David Ignatius Hits the Sweet Spot

David Ignatius has his usual sensible well-informed view of Lebanon. David is a friend of Raja Sidawi, owner of The Oil Daily and Energy Compass where I used to work and a refugee from the Al-Assad family's prisons. I met Sidawi once in Geneva and again in London and New York, and he is as perspicacious as any Middle East business magnate around---in my very limited experience!

BEGIN QUOTE: "Here is Ignatius last Feb 22 on the Paradox of Connectedness:

One of the baseline assumptions of U.S. foreign policy is that "connectedness" is a good thing. Linkage to the global economy fosters the growth of democracy and free markets, the theory goes, and that in turn creates the conditions for stability and security. But if that's true, why is an increasingly "connected" world such a mess?

…Raja Sidawi, a Syrian businessman who owns Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and is one of the most astute analysts of the Arab world I know. He argues that Barnett misses the fact that as elites around the world become more connected with the global economy, they become more disconnected from their own cultures and political systems. The local elites "lose touch with what's going on around them," opening up a vacuum that is filled by religious parties and sectarian groups, Sidawi contends. The modernizers think they are plugging their nations into the global economy, but what's also happening is that they are unplugging themselves politically at home.END QUOTE




Ignatius was on Hardball the other night and with Andrea Mitchell, shared his grave doubts about the long-term benefits Israel can garner from its current assault on South Lebanon. But please outline an alternative without using the "negotiations" quicksand quagmire that the UN employs to make situations worse.

Reference the Darfur Agreement in May, par example, or the UNSC Res 1559 which was supposed to disarm Hezbollah, but didn't even raise a finger to enforce it.

Ignatius does suggest a UNIFIL with real teeth in its Charter, led by a French contingent which for once might take on an opponent it can beat. Here is Ignatius's WaPo wisdom:

BEGIN QUOTE: ""America's role is to energize a political outcome that helps to satisfy Israeli military objectives by other means," says one administration official. The problem is that the American diplomatic timetable is so slow that by the time a cease-fire is reached -- more than a week off, by U.S. estimates -- Lebanon may be too broken to be put back together anytime soon.

Administration officials rightly insist that returning to the status quo in Lebanon would be a mistake. After last year's triumph of forcing a withdrawal of Syrian troops, Siniora's government was struggling (and largely failing) to establish a viable nation. This nation-building effort was hamstrung by Hezbollah's insistence that it maintain what amounted to a state within a state.

The administration's strategy is to let Israel do the dirty work of breaking Hezbollah and then move in a foreign "stabilization force" to bolster the Lebanese army. Once Israel has pushed the guerrillas north, this international force would help the Lebanese army deploy to the southern border with Israel and the eastern border with Syria. The plan is for a beefed-up successor to the existing United Nations force in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

The administration's informal deadline for getting a U.N. mandate for this new international force is July 31, when UNIFIL's current mandate expires. The French now command that force, and the United States hopes they can remain in that role, with new troops coming from such robust military powers as Italy, Turkey and Canada.

Siniora has privately warned the Bush administration that by bombing so many targets in Lebanon, Israel is undermining its own strategic goals. Lebanese are angry with Hezbollah for starting the war by kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and most want to see the militia under government control. But Siniora has asked why the Israelis are hitting Lebanese airports, ports, roads, villages and other targets that primarily affect civilians. And he has criticized attacks on the Lebanese army, which even the Israelis say is the key to long-run stability and security.

Some Bush administration officials share Siniora's concern about the scope of Israeli attacks. These officials are said not to understand Israeli targeting decisions. The administration is understood to have communicated this concern to Jerusalem.

The Lebanon crisis has put the administration in a double bind. U.S. officials know they need to move soon toward a cease-fire to preserve any chance for the Siniora government to regain control of the country. But they don't want to move so quickly that they prevent Israel from completing its primary military mission of destroying Hezbollah's arsenal of missiles and pushing the Shiite guerrillas back from the border. The administration's two-track approach is perhaps summed up in Augustus Caesar's famous admonition: "Make haste slowly."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will head for the Middle East this weekend to try to animate this diplomacy. She has no plans to stop in Syria, and that's a sensible decision. It's up to the Syrians to demonstrate that they can play a positive role -- not least to their Sunni Arab neighbors, who are angry about President Bashar al-Assad's alliance with Shiite Iran and its proxies. A recent claim by Syrian intelligence officials that they have no control over Hamas leader Khaled Meshal is said to have infuriated Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, who responded indignantly: "Don't give us that! We are not Mauritania! We are Egypt!"

Supporting Israel and Lebanon at the same time is a tricky task -- especially at a moment when the bombs are flying between one nation and the other. Unless the administration moves quickly to demonstrate that it supports the Siniora government, and not just Israel, its larger strategy for defusing the conflict may begin to unravel. Administration officials recognize that a stable Lebanon cannot be achieved by military action alone. But for now, all the world sees is Hezbollah rockets and Israeli bombs. END QUOTE.

Syria, of course, is an international leper already. Boy-Assad keeps a Sunni majority at bay by his Shi'ite-related 12% Alawite minority. Sound familiar? Saddam's flip-side.

Hezbollah and Hamas hide among civilian populations, using private homes as missile launching sites, and then the clueless nitwits of the MSM and International Left bemoan civilian casualties without noting their real cause---vicious TERRORISTS who dupe the soft-brained lefties in the EU and US MSM, not to mention the clinically daft lefty bloggers, who regard David Ignatius as Lieberman-lite.

Best curse I've heard yet: May the 72 virgins these dead terrorists meet in Paradise all look like Helen Thomas!