Friday, July 24, 2009

U.N. in Lebanon: Due Diligence or Diligence Due?   [Steve Schippert]

The question, of course, is entirely rhetorical. When a weapons cache in a warehouse in southern Lebanon, along the Israeli border, unexpectedly exploded, no one wondered whose it was or what it was. Well, except perhaps United Nations officials, who routinely have trouble making decisions, lest one party or another might prefer not to hear a proclamation that the apple is, indeed, red.

True to form, the U.N. is almost certain that it is a possibility that the weapons cache that exploded in the middle of Hezbollah’s forces “might” possibly perhaps maybe be Hezbollah’s. Or at least, there’s a chance.

The U.N. peacekeeping chief has said there are signs an illegal weapons stockpile that exploded last week in southern Lebanon belonged to the Lebanese guerrilla movement Hezbollah.

In a speech delivered behind closed doors to the Security Council on Thursday, U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy also said that some of the people who tried to prevent U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon (UNIFIL) from investigating the site were Hezbollah members dressed in civilian clothes.

"A number of indications suggest that the depot belonged to Hezbollah, and, in contrast to previous discoveries by UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces of weapons and ammunition, that it was not abandoned but, rather, actively maintained," he told the 15-nation council in the speech, obtained by Reuters.

He said the mere presence of such arms south of the Litani River represented a "serious violation of resolution 1701."

And that "serious violation of resolution 1701" just might possibly perhaps maybe have been supplied by Iran, through Syria. But that’s another level of clarity that is decidedly not for beginners. Let’s practice calling the apple red first before we go analyzing the core and its seeds.

This is, of course, the same United Nations that finds itself incapable of concluding that Syria — specifically Bashar al-Assad and his merry band of Mukhabarat — were behind the massive truck bombing and assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and 19 others in Beirut in 2005.

And the Blue Hats on the ground (mil-speak for UNIFIL forces from various countries) are on vacation. Everyone knows that getting deployed as a Blue Hat means a no-combat breather in a different land. They have no dog in the fight. And no one wants to go home from vacation dead, after all.

Oh, sure, technically their mandate is to “enforce” U.N. Resolution 1701 and prevent Hezbollah from rearming. But that would mean actually, well, fighting Hezbollah terrorists, who have other designs and orders from Tehran. The Blue Hat colonels and generals jockey for international recognition and prestige while the foot soldier views the situation with disinterest in the generals and disdain for risking death when he has no vested interest in the fight.

It’s essentially Barack Obama’s ideal army. In fact, the long-winded yet ineffectual international organization is a perfect fit. And when he loses the 2012 American presidential election, he will most probably and naturally “ascend” to secretary-general of the United Nations, where he can finally become President of the World, command an army that won’t fight, and endlessly tour the globe giving speeches ad nauseam.

What a spectacle it will be one day to see an American president locking horns with an American secretary-general of the U.N. And for those who are still having a hard time distinguishing true colors, the job of secretary-general will be a much more natural and perhaps ideologically liberating fit for the current president of the United States.

But regardless, the U.N. is and will remain functionally useless, militarily feckless, and little more than a waste of billions of dollars and the squanderer of prime Manhattan real estate.

If the U.N. proclamation that the weapons cache that exploded on Lebanon’s side of the Israeli border “might” be Hezbollah’s doesn’t make that clear, despite the U.N.’s massing “its own” forces to supposedly enforce its own resolution against exactly that, nothing will.

No, you will be among those wildly cheering Secretary-General Obama in a few years as he promises to heal international wounds and begins strong-arming global taxation.

Good luck with that.

07/24 01:08 PMShare