Israel Matzav

Biden's gaffe on Hezbullah

In an earlier post, I mentioned Joe Biden's ridiculous assertion that the US and France had thrown Hezbullah out of Lebanon (Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs and Memeorandum).

In the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez shares an email from a 'foreign policy insider' that debunks the idea of placing NATO troops in a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbullah.

Joe Biden threw out a lot of bunk on foreign policy tonight, too bad Gov Palin didn’t have the foreign policy wonkishness to call him on it. Most ridiculous and downright strange was his contention that the Bush administration let Hezbollah into Lebanon, and then when “we threw them out” – whatever that means, he and Obama said NATO should go in but nobody took them up on it and now Hezbollah was all over Lebanon and that’s a problem. What?

Well, Hezbollah’s been there since the early 1980’s of course, blossoming throughout the 1990’s to become now over a third of the population of Lebanon with 2 cabinet members, a host of parliamentarians, and schools, clinics, and basically an entirely separate governance infrastructure in all of southern Lebanon and elsewhere. I suppose the throwing out of Hezbollah was the dismal and failed Israeli campaign of 2006 which dislodged nothing? Or was it Israeli’s occupation of Southern Lebanon from 1982 – 1999? Don’t remember an Obama position on NATO replacing Israeli occupation then. As for NATO going in after the 2006 debacle, well, I’m the one who rounded up 8,000 French and Italians and a few thousand other Euros to go into Southern Lebanon along with an assortment of others in August 2006 and while working that issue for about 40 straight days I don’t remember a peep from Biden or Obama about NATO – which wouldn’t be budged despite our intense pressure in Mons. So, we went straight to Rome and Paris. Que sera, sera.

I can only add that the idea of placing foreign troops as a buffer between Israel and our enemies in the absence of a peace treaty has been anathema to every Israeli government that preceded this one. Everyone here remembers too well what happened in the lead-up to the 1967 Six Day War in which Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the UN troops to leave the Suez Canal area, and they just upped and left, allowing Nasser to shut down all our shipping. Most Israelis don't regard foreign troops as being any help against the likes of Hezbullah and Hamas. The terror organizations will shoot right over them and then hide behind them.

What is probably the longest standing troop detail in this region in the absence of a peace treaty - the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) - is referred to jokingly around these parts as Two Idiots Patrolling Hebron.

'Nuff said.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:37 AM