Bush And Blair Blowing Bubbles

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Bush And Blair Blowing Bubbles
By SusanUnPC
Friday, 28 July 2006 at 14:34

From Ray Close, via Larry Johnson and posted by SusanUnPC.

Dear Friends:

It became very clear during the Bush-Blair press conference on Friday morning, 28 July, that the American and British "formula" to resolve the Lebanon crisis rests on a hallucinatory expectation that several critically important developments can and will take place successfully between now and the time early next week when the U.N. Security Council is scheduled to meet and discuss the situation.

It is totally unrealistic to expect that any one of these goals will be achieved in the next few days --- and with each passing day it appears more and more unrealistic to expect that they can ever be achieved. Indeed, it was very difficult to believe that a Prime Minister of Great Britain and a President of the United States of America could put on such a pathetic display of confusion and delusion before the whole world, as they did in their press conference today.

This is what would need to happen before the US-UK formula was given serious consideration by any of the various parties involved:

1. The IDF would have to start making very substantial and very visible progress in degrading the fighting capability of the Hizballah army --- to the point where U.N. member nations being asked to contribute soldiers to an international force could be persuaded that, after a ceasefire, the Lebanese army could defeat and disarm the remnants of Hizballah with only minimum direct support from the international contingent.

2. Hizballah would have to show convincing signs that it was realistically accepting the probability of defeat by the armed forces of Israel, and would have to display a sincere willingness to enter into a ceasefire followed by negotiations --- the declared objective of which would very obviously be the disarming and dissolution of Hizballah’s own armed forces.

3. Condoleeza Rice, in the meantime, would have to accomplish the following objectives in her weekend visit to Lebanon and Israel:

(a) She would have to persuade the leaders of Hizballah (presumably through some hostile intermediary like Nabih Berri) that Hizballah should enter in good faith into a ceasefire and stop firing missiles into Israel --- even though they would know perfectly well that the purpose of such a ceasefire would be to give their adversaries time complete the preparations for Hizballah’s defeat and destruction.
(b) Condi would then have to obtain a clear and reliable commitment from the Government of Lebanon that as soon as a ceasefire was in place, the Lebanese army would move into southern Lebanon to finish the job of disarming and dismantling the Hizballah militia, and then be ready to take over full responsibility for the security and stability of that whole region (with help from a heterogenous international force.)

(c) Condi would then have to persuade a bitterly divided and fractious Israeli cabinet and general public that Israel should publicly admit its failure to defeat Hizballah alone, withdraw its forces from their hard-won gains in Lebanon, and entrust Israel’s future security to a tenuous coalition of international forces drawn from countries that have publicly condemned Israel for its previous actions.

(d) Finally, Condi (or perhaps John Bolton?) would then have to obtain reliable commitments from a number of countries to contribute units to a "robust" international force that would have to be prepared and authorized to enter into lethal combat with residual elements of Hizballah, in cooperation with the Lebanese army, knowing that there would still be a strong possibility of continued fighting against a well-armed and very competent underground insurgency for an indefinite period in the future.

It is simply unimaginable that this combination of difficult challenges could all be achieved successfully by the pitifully weak and incompetent team of diplomats available to the U.S. and U.K. governments at this time.

— Ray Close

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Ray Close is a former CIA analyst in the Near East division and a member of the steering group for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity; his recent posts here are "Truth in Simplicity," "From Rasha in Beirut," "U.S. Policy in Lebanon," and HUMINT in History."