An Interesting Parallel

One war . . .

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
August 1, 2006

On September 11, 2001, a freedom-loving nation was attacked by a terrorist organization operating from the territory of a sovereign state with the acquiescence, if not the active complicity, of the latter's government. The United States retaliated with what can only be called a "disproportionate response."

America launched air and ground assaults on Afghanistan, aimed at destroying not only the al Qaeda safe havens but toppling the Taliban regime. We damaged or destroyed critical Afghan infrastructure so as to deny its use to the enemy. Civilian casualties occurred, as did refugee flows. At one point, the U.N. declared the resulting dislocation a humanitarian crisis.

Once the campaign to eliminate al Qaeda was launched, there was no consideration given to negotiating with the terrorists or the government that afforded them protection. The United States would not have contemplated a U.N.-mandated cease-fire, let alone the insertion of an international peacekeeping force under a Chapter 7 mandate from the Security Council -- whose purpose, inevitably, would have been to protect the terrorists from our military, not the other way around.

And most especially, it would have been inconceivable that the U.S. could accede to one of its enemy's central demands -- for example, removal of all American forces from the Mideast -- as part of a negotiated cease-fire brokered by the U.N. and approved by the Taliban at the direction of al Qaeda.

It is therefore stunning, not to say depressing, to see how the Bush administration's early, strong support for Israel's response to the murderous attacks on its territory by the terrorist group, Hezbollah, has morphed in recent days.

First, Israel was told it must not undermine the Lebanese government, even though the latter not only acquiesced to what amounts to a Hezbollah-controlled state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon. The government in Beirut actually has two Hezbollah ministers in its Cabinet -- a role al Qaeda never enjoyed in Taliban Afghanistan. This injunction had the practical effect of limiting Israeli efforts to press officials in Beirut to disassociate from the terrorists in their midst.

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The man makes a lot of sense. Read the entire piece.

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