What the ceasefire bought

A Munich-style pause.

HISTORIANS will look back at this weekend’s cease-fire agreement in Lebanon as a pivotal moment in the war on terror. It is pivotal in the same sense that the Munich agreement between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain was pivotal in an earlier battle against the enemies of freedom. The accord in October 1938 revealed to the world that the solidarity of the Western allies was a sham, and that the balance of power had shifted to the fascist dictators.

Resolution 1701 shows that, for the time being at least, the balance has likewise shifted to the terrorists and their state sponsors. Like Munich, it marks the triumph of the principle of putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Like Munich, it will mean not peace in our time, but a bigger war in our future.

As I was saying a couple of weeks ago–peace in our time.

And the ceasefire bought us bolder fascists:

SYRIA has warned Israel that the occupation of the Golan Heights “cannot last forever” and said Syrians will emulate Hizbollah to recover their land.

“We say to the forces occupying our land that our people warn you that they will not allow our land to be occupied forever,” the government’s daily Ath-Thawra said.

“You must understand that our people will fight the way the Lebanese resistance (Hizbollah) fought you,” it added.

“Our people will fight you … on every inch of the Golan,” it said.

However, the newspaper urged decision-makers in Israel “to open up to new perspectives”, noting that some in the Jewish state were in favour of making peace with Syria.

That last part is just a cynical play to the Israeli left which, like the American left, is mostly full of narcisstic dolts who don’t believe the world is dangerous as long their own country keeps its sword in the sheath. And it’s likely to work to some extent. You can’t overestimate the weakness and gullibility of the left. You just can’t.

The rest is a roadmap to anything but peace. 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.

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