Sunday, August 13, 2006

An alternative resolution

From National Review Online, August 12, 2006, 7:34 a.m., by Claudia Rosett [this article provides a link to the actual wording of the UN resolution calling for the “cessation of hostilities," and an amusing draft of an alternative one that mocks the appeasing diploma-speak of it]...

It’s happy hour at the United Nations. After four weeks of Hezbollah-provoked war in Israel and Lebanon, accompanied by much diplomatic hand-wringing, the U.N. Security Council met Friday evening to adopt 15-0 its latest attempt to paper over the real problems: Resolution 1701 on “The Situation in the Middle East.” This resolution is meant to deliver the “ceasefire” that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been calling for, also described in the lingo of the U.S. State Department as a “cessation of hostilities.”

Unfortunately, if Resolution 1701 has any effect at all, its real meaning is that we now embark on a period in which Hezbollah will seize the opportunity to regroup and reload. The feeble and compromised mix of U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army, which is the force authorized in this resolution, will fail to stop them. Iran and Syria will proceed apace with their terrorist infection and subjugation of Lebanon. The U.N. will wave around this latest piece of paper to try to prevent Israel from defending itself, or, for that matter, defending the rest of us against the “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Hezbollah agenda. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, enjoying yet another confirmation of the U.N.’s mincing impotence in the face of guns, bombs, rockets, and terror, will continue his fevered preparations to roll out the nuclear bomb.

In sum, it’s already time to start drafting the next resolution: UNSC DRAFT RESOLUTION 1701-Plus

The Security Council,
Recalling that all its previous resolutions on the situation in the Middle East have failed to evict terrorists and Syrian toadies from Lebanon, failed to stop Iran’s terror-sponsoring and nuclear-bomb-building projects, failed to protect Israel from unprovoked attack, and failed to bring peace.

Recalling also that Israel in 2000 withdrew entirely from Lebanon to the satisfaction of the U.N., and that Hezbollah deliberately provoked this war by killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers inside Israel’s borders, and — in some cases using children as human shields — has since fired into Israel with the intent of maximizing destruction and civilian deaths more than 3,300 missiles, from an arsenal at least four times that size brought illicitly into Lebanon under the gaze of U.N. peacekeepers who have been at best passive and at times have been caught actively collaborating with Hezbollah,

Expressing its alarm that Hezbollah has established itself over the past 23 years as one of the world’s most ruthless, unscrupulous, and barbaric terrorist groups, even though the United Nations due to the pressures of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference has failed completely to define “terrorism” and therefore in surreal fashion does not consider Hezbollah’s murderous Islamic fascists to be terrorists,

Emphasizing that Hezbollah is a creation of Iran, abetted by Syria; has infested Lebanon to the extent that it effectively serves as an Iranian terrorist militia bordering on Israel and explicitly dedicated, like the president of Iran itself to the annihilation of the democratic state of Israel,

Recalling that the current “Situation in the Middle East” as emphasized in the paragraph above is a violation not only of umpteen U.N. resolutions, but also of the U.N. charter itself, which spells out that membership in the U.N. is open to “peace-loving states” — a condition that clearly excludes Syria and Iran,

Mindful that despite the courage and desire for healthy democratic government shown by the majority of the Lebanese people in last year’s Cedar Revolution, the current Lebanese government and parliament are still packed with Syrian acolytes such as President Emile Lahoud and Speaker Nabih Berri, as well as with cabinet members and parliamentarians who serve as a political front for Hezbollah’s heavily armed protection rackets and terrorist militia,

Suggesting that Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora stop addressing his lamentations, condemnations, and demands to Israel, stop playing the gutless victim, take some responsibility, show some integrity and place the blame where it belongs — on Hezbollah, and its sponsors in Syria and Iran, whose aggressive and unprovoked attacks forced Israel into a war to defend itself,

Regretting the U.N.’s own role in causing this war, by way of offering false and misleading promises to disarm Hezbollah and keep the peace, while in fact ignoring a buildup that was an obvious and growing threat both to Lebanese democrats and to Israel,

Emphasizing that the Lebanese government is pursuing a disingenuous course in allowing Hezbollah a presence in the cabinet and parliament while at the same time disowning all responsibility for Hezbollah’s aggression against a U.N. member state,

Emphasizing further that when Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora praised Hezbollah and in a bizarre distortion of the realities thanked its leaders for “sacrifices” on behalf of Lebanon, he was casting his lot with the terrorists, and the Security Council would like to clarify that it is now time for him either to renounce Hezbollah completely, or resign.

Offering to the Lebanese prime minister, in the unlikely event he does develop a backbone, the services of a robust international force of competent and armed security guards to protect him against the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah terror squads that would undoubtedly try to assassinate him for any display of principle, much as former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and a series of other Lebanese politicians have been murdered after standing up for responsible self-government in Lebanon,

Urging, lest the message is not already crystal clear, that the Lebanese authorities come clean and officially acknowledge that Hezbollah is an Iranian-Syrian infestation of their country, running not “social services” but protection rackets; broadcasting terrorist propaganda both at home and abroad on its Al-Manar TV station, thus endangering other U.N. member states; and infiltrating its political fronts into the national institutions of Lebanon with the aim of taking over the country and turning it into an Islamic state fronting for Syria and Iran,

Calls for even the worst hypocrites on this same Security Council to stop huffing and puffing their way through resolutions that equate democratic states with totalitarian regimes and their terrorist shock troops, and instead recognize that Iran and Syria today have already declared war not only on Israel, but on the entire Free World,

Affirming the need to end this growing fascist threat,

Calls for the free nations of the world to bring together a robust, international force with the express aim of removing, as swiftly as possible, and by whatever means necessary, the terrorist-sponsoring regimes in Tehran and Damascus,Noting that this might require going outside the U.N. to form a Coalition of the Honest, due to various despotic and hypocritical lobbying blocks which too often dictate the agenda not only for such kangaroo courts as the U.N. Human Rights Council, but for the Security Council itself,

Suggesting that this Coalition be prepared, after dealing with the Middle East, to proceed to North Korea,

Requests urgently that Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his entire entourage of special envoys, aides, and advisers resign immediately so they can be replaced by Secretariat employees who understand the dangers of moral equivalence and instead of calling for “peace in our time” are prepared to serve the interests of the Free World,

Stressing that the immediate departure of the current Secretary-General is essential in light of the derelictions and corruption, extraordinary even by U.N. standards, which under his administration characterized the U.N.’s last major effort to cope with a war-mongering tyrant in the Middle East, to wit, Saddam Hussein and the combination of U.N. sanctions and the Oil-for-Food Programme,

Observes that if this course is followed, Hezbollah will be unable to sustain the attacks that have forced Israel into the current conflict; Lebanon would have an excellent chance of achieving genuine reform and lasting peace; and the rest of the world might yet be spared the suffering, carnage, and widespread ruinous war with which the messianic, totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran and their thug sidekicks in Syria would like to black out the freedom and progress which the United Nations and its Security Council are in fact tasked in the charter to defend,

Adds that the course of action outlined above, along with easing the threat to Western Europe, the U.S. and even such unhelpful governments as those now in Moscow and Beijing, would then allow a better focus on such terror-breeding regimes as Saudi Arabia, and greatly clear the way for healthy development, better lives, and freedom from thuggery, fear and war in places ranging from Sudan to the rest of Africa and parts of Latin America, all now suffering from the spread of the fascist ideologies mentioned above

Decides to remain actively seized of the matter. And just in case anyone doesn’t know what that means, moves urgently to append to the U.N. charter both a diplomatic thesaurus and a copy of George Orwell’s essay on “Politics and the English Language.”

Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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