Can someone help me understand, re: immediate ceasefire?

[LynzM]

Ok, so this is really two questions, and I'm not being facetious. I'm just confused.

1.) Bush et al. refuse to call for an immediate ceasefire. Why the hell not??

2.) Related, Bush claims he wants there to be a "true" peace instead of a "false" peace. Ok, if there's a ceasefire and people stop killing each other, isn't that a step in the right direction toward any kind of peace? Why let the fighting go on, or at the very least, not make an effort (see #1) to stop it?

Please don't flame me; I really just don't understand this.

[HereSince1628]

1. The US is involved via Israel in a proxy war against Hezbollah

BushCo forced Syria out of Lebanon and pushed for elections. Unfortunately the new democracy BushCo thought it was setting up included Hezbollah, which they consider a terrorist organization.

BushCo wants Hezbollah destroyed, both as a militia force and as a political force. Consequently I suspect that the US Gov't and Israel cooked up a cooperative plan aimed at destroying Hezbollah.

[Recursion]

2. The rationale:

The "why not", taken at face value of what the War Chimp said, is as follows:

1. We've had intermittant violence and ceasefires off and on for decades now.
2. Any ceasefire would simply allow Hezbollah to rearm and reinforce.
3. More people will end up dying if we allow more decades of tit for tat retaliations to continue.

I disagree with *, but I do admit the argument is not necessarily false; more people probably will die in the coming years if we have a ceasefire that returns us to status quo ante, but we don't know that for sure so I'm willing to give peace a chance again. Incidentally, I've seen several times on DU (and have myself muttered under my breath) the sentiment "wall them in and let all the crazies kill each other"; this is essentially the administration's policy right now.

[KKKarl is an idiot]

3. I will try & see it from their point of view

I think they feel as long as Hezbollah is destroyed then they have destroyed terrorism in Lebanon & so they will not this problem from the northern border again. I think this thinking is flawed. All the US has done in blindly supporting Israel in every conflict is brew more terrorists. So killing all known terrorists in the world today will only lead to angrier terrorists in years to come. Peace is the only answer.

[Igel]

4. There are many kinds of peace.

If peace is merely the lack of gunfire, then the Anschluss of Austria preserved the peace, ceding Czechoslovakia to Germany, and the division of Poland by Germany and the USSR preserved the peace. Peace at all costs lead to a lot of repression, oppression, and death, while permitting a very large buildup and allowing Germany to consolidate peace-time conquests in preparation for military conquests.

Prior to hostilities this time 'round, there were fairly routine rocket attacks by Hezbollah, monitored and duly noted by UNIFIL in Lebanon. Last spring and last fall there were attempted abductions of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. A couple of years ago, Hezbollah planted IEDs on the Israeli side of the border--UNIFIL certified they were Hezbollah--and when the Israeli bulldozer poked its shovel across the border an RPG whizzed over to kill the driver. UNIFIL observed, and duly noted the violations: an Israeli incursion of a few feet, followed by a cross-border attack. Job done.

During the peace, Hezbollah stockpiled a lot of arms, and it got Iranian training under Syrian auspices. It built bunkers.

That's a fake peace. It served the purposes of war. Whenever anybody pointed out this was a problem, the interests of peace prevented a solution. Rocket attack across Israel's border ... restraint called for.

The interim UNIFIL multinational peacekeeping force is a fake peacekeeping force, just as it's fake 'interim'. They monitored Hezbollah's raids, Hezbollah's training, and Hezbollah's digging in and arms buildup. They monitored odd behavior by Hezbollah--widespread vanishing of Hezbollah forces from their positions, which prompted some questions and suspicions that something was about to happen, and kept that "tactical information" to themselves--they must not take sides, even when they know something bad is about to happen, or have information that could save Israeli or Hezbollah lives. In that incident, when few hundred Hezbollah soldiers and sympathizers tried to rush the border, a distraction while Hezbollah forces slipped across the border in a different location and abducted some soldiers, UNIFIL noted it. When they found they had videotaped the abduction, they failed to note they had the videotape until it was too late to be of use--then they blurred the abductors' faces to preserve neutrality; when they found the vehicles the soldiers were abducted in, they decided to return them, but when Hezbollah said "hand them over", they did so, and didn't tell Israel.

To be fair, in the early days of Hezbollah control, UNIFIL forces were beaten up and threatened. They submitted, and ditched their mandate out of fear, and made amorality a virtue. They do not judge; they will not judge; unless, of course, they're hit by Israel. When Hezbollah strikes them, they simply note it for posterity's sake. To complain about Israel results in condemnation to Israel; to complain about Hezbollah ... best not think about it.

That's the peace. It was a 'peace' in name only, one that served as a low-level conflict in Hezbollah's interests, and allowed them to form a real paramilitary.

All the language and blather currently mirrors almost exactly what led to this peace. This is the peace that people seem to want. They're idiots. I don't know what the solution is, but this is certainly not it.