Republicans tell us that we should vote for John McCain because Barack Obama doesn’t understand the realities of the Middle East. Could someone please tell me how he could understand them any less well than the present Republican administration?
From the Lebanese Daily Star:
On Monday Lebanon and the US signed three military contracts worth $63 million in US grants to the LAF. The grants are aimed at providing the Lebanese Army with secure communications, ammunition and infantry weapons.
Beirut and Washington also set up a joint military commission in charge of organizing their bilateral military relationship.
“We discussed with [President Michel Suleiman] military cooperation between Lebanon and the US in light of the recent meeting at the Defense Ministry in the presence of a joint military commission,” [US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David] Hale said, referring to the Monday meeting between Defense Minister Elias Murr and US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Mary Beth Long.
Lebanon today is almost completely dominated by Hezbollah. Indeed, the Lebanese government has issued ‘guidelines’ to permit Hezbollah to initiate military action against Israel, President Suleiman has supported Hezbollah’s pretext-for-war demands for the Shabaa Farms, and he even hugged terrorist child-murderer Samir Kuntar.
As Caroline Glick has pointed out, the Lebanese government and army cannot be depended on to oppose Hezbollah or Syria. The army, which is 1/3 Shia, will certainly not fight Hezbollah, and in fact — in 2006, before Hezbollah’s latest coup — assisted it in the war with Israel.
So, assuming that the administration correctly perceives the Iranian-controlled Hezbollah — an organization responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans since the early ’80’s — as our enemy, why are we arming forces in Lebanon that at best will not oppose it and at worst fight alongside it against our ally, Israel? Why are we in effect helping Hezbollah and Syria deny political rights to Christians and other non-Shiites in Lebanon?
Another example is the “Annapolis process”. Why is the US financing and arming the corrupt and unpopular Palestinian Fatah faction when it’s clear that it cannot — and wouldn’t if it could — oppose Hamas? Why is the US trying to force Israel to evacuate the West Bank, when that will guarantee, just as it did in Gaza, a Hamas takeover? Why is the US supplying Fatah with arms that will certainly fall into the hands of Hamas, as they did in Gaza?
In both cases, the Republican administration prefers to believe attractive fairy tales — that it has allies in the Arab world who will fight the Iranian terrorist proxies for it — to the truth, which is that the only Middle Eastern nation whose interests truly align with those of the US is Israel.
Is this any more realistic than the Democratic fairy tales about talking Iran into giving up its nuclear program?
Technorati Tags: Lebanon, Hezbollah, Fatah, Hamas, Republicans, Democrats, Israel
The policy of the U.S. in regard to the Palestinians, and now Lebanon has simply been stupid. There is no other word that defines it, except perhaps ‘self- defeating’. This stupidity was best exemplified by the Bush Administration’s opting for a ‘Palestinian state’ when such a state,given the present Palestinian realities, could only be anti- American. The failure to understand that there are times when one cannot push the Peace process forward is a major failure not only of American Administrations but of the Western media.
The providing arms to the feckless Lebanese Army is another exercise in foolishness.
It seems not very considerate faulting the U.S. in these actions when it has much greater problems on its hands at the moment. But perhaps the actions here are indicative of what has been wrong with the Bush Administration in other areas also . It just did not have a proper understanding of the matter. So too I might add with its promise to not allow Iran to go nuclear and believing it could achieve this through negotiations.