Everyone from Howard Dean to Kofi Anan has called for Israel to use restraint while attacking Hezbolalh, and several people have gone further to criticize Israel for all the civilian casualties it has inflicted.
It really seems as if the international community really really REALLY wants to condemn Israel for this war but can't because Hezbollah attacked first, not to mention the UN resolution that said Hezbollah should disarm. So they have to content themselves with saying that Israel is overreacting and is using disproportional violence.
Hezbollah gets no criticism for launching rockets in to civilian neighborhoods. Or for going in to Lebanese houses and setting up radar towers and missle launchers. I mean Kofi would probably find some excuse for them if their soldiers wore babies strapped to their backs.
Meanwhile Israel is telling people ahead of time where they are going to be bombing. And yet they are still getting lambasted.
I mean the people around the world can't be that stupid right? Negotiating and compromise is what got Israel in to this situation in the first place. They gave Land for Peace but got no peace. In the UN defeating an enemy to ensure peace is just a foreign concept. Why? Because at the UN and in the more liberal and socialist governments around the world there is this desire to see moral equivilance everywhere that precludes everything. They refuse to see Hezbollah as evil, or terrorists as bad guys. They aren't bad guys just misunderstood. And because Israel has a big military and is perfectly capable of wiping out Hezbollah, and Lebenon for that matter, they are treated as the big mean nasty bullys. Despite the fact that Hezbollah with backing from Iran and Syria are the aggressors and are the ones who have sworn to wipe an entire country off the map. Nope, we have to be sensitive to them because they come from a different culture. Sigh.
Thankfully Israel is used to this kind of thing (or sadly if you think about it), and isn't giving in to public pressure. Kofi can call for Hostilities to end til he's blue in the face but until Hezbollah decides to lay down their arms Israel will do what it needs too.
And the whole "have a cease-fire" idea is just silly anyway as Jonah Goldberg highlights in his column "Why a cease-fire makes no sense for Israel"
Israel's bombing campaign, unlike Hezbollah's, must have a larger goal than mere terror and bloodshed. I'm certain that it does. But if the situation freezes under the current circumstances, Israel's larger goal won't be apparent to much of the world. It will seem like a hugely disproportionate response in which Israel killed hundreds of civilians in order to get back two kidnapped soldiers. And Hezbollah will still be there, ready to dance for any coin Syria or Iran puts in its jukebox, threatening Israel and strangling Lebanon's democratic hopes.Hezbollah can only be destroyed by a ground campaign. If Israel doesn't launch one, it will be worse off, laughter will echo in Damascus and Tehran, Lebanon will have been dealt an unjust and cruel blow for nothing, and we'll all be back here again in the near future.
Charles Krauthammer (one of my favorite writers) echos these thoughts in the Washington Post:
The road to a solution is therefore clear: Israel liberates south Lebanon and gives it back to the Lebanese.It starts by preparing the ground with air power, just as the Persian Gulf War began with a 40-day air campaign. But if all that happens is the air campaign, the result will be failure. Hezbollah will remain in place, Israel will remain under the gun, Lebanon will remain divided and unfree. And this war will start again at a time of Hezbollah and Iran's choosing.Just as in Kuwait in 1991, what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded -- implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.
