It Takes a Cowboy

No, that's not the working title of Maureen Dowd's next book.

I'm referring to TIME's declaration of "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy."



What a coincidence that the very week TIME chose to highlight President Bush's style and policy and certify his supposed penchant for unilateralism to be dead, the Middle East erupts!

When decisive action needed to be taken, Israel took, and continues to take, the steps necessary to defend itself and fight for its survival. President Bush, to his credit, didn't try to block Israel's efforts.

YeeHa!

And once again, the UN, the anti-cowboy organization, proves to be an irrelevant and impotent body.

BEIRUT, July 15 -- The leader of Hezbollah promised an all-out war Friday after Israeli warplanes attacked his residence and Hezbollah's main headquarters in an apparent assassination attempt, and Israel vowed to press its offensive in Lebanon until the Shiite Muslim militant group was disarmed. As Hasan Nasrallah spoke, an Israeli warship was struck and set ablaze off the Lebanese coast in an unprecedented strike, possibly by an unmanned drone.

The quick succession of events after nightfall again recalibrated a three-day war in which each side has methodically raised the stakes since Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid Wednesday. The Lebanese government urged the U.N. Security Council to establish a cease-fire, to no avail, and the White House said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its attacks.

..."You wanted an open war. We are heading towards an open war, and we are ready for it," Nasrallah said by telephone to the group's television station, al-Manar, less than an hour after the Israeli strikes on his residence and the headquarters building.

Israelis don't want an "open war" anymore than we wanted to be attacked and fight the War on Terror.

We were hit on 9/11 and we responded by using all available means to defend ourselves.

Israel has been attacked repeatedly and threatened with destruction. How can it possibly be wrong for that nation to respond?

It's not as if Israel has made no compromises. For example, its withdrawal from Gaza was sold as an avenue to peace. That would be the end of terrorism. The two-state solution would be the answer.

Did any of the compromises Israel made stop the terrorism and bring about the promised peace?

No.

In the speech, Nasrallah struck a more serious tone than he had Wednesday, when he announced the capture of the two Israeli soldiers and insisted they would be freed only in exchange for three Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. With dramatic phrasing, he said Friday that Lebanese now had two choices: either surrender to Israel's demands or fight with Hezbollah. He renewed a threat to carry the fight deep into Israel, which has so far suffered four dead from the scores of rockets Hezbollah has fired over three days.

"To Haifa?" he asked. "Believe me, beyond Haifa and beyond that."

"The surprises that I have promised you will start now," Nasrallah said.

I am disgusted by Nasrallah and by Lebanon's appeal to the UN, the terrorists' knight in shining armor.

Have you heard of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559?
The 2004 resolution calls for the "disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."

Yeah, well, what is Hezbollah doing with an unmanned drone?

Update, from AP:
A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Elite Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior Israeli intelligence official said.

...The Israeli intelligence official said Hezbollah also has Iranian-made drones, and warned that they are more accurate than missiles.

Is UN resolution 1559 meaningless?

What good are these resolutions anyway? It's as if they don't exist.

Even more frustrating is the way the global community just blows the resolutions off.

Resolution? What resolution?

Instead of criticizing Israel for defending itself, in effect blaming the victim of countless abuses and attacks, nations should be demanding that Security Council Resolution 1559 be enforced.

But they aren't.

I don't understand why the world appeases terrorists. And I don't understand why leaders of nations that refuse to appease these monsters, like Israel and the United States, are considered the enemy.

The lib media are bent out of shape because the poor "Lebanese government urged the U.N. Security Council to establish a cease-fire, to no avail, and the White House said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its attacks."

What about the promises made, like Resolution 1559, that have been broken?

I haven't read a story in the lib media about the UN failing to press for the enforcement of Resolution 1559.

I haven't heard lib pundits referring to the UN Security Council's call for the disarmament and disbanding of Hezbollah, to no avail.

The fact is the UN is anti-Israel.

Israel can't build a coalition or try to get international consensus before it makes a move, because much of the world sympathizes with or agrees to appease Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, etc.

If Israel isn't a cowboy, its days would be numbered. Guaranteed.

Another fact--

Israel is fighting Islamofascists, radicals who want Israel wiped off the map, and won't be satisfied until that goal is achieved.

One more fact--

We are fighting the very same enemy.

If victory -- freedom and democracy -- demands a cowboy, then so be it.