Fred Kaplan on Stopping the Fighting

Fred Kaplan's analysis in Slate calls for a negotiated cease fire:

BEGIN QUOTE:The solution is for the United States, the United Nations, the Arab League, and maybe the European Union (throw in as many organizations as possible)—acting, crucially, alongside the Lebanese government and army—to impose this deal. This means cracking down on Israel to cease fire—and it means getting Syria or Iran (or whoever it takes) to crack down on Hezbollah to hand Prime Minister Siniora the Israeli prisoners.

Then this same international coalition—again, with the Lebanese army at least officially in the lead—will have to deploy a substantial peacekeeping operation along a wide buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon. Finally, the international community will have to give the Lebanese government billions of dollars to repair the vast damage inflicted by the Israeli airstrikes—not so much as an act of charity but to pre-empt Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah from organizing (and taking political credit for) the cleanup.END QUOTE

This has been done before. In 1978 the UNIFIL forces were inserted via UNSC Res 415. The result: the PLO and Israel shot over and through the UNIFIL troops, inflicting unprecedented UN casualties, until Israel in 1982 brushed aside the UN buffer and routed the PLO from its new complex of caves and redoubts, eventually causing the evacuation via Beirut to Tunis of Arafat and his crony-army.

Who came in to replace the PLO once the Israelis installed a buffer zone in South Lebanon? Hezbollah with Iranian arms and money, supplied through Syria's good offices, that's who. Syria took over Lebanon, Israel had a Christian proxy on the Litani River line, and Hezbollah began two decades of radicalizing the Shi'ite population, heretofore a poor and proliferating deprived minority, into a near-majority well-armed and even more fanatic than Hamas in their suicidal Death Cult. And lest we forget, Hezbollah invented the suicide bomber with the trucks that killed 241 Marines and 75 French soldiers in the '80s.

Now Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon. Syria is defiant and wants to return to Lebanon after assassinating Rafiq Hariri. Both are using this crisis to divert and deflect attention from their chicanery. They regard the UN as a powerless and ineffectual cave of winds. And why shouldn't they?

Remember the May 2006 Agreement in Darfur, when the UN brokered an "agreement" with Sudan Sudan was to rein in the Jamjaweed and the UN was to supervise the camps with the African Union troops. And because an "agreement" was reached, everyone walked away and to the benign neglect of the MSM, which believes the UN is effective, the world's attention went elsewhere.

What happened? The Jamjaweed STEPPED UP the intensity of their attacks, and the African protectors melted away, while the black African refugees in Darfur were more endangered and attacked than ever.

The Sudanese rightly regarded the UN as of no consequence and Kofi Annan, supervisor of UN policy during Rwanda, as incompetent. They paid no attention to their agreement.

Now the same incompetent UN SecGen is calling for a ceasefire and an "agreement."

Recall what happened when UNSC Res 1559 enjoined the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah. Absolutely nothing. Hezbollah ignored the UN and attacked Israel. Now the UN is trying to pull Hezbollah's chestnuts out of the fire. And Hezbollah will allow UN nitwittery to continue, until Kofi declares an "agreement." Which Hezbollah will again ignore, but which will satisfy the vapid vaporous hand-wringers in the EU, especially imposters like Shh-Iraq, whose involvement in the UN Oil For Food imbroglio is beginning to be exposed. His bag man, frmr Int. Min. Pasqua has been indicted, to the thundering silence of the MSM and hand-wringers of all stripes. If Pasqua rats out the Chief Rat, Chirac's Presidency will end with the appropriate level of disgrace and ignominy that it deserves.

Kaplan wants the EU to participate, but Socialist Spain and a corrupt French Prez must be excluded from deliberations, as should Chirac's houseboy Villepin, unless he is suitably deferential to what real players in the drama demand.

Perhaps some sort of solution can be cobbled together, but the Israelis may have to go in like the Orkin man and disinfest the terrorists in a hand-to-hand fashion and not retreat unless the US, not the feckless impotent UN, guarantees the area of Lebanon south of the Litani River.