In the midst of a war where the forces of civilization have just suffered their first major defeat, it is quite natural to start pointing fingers and assigning blame. In Israel, they are already sharpening the long knives as MK’s are making room on their lodge poles for the scalps of several politicians and generals who, according to most observers, allowed Hizbullah this rather impressive strategic victory.

While the United States was not engaged militarily in this debacle, we nevertheless failed utterly in the only place where we really could have done some good for Israel; at the United Nations. The passage of Resolution 1701, mandating a cease fire in Lebanon, is already turning into our very own diplomatic nightmare. And the blame for this must rest squarely on the shoulders of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Perhaps anticipating the heavy criticism that will be coming her way once it is apparent that Hizbullah will not cooperate in implementing the cease fire accord and that Israel will be constrained from taking any action to make them, Rice penned a dishonest Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post where she not only tries to spin her way out of trouble but also misstates several key parts of the cease fire agreement and downplays or glosses over others that she knows will never be implemented. And if she actually believes some of the tripe she has written, perhaps that is reason enough, along with the fact that she may have lost the confidence of the President, for her to resign.

Rice lists 3 components of the cease fire that she claims will be decisive in altering the “status quo” on the Lebanese-Israeli Border:

First, it puts in place a full cessation of hostilities. We also insisted on the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah must immediately cease its attacks on Israel, and Israel must halt its offensive military operations in Lebanon, while reserving the right of any sovereign state to defend itself. This agreement went into effect on Monday, after the Israeli and Lebanese cabinets agreed to its conditions.

The United States may have “insisted on the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers” but we didn’t get it. That is an issue to be determined later and will almost certainly involve a prisoner exchange, not “unconditional release.” of the IDF men. In fact, we insisted on many things in this resolution including an international force not part of UNIFIL operating under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter which would have allowed this independent force to shoot if Hizbullah would not comply with the terms of the cease fire. What we got was a tepid augmentation of the UNIFIL force operating under Chapter 6 strictures which are much more defensive and will prevent the UN from enforcing the will of the Security Council with regards to Hizbullah’s weapons.

Here’s the second component of the cease fire agreement that the Secretary assures us will alter the status quo on the border:

Second, this resolution will help the democratic government of Lebanon expand its sovereign authority. The international community is imposing an embargo on all weapons heading into Lebanon without the government’s consent. We are also enhancing UNIFIL, the current U.N. force in Lebanon. The new UNIFIL will have a robust mandate, better equipment and as many as 15,000 soldiers—a sevenfold increase from its current strength. Together with this new international force, the Lebanese Armed Forces will deploy to the south of the country to protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area. As this deployment occurs, Israel will withdraw behind the “Blue Line” and a permanent cease-fire will take hold.

Either the Secretary has blinders on or she is being deliberately disingenuous and perhaps dishonest.

How will this resolution expand the authority of the Lebanese government? The resolution says much. It’s high minded words are soothing to the ear. But we are not dealing with people who plan on relinquishing their hard won gains at the conference table that they won on the battlefield.

Hizbullah and their leader Hassan Nasrallah are in the ascendancy in Lebanon. During the conflict, Nasrallah exercised veto power over what cease fire terms were acceptable to Lebanon. The sad fact is that Prime Minister Siniora is not in charge at the moment in Lebanon. With Hizbullah balking at disarming as well as moving their forces from the southern part of the country, Siniora doesn’t dare call a cabinet meeting to discuss the matter lest the Hizbullah ministers walk out and his government fall – a blow that could open the door to any number of nightmare scenarios. Siniora is trapped and no United Nations resolution is going to help him “expand the authority” of the Lebanese government until Hizbullah is disarmed.

And what about that little detail, Madame Secretary? In her Op-Ed, Rice is all over the map regarding the disarmament of Hizbullah. In the segment quoted above, she seems to be saying that the Lebanese army will deploy with the augmented UNIFIL force to “protect the Lebanese people and prevent armed groups such as Hezbollah from destabilizing the area.” So will Hizbullah be armed or disarmed? Here, she seems to be saying that UNIFIL will disarm the terrorists:

Finally, this resolution clearly lays out the political principles to secure a lasting peace: no foreign forces, no weapons and no authority in Lebanon other than that of the sovereign Lebanese government.

Clearly the two goals are incompatible, although she may be talking about a “lasting peace” in the context of further negotiations over other issues such as prisoner exchanges and the Shebaa Farms matter. However, surely she knows Israel’s ironclad position on Hizbullah disarmament; that the IDF will not leave southern Lebanon until the terrorists lay down their weapons. How can she reconcile her rosy resolution scenario with the completely useless Lebanese army being deployed alongside a UN force that has failed for 28 years to fulfill its mandate?

Just today, Secretary Rice said that UNIFIL would not be disarming Hizbullah, that this was a job for the Lebanese government:

“I don’t think there is an expectation that this (U.N.) force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah,” Rice said. “I think it’s a little bit of a misreading about how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of the militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily.”

If Hezbollah resists international demands to disarm, Rice said, “one would have to assume that there will be others who are willing to call Hezbollah what we are willing to call it, which is a terrorist organization.”

If people are not going to call Hizbullah a terrorist organization after the thugs launched almost 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israeli towns and cities in order to kill as many civilians as possible then nothing on earth they do will change the laggard’s minds.

It is this kind of disconnect from reality that makes me question the Secretary’s fitness to remain in office. For there is much more in the Washington Post Op-Ed that calls into question Ms. Rice’s grasp of the situation as well as her honesty.

Her belief that the Lebanese army will be effective in doing anything at all is belied by this assessment from Janes:

Yet as things stand the Lebanese Army, which has operated primarily as an internal security force since the 1975-90 civil war, is incapable of undertaking any peacekeeping mission unless Hizbullah is completely disarmed.

It has been starved of funds for years because of Lebanon’s economic woes, it is poorly equipped and does not have the combat experience or motivation of Hizbullah’s battle-hardened Shi’ite fighters.

More troublesome is the composition of the army’s 11 mechanised brigades and half-dozen special forces formations along sectarian lines between Christians and Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims.

The Lebanese army has been a barracks army for 20 years. Calling them an “army” doesn’t make them so. And if this is the bunch that is being counted on to help disarm Hizbullah – something that Nasrallah has insisted isn’t going to happen voluntarily – then the world and Resolution 1701 are in deep trouble.

And what of this mythical arms embargo? As I write this, Iran and Syria are busy resupplying their client in Lebanon with no thought of complying with the resolution’s mandate that only the government of Lebanon be the recipient of any arms transactions. Why should Iran and Syria comply? Who is going to stop them?

Perhaps the augmented UNIFIL force will be able to help – if they ever get there:

A United Nations international force is expected to land in Lebanon within two weeks, but analysts said yesterday that U.N. troops will be unable to disarm Hezbollah against its will.

“We would like to see 3,000 to 3,500 troops within 10 days to two weeks,” Hedi Annabi, assistant secretary-general for U.N. peacekeeping operations, told reporters in New York.

“That would be ideal to help consolidate the cessation of hostilities and start the process of withdrawal and deployment of the Lebanese forces,” Mr. Annabi said.

[snip]

Mr. Annan has been working the phones since Saturday to get world leaders to commit to creating a robust international force, but there have been no formal commitments, Mr. Dujarric said.

C. David Welch, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said the U.S. would send a senior interagency team to the United Nations today and tomorrow to help shape the enhanced UNIFIL force.

The United Nations, he said, “is on a fast track to try and supplement and enhance” the force in Lebanon. “They are meeting every day in preparation for that.”

The current UNIFIL force has troops from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Ukraine. Mr. Welch said other countries, including Turkey, might participate in the enhanced force.

There is no doubt that Secretary Rice is sincere in her belief that she got the best possible deal for the United States and Israel at the UN. And despite her obvious spinning and outright dishonesty in putting the best face on the outcome, the fact is that Resolution 1701 – recognizing as it does a terrorist group as a legitimate combatant in a war with Israel – is an unmitigated disaster for the United States and almost as big a blow to the cause of freedom and democracy as Israel’s disaster on the battlefield.

Pretty strong stuff, I know. But if one were to examine the world prior to the Israeli-Islamist War and the world afterwards, several hugely significant differences have emerged that have further endangered Israel, complicated our efforts to deny Iran the nuclear weapons it wants so badly, pushed our allies in the Middle East closer to the Iranians, and perhaps fatally weakened the Lebanese government.

In Rice’s defense, it is not entirely her fault. Some of the blame must accrue to the President for not infusing a sense of urgency on Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert in the early days of the war against Hizbullah. Bush refused to call Olmert for the first few weeks of the military campaign – a campaign that unfolded with painful slowness and puzzling hesitancy on the part of the IDF. While Bush’s reticence with Olmert was rightfully interpreted as signalling a “green light” for Israel to carry out a wide ranging war against Hizbullah, once it became clear that Olmert wasn’t moving with boldness and speed, perhaps a call from the President would have alerted Olmert to the fact that his “green light” could turn amber or even red in the very near future unless he got a move on.

Finally, it is very possible that Rice has lost the confidence of the President. This piece that appeared in Insight Magazine is extraordinary for the candor of the Secretary’s people in describing how the President allowed Rice to be undermined by the Cheney faction in the White House during the war:

The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is over the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel’s continued offensive against Lebanon. The sources said Mr. Bush believes that Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah would encourage Iranian adventurism in neighboring Iraq. Ms. Rice has argued that the United States would be isolated both in the Middle East and Europe at a time when the administration seeks to build a consensus against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Instead, Ms. Rice believes the United States should engage Iran and Syria to pressure Hezbollah to end the war with Israel. Ms. Rice has argued that such an effort would result in a U.S. dialogue with Damascus and Tehran on Middle East stability.

[snip]

The sources said Mr. Bush’s position has been supported by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and to a lesser extent National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. They have urged the president to hold off international pressure and give Israel more time to cause strategic damage to Hezbollah as well as Iranian and Syrian interests in Lebanon.

Secretary Rice bears most of the responsibility for agreeing to a UN cease fire resolution with little prospect that it will do anything that it says it will. All it has done is prevented Israel from continuing an offensive that was just starting to make rapid progress in inflicting the kind of damage on Hizbullah that would have made Nasrallah’s claims of “victory” ring hollow. For this reason, her continued usefulness to the President should be called into question.

UPDATE: MORE “FIG LEAF DIPLOMACY”

Via the Washington Times, AP is reporting that the Lebanese cabinet has reached an agreement with Hizbullah to deploy the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon as long as Hizbullah keeps its weapons out of sight:

The government ordered the army, which has been assembling north of the river, to “insure respect” for the Blue Line, the U.N.-demarcated border between Lebanon and Israel, and “apply the existing laws with regard to any weapons outside the authority of the Lebanese state.”

That provision does not require Hezbollah to give up its arms, but rather directs them to keep them off the streets. “There will be no authority or weapons other than those of the state,” said Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said.

Hezbollah’s top official in south Lebanon said the group welcomed the Lebanese army’s deployment even as he hinted that the Shiite guerrillas would not disarm in the region or withdraw but rather melt into the local population and hide their weapons.

“Just like in the past, Hezbollah had no visible military presence and there will not be any visible presence now,” Sheik Nabil Kaouk told reporters Wednesday in the southern port city of Tyre.

I would wager that the UN will stipulate that Lebanon is in compliance with Resolution 1701 despite this cynical and transparent attempt by Hizbullah to circumvent its mandate and then dare the Israelis to break the cease fire.

This is no surprise. It was predicted by most opponents of the Resolution before it was even voted on. We should be ashamed of ourselves for signing on to this treacherous bit of UN lunacy. Before the truly evil thugs of the world, the United Nations is worse than useless; it becomes complicit with the evil in order to satisfy its own narrow minded and cynical membership who crave the appellation “peacemaker” when in fact they become little better than gravediggers.

This next round is on the UN.

UPDATE II

Bryan at Hot Air links a rather over done piece from the New York Post equating the cease fire with Munich but he’s nevertheless spot on with this assessment:

The Syrians and Iranians think they have hit upon a strategy to destroy Israel: Attack it with standoff weapons like Katyushas, goading it into fighting a ground war that frightens the world into halting Israel’s defensive actions. The end game is that Israel can’t defend its borders, it becomes demoralized and then the Arabs and Iranians move in for the kill. In response to the standoff attacks, Israel has the choice of non-response, weak response or brutal response–there’s no way to uproot an entrenched army of any size without using some very nasty tactics and weapons. I’m not talking nukes or anything like that–just weapons that make for bad TV. Which gets us back to underestimating the weakness of the left.

And you shouldn’t underestimate the ambitions of tyrants. You’d think we would have learned that lesson by now.

Indeed.