The loser in Lebanon: The Atlantic alliance

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH08Ak01.html

The United States and France have produced a United Nations resolution of sorts aimed at ending the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, but the negotiations between US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and France's Jean-Marc de La Sabliere nearly ended in disaster.

Through the course of a single week, the US and France came as close to a bitter split over Middle East policy as they had on the eve of the Iraq war. At issue in the confrontation was a US insistence that an international force (led by France) be deployed to Lebanon prior to the declaration of a ceasefire - a requirement the French thought ludicrous. They weren't the only ones.

"The position that we're taking in the UN is just nuts," a former White House official close to the US decision-making process said during the negotiations. "The US wants to put international forces on the ground in the middle of the conflict, before there's a ceasefire. The reasoning at the White House is that the international force could weigh on the side of the Israelis - could enforce Hezbollah's disarmament."

All of this, this former official noted, "is covered over by this talk about how we need a substantive agreement that addresses the fundamental problems and that will last. But no one is willing to say exactly what this means."

A former US Central Intelligence Agency officer confirmed this view: "I am under the impression that {President} George {W} Bush and {Secretary of State} Condoleezza Rice were surprised when the Europeans disagreed with the US position - they were running around saying, 'But how can you disagree, don't you understand? Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.'"

[Mojorabbit]

1. Great article!

Thanks.

[breakaleg]

2. It certainly gives a different picture than in the US media...

It implies that the agreement reached was hard fought between the US and France. Yet France has agreed to it with all of those harsh to Lebanon conditions.

[Scribe]

4. Which media? I've seen all sorts of implications. It's not uniform

[thereismore]

3. Bolton is an asshat. nt

[Ms. Clio]

5. I read a post here last week that pointed out that the EU does not list

Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

more from the article:

Bolton's continued "cheerleading for Israel" didn't help, according to this same official. "It's a real row that started with Bolton's statement that you couldn't compare the deaths of Lebanese to the deaths of Israelis," the official said. "He implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit. It was a stupid thing to say. It tore the scab off the wound."

Bolton refused to back down, reiterating that the death of Lebanese civilians, while "tragic and unfortunate", was understandable considering Israel's right to "self-defense". In any event, Bolton went on to say, Israel did not "desire" the deaths of innocents - unlike Hezbollah.

The US press was quick to pick up on this, parroting the administration's line. Even the venerable Washington Post implied that seven Canadians who had died as a result of Israeli air strikes in the war's first days were of lesser value than other Westerners - since they were "Lebanese holding Canadian passports".

The French, as well as the British, also resented what they viewed as Israel's "high-handed" lecturing of the Europeans on their own constituent problems. The European anger boiled over, according to one UN diplomat, during an exchange between Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman and a French official during a meeting on the composition of a proposed international force.

[regnaD kciN]

6. I wonder how long it will be...

...before we're back to "freedom fries" and "freedom toast." :eyes:

[izzie]

7. I am getting mixed up on who is a terrorist any more.

From my safe home they all look some what scary to me. I think a bomb from any country would be called as terror to the one around it. For get it if, it comes from a ship in the sea, a drone, F15, in the ground under my car or from a man behind a wall, all kill and all scary.

[malaise]

8. Europe is fed up of US

highhandedness.
<snip>
There are more difficult days ahead - particularly when the US and France square off in the coming week over the draft of a second resolution. With nearly everyone now wondering whether the US position in the Middle East is unraveling, one UN diplomat said the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict may spell the end of an era in which the US and Europe established a tradition of diplomatic cooperation: "We might as well face up to it. Sooner or later the United States is going to have to choose what is more important - its strategic alliance with Europe, or its friendship with Israel."
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Bushco is a disaster; they have no friends left.