Posted by
Silvio Canto, Jr. on Thursday, July 20, 2006 8:12:40 AM
Lebanon is in the middle of this war. I understand that.
In a perfect world, Israel and Hezbollah would not fight in Lebanon.
In a perfect world, Hezbollah would not hide its missiles in Beirut apartment buildings.
However, Hezbollah is shooting missiles from Lebanese territory and hiding its military hardware in residential areas. What is Israel supposed to do?
How would the US react if hundreds of missiles were landing in Texas or Florida?
Do the math. The US population is 300 million. Israel has 7 million.
100 dead in Israel is equal to thousands in the US.
Would we show restraint? No way!
Let me say it again. Israel does not have easy choices. The Middle East is always about bad choices.
World War II was about bad choices, too. Pres. Truman had to choose between dropping two atomic bombs on Japan or losing thousands of American GIs in an invasion.
Life is not fair or pretty.
Life is not going to get fairer or prettier as we fight this messy war against Islamic fanatics. This is going to get ugly and uglier. We are in a nasty war!
Indeed, let's help Lebanon. We need a multinational force to enforce Resolution 1559. I don't want another Kosovo, where the US did all of the heavy lifting. I want a multinational force made up of many nations. We could start with NATO and invite others.
As a matter of fact, most countries do not have the military resources to participate. However, they could contribute doctors, nurses, policemen and engineers.
Am I optimistic? No. Why not?
The world is good at talking. It is not good at solving problems. It prefers to sit back and let the US clean up the mess.
Many European countries have large Islamic populations. For example, how would all of those young men outside Paris react to Chirac sending French soldiers to fight Hezbollah? They burned 1,000 cars last year. How many would they burn now? Would they burn Paris?
What about all of those cells all over Europe? Have we forgotten what happened to a Danish newspaper that published Mohammed cartoons?
The bottom line is that most European leaders are scared to death of their Islamic populations. This is why they play the anti-Israel card.
So we are back to square one.
The world won't fight Hezbollah. How can we blame Israel for defending itself?