Bush: Impotence on Parade

In his remarks to the media today, President Bush stated that Hezbollah lost the recent war because they would no longer be a "state within a state" under the terms of the UN cease fire.

What are the chances that Hezbollah would actually disarm or lose their status as an independent militia? And what can the U. S. do to ensure that the terms of the cease-fire are fulfilled.

There's practically no chance of meeting the terms of the cease fire and American impotence is going to play a role in the failure.

According to press secretary Tony Snow, all of these groups would have to cooperate for the terms of the cease-fire to be fulfilled.

"The people also within Lebanon, the Lebanese government has a role to play, the governments of Syria and Iran have a role to play, Hezbollah has a role to play, the Israelis have a role to play. And we'll have to see how all those things work out in the hours, days and weeks ahead."

The only entity out of this group that U. S. has any leverage over is Israel. The Bush administration lost our leverage over Lebanon when we gave Israel blanket approval to destroy their country. The Lebanese government may be in no mood to cooperate anyway, but we have no ability to ensure that they will. They threw away our leverage over Syria when the neo-cons started talking about invading them as well as Iraq. No chance of influence them to help us fulfill our foreign policy objectives. The same with the Iranians given that we refuse to communicate with them. Of course, we have no influence over Hezbollah and won't have any because we don't want any discussions with Hezbollah either.

Under current conditions, Hezbollah is going to stay independent of the Lebanese government, rearm themselves, and go into their next battle with Israel with a lot of confidence.

The only way this disastrous outcome can be prevented is by setting up some sort of negotiations between the Israelis and Hezbollah. The Bush administration forgot their disgust with negotiations when they co-sponsored the ceasefire with France. They should swallow their pride again and sponsor some sort of secret contact over the issues between Hezbollah and Israel.