A REASONED RESPONSE TO MY ANGER

A reasoned response to my anger can be found here. Read the whole thing.

...Israel made clear what they wanted from their war from its beginning. It wanted their soldiers returned and the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah and move them out of the sub-Litani region. The Israelis want an end to Hezbollah's capability to shower rockets down on their cities. Those goals fit within Israeli political reality, which will abolutely reject another long occupation of Lebanon, considered by many as their Viet Nam. These limited goals may have made some of their international supporters despair, but the Olmert government does not want to fight the combined armies of Arabia again unless absolutely necessary, and that time has not yet come.

In this context, George Bush delivered the best deal he could to meet those goals. He fought the UN to a stalemate while allowing Israel a free hand to conduct military missions against Hezbollah positions and leadership, creating some diplomatic backlash against the US as a result. When France tried to weasel its way into the good graces of the Arab states supporting Hezbollah, Bush made sure they did so by themselves, and then forced them back. In the end, the resolution calls for the solution that Israel wanted all along, and it commits the UN to provide enough forces to at least have a chance of successful implementation. Bush also made sure that the Israelis did not have to leave Lebanon until that force replaced them despite loud calls for immediate withdrawal, allowing Israel to protect its retreat.

My point, therefore, was that George Bush could hardly be blamed for delivering almost everything Israel wanted out of this war, and doing so with unanimous UN Security Council approval. In fact, the result should be seen as something of a diplomatic accomplishment. Israel set the goals, and we delivered. If the result is unsatisfactory, then I believe it is unfair to blame George Bush for demanding a war that Israel did not want to wage.

History is not over, yet. A lot depends upon what our government does in the next months with the ultimate bad guys, Syria and Iran. If we move to the source, this is a reasonable choice, for the reasons explained. If we go back to square one, it's still a disaster. No matter that the Israelis got most of what they wanted/needed, the issue from my perspective is not what they need, but what WE need.

We'll see. Read the whole thing, by clicking on the link, above.