Deaf Ears
Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post, sends an open letter to Jacques Chirac asking for support for the UNIFIL peacekeepers. It is a passionate plea, that I suspect will fall on deaf ears.
A French-led force would be a particular target for car-bombers and other assassins from Syria and its client Lebanese guerrilla organization, Hezbollah, you are said to believe. Your determined efforts to eliminate Syria's control over Lebanon, to pursue the Syrian officials who assassinated your friend, former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and to deny Iran a nuclear weapon — to say nothing of the extraordinary but merited public rebukes you have aimed at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government — lend weight to your concerns.
And the watering down of command arrangements in the U.N. resolution that created the new force did nothing to help you overcome the immediate strong doubts of your own Defense Ministry about the wisdom of a Lebanon operation. This is, of course, deja vu for you: Your first crisis on taking office in 1995 involved making sure French troops were not endangered by the inept and ineffective U.N. command in Bosnia. Your forceful calls for change in the Bosnia operation sparked a new dynamic for ending that butchery.
But those experiences are all reasons why France, and Europe, are essential to making sure this cease-fire in Lebanon does not become just a pause for rearming for an even bloodier round that will widen into a regional conflict reaching into Iran the next time.
The five-week border conflict has created a small strategic opening for avoiding that wider war. Israel — now led by a lawyer, not a general — has attached a new importance to the Lebanese government's controlling its own territory, to U.N. resolutions in general and to international peacekeeping forces for the region. And Europe has been more willing to fix responsibility for the crisis on those who are determined to destroy Israel on any pretext available.
Hoagland mentions several things in this piece that are troubling. The fears Chirac supposedly has of drawing attacks to French troops is one. The fact that Chirac apparently vetoed use of a NATO force is even more so, I have maintained for a long time that NATO might have been able to pull this mission off – the UN is simply, utterly and completely unable to do so.
But Chirac blocked that. Now he won't even make a show of backing the deal he helped broker. And Hoagland thinks his letter will do any good?
No, I fear it is on deaf ears, Mr. Hoagland.
Other Links to this Post
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Globalclashes — August 24, 2006 @ 1:29 am
By Santay, August 24, 2006 @ 4:23 am
What happened to Condi? She was in the thick of things during the first part of the recent conflict and all over the news then she disappeared.
By Roland Hesz, August 24, 2006 @ 6:42 am
Took up too much of the PR budget.
Someone else will soon step in I think.
Everyone has to shine for a while
By Claire, August 24, 2006 @ 7:56 am
If Chirac wants to be credible he has to stand by his commitments.
During the war the French were sending envoys all the time, their voice was loud while the resolution was prepared and now… Is france giving
up on its role as intermediary in Lebanon and Syria ???
By Ahuva Einstein, August 24, 2006 @ 8:00 am
The last French leader that had guts was Napoleon. Reminds me of a joke
In a medical convention, four surgeons meet in a bar and discuss their preferences of patients.
First surgeon: Librarian, reason, everything is alphabetiaclly arranged.
Second : Electrician, reason, everything is color coded.
Third : CPA, reason, everything is numerically organized.
Fourth : French government, reason, brainless, heartless, gutless
ball-less.
By tina, August 24, 2006 @ 11:30 am
chirac did not even surprise me !!!! it was soooooooo predictable
By alasdair, August 24, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
Chirac is right to be cautious in deploying troops to Lebanon. Israel’s has already demonstrated that it has no intention of adhering to the ceasfire and has fired on people moving around Southern Lebanon. Any French troops moving into such uncertainty would inevitably find themselves caught betwee Hezbollah’s right to defend themselves and Lebanon and America’s imperial objectives acted out by its principal colonial puppets.