations, chiefly because I do not think they will actually result in achieving Israel’s strategic goals. As I have posted, this war began with miscalculations all around, but I have been equally clear that Israel’s military response is justified to Hezbollah’s July 12 cross-border raid. Hezbollah has never shown the slightest interest in giving up its goal of destroying Israel. That Israel should destroy Hezbollah I simply take as a given. But not only must Hezbollah lose, it must be seen to lose. Hezbollah is not obviously losing. Regardless of whether Hezbollah is being significantly degraded in fact, Israel is losing the vital information-war part of the campaign: its tactics appear, justifiably or not, as both brutal and ineffective to the people whom Israel cannot afford to alienate: the average Lebanese.

Israel has said repeatedly that it wants the Lebanese government and Lebanese national army to exercise control over Hezbollah and assume territorial control over southern Lebanon. Even if that were to come about, Israel’s over-reliance on aerial bombing runs a high risk of making the Lebanese army and future government just as inimical to Israel as Hezbollah is now. In fact, it will be no surprise if the next Lebanese government is actually a Hezbollah government, and the future national army a Hezbollah-dominated army.

Update: The IDF says that the building in Qana fell down eight hours after it was attacked.

An IDF investigation has found that the building in Qana struck by the Air Force fell around eight hours after being hit by the IDF.

“The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear,” Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana.

This gap of time does not mean that the IAF attack didn’t cause the building’s collapse,but it certainly makes one wonder why the women and children stayed in the building for those eight hours. The IDF also said that it had documented at least 150 rockets had been fired from Qana into Israel.

News has broken this morning that Israel bombed a building in Qana, Lebanon, in which several dozen women and children were seeking shelter. Early reports are that two dozen children were killed and at least 25 adults, mostly the children’s mothers.

Some of the dead of Qana, killed by Israeli missiles

The Sydney Morning Herald reports,

The attack prompted the Lebanese government to cancel a planned visit to Beirut by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he would hold no negotiations before a ceasefire and officials said they had told Rice to stay away from Beirut until the fighting stopped. …

Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said rescuers had extracted 38 bodies from the devastated buildings, including 23 children, and seven wounded. At least 17 more bodies were feared to be still under the rubble, seven of them children.

It’s not clear what the intended target was at the building. Nor are there any accusations that Israel destroyed the building knowing that the civilians were inside. Israel has said for many days, though, that the presence of civilians at a legitimate military target will not prevent attack.

Israel’s Olmert government said after the attack that its air offensive will continue. In Beirut and large crowd gathered outside the UN mission building, chanting anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, then stormed inside to break windows and generally create havoc. A new poll, reported on cable news last night, before the attack, revealed that Hezbollah now enjoys suport of 85 percent of the Lebanese people.

Analysis:

Even if Hezbollah was storing rockets in the building and intentionally sacrificing the women and children as propaganda tools, expecting Israel to bomb the building, the repercussions from the video and images of the dead children and women will overwhelm any Israeli attempts to justify targeting the building.

So far, the Olmert government has stood fast. It sent a proxy spokesman, a former Israeli foreign minister whose name I didn’t catch, to make the cable news rounds this morning. He reiterated the basic goals of the Olmert government in the war. An Israeli lieutenant colonel was quoted on FoxNews this morning as saying that Hezbollah intentionally created the tragedy in order to garner international condemnation of Israel, which, according to the Jerusalem Post, was promptly forthcoming.

Again, it appears to me that while Israel has strategic goals in the campaign, it does not have a well-developed strategic plan . For example, yesterday, Israeli ground forces withdrew from Bint Jbail, where they had battled Hezbollah for several days. IDF spokesmen said that the town had been mostly reduced to rubble and the Hezbollah was no longer a significant presence there. This may well be true and probably is, IMO.

But the manner in which the withdrawal was conducted handed Hezbollah a strategic leg up. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah immediately issued a statement claiming Hezbollah was defeated the IDF at Bint Jbail. If Israel had understood that Bint Jbail was strategically, not merely tactically significant, it would have taken steps to document its victory there to the world. With news media reps crawling all over the area, the IDF should have arranged a media tour of the town before withdrawing.

Israel’s reluctance to commit significant numbers of ground combat units is puzzling. Having already expressed a willingness to fight for many more weeks, I wonder what is the point of continuing the frenetic pace of aerial bombing. Hezbollah is still able to launch 100 or so rockets per day into northern Israel. Since ending those launches is the number one near-term goal of Israel’s military campaign, Israel’s strategy and tactics cannot be said to be successful. The intermittent presence of aircraft over southern Lebanon cannot stop the rockets. Only boots on the ground can do that.

Israel seems not to be taking advantage of its great advantage of ground combat mobility over Hezbollah. One result is the tragedy at Qana. With a thoroughly mechanized, powerful set of ground formations, the IDF could be blocking Hezbollah strongholds from the rear, preventing their reinforcement or evacuation, and they can do this far more effectively than aircraft, and with much greater target discrimination. Other units could then engage Hezbollah in direct combat, forcing them to surrender or die.

“Prolonged indecision,” said Douglas MacArthur, “is never a just aim or war.” Yet it is exactly the situation Israel seems to be bringing about. With the mass deaths at Qana, time is running out for Israel to reach a decision on the ground. We have argued on this site against accusations that Israel’s campaign has been disproportionate, but more incidents like Qana will open Israel anew to such criticisms. And such accusations will be difficult to rebut.

Unless Israel very soon commits ground forces in number and speed to defeat Hezbollah in direct combat, it will undercut the moral case it made for mounting the campaign to begin with. More and more, its air bombardments will appear to be only brutality rather than purposeful strategy. That moment is already very close. Israel’s cause is just, but it is very close to the line of unjustly fighting for it.

——

Breaking - just as I finished this post, former Prime Minuister Ehud Barak said on cable news that the Qana bombing will accelerate the world’s calls for cease fire. He also said that it should cause Israel to conduct a more powerful ground campaign. He said that Israel wants other world powers “to impose UN Resolution 1559.”

Israel’s troops must move faster than diplomats’ agendas

I observed a week ago that, “Israel never lost a war or won a conference.” With UNSC set to take up a ceasefire resolution in the coming week and the joint statements of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush yesterday, Hezbollah’s political operatives have swung into action. Power Line reports,

[T]he Lebanese government, with the consent of its Hezbollah faction, has approved a cease-fire offer which it hopes will become the framework for an end to hostilities. The key elements are: (1) an immediate cease fire, (2) the release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners, (3) Israeli withdrawal behind the border, (4) resolution of the status of Chebaa Farms, a small piece of land held by Israel and claimed by Lebanon, in favor of Lebanon, and (5) the “disarming” of Hezbollah, and (6) the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, with the strengthening and increasing of the small, lightly armed U.N. peacekeeping force currently there.

A cease fire under these terms would represent a clear victory for Hezbollah. They began the hostilities for the stated purpose of obtaining the release of its prisoners. The deal would not only enable them to accomplish this, but Israel would lose territory (Chebaa Farms) in the process.

A little quick analysis:

1. “The Lebanese government, with the consent of its Hezbollah faction” - that tells you pretty much all you need to know. Remember, Hezbollah is actuallypart of the Lebanese government, and right now the most politically powerful.

2. “Immediate cease fire” - The only indication, but a weak one, that Hezbollah thinks its military situation is becoming tenuous. Hezbollah cannot actually regain territory that Israel has taken. This item is more likely a bone to the UNSC, whose members have declared they already want an immediate cease fire, anyway, except the US.

3. “Israeli withdrawal behind the border” - that is, a return, militarily, to the status quo ante bellum.

4. “Resolution of the status of Chebaa Farms” - a sliver of land taken by Israel in 1967. Israel once again would give up land for peace, and will find itself with neither. Expect Hezbollah to cry a river over how they only want their land back (although Israel took it from Syria, not Lebanon) and that once the Farms are given to Lebanon, all Hezbollahis will take up gardening.

5. “the disarming of Hezbollah” - ’scuse me, I was drinking coffee and just spewed it all over the keyboard. Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, recently said:

“But if anyone, no matter who, even thinks about disarming the resistance, we will fight him like the martyrdom seekers of Karbala.”

So he’s suddenly changed his mind? Please.

6. “the deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, with the strengthening and increasing of the small, lightly armed U.N. peacekeeping force” - where both will be promptly dominated by Hezbollah, which holds UN forces in contempt, and rightly so. Victor Davis Hanson:

“Multinational,” as in “multinational force,” usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.” See “peacekeepers.”

“Peacekeepers” keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.

But gosh! Western governments will exclaim, now we know that Hezbollah wants peace! After all, they’ve admitted they miscalculated what their July 12 cross-border raid would rovoke from Israel.

The WaPo reports that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, en route back to the Middle East, said,

“Obviously we are all trying to get to a cease-fire as quickly as possible, so I’ll take this as a positive step,” Rice told reporters on her plane flying from Malaysia to a refueling stop in Qatar. “I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together.”

Rice has unsheathed her knife and is just waiting for Israel to turn its back so the stabbing may begin. Regarding the disarmament of Hezbollah,

- The central element — and deal-breaker — is disarmament of Hezbollah. But this does not have to happen before a cease-fire or even soon, U.S. officials say. The goal is to get a formal commitment and to outline arrangements, possibly to eventually bring members of Hezbollah’s militia into the Lebanese Army reserves or in another capacity and to get their arms into a government-controlled depot.

So the UNSC will begin its debate with several presuppositions, including (as always) that Israel must trust again in the promises of a terrorist organization that wants to destroy it. Hezbollah cannot defeat Israel militarily so it has begun to play its political cards, knowing that the international “community” will always intervene in time to save it from the military destruction that it so richly deserves.

The only thing that may save Israel’s efforts is the fact that no UN force can possibly reach southern Lebanon for several weeks, according to US officials, because of the detailed negotiations that must occur to set the size of the force, its composition and rules of deployment. Israel can salvage victory only if it immediately reads the tea leaves and throws overwhelming ground combat power into the fight. It must move events so quickly on the ground - specifically, on the ground - that they outdistance the parameters of the UNSC’s debate.

Put simply, Israel’s tanks and troops must move more quickly than diplomats’ talking points. I doubt the Israeli government will make that happen, though, for pretty much the same reasons I explained here.

Jules Crittenden, Boston Herald City Editor, says, “Let us review the tragic and deadly record of the United Nation’s toothless and often immoral peacekeeping missions.” And he does. Worth the read.

Before Israel launched its ground campaign, retired US Army Lt. Col. and syndicated columnist Ralph Peters said that Israel is losing. His essay happened to reinforce my own observation that Israel was carrying out a spasm, not a strategy. Nothing I have learned about Israel’s conduct of the war so far causes me to change my mind.

Israel’s leading figures said two weeks ago, at the start of the air campaign, that the destruction of Hezbollah’s military threat was Israel’s objective. As Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres said, “the problem is in the air,” the capability of Hezbollah to continue launching rockets into Israel at will. Remember that the 1,400-plus Hezbollah has let fly at Israel in the last 15 days were new in intensity but not in experience. Hezbollah has been launching rockets into Israel practically since Israel vacated southern Lebanon in 2000.

Yesterday Israel announced it wanted to establish a two-kilometer-wide, Hezbollah-free zone, which does not much solve the problem in the air since Hezbollah has rockets ranging out to 20 kilometers and probably farther. Today the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided not to expand the ground offensive. Subsequent reports indicate that the IDF will not penetrate farther into Lebanon without much more extensive aerial bombing than planned. This twist may doubtless signals an intensification of the air war since,

Israel’s Justice minister said world leaders, in failing to call for an immediate cease-fire during a Rome summit, gave Israel a green light to push harder to wipe out the Lebanese guerrillas.

EU foreign ministries insist the conference’s result is no such thing. Israel has just shrugged them off. Last night, mere hours after the Israeli cabinet rejected sending more ground combat into Lebanon, news reports from southern Lebanon said that Israeli air strikes have much intensified. But absent a more powerful ground campaign, more bombing will not gain victory for Israel or do much more than make the rubble bounce.

Israel’s armed forces have not fought a conventional war of integrated air-ground operations in more than 20 years. Prime Minister Olmert’s government, including the defense ministry, is not a war experienced government. (The bio of Olmert’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, does not inspire confidence.) This lack of experience is found right on down to the troop level, where pretty much no one from private through captain has combat experience, and relatively few senior officers have experience in large-scale operations. It’s no wonder that the fog of war encloses them more densely compared to Israel’s earlier governments and armed forces.

(more…)

The breakup of the Rome conference with no policy announcements has brought forth predictable reactions from Arab media.

Michael Totten, who spent seven months in Lebanon over the past year, says that once Israel cools its guns,Lebanon may well descend again into the anarchy of sectarian fighting.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud was interviewed by Der Spiegel and explains why the idea, floated by the UN in 2004 and the Israelis and some Western powers this month, that Lebanon’s national army bring Hezbollah to heel is a fantasy.

SPIEGEL: Mr President, you are the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese army. Lebanon finds itself in the middle of a war, but it is being fought by a militia in the south of the country. Where is the regular army?

Lahoud: I myself built up this army following the civil war and integrated all the religious groups: Muslims, Christians and Druze. This army is there to secure internal peace, but it is not an army to fight a war.

SPIEGEL: United Nations Resolution 1559 demands that the army should control the whole country — up to the border with Israel.

Lahoud: It (the army) does that. But it wasn’t the army that freed the occupied south of the country, rather it was the resistance which achieved that. Without this resistance Lebanon would still be occupied today.

Read the whole thing foran enlightening look into internal Lebanese politics. Hezbollah is a Lebanese organization with enormous popular support. Hezbollah does not threaten Lebanon’s government, it participates in it. The notion that the Lebanese government, or any potential near-future government, is going to suppress Hezbollah forcefully is just a fantasy.

The day before Israeli land forces moved into Lebanon, I said that ground fighting against Hezbollah “will be nasty. In the countryside it will resemble Pacific island fighting in the Second World War more than the hard, deep strikes of large formations in the Gulf War or Iraq War.”

There were some skeptics, but sadly, events have proved me correct (AP report).

Hezbollah inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli troops as they battled for a key hilltop town in southern Lebanon for a fourth day Wednesday, with as many as 14 soldiers reported killed. …

Israel has faced fiercer resistance than expected as it advances across the border in its two-week campaign against the Islamic militant group. …

The Israeli military said there were 20 Israeli casualties, but it would not say if any soldiers had been killed.

The battle site is the city of Bint Jbail, where FoxNews says it “confirmed at least 9 Israeli soldiers died in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas as they battled for occupation of a key hilltop in the town… .”

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) later said soldiers fought a fierce battle with Hezbollah guerrillas in the town of Maroun al-Ras, suffering several casualties. The IDF did not give details of the fighting or reveal details of the casualties.

At a press briefing Gen. Udi Adam, head of the Israeli northern command, said the fighting in Lebanon would last several more weeks.

Got that? Several more weeks. This is not a quick scrap, it is major combat for ultimate stakes on both sides.

Israel announced today that it wants to establish a two-kilometer wide zone, extending north from the Israel-Lebanon border, pending arrival of an international force there. But no such force, though much discussed, has been authorized nor is there any real prospect at this time of such an authorization (see here and here).

According to an Israeli soldier taking a break from 48 hours of fighting,

“They are attacking us in a very organized position,” one soldier said. “They know where we are coming from. They know everything. They shoot us wherever they like. It’s their country.”

He added they are “very well armed.” …

“Over here, everybody is the army,” one soldier said. “Everybody is Hezbollah. There’s no kids, women, nothing.”

Another soldier put it plainly: “We’re going to shoot anything we see.”

As I said, the fighting is nasty business.

When Kofi Annan was advised of the deaths of four UNIFIL soldiers in Lebanon as the resultof Israeli fire, Annan immediately - immediately - announced that Israel had killed them deliberately. When I heard that, I had the same thought Ed Lasky had, but he already wrote it:

Annan seems more exercised by this accident than the truly deliberate kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers and the indiscriminate mass rocket attacks Israel is being forced to endure because the UN was pusillanimous in refusing to enforce its resolutions regarding terror forces in Southern Lebanon.

Annan, as the world’s chief diplomat, is charged with the responsibility of good judgment and temperate, well-considered remarks. He seems to have a penchant for violating this obligation when it comes to issues involving Israel.

And he proved it once again at the Rome conference, where CNN reports, ” Key Middle East players and top diplomats meeting in Rome failed to reach agreement on a plan to end the 15-day-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.” At the press conference today, Annan said,

It is important that we work with the countries of the region to find a solution and that should also include Iran and Syria.

This is a man so bereft of a moral compass that he fails to see that Iran is the heart of the problem and the chief instigator of the violence. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be to give Iran the slightest voice in any “solution” to the Israel-Hezbollah war? Suppose Iran, legitimated by the UNSG as a solution maker, volunteers to send troops to form a new international force in Lebanon under UN mandate? On what possible basis could they be refused once Annan gives Iran a seat at the table?

Kofi Annan’s severe flaws become more evident with every passing day. Apparently, he believes that the role of the UNSG is never to make a moral judgment of any kind, a role he can fill perfectly because he gives no evidence of having a moral sense in the first place. No statements he utters offer a scintilla of preference for freedom over tyranny or support of liberty over oppression. He is a one-man excuse-making machine for murder, terrorism and international lawlessness.

Annan’s term expires at the end of this year, which is, as I said, is better on time than never. But wouldn’t it be nice if he resigned now? With apologies to Dr. Seuss:

The time has come. The time is now.
Just go. Go. GO! I don’t care how.

You can go by foot. You can go by cow.
Kofi Annan, will you please go now!

You can go on skates. You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat. But please go. Please!

I don’t care. You can go by bike.
You can go on a Zike-Bike if you like.
If you like you can go in an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, Go!
Please do, do, DO!

Kofi Annan, I don’t care how.
Kofi Annan, will you please
GO NOW!

You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car if you wish.

If you wish you may go by lion’s tail.
Or stamp yourself and go by mail.
Kofi Annan!
Don’t you know
the time has come
to go! Go! Go!

Asked for comment by phone, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “I wish I’d said that.”

HT: OOTB, who has other reactions to Annan’s eagerness to pronounce Israel guilty.

Colt, writing at Winds of Change, has a long, penetrating look at the prospect of a multi-national force replacing UNIFIL in southern Lebanon and concludes (as I did) that it ain’t gonna happen.

Let’s start with his quotation of Sheikh Nasrallah:

“But if anyone, no matter who, even thinks about disarming the resistance, we will fight him like the martyrdom seekers of Karbala. This is because any such step is an Israeli act, and any hand reaching for the resistance’s weapons is an Israeli hand – and we will chop it off. We are ready for discussion [on the basis of] the national interest, [but] under no circumstances will we agree to discussion in the Israeli framework.” [link]

Says Colt:

Barring a miracle - a MNF capable of and committed to disarming Hezbollah - we can expect a similar battle to the one we’ve seen since July 12th again in the coming months or years. Large parts of Lebanon will remain under Hezbollah/Iranian control, and they will use their territory to continue to undermine Lebanese sovereignty, and to attack Israel and other countries.

Well, the US will veto any UNSC resolution calling for “UNIFIL 2.” UNIFIL’s UN authorization expires on the 31st of this month, anyway; if it was to have been re-authorized it would have taken place weeks ago.

I’m not so sure that “large parts of Lebanon will remain under Hezbollah” control for months or years to come. Israel has basically declared all of the south half of the country a combat zone and been very insistent in announcing to the people of south Lebanon that they need to leave for their own safety. This tactic relieves Israel of having to worry about administering occupied areas or providing services. Certainly Hezbollah is putting up a tough fight, but eventually Israel (providing it does not lose its determination) will prevail tactically. They have to prevail because, says Colt,

There isn’t a political solution to this problem. Hezbollah has made clear that they will never disarm voluntarily, even if Israel were to release every terrorist in its jails and withdraw from the Sheba Farms - and, for that matter, withdraw from the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Correct. there cannot be a political solution with a group whose only objective is your destruction. Only the willfully obtuse can possibly insist that Hezbollah can be brought to “reason” at a negotiation table. We need to remember as well that any outcome other than Hezbollah’s destruction will be a victory for Iran. With Iran trying to flex atomic muscles, this is no time to go wobbly. For the West to shrink from letting Israel finish Iran’s proxy would simply crush any chance of bringing Iran to halt its weapons program.

Not long after I blogged yesterday that since 1998 257 personnel of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been killed on duty in southern Lebanon, reports surfaced that Israeli fire had killed four more UNIFIL troops.

UN secretary General Kofi Annan, in Rome for an international conference on the Israel-Hezbollah war, immediately said that Israel attacked the UNIFIL outpost intentionally. Israel has expressed regret.

Israel expressed regret on Wednesday over the deaths of four United Nations observers in south Lebanon and said it was shocked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had suggested they may have been deliberately targeted.

The Jewish state promised a thorough investigation into the killing of the four military observers in an air strike, calling Annan’s comments “premature and erroneous”.

“Israel sincerely regrets the tragic death of the UN personnel in south Lebanon,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev.

“We do not target UN personnel and, since the beginning of this conflict, we have made a consistent effort to ensure the safety of all members of (the UN peacekeeping force). This tragic event will be thoroughly investigated,” said Regev.

Israeli author Daniel Gordis says that the war against Hezbollah is, “The First War, All Over Again.“

… In the last war, when they blew up buses and restaurants and sidewalks and cafes, Israelis were enraged, apoplectic with anger. This time, it’s different. Rage has given way to sadness. Disbelief has given way to recognition. Because we’ve been here before. Because we’d once believed we wouldn’t be back here again. And because we know why this war is happening. …

This is a war over our homes. Over our homes in the north, for now, but eventually, as the rockets get better and larger, all of our homes. This is not about the territories. This is not about the “occupation.” This is not about creating a Palestinian State. This is about whether there will be a state called Israel. Sixty years after Arab nations greeted the UN resolution on November 29 1947 with a declaration of war, nothing much has changed. They attacked this time for the same reason that they did sixty years ago. …

And, assuming that there was little that we could or would do, it attacked on June 12, killing eight soldiers, and stealing Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Not from Southern Lebanon. Not from Har Dov, a tiny hilltop that’s still contested. But from inside Israel. Inside a line that no one contests.

Unless, of course, they contest the idea of the whole enterprise. Which they do. And which is precisely the point. …

But behind [Israelis’] defiance lies sadness, a tired and experienced renewed loss of optimism, a wondering if it will ever, ever end. Because we know what they want. It’s not the Golan Heights. It’s not the West Bank. And it’s not a State. We know what they want, and we know why they want it. …

It’s the eighth war, or the ninth. But it isn’t the last war. It’s the first war, all over again. We’ve got this war for the same reason that we had all the others. We have this war for the same reason that people in Haifa are still saying mi-po ani lo zaz. We got this war for the same reason that we got the first, and the second.

We know why they attacked then. And we know why they’re still attacking. And we’re determined to hold on for the same reason that they’re so determined never to stop. There’s one reason, and one reason only:

The Jewish People has no where else to go.

When will the deluded West wakeup and internalize that Iran, Syria, Hezbolla, Hamas, the PLO plus who knows how many other splinter groups, do not want peace with Israel? They are determined to destroyIsrael. The fight against Hezbollah and the lower-intensity fight against Hamas are exactly what Daniel says they are: the fights for Israel’s very existence. Perhaps perversely, it was not until Israel had made every concession demanded of it that all its population woke up and faced that reality themselves.

The Israelis can no more make peace with Hezbollah than Europe’s Jews could have made a treaty with the Nazi SS.

As countless observers, myself included, have said they did, Hezbollah now admits it grossly miscalculated Israel’s response to the July12 murder and kidnapping of IDF soldiers.

A senior Hezbollah official said tonight that the guerrilla group did not expect Israel to react so strongly to its capture of its two soldiers last month.

Mahmoud Komati, the deputy chief of the Hezbollah politburo, also said his group would not lay down arms.

“The truth is – let me say this clearly – we didn’t even expect (this) response…. that (Israel) would exploit this operation for this big war against us,” said Komati.

He said Hezbollah had expected “the usual, limited response” from Israel.

In the past, he said, Israeli responses to Hezbollah actions included sending commandos into Lebanon and kidnapping Hezbollah officials or briefly targeting specific Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.

He said his group had anticipated there would be negotiations on the exchange of the soldiers with three Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, with Germany acting as a mediator as it did before.

As I said before, Hezbollah raised Israel $100 and probably expected Israel to call. Instead, Israel raised Hezbollah $1,000.

But better on time than never:

United Nations Seeking Annan’s Successor
by Michele Kelemen

Morning Edition, July 24, 2006 · With Kofi Annan’s term due to expire at year’s end, the U.N. Security Council is starting the search for a new secretary general. Asian nations insist it’s time for someone from their region to hold the post.

Annan presided over the most corrupt UN administration ever known and has been a steadfast opponent of liberty. He’s has been a terrible UNSG and the sooner we’re rid of his administration, the better. HT: SmartChristian.com

“… but nobody wants to die.”

Everyone agrees somebody else should emplace a new international force in Lebanon

Let’s review one of the key provisions of UNSC Resolution 1559 of 2004. Among other thing, it called for “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias” in Lebanon, including, of course, Hezbollah. Nothing was done. Then,

On January 28, 2005 UN Security Council Resolution 1583 called upon the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, including through the deployment of sufficient numbers of Lebanese armed and security forces, to ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it.

Again, nothing was done.

Commercial sanctions have proved to be a joke, with the UN’s own apparatus ignoring them and sometimes profiting from them. Can any one say,”Oil for food scandal?”

With the warfare raging between Israel and Hezbollah, some talk has begun among foreign ministries that an international force should be inserted into southern Lebanon to provide a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah, which would presumably relocate itself further north. Southern Lebanon would effectively become a demilitarized zone. Or, as an alternative narrative goes for this idea, the international force would take positive, even forceful, steps to disarm Hezbollah.

There are more than one severe problems with these proposals. One is that Israel, with overwhelming justification, does not trust the United Nations. The UN has a force in place in southern Lebanon, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

According to Security Council resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978) of 19 March 1978, UNIFIL was established to:

Confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon;
Restore international peace and security;
Assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area.

Most recently the mandate of UNIFIL was extended until 31 July 2006 by Security Council resolution 1655 (2006) of 31 January 2006.

That means that UNIFIL’s mandate expires this coming Monday. It will make no difference. UNIFIL has never showed the slightest interest in anything but watching Hezbollah attack Israel. If a future force is to be agreed to by Israel, it will have to meet the conditons set by Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was asked several days ago about the utility of an international force in southern Lebanon to stand between Israel and Hezbollah. Peres replied,

… The confrontation is not on the ground. It is in the air. If these U.N. forces can stop Hezbollah from firing missiles and rockets, that is one thing. If they are going to fight Hezbollah, fine. But there is no point to have people on the ground to observe the missiles flying overhead. That is useless.

Tragically, as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz points out, Kofi Annan has proven to be a huge obstacle to peace rather than peace’s advocate.

If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s July 20 statement. …

Annan himself has a long history of one-sided condemnations of Israel. In March 2004, Annan “strongly condemned” Israel’s targeted killing of Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the terrorist leader of Hamas, without condemning Yassin for his murderous actions or his organization for the murder of Jewish civilians. In December 2003, Annan “strongly condemned” Israel’s assault on a Palestinian refugee camp where two gunmen were thought to be hiding. And in 2005, he issued the most tepid of statements-expressing “dismay”-at threats by Iran’s president to “eliminate” Israel, a member nation of the UN. The list goes on and on. …

This is a real test for the UN. If it cannot-or will not-distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

There has been some talk about the UN outsourcing the international force to another treaty organization, with NATO being pretty much the only one mentioned. Since neither Lebanon, Hezbollah nor Israel has attacked a NATO member state, it’s hard to see how such an intervention could be justified by the NATO charter, but the objection is almost moot. NATO states could individually commit forces on their own and form ad hoc command structures. But, says the NYT:

PARIS, July 24 — … where will the troops come from?

The United States has ruled out its soldiers participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia which it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.

“All the politicians are saying, ‘Great, great’ to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground,” said one senior European official. “Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus.” …

There has been strong verbal support for such a force in public, but also private concerns that soldiers would be seen as allied to Israel and would have to fight Hezbollah guerrillas who do not want foreigners, let alone the Lebanese Army, coming between themselves and the Israelis.

… Israel wants [the international force] to keep Hezbollah away from the border, allow the Lebanese government and army to take control over all of its territory, and monitor Lebanon’s borders to ensure that Hezbollah is not resupplied with weapons.

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, laid out the goals in a meeting on Sunday with a British Foreign Office minister, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy of France. Ms. Livni told them that Israel’s goal was to disarm Hezbollah and that either the Israeli Army or an international force would have to do it, said officials familiar with the meeting.

The Europeans, by contrast, including Britain, France and Germany, envision a much less robust international buffer force, one that would follow a cease-fire and operate with the consent of the Lebanese government to support the deployment of its army in southern Lebanon.

Such a scenario would mean that Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government, would have to be part of a decision that led to its own disarming and the protection of Israel, a scenario that European officials see as far-fetched.

I am reminded now of a little jody call we used to sing at morning PT: “MP, MP, don’t arrest me, arrest that man behind that tree.” Now consider:

The challenge of creating a viable international force to secure Israel’s border with Lebanon was captured by Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The European foreign ministers were enthusiastic, he said.

“They only had one small condition for the force to be made up of soldiers from another country,” Mr. Barnea wrote. “The Germans recommended France; the French recommended Egypt, and so on. It is doubtful whether there is a single country in the West currently volunteering to lay down its soldiers on Hezbollah’s fence.”

So the war will continue for the foreseeable future. The Lebanon-Israel-Hezbollah war is a tar baby no one else wants to slug.

Update: the crux of the problem:

Any international force without the power to react to renewed outbursts of violence or to strike back if it found itself under threat would be as impotent as the current U.N. peacekeepers and unlikely to succeed at keeping Hezbollah away from the Israeli border.

More at the link. Also, thanks to Charlie Quidnunc for pointing out that in “UNIFIL” the first “I” stands for “Interim,” not “International.” I’ve made the correction in the text. He also says that UN Ambassador John Bolton discussed UNIFIL on FoxNews, for which the podcast is here: http://wizbangblog.com/podcast.

I should also point out that 249 UNIFIL troops have died on duty, along with eight other staff - almost three KIAs per month for eight years. They have had a thankless job but the fact remains that of its three objectives, UNIFIL failed to accomplish two.

If you slap me and I slap you in response the chances are you’ll just do it again. If you slap me regularly and I keep begging you stop, chances are you’ll continue to slap me but laugh all the while. If I shoot you dead for slapping me you’ll never slap me again but that seems a bit extreme and most likely unnecessary. If I knock you out with a cold hard punch you’ll come to and most likely will never slap me again and we might even have a chance to figure out how to get along. None of these responses are guaranteed but they are probable, certainly with some exceptions.

And so it goes for war. What we need is a truly proportionate response, at least if we want to meet what has generally been recognized as the fourth condition of Just War. This does not mean a tit-for-tat response. A tit-for-tat response is often simply further invitation for more punishment. What proportionality means in Just War terms is that “the rights to be defended must be proportionate to the damage…What we are fighting for must be worth the price” (from “Twelve Tough Issues”, Archbishop Daniel Piarczyk, St. Anthony Messenger Press). It also means, according to the Catholic Catechism, that the means used to fight will not cause greater evil than the evil being fought.

In today’s current war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel is not responding only to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. That was only a tipping point that has been further tipped by the bombings of Haifa. Israel is responding to years and decades of having been under siege every day by terrorists. It is responding to daily rocket attacks and regular suicide attacks against its civilians ever since it gave up land for peace.

Much has been said recently about the notion of proportionality and the more said the better. It is only with a true understanding of this condition of Just War that Israel will be enabled to defend herself in the information aspect of this war.

In my book Crossfire - A Time for Peace, War, and Love, I illustrate this principle as it relates to the War on Terror. Think about the billions of dollars we have invested in precision bombs. Walking through the streets in Kabul during my 2003-2004 tour of duty, I marveled when I saw a building completely reduced to rubble while the rest of the buildings that surrounded it remained standing. Precision bombs can do this quite effectively, though not always perfectly. Sure, the damage may extend beyond the targeted building, or the wrong building may be struck, but there are no cities in Afghanistan or Iraq that look like Dresden. It is far more expensive to use precision weapons than it is to carpet bomb. We have invested billions of dollars in precision weaponry. It is a reflection of the value we in the West have on innocent life, to reduce “collateral” and unnecessary damage. We spare no expense when it comes to sparing innocent lives.

The basic weapon of the infantryman is a reflection of proportionality and our value of life. Look at the weapon of choice for the enemy—the AK-47. It is durable and it is cheap to make. It is easy to maintain. You can drag it through mud. You can bang it against a tree. You can ignore it for days on end as sand covers it. And yet you can pick it back up and squeeze the trigger and fire a shot. You may not hit your target with one bullet (accuracy is not the norm), but that doesn’t matter, because you can spray your target, and everything else in the vicinity, with bullets.

Now look at the basic tool of the infantryman of the United States—the M16. It is very sensitive and very expensive. Any soldier who has spent more than a couple of hours with one will tell you that when it gets a little bit of sand or dirt in it, it will jam up on you. You put your own life at risk carrying one in combat. A soldier will tell you that if you’re not shooting the M16, you’d better be cleaning the M16, so it will be ready when you need it. But the M16 has few peers for accuracy. I can point my M16 at a crowd of people 300 meters away, and I can take out one enemy target and leave everyone else standing.

The AK-47 and the M16: their differences tell us something about proportionality our values.

Whether it is our War on Terror or the current crisis between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas (or should we just go ahead and say with Iran??), we again see key illustrations of proportionality - the targets. Our targets as well as those of the Israelis are military and political in nature, thus our use of precision weapons and other tools such as night vision devices. All of these, while expensive, are meant to reduce unnecessary civilian casualties and demonstrate the values we try to live by and fight for.

Our enemies on the other hand make civilians their intended targets. Whether the citizens of the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, or civilian contractors and relief workers in Iraq who are kidnapped and beheaded, or medical workers and teachers who are ambushed and murdered in Afghanistan, our enemies demonstrate their values by their targets. The deliberate targets of our enemy also include their own people who they sacrifice as human shields by hiding terrorists and their caches in often innocent homes and not so innocent mosques. This is a grave violation of Just War principles and one that must be held to account.

So the next time we urge for restraint and for limited responses such as a cruise missile lobbed at an empty al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 1998 in response to the murder of 200 civilians in US embassies in Africa; or urging Israel to be satisfied with a marginal buffer zone while rockets fly at their towns day in and day out as suicide bombers infiltrate and succeed, perhaps then we should reconsider the values that the enemy is living and fighting by. Then indeed, we should respond proportionately and vigorously - that’s the moral thing to do.

Editor’s note: See Richard Cohen’s WaPo piece today, “A Proportionate Response is Madness.” Among other things, he writes, “It is necessary to re-establish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.”